Sept. 7, 1979

At 7 p.m., an RCA SATCOM I communications satellite 22,300 miles above the equator, south of Hawaii, receives a signal from an earth station transmitter in Bristol, Conn., and beams the message back to earth and into the homes of about five million cable television viewers across the United States.

The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) hits the air.

Sportscasters George Grande and Lee Leonard introduce the network to viewers. Also present at the debut are Getty Oil executives - Getty has an 85 percent interest in the company - and NCAA officials.

The cable network plans to televise 12-14 hours of sports weekdays and 19 hours on weekends. In a few months, ESPN plans to go 24 hours, seven days a week.

Twenty-four hour sports programming is the brainstorm of ESPN president William Rasmussen, who got the idea for an all-sports network format while stuck in a traffic jam. At first, he planned on a regional network, but when he learned that his satellite fee would be the same if the telecast went to the entire country, he went nationwide.

"What we're creating here," says Scott Rasmussen, Bill's son and ESPN vice-president, "is a network for sports junkies."