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1 results

  • 5 - Color Commentary

  • Joseph Darda, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    Gift and Grit
    Published online:
    26 May 2025
    Print publication:
    12 June 2025, pp 152-181

  • Summary

    In 1980, the fledgling Entertainment and Sports Programming Network delivered the first live television coverage of the NFL draft. The draft would become one of the biggest events on ESPN’s and the NFL’s calendars and demonstrate to the emerging cable industry that talk sold – sometimes better than the thing being talked about. Chapter 5 recounts how ESPN, for years the leading cable channel, built a multibillion-dollar business by nurturing an obsession with scouting athletic giftedness. The talent talk allowed the network to bridge the two dominant racial ideologies of the time, color blindness and multiculturalism, and model for other cable networks and media how to turn commentary into mass entertainment.