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Extremely out of style?

In other sports-on-TV news, I noticed that the tenth X games starts tomorrow, but strangely enough, the entirety of programming will be confined to three nights on ESPN this week. After a decade of these games aimed squarely at the coveted teen demographic, I think it's serious when it gets reduced to just three nights of programming, considering just a few years ago it would unfold over the course of a week, with preview events and post wrapups going on for weeks around the actual dates. I'm curious if ESPN didn't want to upstage the Olympics or felt the summer schedule was already packed with other large events -- they put a lot of money into the X games so I'm confused why they wouldn't capitalize on it with expanded coverage.

The other major alternative sports event, the Gravity Games, had a "coming soon in 2004" message on their site up until Monday of this week. The Outdoor Life Network picked up their programming and announced a late September date for those events. But just two years ago, I bought a pay-per-view version of the live Gravity Games (it would take two months for the games to show on NBC sports in a heavily edited version) which showed for a week and cost me almost 40 bucks to watch (it was worth it, being the year backflips came to motocross), and now the event will be a few nights of recaps on a smaller network, OLN.

I thought with the advent of a whole network dedicated to skating, surfing, and bmx that extreme sports were here to stay, but it's starting to seem like they're on the way out.

213.149.188.121

by Matt Haughey August 4, 2004 in News

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