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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

Comments

They may be on the way out, but it's definitely not the first time. Of course, as an ex(?)-flatlander, you already know this.

BMX was big in the late 70's before "dying out", then coming back (bigger than before) in the 80's before "dying out" again. Then it came back in the late 90's, bigger than ever with the X-Games, etc. They'll be back again...someday for good.

Posted by: KJC at Aug 4, 2004 2:16:52 PM

ABC will cover 2 additional hours of the X Games on Saturday afternoon, but I agree with your statement. ESPN seems to like having more programming dedicated to poker and ESPN25 than this years X-Games.

Posted by: Peter at Aug 5, 2004 10:19:52 AM

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