ESPN Goal Line & Bases Loaded
HDTV) | |
Ownership | |
---|---|
Owner | ESPN Inc. (The Walt Disney Company (80%) Hearst Communications (20%)) |
Sister channels | |
History | |
Launched | September 4, 2010 |
Closed | January 13, 2020 June 30, 2020 (contractual sunsetting) | (final program)
ESPN Goal Line & ESPN Bases Loaded was a gametime-only
Goal Line aired during the regular season on Saturdays from 3:00 p.m. ET to approximately 11:30 p.m. It also ran throughout the playoffs as an alternate feed for Megacast coverage, usually as a "datacast" feed of extended data. The network was occasionally simulcast on ESPNews in the late afternoon or early evening when that channel was not carrying its own games. Bases Loaded operated during the early rounds of the NCAA Softball & Baseball Championship.
At its launch, the channel was made available to customers of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks systems,[1] and became available soon after to customers of Verizon FiOS TV.[2] In addition, the channel is also carried on Dish Network, Comcast, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Sling TV, Cablevision, Hulu and DirecTV. During the network's downtime, it would promote the next week or event that would air with a still card and a loop of ESPN's college football theme of the time as background audio; cable providers were disallowed from using the channel space for other purposes.
The channel formerly operated a third iteration of the service in the same channel space during the college basketball season known as ESPN Buzzer Beater, which broadcast on Wednesday nights and Saturdays from December to early March. In July 2017, ESPN announced that it had discontinued Buzzer Beater, in order to "shift resources to better position ourselves for the long-term". The Goal Line and Bases Loaded services were not affected by this change.[3]
Officially, the network's last program was the 2020 College Football Playoff National Championship on January 13, 2020, when it again carried the DataCast channel for ESPN's Megacast coverage.
Network closing
The 2020 version of Bases Loaded would never occur, due to the
References
- ^ Humes, Mike (September 3, 2010). "ESPN and Time Warner Cable Launch New College Football Live Cut-In and Highlights Channel – ESPN Goal Line". ESPN Press Room. Archived from the original on June 5, 2014. Retrieved April 24, 2022.
- ^ Szalai, Georg (October 7, 2010). "FiOS inks carriage deal with Disney, ESPN". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved April 24, 2022.
- ^ "ESPN Shutters One of Its Channels to Cut Costs". The Wrap. 19 July 2017. Retrieved 24 July 2017.
- ^ "Re: Notice of Discontinuation of ESPN Goal Line and ESPN Bases Loaded". Letter from ESPN to the National Cable Television Cooperative. 13 March 2020. Archived from the original on 15 June 2020. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
See also
- NFL RedZone, a similar channel operated by the NFL Network