The first aspect of the ESPN Bristol Campus that jumps out at you is the satellite farm. It includes what is supposedly the 5th largest dish in the world and the second biggest in the United States. There are 26 satellites in total in this one area, and pictures don’t do it justice. You have to see it in person. Especially since when the dishes catch your eye they’re juxtaposed against a hilly countryside where you don’t really see anything for a long while and then boom- there they are!
When you see all these satellites, and then tour the inside of ESPN Global Headquarters, you realize that if we’re to ever make contact with beings from another galaxy, it will be via the communications technology here.
The Mothership
I’m still not sure if the human beings inside the ESPN Bristol campus like or dislike “The Mothership” nickname. On one hand, it is the focal point of the sports media universe; the capital of the World Wide Leader empire. And it truly is one of the most technically advanced places on the planet. The control rooms, the monitors, the studios, the security, the gadgets and gizmos, it does feel like a spaceship.
On the other hand, Dan Patrick is the one who popularized this term, at least in reference to the ESPN Bristol campus, and clearly he’s doing so in a somewhat pejorative light.
There had been rumors of a Patrick reunion with Keith Olbermann, re-living the glory days of SportsCenter in its heyday. However, ESPN President John Skipper publicly shot down those rumors.
And here’s some news that was revealed yesterday on the ESPN Bristol Campus
Looks like June 22nd for new @SportsCenter graphics/set/studio/era.
— James Andrew Miller (@ESPNBook) May 22, 2014
It sounds like ESPN will pursue Thursday NFL games when CBS contract runs out.#SCMediaDay
— Pete Dougherty (@Pete_Dougherty) May 22, 2014
“If SportsCenter was a stand alone network, it would be the fifth most watched network among men,” Skipper said.
Guess what’s #1. Yep ESPN. Here’s the rest of the 18-34 male demo: 2. Cartoon Network (Adult Swim) 3. Comedy Central 4. TBS. The new Digital Center 2, or DC-2, 194,000 square foot facility that will be the new home to SportsCenter and the studio programming covering the NFL, will have five control rooms and about 10,000 square feet devoted to SportsCenter alone.
Those satellites I mentioned? They receive 95,000 live television feeds a year, as the network processes 45 petabytes a day (more than twice the data indexed in Google). That’s enough to cover all the information in the Library of Congress 169 times in one day.
“There is no media company that creates the amount of content on a daily basis that we do,” said ESPN Executive Vice President, Director of News Craig Bengtson.
We’ll have much more on the ESPN Bristol Campus. The sights and sounds, plenty of ESPN Bristol Campus pictures, and many more feature stories in the coming week.
Paul M. Banks owns The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports. He’s also a frequent guest on national talk radio. Banks, a former contributor to NBC Chicago and the Washington Times, has been featured in numerous outlets including NFL.com, Forbes and the History Channel. President Barack Obama follows him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)