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ESPN2 is an American basic cable and satellite television network that is owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and the Hearst Corporation (which owns the remaining 20%). ESPN2 was initially formatted as a network for a younger generation of sports fans; by the late 1990s, this mandate was phased out as the channel increasingly served as a second outlet for ESPN's mainstream sports coverage. As of February 2015, ESPN2 is available to approximately 94,379,000 pay television households (81.1% of households with at least one television set) in the United States. ==History== ESPN2 launched on October 1, 1993 at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Its inaugural program was the premiere of ''SportsNight'', a sports news program originally hosted by Keith Olbermann and Suzy Kolber – where Olbermann opened the show by jokingly welcoming viewers to "the end of our careers." Launching with an estimated carriage of about 10 million homes, ESPN2 aimed to be a more informal and youth-oriented channel than parent network ESPN, featuring a heavier emphasis on programming that would appeal to the demographic. Its initial lineup featured studio programs such as ''SportsNight'' (which host Keith Olbermann characterized as a "lighter" parallel to ESPN's ''SportsCenter'' that would still be "comprehensive, thorough and extremely skeptical"), ''Talk2'' (a nightly talk show hosted by radio personality Jim Rome, which was billed as a sports parallel to CNN's ''Larry King Live''), ''Max Out'' (an extreme sports anthology series carried over from ESPN) and ''SportsSmash'', a five-minute rundown of sports news and scores which aired every half-hour. ESPN2 also featured several half-hour news programs focused on specific sports, such as ''NFL 2Night'' (football), ''NHL 2Night'' (hockey) and ''RPM 2Night'' (auto racing). Event coverage would focus on coverage of conventional sports popular within the 18-34 age demographic (such as auto racing, college basketball and NHL hockey), while also covering atypical sports such as BMX and other extreme sports.〔 ESPN2 would also be used to showcase new technology and experimental means of broadcasting events: on September 18, 1994, ESPN2 aired a simulcast of ESPN's coverage of CART's Bosch Spark Plug Grand Prix, consisting exclusively of onboard camera feeds. In 1995, ESPN2 introduced the "BottomLine," a persistent news ticker which displayed sports news and scores. The BottomLine would later be adopted by ESPN itself and all of its future properties. In the late 1990s, ESPN2 would phase out its youth-oriented format and begin to serve as a secondary outlet for ESPN's mainstream programming; telecasts began to adopt a more conventional style, and the "graffiti 2" logo was dropped in 2001 in favor of a variation of the standard ESPN logo. On-screen graphics (such as the BottomLine) would use a blue color scheme instead of red to differentiate it from ESPN. On February 12, 2007, the use of ESPN2 branding would also be dramatically reduced – while the ESPN2 name would be retained for branding and identification purposes, all future telecasts were branded simply with ESPN logos. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「ESPN2」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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