And, David, I'm kind of sick of the old theme music, and to be completely honest, I never really liked it.
Welcome to season four, episode one of Acquired, the podcast about technology, acquisitions and IPOs.
I'm Ben Gilbert.
I'm David Rosenthal, and we are your hosts.
Today, we are covering a company that is absolutely synonymous with sports.
Espn, the worldwide leader.
Indeed.
And as they say in the very first moments of their 1979 broadcast, if you're a fan, if you're a fan, what you'll see in the next minutes, hours and days to follow may convince you you've gone to Sports heaven.
Indeed, Acquired has gone to Sports heaven here.
It was obligatory for longtime listeners of the show.
You know, that we cover typically one acquisition and we talk about it and we grade it, and we have a pretty standard format.
This episode covers not one acquisition, but three, Each one fairly monumental.
And I want to outline what that's going to be so that the story has a little bit of structure to it.
As I mentioned, the first broadcast was in 79.
ESPN was acquired by ABC in 1984.
Just one year later, in a surprising turn of events, the smaller Capital Cities Broadcasting Corporation incredibly bought abc, took its name, and got ESPN along along with it.
And then finally, in 1996.
95.
96, yeah, 95.
Yep.