Legends Behind the Lens: Steve Bornstein An architect of ESPN and the NFL Network, the media visionary is still shaping sports video entertainment today By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Friday, May 22, 2020 - 12:00 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The story of American sports television is engrained in the history of this nation, rising on the achievements of countless incredible men and women who never once appeared on our screens. During this pause in live sports, SVG is proud to present a celebration of this great industry. Legends Behind the Lens is a look at how we got here seen through the people who willed it to be. Each weekday, we will share with you the story of a person whose impact on the sports-television industry is indelible.
Legends Behind the Lens is presented in association with the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame and the SVG Sports Broadcasting Fund. In these trying times - with so many video-production professionals out of work - we hope that you will consider (if you are able) donating to the Sports Broadcasting Fund. Do so by visiting sportsbroadcastfund.org.
___________________________
By Jason Dachman
Few would argue that the two most influential and powerful entities in the U.S. sports are ESPN and the NFL, and it would be hard to envision either without the contributions of Steve Bornstein. As the president/CEO of ESPN throughout its unprecedented growth in the 1990s and the first-ever president of NFL Network, Bornstein joined the pantheon of sports-media executives while cultivating a reputation as one of the most driven and competitive personalities the industry has ever seen.
Steve is one those pivotal people in the history of sports television, says fellow Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Don Ohlmeyer. He's a smart and tough negotiator, a tremendous leader, and one of the great innovators this business has ever seen. He simply knows how to position the side he's representing to be successful.
The Early Days in Wisconsin
The Fair Lawn, NJ, native began his career at the campus television station while attending the University of Wisconsin - Madison.
I think I caught the TV bug pretty early on, says Bornstein. My freshman year, they were building the communication-arts building across from my dorm room, and I ended up starting to work at the university TV station. It sort of took off from there.
After graduating in 1974, Bornstein bounced around local Wisconsin stations before taking on a three-year stint at WOSU-TV in Columbus, OH, working his way up to the station's executive producer. While in Columbus, he also produced Ohio State Buckeyes football telecasts for Warner-Amex Cable's groundbreaking QUBE interactive-cable-television venture, which served as the launchpad for Nickelodeon and MTV and introduced the concepts of pay-per-view and interactive TV services.
The Rise of the World Wide Leader in Sports
Legendary executive Bill Creasy played a key role in QUBE's development and became close with Bornstein, so, when he was tapped by Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Chet Simmons to run programming at the fledgling ESPN, he brought Bronstein with him.
Frankly, we were very close to going out of business in the early '80s, recounts Bornstein. It early became quite clear that we weren't going to be able to make any financial sense out of this unless we changed the model. As a result, ESPN really invented the whole business of affiliation fees for the cable industry. Ultimately, it was such a sound model that it obviously became the standard that the entire cable industry was built on.
Arriving just four months after the network launched, Bornstein would spend the next two decades helping transform ESPN into a sports-media heavyweight.
After moving through ESPN's programming and production ranks for 10 years, the 38-year-old Bornstein became the network's youngest president and CEO in 1990, adding the title of corporate VP of Capital Cities/ABC three years later.
Steve was the perfect person for that job at that time, says NFL SVP of Broadcasting/NFL Films COO Howard Katz, who served with Bornstein at ESPN, ABC, and the NFL. Were it not for Steve, I don't think ESPN would have seen the enormous growth that they have achieved.
He would go on to lead ESPN though one of its most prolific eras, overseeing the launch of ESPN2, ESPNEWS, ESPN Classic, ESPN Radio, ESPN.com, ESPN Regional Television, and a variety of new properties, including the ESPY Awards and X Games, as well as unprecedented global expansion
With the way that the cable business and ESPN grew side-by-side in the '90s, Steve was the perfect leader for that decade, says ESPN on-air stalwart Chris Berman. We could have made a lot of wrong turns, but we didn't, and the proof is where we are today.
If he did nothing else from this point on, he would still go down as one of the greatest executives ever in sports media and the media industry at large. Howard Katz
In addition, Bornstein championed ESPN's launch of the V Foundation for Cancer Research with Jimmy Valvano in 1993. The master negotiator and programmer also played a key role in the extreme expansion of SportsCenter, the addition of college basketball and football programming, and, most important, the arrival of live NFL games in 1987.
Steve expected excellence, and that contributed to our culture, says ESPN EVP, Programming and Production, John Wildhack. It helped us set very high standards across the company in every way we ran our business and created our content.
In 1996, Bornstein became ESPN chairman and took on added oversight of ABC Sports, serving as president. By this point, thanks largely to its dual-revenue-stream model of advertising and subscription fees that Bornstein helped pioneer, ESPN had become a
Most recent headlines
04/08/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, is excited to announce Santiago Solanas as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO)....
03/06/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, a...
29/04/2024
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
29/04/2024
Codemill aims to revolutionize media workflow efficiency at this years NAB Show by introducing Just-In-Time (JIT) playback technology in Accurate.Video Validate...
29/04/2024
April 29, 2024
-- TF1 Chooses Broadpeak to Power Targeted Advertising for New...
29/04/2024
LOS ANGELES Allen Media Group (AMG) has partnered with LG Electronics to bring 223 Local Now FAST channels to LG's free streaming service, LG Channels, avai...
29/04/2024
OTTAWA Ross Video has announced the introduction of Raiden, a data-driven weather graphics software that combines data gathering, processing, and visualization ...
29/04/2024
Panalux, a leading rental provider of lighting and power solutions for the motion-picture industry and part of Panavision's end-to-end service offerings for...
29/04/2024
Cobalt Iron Inc., a leading provider of SaaS-based enterprise data protection, today announced that it has received a patent on its technology for dynamic autho...
29/04/2024
SDVI, the leading platform provider for cloud-native media supply chains, today announced that Rally Access Workstation, a fully managed solution for editing in...
29/04/2024
Premier Sports, a premium sports broadcaster, has selected QuickLink's Remote Commentary solution for introducing professional, high-quality remote commenta...
29/04/2024
Glookast has chosen Jigsaw24 Media as the only UK channel partner to represent their portfolio of ingest and workflow optimisation products. The agreement, sign...
29/04/2024
Clear-Com played a pivotal role in the seamless coverage of the recent solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Leveraging its cutting-edge Eclipse HX Digital Matrix i...
29/04/2024
PlayBox Neo will promote its complete range of television channel management, graphic branding and playout solutions to EMEA region media content owners and bro...
29/04/2024
Lingo, RuPaul's word-twisting game show, returns for season two on CBS Friday, May 24. Two episodes air that night, and stream on Paramount Plus, too....
29/04/2024
ESPN and Amazon Prime Video are reportedly close to scoring television rights to the National Basketball Association, according to published reports....
29/04/2024
Judge Judy and Hot Bench, CBS Media Ventures' genre-leading court shows, have been renewed through the 2025-26 TV season in more than 95% of the country, Gr...
29/04/2024
Premier Sports, an Irish-based premium sports broadcaster, has selected QuickLink's Remote Commentary solution for introducing professional, high-quality re...
29/04/2024
The awards celebrate the craft of behind-the-scenes TV talent and the best programmes of 2023
By Matthew Corrigan
Published: April 29, 2024
The awards cel...
29/04/2024
The team at Milk had to create and deliver the VFX and environment work for the royal residences featured in the drama from scratch
By Jenny Priestley
Publis...
29/04/2024
CEO Bob Bakish is expected to leave the company as early as today, with a new leadership committee likely to run the company on an interim basis
By Jenny Pries...
29/04/2024
Albena Ivanova, director, media and entertainment and strategic products at CHAOS talks to TVBEurope about her route into the industry
By TVBEurope Staff
Pub...
29/04/2024
The acquisition gives Grand Technix the opportunity to expand its footprint in the audio visual and broadcast technology sectors
By Jenny Priestley
Published...
29/04/2024
29 04 2024 - Media release Screen Australia announces James J. Robinson's debut feature First Light
First Light
Principal Photography is underway on Firs...
29/04/2024
Capitol Broadcasting recently became the inaugural company honored with inductio...
29/04/2024
Tonight on Smoke and Mirrors: Fanyana feels embarrassed about his sexual mishapDon't miss Monday, 29 April's riveting episode of South African soapie Sm...
29/04/2024
Talk about commitment. When startup SEA.AI, an NVIDIA Metropolis partner, set out to create a system that would use AI to scan the seas to enhance maritime safe...
28/04/2024
Mediahaus delivers the first SRT live-streaming sports production over 5G with U...
27/04/2024
On April 26, L3Harris Chair and CEO Christopher E. Kubasik joined CNBC's Mor...
27/04/2024
PORTLAND, Oregon Audinate Group Limited, the developer of the Dante AV-over-IP solution, announced significant new additions to Dante Connect, its cloud-based D...
27/04/2024
TORONTO Bell Media has launched 10 English and French-language FAST channels featuring entertainment, factual, news, and sports programming. The new free stream...
27/04/2024
An extensive new analysis of the news segments in the broadcast evening news programs of ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS has found that broadcasters devoted most of their...
27/04/2024
GERMANTOWN, Md. EchoStar's Hughes Network Systems has opened a new manufacturing facility and private 5G incubation center in Germantown, Maryland....
27/04/2024
Harry Pappas, one of three brothers who founded Pappas Telecasting Companies in 1971, died April 24. He was 78 years old....
27/04/2024
ATLANTA and LONDON Mexican telecommunications and broadcast company Televisa has selected Synamedia for an overhaul of its broadcast distribution....
27/04/2024
Participate in the Survey - The Impact of AI on Media and the Creative Industry
Pascal Wagner April 26, 2024
0 Comments
By participating in this surve...
27/04/2024
SDVI Rally Access Workstation Earns Two Top Awards at 2024 NAB Show
Brie Clayton April 26, 2024
0 Comments
SDVI, the leading platform provider for clo...
27/04/2024
Berklee's Music and Health Institute Launches Community Health Musician Cert...
27/04/2024
Charter Communications reported higher first-quarter profits despite continued cord-cutting and competition for broadband customers....
27/04/2024
Two environmentally-focused groups are partnering to engage the unscripted TV world in finding better ways to address climate change. Reality of Change is an ec...
27/04/2024
Sarah Garcia has been promoted to weekend anchor at KTLM McAllen, Texas, known as Telemundo 40. Starting April 27, she will anchor Noticias Telemundo 40 weekend...
27/04/2024
CBS Sports said it launched a new 24-hour free, ad supported streaming television (FAST) channel devoted to the UEFA Champions League....
27/04/2024
Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts received $35.4 million in compensation in 2023, up 11% from the previous year, according to a proxy statement filed by th...
27/04/2024
Art Happens Here With John Lithgow, which sees the actor study dance, ceramics, silk-screen printing and vocal jazz with students in Los Angeles, debuts on PBS ...
27/04/2024
Remember Leave It to Beaver? Bewitched? Dragnet? When cable ratings were rising?...
27/04/2024
Next up for the weekend binge at Catchy Comedy is Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. Every weekend, Catchy Comedy features The Catchy Binge, a marathon of a classic sitcom....
26/04/2024
Sundance Film Festival CDMX 2024 kicks-off today with screenings in 5 theaters in Mexico City and the opening-night film, FRIDA, directed by Carla Guti rrez...
26/04/2024
[Editor's Note: This interview is part of a larger feature about the women d...
26/04/2024
Once again this year, SGL Carbon opened its doors to interested children and young people. On the occasion of the German Girls and Boys Day, which took place on...
Legends Behind the Lens: Steve Bornstein An architect of ESPN and the NFL Network, the media visionary is still shaping sports video entertainment today By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
