Mike Phelan WRT 205

When discussing ESPN’s use of technology to expand it’s horizons, I am aiming this piece at anyone who is your average sports fan.  At some instances I made direct references to my audience.  In many instances, I referred to the audience as fans of ESPN.  At one point I mentioned, “Now fans can feel as if they are much closer to the players and can grasp a better understanding of how athletes are physical specimens.”  Although I target the fans throughout the paper, I also try to expand horizons at some points.   Right now is the age of technology and social media.  We can see changes in the way were living and collected new information every year and we have to tweak our likes slightly in order to keep up with it.  For a large company like ESPN, those changes and adaptations are a little bit more drastic.  There are some articles that you can find on the internet about how ESPN is doing so but I feel like there should be a lot more informatio...

Unit 2 ESPN has been the leading platform for all sporting news in the world for almost forty years.  Over that time, there were many changes in the broadcasting industry that many companies struggled to overcome.  Possibly the largest obstacle, and still the most prevalent, was and is technology.  ESPN adapted over the years in order to stay relevant in a time of ever so changing technological platforms and social media.  This new technology allows ESPN to find, reach, and expand their audience in a way that best interests the company and it's viewers beyond just broadcasting.   Technology has allowed for ESPN to use and expand  upon fantasy football, Sports Science, and statcast.  All of these aim to target fans who want to get closer to the game and gain insight on live updates and injuries.   Fantasy football has been a game loved by everyone who enjoys sports.  In the early 1960’s, fantasy games were just a mere thought that no ...

Unit 2 Draft ESPN has been the leading platform for all sporting news in the world for almost forty years.  Over that time, there were many changes in the broadcasting industry that many companies struggled to overcome.  Possibly the largest obstacle, and still the most prevalent, was and is technology.  ESPN adapted over the years in order to stay relevant in a time of ever so changing technological platforms and social media.  This new technology allows ESPN to find, reach, and expand their audience in a way that best interests the company and it's viewers.   Fantasy football has been a game loved by everyone who enjoys sports.  In the early 1960’s, fantasy games were just a mere thought that no one expected to be what they are today.  Although, with the increase in technology, fantasy sports have become a major cornerstone in the sports industry.  ESPN jumped on the bandwagon in 1995 when they begun their first ever fantasy football le...

I found this to be one of the more interesting free writes from this unit.  This assignment allowed me to choose something that I was passionate about.  I chose to write about a current event in the field I one day hope to be in and a sports current event.

Beginning in elementary school, students were introduced to the library.  My first memory in a library came from when I was in second grade and we first learned the dewey decimal system in our school.  At such a young age, the library was a huge source of information.  Knowing how to navigate the library and to be able to utilize that information was huge, especially before the age of smartphones began to boom.  My mother used to take me to the city library after school to do my homework and I would be rewarded by playing on the computers or checking out an interesting book.  When I was growing up, my friends were getting phones in sixth grade but I did not get one until a year or two later.  I feel like once we had all the information in the world at the tip of our fingers, we began to shy away from using the library unless it was mandatory for a project.  Even if I needed information from a library, I could use their databases from the comfort of m...

My blog is about how technology allows ESPN to find, reach, and expand their audience in a way that best interests the company and it's viewers. https://twitter.com/OrangeMike337/status/1051923673312051200

Three potential research questions: How has ESPN’s use of technology adapted since it’s creation? How has ESPN used technology to broaden it’s viewership? How has ESPN adapted in order to keep up with new technological advancements? I posed all three of these thesis questions to my three current roommates and to my Twitter followers.  Because my roommates have different sport backgrounds and two are in the Newhouse School of Communications, I figured they would all have a different approach to this question.  I originally assumed that all three would get a vote.  Although, I received much different feedback than expected.   The first roommate I asked said he thought the second thesis was the better option.  The second roommate believed the third thesis was better.  The first final roommate I asked was Phil who is an avid sport watcher and is up to date on most technologies because he is in Newhouse.  He was the tie-breaker in my mi...