Word: espn
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Games, a collection of extreme sports competitions whose winter event takes place January 22-25, did not exist until ESPN (and its hipper offshoot, ESPN2) realized in the early 1990s that there was a huge, demographically desirable slice of America that wasn't watching SportsCenter. ESPN executives, aware they were missing out on ad dollars that could be coaxed from finicky flannel-wearing Gen Xers, launched the X Games in 1995. (See TIME's Top 10 Fringe World Titles...
...Well, yes, actually, he did misinterpret the Games' cultural significance - namely, that they came at a moment when a good chunk of young people were getting a little bored with football and baseball, while even more were on skateboards practicing their Ollies in mall parking lots across the country. ESPN spent a reported $10 million on the 1995 X Games, drawing some 200,000 spectators to the competition held in Rhode Island. Hailed (by ESPN) as a huge success, the Games, originally planned to be biennial, were quickly rescheduled to be held every year. In 1996, marketers promoted the remonickered...
...franchise had become successful enough that ESPN launched the Winter X Games, featuring skiers and snowboarders. The winter event eventually got substantially more "extreme" with the inclusion of sports like snowmobile freestyle and ice climbing - a strenuously athletic yet visually uninspiring sport that didn't prove popular enough to stay on the docket. But in one respect, USA Today wasn't far off: the X Games, both winter and summer, have become a proving ground of sorts, with organizers unafraid to experiment with burgeoning sports, some of which have stuck around and some which have fallen by the wayside after...
...struggling channels in the wee hours of the morning. Images of Snuggie-clad folks high-fiving one another at an outdoor sporting event (and looking like, as one blogger put it, members of a "laid-back satanic cult") have appeared during prime time on such cable stalwarts as ESPN, Comedy Central and CNN, becoming so ubiquitous that everyone from Jay Leno to a gazillion people on YouTube is talking about it. Just Google "Cult of the Snuggie." (See the top 10 viral videos...
...just on struggling channels during the wee hours of the morning. Images of Snuggie-clad family members high-fiving one another at an outdoor sporting event - and looking like, as one blogger put it, a "laid-back Satanic cult" - have appeared during prime time on such cable stalwarts as ESPN, Comedy Central and CNN, becoming so ubiquitous that everyone from Jay Leno to a gazillion people on YouTube is taking note. Witness this "Cult of the Snuggie" parody, for example...