Bill Rasmussen

Bill Rasmussen
Born	Chicago, Illinois
Known for	Founder and First President of ESPN

William F. Rasmussen, also known as Bill Rasmussen is a former Sports Director, and Marketer and one of the original Founders of ESPN, along with Scott Rasmussen and Ed Egan. Rasmussen served as the first president and CEO of ESPN. ESPN was founded on July 14, 1978, and was launched on September 7, 1979.

Bill Rasmussen was born in Chicago, Illinois where he attended Gage Park High School. He received a scholarship to attend DePauw University in Indiana, where he met his future wife Mickey. After college, he was a supply officer in the US Air Force. He played baseball (as third baseman) with the hopes of going pro. Parts he procured for the Air Force were used in F-86 and F-89 fighter jets, as well as on Mercury space capsules. His son Scott was born in 1956, the year he was discharged from the military.

Rasmussen’s career in the media began with WTTT in Amherst, MA, in 1963. In 1965, he moved to WHYN-TV and then to WWLP-TV, both in Springfield, MA, where he spent eight years as Sports Director and two years as News Director. In 1974 he left Springfield to join hockey’s New England Whalers as Communications Director. At the conclusion of the 1977-78 World Hockey Association season, Rasmussen was fired by the Whalers. Thus began the pursuit of ESPN, incorporating the fledgling network on July 14, 1978.

ESPN, originally called Entertainment and Sports Programming was incorporated on July 14, 1978. It began broadcasting fourteen months later, at 7 p.m. on September 7, 1979. ESPN wound up being headquartered in Bristol, Connecticut. Rasmussen paid $18,000 for the first acre of ESPN’s campus.

Getty Oil purchased 85% of ESPN and left 15% of the enterprise to be split.

By July 18, 1979, before launch, the investors decided to remove Rasmussen from power. His salary and responsibilities were cut.

Just prior to the launch of ESPN, according to the book Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN Stuart Evey claimed "I made Bill Chairman, but in no way did I want to give him any responsibility!" "Having Bill Rasmussen play a significant role was just not part of the deal." Rasmussen, the one who had the idea for ESPN, stepped back from day-day business, having less contact with ESPN until mid 1999. Rasmussen and ESPN “made amends” in 1999 when then-president George Bodenheimer reached out to the founder for the network’s 20th anniversary.

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