keywords: espn broadcasting channel sports cable
text: ESPN ahead of the game Twenty-five years ago this Tuesday, a brash startup cable channel with a strange name began broadcasting. Its goal: Provide sports programming 24 hours a day. The concept behind ESPN was solid, but the execution was shaky in those early days of bouncing a signal off a satellite from a half-built building in a muddy field in then-rural Bristol, Conn. Today, ...