This is SportsCenter

This is SportsCenter is the name of a series of comical television commercials run by ESPN to promote their SportsCenter sports news show. The ads are presented in a deadpan mockumentary style, lampooning various aspects of sports, and sports broadcasting. The commercials debuted in 1994. The New York office of advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, of Portland, Oregon, is responsible for the writing and production of the commercials.

A few of the ads are available for free on iTunes while many ads are available for viewing through the official ESPN YouTube channel.

Guest appearances by sports figures

A notable feature of the commercials is the seeming ubiquity of famous athletes on the ESPN campus. Some are even depicted doing menial, everyday tasks, usually while wearing their game uniforms. Athletes often have their idiosyncrasies parodied — for example, gymnast Kerri Strug being carried around ESPN headquarters because of her famous ankle injury.

The Joker Is Wild (album)

The Joker is Wild was the second album released by Alex Harvey after the demise of The Soul Band. The album was released in 1972. Some time after 1972 the album The Joker Is Wild was reissued and repackaged, the album song listings stayed the same, but the album was credited as being made by "The Sensational Alex Harvey Band" even though this band did not exist at the time, and the title was changed to This Is.

Background

The album was recorded at Regent Sound Studio, London in early 1972. These songs are unfinished demos only, recorded for a Spanish singer named Tony Caldeira (who wrote "The Joker Is Wild" and "Silhouette and Shadow"). Alex was teaching Tony vocal delivery and phrasing. Alex received a cheque for the session which subsequently bounced. The producer, Paul Murphy, sold the tapes to Metronome Records in Germany and they issued the LP as The Joker Is Wild in 1972. This Is SAHB is a low budget reissue of "Joker" intended to cash in on SAHB's success (even though Zal, Chris, Ted and Hugh weren't involved with the recordings). The photo of SAHB on the sleeve features keyboard player John Martin on the far left.

ESPN

ESPN (originally an acronym for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is a U.S.-based global cable and satellite television channel owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which operates the network) and the Hearst Corporation (which owns a 20% minority share).

ESPN broadcasts primarily from studio facilities located in Bristol, Connecticut. The network also operates offices in Miami, New York City, Seattle, Charlotte, and Los Angeles. John Skipper currently serves as president of ESPN, a position he has held since January 1, 2012. While ESPN is one of the most successful sports networks, there has been much criticism of ESPN, which includes accusations of biased coverage,conflict of interest, and controversies with individual broadcasters and analysts.

As of February 2015, ESPN is available to approximately 94,396,000 paid television households (81.1% of households with at least one television set) in the United States. In addition to the flagship channel and its seven related channels in the United States, ESPN broadcasts in more than 200 countries, operating regional channels in Australia, Brazil, Latin America and the United Kingdom, and owning a 20% interest in The Sports Network (TSN) as well as its five sister networks and NHL Network in Canada.

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States. The service was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005. In November 2006, it was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion. YouTube now operates as one of Google's subsidiaries. The site allows users to upload, view, rate, share and comment on videos, and it makes use of WebM, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, and Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media video. Available content includes video clips, TV clips, music videos, movie trailers and other content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos.

Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, but media corporations including CBS, the BBC, Vevo, Hulu, and other organizations offer some of their material via YouTube, as part of the YouTube partnership program. Unregistered users can watch videos, and registered users can upload videos to their channels. Videos considered to contain potentially offensive content are available only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old.

Social media

Social media are computer-mediated tools that allow people or companies to create, share, or exchange information, career interests, ideas, and pictures/videos in virtual communities and networks. Social media is defined as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Furthermore, social media depend on mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms through which individuals and communities share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content. They introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between businesses, organizations, communities, and individuals. These changes are the focus of the emerging field of technoself studies. Social media differ from traditional or industrial media in many ways, including quality,reach, frequency, usability, immediacy, and permanence. Social media operate in a dialogic transmission system (many sources to many receivers). This is in contrast to traditional media that operates under a monologic transmission model (one source to many receivers).