For years, ESPN has had what many refer to as a “ticker” running along the bottom of the screen, displaying scores and relevant sports news. Yet, surprisingly, during college football’s opening weekend, the ticker was suddenly absent, and one former network legend took notice.
Linda Cohn Laughs off ESPN’s Ticker Removal
One person who admits she didn’t initially like the ticker because she felt it served as a distraction from the action taking place on-screen is Linda Cohn. The longtime ESPN desk host no longer works at the network, but now that she has her own “Linda Cohn Show,” she’s able to comment freely on their transgressions.
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To no surprise, she had a pretty strong response to ESPN removing the scores ticker from the bottom of the screen.
“I have a little history with the bottom line,” Cohn admitted. “I was at ESPN when it was introduced back in 1995, first on ESPN2 before eventually it spread across ESPN and onto SportsCenter. When they decided to put that ticker at the bottom of SportsCenter, many of us anchors, we were up in arms.”
One of the reasons Cohn and others took such issue with the introduction of the ticker was because of all the hard work they put into the presentation of their shows. They felt like the ticker took away from their effort.
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“Remember, we wrote our own shows,” Cohn explained. “We put a lot of time and effort into those on-camera lead-ins. This information, the set-up, and hopefully a clever line or two. Then suddenly, while we’re talking, scores and breaking news were moving at the bottom of the screen? That’s a distraction. You’re not going to pay attention to us. We were upset. They’re all going to stare at the ticker at the bottom of the screen. We complained. We made our case. And spoiler alert, we did not win our case.”
Despite Cohn and others pushing back against ESPN’s then-new agenda, the network didn’t seem to care. Soon enough, other networks started to copy them.
“The bottom line stayed,” Cohn added. “It became part of ESPN’s identity. And eventually, it changed the way sports TV looked everywhere. Everybody was copying it. Now more than 30 years later, how about that? ESPN is removing it from its college football broadcast because, wait for it, it can be distracting. So apparently we SportsCenter anchors were right way back then. It just took ESPN a few decades to admit it.”
Now they realize it’s a distraction! 🤣 https://t.co/9rLFiBzGtD pic.twitter.com/aRCb3CDO6l
— Linda Cohn (@lindacohn) August 28, 2026
Clearly, Cohn is happy to see that ESPN finally wised up and removed the ticker, no longer causing distractions while trying to generate better ratings for the product that’s already on-screen. But will everyone be happy with ESPN’s latest decision? Time will tell.
