Division of Social Sciences

And the heavyweight champion of TV is ... HBO!

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 23:11:23 +0000

And the heavyweight champion of TV is ... HBO! Rachel Sauer Thu, 10/02/2025 - 17:11

Jared Bahir Browsh

Fifty years after the Thrilla in Manila bout launched HBO as a national broadcasting powerhouse, the network continues to shape modern viewing and entertainment

The Thrilla in Manila, fought 50 years ago on Sept. 30, 1975, in Quezon City, Philippines, was the third bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier and is considered by many as one of the best, most brutal fights in boxing history. It also marked a new era in sports media as the first fight broadcast nationally through Home Box Office (HBO).

Television audiences had been limited in what sports they could watch since the 1930s. Broadcast networks had to fit sports in with their other programming, including news and scripted shows, so audiences that wanted to watch at home were limited to regional offerings or national games of the week. In 1948, a fight between Joe Louis and Joe Walcott was broadcast in theaters through closed-circuit television. Theaters were connected through private telephone or coaxial cable, and viewers bought tickets to see the bout projected from a special receiver.

Closed-circuit broadcasts of boxing matches and other sports events peaked in the 1960s and 1970s, earning millions of dollars for event promoters. Ali’s fights in this era were among the most popular closed-circuit events, but others, like the Indianapolis 500, also drew large audiences of sports fans to movie theaters. The famed Rumble in the Jungle between Ali and George Foreman earned $60 million in theater admission in the United States, with fans paying $20 ($130 today) to watch the event live as it occurred across the world in the former Zaire.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the CU Boulder Department of Ethnic Studies.

The same year as the Louis-Walcott fight, cable television debuted, connecting rural homes too remote to receive a television signal over an antenna. Northeastern Pennsylvania was a test ground for this form of television, since it was close enough to New York City and Philadelphia to pick up broadcast signals with a strong antenna atop a building or a mountain, then connect households through cable. Later, cities in eastern Pennsylvania like Wilkes-Barre and Allentown were among the first whose residents subscribed to paid cable television outside of major cities like New York.

Businessman Charles Dolan was granted a franchise permit to build the first cable system, Sterling Manhattan Cable, in 1965, obtaining financial backing from Time-Life. A lack of quality programming beyond some events in Madison Square Garden hampered the growth of the system, which cost millions of dollars to install but only attracted a few hundred customers in the city. In 1971, during a cruise to France, Dolan conceived of a network that could be leased to other cable systems, which would air unedited films without advertising and was funded by subscriber costs, tentatively named the “Green Channel.”

Along with convincing Time-Life that this was a viable business, Dolan also had to navigate Federal Communications Commission (FCC) scrutiny, which had limited the programs that could be broadcast on cable due to non-duplications rules and other regulations focused on supporting the broadcast networks. Also, consistent lobbying from movie theater chains and broadcasters hampered cable companies, since customers were bombarded with messages that cable was a threat to both the movie business and to free over-the-air content.

Undeterred, Dolan convinced Time-Life to support the Green Channel, which it did after the FCC gave preemptive authorization to launch a paid television service. Dolan and his Time-Life partners originally planned to launch through the Teleservice cable system in Allentown, but after an agreement to broadcast Philadelphia 76ers games collapsed, they launched through the same service 65 miles north in Wilkes Barre to avoid NBA blackouts. Wilkes-Barre was considered New York Knicks territory, and the network had the right to broadcast Knicks games through its agreement with Madison Square Garden. During this time, Dolan and Time-Life also selected a placeholder name for the network, Home Box Office, as they prepared to launch in 1972. The network was soon made available throughout the northeastern United States by relaying microwaves along towers across the region; some of the earliest programming included movies and New York Rangers hockey.

The following year, Home Box Office, Inc., was spun off from Sterling Communications, with Time-Life increasing its equity in the company. Dolan stepped down as CEO of Home Box Office and Sterling after disagreements with Time-Life, accepting a buyout that enabled him to expand his cable service across Long Island. Time-Life had a tentative agreement with Warner Communications to buy HBO, but ultimately that deal fell through. Time-Life later took over Sterling Communications, but the service continued to struggle, ending in 1973 with fewer than 20,000 subscribers and a high turnover rate as customers found the programming repetitive.

The Thrilla in Manila bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier marked a new era in sports media as the first fight broadcast nationally through Home Box Office (HBO).

The turning point for HBO came in 1975, when executives made a deal with RCA Americom Communications, a satellite communication company, to relay the HBO signal nationally through UA-Columbia Cablevision. UA-Columbia was a joint venture with United Artists that later took over the entire cable service from Columbia and partnered with Madison Square Garden to form Madison Square Garden Sports Network in 1977, changing its name to USA Network in 1980.

Sports = audience

The partnership between HBO and UA-Columbia, and later the formation of what would become USA Network, showed that even early cable service providers and networks understood live sports would attract audiences. This was confirmed when HBO first transmitted its programming by satellite, debuting the now national network through what is considered by many the greatest boxing match in the sport’s history. Between 1973 and 1980, HBO grew from a regional cable network to a national one, increasing subscribers from 8,000 in the northeast at the start of 1973 to more than 3 million nationally in that seven-year period. HBO’s model was also replicated in local markets through networks like the Z Channel in Los Angeles, which launched in 1974, and Prism in Philadelphia, launched in 1976.

Satellite transmission led to the accelerated growth of cable, with several networks launching in the second half of the 1970s. WTCG became the first superstation in 1976 after Ted Turner learned of the success of the Thrilla in Manila broadcast. He had received approval to buy the Atlanta station six years earlier, and on Dec. 17, 1976, WTCG became the first local station to be retransmitted nationally. The station obtained the rights to broadcast Atlanta Braves baseball games and Atlanta Hawks basketball games—Turner bought the teams in 1976 and 1977, respectively—so when WTCG was renamed WTBS in 1979 and went national, so did the broadcasts for both teams.

The success of WTCG/WTBS led Turner to launch Cable Network News, the first 24-hour news network, in 1980. He launched several other networks through the 1980s and 1990s, including Turner Network Television (TNT) in 1988, Cartoon Network in 1992 and Turner Classic Movies (TCM) in 1994, helping him become the first cable magnate and a billionaire before selling Turner Broadcasting System to Time Warner in 1996—placing TBS and Turner’s other holdings under the same umbrella as HBO.

Competition in sports programming

Boxing had been a cornerstone of HBO’s programming since 1973, when the George Foreman upset of Joe Frazier was made famous by Howard Cosell calling “Down Goes Frazier!” HBO also broadcast the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974 before going national. Many credit “HBO World Championship Boxing” for the sport’s continued growth in the 1970s through the 1990s, even after Ali retired in 1981. The network also launched “Inside the NFL” in 1977, the first league-branded analysis show on premium cable, which was followed by the Major League Baseball-branded “Race for the Pennant” the following year. HBO aired Wimbledon matches starting in 1975 and set a standard for investigative sports journalism with “Real Sports with Bryant Gumble,” which ran for 28 years starting in 1995.

HBO was a fixture in boxing for 45 years, airing its last boxing match in 2018 as it shifted network focus away from sports overall due to competition from sports media companies, including those also owned by Warner Bros. Discovery like CBS Sports and TNT.

ESPN is another sports media company that emerged from the establishment of regional sports cable networks, including the Madison Square Garden Sports Network. It was originally conceived as a Connecticut sports network before founder Bill Rasmussen learned it would be cheaper to broadcast nationally over satellite from Bristol, Connecticut, than regionally, leading to the first national 24-hour sports network launching in 1979.

The same year, a local Columbus, Ohio, children’s cable network, Pinwheel, went national—renamed Nickelodeon for its April 1 launch. Warner-Amex owned Nickelodeon and launched MTV two years later in 1981, three years after HBO’s music video-focused “Video Jukebox” premiered.

Expanding cable

Cable’s growth was still limited through the early 1980s, with many municipalities blocking expansion to protect their own media. The Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 helped create regulations that ensured local stations would be available on cable while also requiring that a portion of cable subscriptions fund public, educational and government (PEG) access channels. As cable’s spread accelerated, HBO continued to break ground in television programming and larger culture.

The Sopranos (cast pictured) was one of the industry-changing shows that debuted on HBO duringthe late 1990s and early 2000s. (Photo: HBO)

When HBO launched, there were only a handful of comedy clubs in the United States, with only a few venues to see standup comics outside of New York or Los Angeles. On broadcast television, standup comedy was limited to five-minute sets on late-night and variety shows. HBO’s comedy specials changed the industry when comedian Robert Klein debuted on the network in 1975. HBO helped legendary comedians like George Carlin become stars, while providing viewers exposure to future generations of comedians by creating standup comedy shows like Def Comedy Jam. Other networks and platforms like Comedy Central and Netflix followed this lead and expanded their program offerings through standup programs and specials.

One of the draws of these specials was that they were uncensored. HBO and its sister network Cinemax, which launched in 1980, were unique because they aired uncut theatrical films and adult programming. As HBO spread, advocacy groups tried to block the network in some states, due to what they felt was obscene content. Utah passed several laws to try to block HBO, but ultimately, as a premium network that required a subscription, it was not subject to broadcast obscenity laws and was protected by the First Amendment.

HBO was also a pioneer in unscripted programming, becoming one of the top producers of documentary films and series. From concert films to true crime, the breadth of unscripted programming became an inspiration for reality programming across television and helped advance documentary filmmaking. HBO now releases a documentary film or series nearly every month and helped create a template for documentaries, especially those focused on sports or culture.

As other premium and cable networks encroached on HBO’s programming, the network stayed ahead of the pack and produced its own scripted programming in the early 1980s—including Not Necessarily the News, a satirical news program that inspired series like The Daily Show and HBO’s own Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

One of the true turning points for HBO and the sitcom genre was the debut of The Larry Sanders Show in 1992. The network saw a number of the comedians that launched their careers through HBO—including Jerry Seinfeld and Roseanne Barr—receive their own shows, so HBO worked with Garry Shandling to create the show based on Shandling’s life. The single-camera, behind-the-scenes, laugh track–free show inspired similar series like 30 Rock, The Office and HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The true turning point

The true turning point for HBO came in the late 1990s, when the network helped launch what many consider the age of prestige television. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, HBO debuted a string of industry-changing shows including Oz, Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under, and The Wire, which inspired other networks to focus on higher-quality scripted programming like The Shield on FX and Mad Men on AMC.

During this time, HBO also launched the first video-on-demand service in 2001 through cable providers, initiating a shift away from appointment television and toward the current streaming environment, which HBO helped expand by launching HBO Go in 2010. Although Netflix launched its streaming service in 2007, HBO Go offered the network’s original programming and pushed Netflix to do the same; Netflix aired its first original series, House of Cards, in 2013.

HBO Go was supported by a new wave of highly produced series that brought cinematic-level production to television. Shows like Game of Thrones and Westworld helped support the continued growth of cinematic sensibilities influencing television production. Even with increased competition from streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu, HBO continues to be an industry leader despite questions regarding parent company Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD) future. HBO Max is the streaming home for the corporation offering HBO programming along with news (CNN), sports (Turner/CBS) and scripted and unscripted programming from across WBD’s many brands.

HBO’s growth from a small regional subscription network to the standard bearer of television internationally can be traced to the network’s national debut. That its first national broadcast happened to be one of the greatest boxing matches in the sport’s history is fitting, considering HBO’s impact on modern television.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the CU Boulder Department of Ethnic Studies.

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Fifty years after the Thrilla in Manila bout launched HBO as a national broadcasting powerhouse, the network continues to shape modern viewing and entertainment.

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Long live the King in modern music

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:51:19 +0000

Long live the King in modern music Rachel Sauer Tue, 09/30/2025 - 18:51

Rachel Sauer

In what would have been B.B. King’s 100^th birthday month, CU Boulder music scholar Shawn O’Neal considers how the legends of blues can be heard in even the fizziest pop of 2025

B.B. King was born to sharecroppers on a cotton plantation in Leflore County, Mississippi, and began his musical career in the church choir, teaching himself to play guitar while listening to the “King Biscuit Time” radio show.

Sabrina Carpenter was born in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, and began posting videos of herself singing Adele and Christina Aguilera songs on YouTube around age 10. As a teenager, she starred in the Disney Channel series “Girl Meets World.”

Culturally and musically, they’re about as different as two artists can be. But if the roots of rock ‘n’ roll and even pop grow from blues—which they do—then it should be possible to hear B.B. King and other legends of blues in the sly pop confections of Sabrina Carpenter.

Shawn O'Neal is a CU Boulder assistant teaching professor of ethnic studies and Center for African and African American Studies executive committee member.

So, Shawn O’Neal, a �� musicologist and assistant teaching professor of ethnic studies, cues up Carpenter’s song “Manchild,” currently No. 6 on the Billboard Top 100: “Right away, the first thing I hear is that call and response of where she’s singing something and then answering her own question or statement back to herself,” he notes. “Call and response is such a foundation of blues music—whether Sabrina Carpenter knows that or thinks about it, or even has to, she got that from somewhere.”

Further, he asks, who were some of the first to sing about taking care of business—working all day, making a home at night—while a no-good partner is off catting around? The women of blues.

“They were the first to talk about sexuality, to talk about the issues they were having with their partners, even sometimes to talk about the fact that they were having love interests of the same sex,” O’Neal says. “All of those tropes are very defined in (Carpenter’s) music, and then there’s just that drumbeat, that very four-on-the-floor beat that’s a hallmark of blues. I think you could take that Sabrina Carpenter song and turn it into a blues song very easily.”

And it’s not just Carpenter. Even on current Top 40 lists that seem to owe more to computers and electronics than to the sawdust floors of Delta juke joints, blues touchpoints are audible. B.B. King, who died in May 2015 but would have turned 100 this month, and other legends of blues live in the music of 2025.

“B.B. King, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey—I hear them in all this pop music,” O’Neal says. “I can’t not hear it, because it’s there; it’s in the DNA.”

‘What they call rock ‘n’ roll’

In 1957, a Hearst interviewer asked rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Fats Domino, “Fats, how did this rock ‘n’ roll all get started, anyway?” and Domino replied, “Well, what they call rock ’n’ roll now is rhythm and blues. I’ve been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans.”

It was an acknowledgment that what felt revolutionary and sonically groundbreaking was actually a long time coming—the latest brick in a long- and well-established foundation.

It’s a direct lineage, O’Neal says: Pop grew from rock ‘n’ roll; rock grew from blues, jazz and gospel; which grew from spirituals and field hollers; and those were first-generation descendants of African musical and narrative traditions brought to North America by enslaved people.

“Spirituals were sung in the cotton fields on the plantations,” O’Neal explains. “People were creating this music as subliminal communication, and the enslavement masters didn’t understand what they were talking about. They had to create a new language, and so much of it was speaking to spirituality—save us, help us, let me find some solace. It comes from pain and struggle and being completely removed from who you are, and we can sugarcoat it and syrup it up, but foundationally that’s where American music is coming from.”

Though the roots of American music are twisting and complex—and also woven of European folk and classical traditions—there’s a through line of African American musical tradition, O’Neal says. Gospel evolved from spirituals and give birth to its lyrically secular offspring of blues, which birthed jazz, rock and pop, as well as the direct descendants that are rap and hip-hop.

CU Boulder music scholar Shawn O'Neal notes that blues legends like B.B. King stood on the shoulders of musical giants such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe (pictured above), Lead Belly and Robert Johnson. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The earliest blues artists began developing a distinctive sound that became known for 12-bar chord progressions—a form based on the I, IV and V chords in a musical key—that are fundamental to the blues genre and are prominent in rock ‘n’ roll, O’Neal says. Classic blues music also followed a pattern of one line being repeated four times in a verse, which 20th-century artists evolved the AAB pattern that became the blues standard: a three-line verse structure in blues music where the first line (A) is repeated, and the third line (B) offers a conclusion or response, often using a "question-question-answer" pattern within a 12-bar blues progression.

Blues legends like B.B. King, who stood on the shoulders of musical giants such as Lead Belly and Robert Johnson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, experimented with the foundational elements of blues, which also included the “walking bass” rhythms and pitch-flattened “blue notes,” and broadened the sound and scope of the genre. Rock and pop, as well as myriad blues subgenres, were natural progressions, O’Neal says.

Drenched in the blues

Even now, as cross-pollinated and subdivided as music is, O’Neal says, listeners hear the blues regardless of whether they recognize it: “For example, when you think about the foundations of electronic music or EDM, we’re talking about house music, and those DJs were originally playing rhythm and blues records. And in pop, you hear that foundation of disco, and they were also playing soul and rhythm and blues in the clubs.

“None of this music being played today was conjured out of thin air; it’s based on musical traditions that go back 100, 200 years.”

He adds that in hip-hop culture, B.B. King has been sampled from the earliest days of the genre “because those were the records in our parents’ record collections. And obviously it’s never been just Black artists who’ve sampled and built on the blues. If you start at a place like Led Zeppelin, they obviously were heavily influenced by B.B. King and just drenched in blues, Jimmy Page especially. You take songs like ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’ or ‘The Song Remains the Same’ and slow them down to that really draggy riff—that’s blues.”

When O’Neal has taught students to hear these influences in Reiland Rabaka's Introduction to Hip Hop Studies classes and Critical Survey of African American music, “they come up to me after almost every class saying, ‘I never knew that was in there.’”

The challenge, he says, is respecting the artistic quest for newness and innovation while acknowledging and honoring the foundation on which it lives.

“As an artist, you have to understand that even if you want to think it’s your own original song, it’s still based off things that already happened,” says O’Neal, who also is a renowned DJ and musician. “Taylor Swift? Well, that’s Motown, that’s what she’s doing—three chords, simple progressions, prominent melodies, emotional lyrics. Whether artists now want to acknowledge it or not, the sounds they’re playing started a long time ago.”

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In what would have been B.B. King’s 100th birthday month, CU Boulder music scholar Shawn O’Neal considers how the legends of blues can be heard in even the fizziest pop of 2025.

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Top image: B.B. King playing at the University of Hamburg in November 1971. (Photo: Heinrich Klaffs/Wikimedia Commons)

Charting the rise and fall of great sea powers

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 17:29:31 +0000

Charting the rise and fall of great sea powers Rachel Sauer Thu, 09/18/2025 - 11:29

Bradley Worrell

CU alum’s book examines how the fate of the Netherlands, Great Britain and the United States as economic and political powers has been deeply intertwined with their ability to project power via the seas

Colin Flint, a �� PhD geography graduate and professor of political geography at Utah State University, researches the rise and fall of great world powers.

It’s a topic beyond simple academic interest to Flint, who was born in 1965 and raised in England during a period of seismic change in the country.

“At the time, Britain was still struggling to figure out that it wasn’t the world’s greatest power anymore, so my socialization and political coming of age was in a declined power,” he says. Additionally, Flint says being raised in the busy ferry port of Dover made a powerful impression on him by highlighting the country’s long history as a maritime nation.

Colin Flint, a CU Boulder PhD geography graduate, researches the rise and fall of great world powers.

“Dover definitely has influenced me, being so close to the water,” he says. “My high school was on a hill overlooking the harbor, which at the time was the busiest ferry port in the world, with ships going back and forth to France and Belgium. So, the notion was very much rooted in me that Britain drew its power, historically, from the sea.”

At one point, Flint entertained the idea of joining the Royal Navy before setting his career sights on academia. He obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Britain, then pursued his PhD in geography at the �� thanks to fortuitous connections between his undergrad mentor and CU Boulder Department of Geography Professor John O’Loughlin.

“I moved to United States of America in 1990 to attend university, and the literature at the time and discussions were all very declinist. It was very much, ‘America has gone down the tubes,’” he says. “Broadly speaking, I moved from a declined power into a declining power, or so I thought at the time.”

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Flint says the idea of America as a declining power was largely replaced with a triumphalist narrative that saw the U.S. as the world’s only remaining superpower.

Ideas about what makes a country an economic and political superpower—and how a country can lose its status as a hegemonic power—had been percolating in Flint’s brain for years when he recently published his book Near and Far Waters: The Geopolitics of Seapower. The book specifically looks at the Netherlands, Great Britain and the United States for context on how the countries used sea power to project their economic and political influence across the globe.

Flint spoke with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine about his book, while also offering insights on how current events are shaping the outlook for the United States and the world. His answers have been edited for clarity and condensed.

Question: What is the context for your book’s title: Near and Far Waters?

Flint: There are legal terms about coasts and the exclusive economic zone around the country’s coastlines, but I’m not using it in that way. I’m thinking about an area of ocean in which a country has interest and influence over and off its coastline.

"Near and Far Waters" by CU Boulder alumnus Colin Flint focuses on the Netherlands, Great Britain and the United States for context on how the countries used sea power to project their economic and political influence across the globe.

That is an important piece of ocean for a country because there’s resource exploitation, but it’s also a matter of security. If a country wants to protect itself from potential invasion, it needs to control those waters off its coastline—it’s near waters.

Some countries, once they’ve established control of their near waters, have the ability and desire to project beyond that, across the oceans into what would then become its far waters. If you think about Great Britain in the context of the British Empire, once it fought off European threats to its coastline—its near waters—it was then able to develop the sea power to establish its empire. It was in African far waters, it was in Indian far waters, in Middle East far waters and so on.

Another good example of this would be how the United States of America, over the course of history, pushed other countries out of its near waters. The Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico are good examples, where Spanish and British influence were ended over the 1800s and 1900s. And then by establishing control through annexation of Hawaii and the purchase of Alaska, America developed its Pacific near waters, too, which it expanded upon through the course of World War II, pushing the Japanese back and establishing bases in Okinawa, Japan; the Philippines; and Guam, etc.

Question: One of your chapters is titled ‘No Island is an Island.’ What do you mean by that?

Flint: I was talking about how the projection of sea power requires the control of islands. Often, the geopolitical goal and benefit of controlling an island is not the island itself—it’s how it enables projection of power further, or how it hinders other countries’ projection of power by being near sea lines of communication that you can have a base to try and disrupt. For example, when Hawaii became part of the United States, it allowed the U.S. to project power across the Pacific. Again, it’s not the island itself—it’s the projection of power across an ocean.

Projecting sea power is about more than just having a strong navy.

Question: If one country’s far waters extend into the near waters of another country, that would seem to be a recipe for conflict, would it not?

Flint: That is the kicker, of course, that a sea power’s far waters are another country’s near waters. And it has historically led to conflicts and even wars. It’s always involved violence—and not just between great powers and lesser powers, but also violence against the people living on islands or in coastal lands where sea powers are looking to establish dominance and exploit resources.

Question: China has been rapidly expanding its navy in recent years. Is it simply beefing up its sea forces to protect its near waters, or is it looking to supplant the U.S. as the dominant sea power? Or are there other motives at play?

Flint: You often see in newspaper articles written in the United States and maybe other Western countries that China has the biggest navy in the world. This always makes me laugh because, yes, it’s got hundreds and hundreds of tiny little coastal defense vessels, but even now that it has two aircraft carriers, it does not have the ability to project power like the United States of America, which has 11 carrier groups. So, I think that should always be recognized.

The other sort of trope that’s often wielded out there, which I think we need to question, is: The West is worried about China developing a navy, because it will allow China to disrupt trade networks. Well, wait a minute. China is very dependent on imports, especially of fuel or energy. Additionally, it is the world’s largest trading economy, and it’s worried about the robustness of its domestic economy. They cannot maintain their economic growth based purely on their domestic market, so they need to have a global economic presence for markets and for securing inputs into their economy.

Putting those two things together, it makes no sense why China would want to disrupt global trade. In fact, the country’s reaction to President Trump’s sanctions tells us that the last thing China wants is global trade disrupted. They’re very worried about the fragility of their own economy and whether that leads to social unrest, etc. The flip side of that is how the West could really hurt China by blocking those trade routes to prevent energy imports into China and exports.

China is definitely trying to grow its navy. I think what makes it so interesting is its simultaneous attempt to have a navy that can defend its near waters while perhaps preventing the operation of the United States in its far waters. To what extent China is attempting to establish a presence in its far waters is less clear.

"A sea power’s far waters are another country’s near waters. And it has historically led to conflicts and even wars," notes scholar Colin Flint. ("Naval Battle of 1812," Painting, Oil on Canvas; By Rodolfo Claudus; 1962/U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command)

Question: From your book, it seems like you have some serious concerns about the potential for a serious conflict arising from disputes over near and far waters?

Flint: In fact, I’ve never been so concerned or worried in my career, to be honest with you. When I started teaching my class on political geography many moons ago, let’s say in the mid-1990s, I used to start off with some structural model of global political change, which essentially says, we have cycles of war and peace, for the want of a better term.

And I asked my students to try and get them engaged: ‘Picture yourself in 2025. What are you going to be doing?’ It was staggering to me how many of them believed that they would be millionaires and already retired (laughs).

The point of that was that the model I was using predicted another period of global war, starting in 2025. I don’t do that exercise anymore, because it isn’t funny; it’s really quite serious. So yes, the risk of war is high, and I think it could emerge in a number of different places. One focus is on the South China Sea, the near waters of China, as that is clearly a potential flashpoint. Taiwan is the obvious focal point of what that conflict would look like.

I also wonder about potential flashpoints of conflict in Chinese far waters—and that could include the Arctic and the Northern Atlantic, because another factor that has to be considered is global climate change and the increasing possibility of a trade route through the North Pole, which would cut trade times from China into European markets considerably. Those waters represent U.S. near waters, so …

Question: Do you envision any sort of viable alternatives to a conflict between world powers over near and far waters, especially in today’s environment?

Flint: My motivation with the book was with an eye to waving some sort of flag about how to think about peace rather than war. Most of our lenses are national lenses. If we keep on this pattern of a national lens, then I see a strong likelihood to repeat these cycles of near and far water sea powers, which have always involved a period of global war.

We need to change that lens. We need to have a global view as to why countries are always seeking far waters, entering other people’s near waters and why that can lead to conflict.

Today, we’re facing a humanity-scale problem, which is global climate change. Is that the thing that will tell us we need to work together, rather than compete? I’m not saying it is; I’m saying, if I see a glimmer of optimism to your question, that’s it.

Question: Based upon your research, if a country loses its status as a hegemonic power, can it later recover that status? And, in the context of today’s world, what might things look like if the U.S. lost its hegemonic status?

Flint: The short answer is no, based upon past history, a country that loses its hegemonic status has not been able to reclaim it once it’s gone.

But to your second question, it goes back to the question about what China’s intentions are. In American popular culture, where every sports team has to be No. 1, even if they are eighth in some Mickey Mouse conference, there is this obsession that there has to be a singular winner or champion.

What I’m saying is that we shouldn’t just assume that if the United States declines there will be another emergent dominant power in the world. It’s quite possible that if the United States declines, what might emerge would be a multipolar world, although I don’t know what that might look like.

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Top image: A squadron of the Royal Navy running down the Channel and An East Indiaman preparing to sail, by artist Samuel Atkins (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Television is a laughing matter

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 22:17:11 +0000

Television is a laughing matter Rachel Sauer Mon, 09/15/2025 - 16:17

Jared Bahir Browsh

In the 75 years since it was introduced, the laugh track has conditioned viewers to know when and how much to laugh

Some audiences love it, and some audiences hate it, but the laugh track—which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year—has a deeper, more psychological impact than many realize.

For months after I completed my book on Hanna-Barbera, I purposely avoided shows with laugh tracks. After hundreds of hours of over-the-top laughter that followed every Fred Flintstone fall or Scooby Doo pun, I became hyperaware of the laughter that accompanied my favorite shows like “I Love Lucy" and “Seinfeld.” These shows returned to my TV rotation after this short detox, but similar to involuntary processes like breathing, once I begin noticing laugh tracks, I couldn’t stop, breaking the desensitization and conditioning that has occurred for many viewers after decades of watching sitcoms.

Like a number of early television shows, laugh tracks originated on radio before transitioning to television. Pioneering radio engineer Jack Mullin brought a tape recorder back from Germany after World World II, exhibiting the technology by recording musical performances and then playing back the music. In June 1947, he met the producer for Bing Crosby’s radio show, and after he demonstrated the technology, Crosby decided to pre-record his show.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the CU Boulder Department of Ethnic Studies.

At the time, the few shows that were prerecorded were done so on acetate disc, which was fine for scripted content, but the low quality of the recording prevented the discs from being used to broadcast music. Crosby preferred a pre-recording in a studio, but NBC denied his request. He left NBC in 1945, then joined ABC in 1946 after the young network allowed him to record his show, the first major radio show to be recorded. The first season was recorded on disc, but when Crosby heard the quality of magnetic tape, he switched to tape recording the show.

The improved quality of the recording helped push the show to the top 20 during its second season. The technique allowed show producers to edit out less-entertaining segments or performances deemed inappropriate for radio. During the third and final season of the show, comedian Bob Burns performed a “blue” set, which led to raucous laughter but was too racy for broadcast. Producers kept the laughter, and when the studio audience was less than receptive to a comedy performance a few weeks later, Mullin added the laughter from Burns’ performance during post-production, and the laugh track was born.

Sweetening live laughter

In early television, shows that were not recorded live used a single camera, filming the same scene several times. CBS engineer Charles (Charley) Douglass noticed inconsistencies in the laughter, with some reactions shorter or longer than intended, especially after the third or fourth filming. Also, certain individual laughter could be distracting, overshadowing the performance when audience members laughed at the wrong time. Douglass began “sweetening” the live laughter by adding recorded laughs when the joke did not land, and even edited down laughter when it went on too long.

The first time recorded laughter was used not merely as a sweetener but as the sole source of laughter for a sitcom was in 1950 during “The Hank McCune Show” produced for CBS by Bing Crosby Enterprises. Although the sitcom lasted only 13 episodes, other shows began to pick up the practice. The recorded laughter not only helped to signal jokes in the program but was also used to cover bumps in the original recording.

Many early sitcoms and variety shows filmed in front of a studio audience, but the design of multiple-set studios blocked half the audience from seeing some scenes and performances, so the laugh track helped fill some of those gaps. “I Love Lucy" was a famous exception, using mostly audience laughter and reactions in the original broadcast; however, even some of "I Love Lucy’s” laugh audio was sweetened.

Douglass went on to create what was known as the “laff box,” a large, organ-like box that contained different laughs, many of which were originally recorded from segments of “The Red Skelton Show.” Douglass, who founded Northridge Electronics, was so secretive about his device that his family were the only ones to see inside it and just a few select technicians trained to use it. Douglass would often receive directions and edit in the laughter isolated from other producers and editors.

“I Love Lucy" used mostly audience laughter and reactions in the original broadcast; however, even some of the show's laugh audio was sweetened with a laugh track. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Psychology and social conditioning

The laugh track has survived 75 years on television, but not without challenges or controversy. The television comedy community has at best been ambivalent toward canned laughter, with some early television performers like Crosby, Milton Bearle and Bob Hope understanding how a laugh track could be used to project their desired reaction to a joke or routine. Many producers hated the artificial laughter, but because all the most popular comedies had laughter and most used a laugh track, they submitted to the trend at the time.

By the 1960s, most comedies had stopped filming in front of a studio audience, knowing the broadcast audience did not care whether the laughter was canned or real. They also knew the audience needed to hear the laughter to know a show is a comedy, so a laugh track was a requisite to any show categorized as a comedy. One of the most famous tests of this idea involved “Hogan’s Heroes”: Audiences were shown early episodes with and without the laugh track, and the response was much better for the episodes with a laugh track. Shows like “Hogan’s Heroes” and “M*A*S*H” have had laugh tracks removed in rebroadcasts, leading to much darker shows around war themes.

The goal is for the canned reactions to match the assumed reactions of the audience, conditioning the audience to react or engage in the way intended. Media theorist Stuart Hall famously discussed encoding and decoding in his reception theory, although the audience does have the agency to decode, or create their own meaning, even when producers encode the content with their intended messages. The laugh track is another form of encoding in which the message—in this case the joke—is encoded with humor, and the laugh track is used to reinforce the message so the receiver, or audience, decodes the dialogue or action and finds it humorous.

Some creators pushed back against this, including Mel Brooks when creating “Get Smart,” Jackie Cooper in his show “Hennessy” and The Monkees, who thought the band’s comedy was intelligent enough to not require the track in their self-titled show. Brooks eventually relented, whereas Cooper and The Monkees finally were able to eliminate the laugh track in the third and second seasons, respectively. Both “Hennessy” and “The Monkees” were cancelled the season after they eliminated the laugh track, whereas “Get Smart” lasted six seasons.

Laugh tracks were also widespread in children’s television. When Hanna-Barbera created several shows, including “The Flintstones" and “The Jetsons” for primetime, they included a laugh track similar to that in sitcoms, which they brought with them when they transitioned to Saturday morning. Hanna-Barbera’s Saturday morning cartoon budget was more limited than their primetime budget, so they and other animation studios created their own, more limited laugh track to circumvent Douglass’ monopoly, but would occasionally still employ Douglass laugh tracks for more high-profile productions. Other producers such as Rankin/Bass and Jim Henson also developed their own laugh tracks. The canned laughter not only showed animated viewers when to laugh, but it also extended scenes to reduce the amount of animation and, in turn, cost.

The Monkees thought their comedy was intelligent enough to not require the track in their self-titled show. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

However, some children’s television producers, like their live-action counterparts, hated laugh tracks and tried to broadcast without them. Ross Bagdasarian pushed back against a laugh track for “The Alvin Show.” Despite the popularity of The Chipmunks’ novelty music, the show was cancelled after one season, which was blamed partially on its lack of a laugh track.

Creators who won their battle against canned laughter were Charles Schultz, Jay Ward and Bill Scott. NBC assumed “A Charlie Brown Christmas” would fail without a laugh track, but 60 years later, the holiday favorite and Schultz’s other specials remain classics—without the laugh track. Ward and Scott were supported by the show’s sponsor General Mills when negotiating with ABC regarding the laugh track in "Rocky and His Friends/The Bullwinkle Show,” and it was ultimately eliminated after the fourth episode.

Canned laughter’s introduction to children’s television contributed to the continued social conditioning of television audiences; laugh tracks both signal that the program is a comedy while helping audiences recognize jokes and know when they should laugh. The laugh track also creates a feeling of connection or community rooted in visual media transitioning from theaters, where audiences watched the show together, into homes where an individual or small group is watching alone.

Return of live audiences

A mix of old-school sensibilities, a crop of new producers and a shift in settings for sitcoms led to the return of live audiences in the late 1960s. When “Here’s Lucy” debuted in 1968, Lucille Ball insisted on a live audience for her third network sitcom. That era also saw a shift back to shows set in urban environments after networks earlier moved toward rural settings like those in “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Green Acres,” attempting to appeal to middle America. This not only led to the rural purge in the early 1970s, as series returned to cities, but these urban sitcoms, created in larger, more accommodating studios, were more conducive to live audiences.

Writer and producer Norman Lear’s legendary career was built in front of a live studio audience, as his urban sitcoms like “All in the Family” and “Good Times” not only featured working-class Queens or the housing projects of Chicago but were also groundbreaking in bringing more diverse representation to television. Similar to theater, actors in these sitcoms allowed the audience reactions to simmer, ultimately pausing the scene until the laughter subsided. However, even as live studio audiences returned, showrunners continued to sweeten the laughs with laugh tracks.

Actors in sitcoms like "Good Times" allowed audience reactions to simmer, ultimately pausing the scene until the laughter subsided. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Comedy dramas (or dramedies) like “Eight is Enough” and “The Love Boat” even employed laugh tracks to help signal jokes, as they mixed comedy and more serious story lines and used the laugh track to help the audience distinguish between them.

Some games shows, like Chuck Barris' “The Newlywed Game” and “The Gong Show,” were also sweetened with laugh tracks, especially since audiences were less excitable due to the lack of prizes given or won. Mark Goodson’s productions, like "The Price is Right” and “Family Feud,” were and continue to be famous for more raucous live audiences, but there still have been instances of occasional sweetening for broadcast.

As time went on, laugh track options were expanded, with the type of laughter increasingly customizable depending on the show. Both Douglass and the companies creating their own tracks, like Hanna-Barbera, ensured the laugh track for each show matched the tone, mood and pace of the show in which they were used. More subtle comedies featured more subdued laugh tracks, while more slapstick or over-the-top comedies used more raucous laugh tracks to match the program and encourage similar viewer reactions.

The laugh track continued to be nearly ubiquitous in sitcoms through the 1980s. However, as more satirical and animated sitcoms made it to broadcast, producers of this new crop of series began to move away from the laugh track to maintain flow and introduce more subtle humor. When “The Simpsons” debuted in 1989—the first primetime animated sitcom on a broadcast network since “The Flintstones” in 1966—the series departed from its prehistoric counterpart and trusted the audience to recognize the humor in the show. The shift also allowed for more visual humor and for producers to stack more jokes and allow dialogue to flow without waiting for the canned laughter to subside.

Yet, even through the 1990s, the most popular sitcoms, including “Friends” and “Seinfeld,” maintained the classic sitcom approach and both invited live audiences to tapings and sweetened laughter with more advanced laugh tracks that were increasingly digital and customizable. As television entered a new millennium, more single-camera comedy series, including mockumentary series like “The Office” and cult favorites like “Arrested Development,” ditched the laugh track. Also, cable dramedies like “Shameless” and “Atlanta” emerged, particularly on cable, balancing serious storylines with subtle comedy where laugh tracks just did not fit with the overall audience experience.

New generations of television (and streaming) viewers are now conditioned to watch comedies without laugh tracks, but there still is a place for traditional multicamera comedies that are either filmed in front of an audience whose laughter is sweetened or whose editors just insert laugh tracks. Audiences may be familiar with formulas or tropes in sitcoms, but laugh tracks still provide a feeling of communal watching even as appointment viewing and broadcast television slowly fades.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the CU Boulder Department of Ethnic Studies.

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In the 75 years since it was introduced, the laugh track has conditioned viewers to know when and how much to laugh.

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Honoring the legacy of Vincent Chin

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 16:25:57 +0000

Honoring the legacy of Vincent Chin Rachel Sauer Fri, 09/05/2025 - 10:25

Jennifer Ho

A Detroit street is named in honor of Vincent Chin—his death mobilized Asian American activists nationwide

The legacy of Vincent Chin has recently been commemorated in a street sign bearing his name on the corner of Cass Avenue and Peterboro Street in Detroit’s historic Chinatown.

I was glad to see it. Watching the 1987 documentary “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” and learning about his life and Asian American activism changed my life.

I was 18 and taking my first Asian American studies class at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The film made me realize two things: Asian Americans are targets of racial violence, and Asian Americans across the ethnic spectrum could join together to fight for civil rights. This led to my passion for social justice.

Jennifer Ho is a professor of Asian American studies in the CU Boulder Department of Ethnic Studies and director of the Center for Humanities and the Arts.

I’m proud to now be a professor of Asian American studies and critical race theory who teaches my students about Vincent Chin.

So who was Chin, and why did his death catalyze an Asian American civil rights movement?

A fatal brawl

Chin, an Oak Park resident, was 27 years old on the night of his bachelor party, June 19, 1982. He got into a fight with two white men – Ronald Ebens, a Chrysler car plant supervisor, and Michael Nitz, an unemployed autoworker and Ebens’ stepson.

According to Racine Colwell, a dancer at the Fancy Pants Club in the Detroit area, Ebens shouted, “It’s because of you little motherf–kers that we’re out of work.” Detroit in the early 1980s was in an automotive slump. People blamed Japanese auto imports and the Japanese people, in general, for the economic downturn. The assailants didn’t seem to understand or care that Chin was actually Chinese.

After the fight between Chin and Nitz and Ebens, Chin and his friends ran out of the club. Ebens and Nitz ran after them, with Nitz grabbing a baseball bat from his car. When they found Chin outside a McDonald’s on Woodward Avenue, Nitz held Chin while Ebens beat his body and head with the bat. They were stopped by two off-duty police officers who had been inside the fast-food restaurant.

After the attack, Jimmy Choi, a member of the bachelor party, cradled Chin in his arms. He said that Chin’s last words were “It’s not fair.” Chin died four days later.

Ebens and Nitz were charged with second-degree murder, but their lawyers pleaded the charge down to manslaughter. At the end of the trial, Judge Charles Kaufman fined them US$3,000 each and sentenced each to three years’ probation, explaining: “These weren’t the kind of people you send to prison. … You don’t make the punishment fit the crime. You make the punishment fit the criminal.”

Vincent Chin was a Chinese American draftsman who died as the result of an anti-Asian hate crime on June 19, 1982. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Asian Americans organize for legal justice

The sentencing enraged Chin’s friends, family and the greater Chinese and Asian American community of Detroit.

Activists of various Asian ethnicities and their non-Asian allies created American Citizens for Justice, an organization that pressured the Justice Department to investigate the violation of Chin’s civil rights and to see Ebens and Nitz imprisoned for Chin’s murder. Lily Chin, Vincent’s mother, was a key advocate in the pursuit of justice for her son, showing up to rallies and interviews to remind people of Vincent’s death for nearly a decade.

While there were other moments, such as the anti-eviction fight for the I-Hotel in San Francisco, that brought Asian Americans of all ethnicities together to fight for civil rights, Chin’s murder sparked a broad awareness. Asian Americans realized that what happened to Chin could happen to them.

American Citizens for Justice held press conferences and gained support from local African American activists in Michigan and national Black leaders like Jesse Jackson, whose presence helped bring more attention to the Chin tragedy.

Activists were successful in forcing the FBI to open an investigation. The resulting 1984 federal trial was the first time the Justice Department had argued that the civil rights of an Asian American person had been violated. Nitz was found not guilty on two counts. Ebens was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison. However, a 1986 federal appeals court ruling overturned the conviction, freeing Ebens.

A civil suit filed against Ebens and Nitz on behalf of Lily Chin was settled out of court in 1987. Nitz agreed to pay $50,000 and Ebens $1.5 million – the projected income that Chin would have made had he lived.

Nitz fulfilled his debt, but Ebens made only a few payments. By 1987, Ebens had been unemployed for five years. He stopped making payments after he moved to Nevada. Estimates in 2016 place Ebens’ debt to the Chin estate at over $8 million, including accumulated interest.

Chin’s death had a profound impact on the criminal justice system in Michigan and nationally. Michigan made it harder to plead down murder charges to manslaughter and required prosecutors to be present at sentencings to face victims. Nationally, victim impact statements are now commonplace. Victims and their families now have more of a voice in the justice system.

Chin’s death spurred Pan-Asian American activism across the U.S., leading to the eventual founding of organizations like Asian Americans Advancing Justice in 1991 and Stop Asian American Pacific Islander Hate in 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Stop AAPI Hate recorded violence against Asians happening in the U.S. and educated people about anti-Asian racism.

Today, Asian Americans fight for social justice through organizations like these and 18 Million Rising, a group that advocates for racial justice for Asian Americans and all marginalized people.

This is the lasting legacy of Vincent Chin.

Jennifer Ho is a professor of Asian American studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the ��.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A Detroit street is named in honor of Vincent Chin—his death mobilized Asian American activists nationwide.

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CU Boulder scholar helps unite Navajo culture and modern science

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 22:43:38 +0000

CU Boulder scholar helps unite Navajo culture and modern science Rachel Sauer Tue, 08/26/2025 - 16:43

Cody DeBos

Kelsey John’s Navajo-centered Horses Connecting Communities initiative offers culturally relevant, practical education about horses

When Kelsey John left Oklahoma to pursue her PhD in New York, she quickly started missing a central piece of her lifestyle: horses. Raised in an environment rooted in horse culture, John’s life is deeply intertwined with the animals.

“I am a citizen of the Navajo Nation, and I am a lifelong horse person,” she says. “Both sides of my family had horses in their background, so I grew up with a lot of exposure to them and education about them.”

As she studied away from home, Kelsey John, a CU Boulder assistant professor of ethnic studies, felt a strong pull to return home and rediscover the close relationship with horses she once had.

As she studied away from home, John, a �� assistant professor of ethnic studies and Center of the American West affiliate, felt a strong pull to return home and rediscover the close relationship with horses she once had. That realization inspired her doctoral research and gave birth to a community organization centered on the profound bonds between humans, horses and the environment. Ultimately, it led her back to her community to spearhead a unique initiative called Horses Connecting Communities.

Blending cultural traditions and modern science

Originally started as a one-day conference, Horses Connecting Communities quickly became a cherished gathering, providing Navajo people with culturally relevant and practical education about horses.

“The goal was to kind of braid those things together and just make it a really Navajo-centered event for the needs of the Navajo people and their horses. That’s where it all started, and it’s grown since then,” John says.

Events hosted by the organization typically include speakers, demonstrations, and hands-on workshops on horse care, training and veterinary skills. They are often led by Navajo experts like John, who return to their community to share their specialized knowledge.

“We’ve also partnered with a different camp that’s been happening on the Navajo Nation for over 10 years now called Song of the Horse Camp, which is organized by the folks at the University of Arizona,” says John.

“Since we partnered with them, we’ve been able to introduce more equine facilitated learning, which helps either youth or adults with academic skills, life skills, personal communication, confidence building, body language awareness … all these different interpersonal and personal skills in a new and different way,” she adds.

Horses, land and Navajo identity

At the heart of Horses Connecting Communities is the understanding that horses, land and Navajo cultural identity are inseparable.

“Something really unique about horses is that, in order to have a relationship with them, you’re kind of inevitably having a relationship with the land as well,” says John. “Because we are an indigenous community, we have a deep relationship with our ancestral land.”

She also emphasizes how Navajo traditions and modern equine science are not opposing ideas, but natural complements to each other.

“There is a great effort among the horse community in the Navajo Nation to understand and integrate our cultural beliefs with the best and most current science,” John explains. “I’ve had the huge privilege of being able to work with lots of professionals who are also tribal members so they can personally and in a communal way integrate tradition with relevant science.”

“There is a great effort among the horse community in the Navajo Nation to understand and integrate our cultural beliefs with the best and most current science,” says CU Boulder scholar Kelsey John. (Photo: Kelsey John)

Working ‘with,’ not ‘on’

John’s approach to relationship building through Horses Connecting Communities emphasizes the ethical necessity of working hand-in-hand with indigenous communities rather than just researching them. Her organization exemplifies this with a collaborative and sustained partnership that is directly shaped by the Navajo people’s needs and aspirations.

“The idea is making your research relevant and useful to the community and keeping that ongoing relationship and ongoing presence,” she says.

But community partnerships can still be complex, John acknowledges.

“There’s always going to be a power differential between a university—even a university researcher such as myself—and a community. You’re always dealing with power and access to resources and sometimes even conflicting ideas of what’s beneficial.”

Yet, despite these challenges, the rewards of genuine community-based collaboration inspire John to keep coming back for more.

“It’s been almost nine years now since I started my research, but I still work with a lot of the same people that I worked with for the first Horses Connecting Communities event. We’ve brought in new people and changed our programming and are always evaluating if what we’re doing is relevant,” she says.

John adds, “But it always goes back to what I learned in that initial research about what the horse means to the people, what they want, and what are the challenges they’re facing, then finding ways to support that.”

Looking ahead

Thanks to recent support in the form of a CU Boulder PACES Grant, Horses Connecting Communities will further explore equine facilitated learning tailored to the Navajo community.

“We want to understand what the needs of the tribe are and if they can be met through this unique educational approach,” John says.

She is also excited about organizing specialized events for Navajo women that recognize culturally significant beliefs about their relationships with animals and the land.

John’s ultimate aspiration, however, goes beyond education and research. She hopes her initiative will inspire a deeper appreciation for horses, their care and the Navajo people’s enduring relationship with these animals.

“The big thing is to really be aware of the legacy and the significance of the horse and the people’s relationship with the horse—and the land, too,” she concludes. “There’s such a long history there, and I’m so glad to be a part of the larger narrative about horses.”

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Kelsey John’s Navajo-centered Horses Connecting Communities initiative offers culturally relevant, practical education about horses.

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ESPN launches a new era

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 23:08:07 +0000

ESPN launches a new era Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/21/2025 - 17:08

Jared Bahir Browsh

Launching a new direct-to-consumer service this week and inking a recent deal to control NFL Media, ESPN continues evolving as the dominant force in sports media

On August 5, ESPN and the National Football League agreed to a deal giving ESPN control of NFL Media in exchange for a 10% stake in the sports network and media corporation. The next day, ESPN announced the deal with World Wrestling Entertainment to stream its premium events, including Wrestlemania.

There had been rumors for several years that Disney was looking to offload its sports network due to rising sports media rights expenses and challenges from streaming platforms. Tech companies like Apple and Amazon and internet providers including Comcast and Verizon were mentioned as potential partners.

The network, which is valued in the $25 billion to$30 billion range, ultimately turned its attention to partnering with a sports organization, moving forward with the NFL over other leagues, including the National Basketball Association.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the CU Boulder Department of Ethnic Studies.

Over the last year and a half, ESPN took down its “for sale” sign and dug in its heels—first partnering with Penn Entertainment and lending its name to the betting app ESPN Bet, which launched in November 2023. A year later, ESPN enabled users to link their ESPN Bet account with ESPN+, allowing users to gamble while watching sporting events.

In February 2024, ESPN announced a joint venture with Fox Sports and TNT Sports, a streaming service known as Venu Sports. Venu was ultimately abandoned after FuboTV, a sports streaming service, filed an antitrust lawsuit. Disney eventually bought 70% of FuboTV, ending the lawsuit in January 2025.

In July 2024, ESPN renewed its partnership with the NBA, joining Amazon and NBC as broadcasters of the basketball league. In November, ESPN announced that it acquired Inside the NBA, the popular show that had aired on TNT since 1989 and featured commentators Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith.

In May, ESPN announced it would launch its own direct-to-consumer service, officially signaling that its cable network would no longer be the center of its media empire. ESPN leaders turned their attention to streaming at a time when Apple, Google and Amazon have been attempting to leverage sports to increase their influence in the digital media environment. Shortly after the NFL deal, they announced a partnership to bundle ESPN and Fox One after Venu was abandoned.

A legacy of innovation

ESPN and the American Broadcasting Company have been at the forefront of innovation in sportscasting, their legacies inextricably linked when ABC purchased ESPN in 1984.

ABC launched as a radio network in 1943 when Edward Noble, the owner of Life Savers, purchased the Blue Network from NBC after the FCC recommended that RCA sell either its Red or Blue Network to promote competition in broadcasting. ABC was thought of as the “third network” behind the much larger NBC and CBS, so ABC took some programming risks to compete with the other two networks, including airing taped counterprogramming on radio in 1948 when the other networks refused to air pre-taped shows.ABC aired the 1948 NFL championship and began airing NFL regular season games in 1953. The sports production company Sports Programs, Inc., founded by TV executive and producer Edward Scherick, approached ABC about airing a weekly Saturday baseball game during the 1953 season titled “Game of the Week.” In 1955, CBS purchased the program after first balking at it two years earlier.

In 1954, ABC agreed to provide funding for Disneyland in exchange for a primetime program, Disneyland, which was later renamed the Wonderful World of Disney, forging a relationship that continues today with ABC as a subsidiary of the media giant. The network continued to think outside the box for programming, nationally broadcasting a local Philadelphia music and dance show, Bandstand (renamed American Bandstand), starting in 1957. ABC also gained audiences by airing westerns—shows like The Lone Ranger and Davy Crockett, the latter of which aired as a serial on Disneyland and became a pop culture phenomenon.

The early 1960s were a turning point for ABC as the network continued to work with partners and think outside the box for programming. In February 1960, it purchased Sports Programs, Inc. which became ABC Sports with Scherick heading up the new sports division. In June 1960, ABC purchased the rights to air American Football League games as the upstart league launched to compete with the NFL. The deal became a template for future sports media rights deals as the revenue was shared with all franchises in the AFL; the NFL followed suit in 1961. This led to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 that allowed leagues to bargain collectively on behalf of their teams, rather than a piecemeal set of deals for individual teams and with the league for championships and all-star games. Before the act, it was against antitrust laws to pool rights contracts in sports.

Drag racer Don Nicholson gives an interview to Wide World of Sports in 1966. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Three months after the AFL deal, ABC Sports broadcasted college football for the first time—a matchup between the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia played at Alabama. As ABC prepared for the game, a young production assistant, Roone Arledge, sent a memo to Scherick outlining strategies to attract casual fans to their sports broadcasts and grow female audiences for sports. The broadcast was a success and Arledge continued to help ABC leverage sports to compete with NBC and CBS

Two weeks after the first college football broadcast, ABC took a chance and aired the first regularly scheduled primetime animated program, debuting The Flintstones on Sept. 30. In early 1961, ABC signed a deal with the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) to air track and field and other amateur events. Although there was not a huge demand for track and field coverage, Scherick and Arledge felt that people enjoyed watching games, and ABC could edit the broadcast to make it more entertaining. Since the track and field results were not widely known, they could also delay broadcast until the scheduled airtime on the weekend.

The deal with the AAU became the foundation for the program ABC’s Wide World of Sports, which debuted in April 1961, drawing audiences that embraced the drama of “the thrill of victory and agony of defeat.” It was a direct competitor to The CBS Sports Spectacular, which debuted in 1960 and featured events like NASCAR races and boxing matches.

ABC’s Wide World of Sports was a forum to test new sports programming, including college basketball, when ABC aired the NCAA Championship the day after it was played on March 24, 1962. Also in 1962, the anthology series featured events from the Professional Bowlers Association along with the Daytona 500. Two years later, the NBA was featured on Wide World of Sports as Arledge continued to seek engaging live sports programming. After a 1964 fly fishing segment on Wide World of Sports with broadcaster Curt Gowdy and fisherman Joe Brooks, Arledge created the anthology program The American Sportsman in 1965, an unscripted program featuring athletes and celebrities participating in outdoor sports.

Arledge recognized that diehard sports fans would watch their favorite sports regardless of the production elements, but casual fans were attracted to the narratives and human interest featured in Wide World of Sports and other programming from ABC Sports, which continues to be the template for sports broadcasting today. After watching videotape of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Arledge felt that instantly replaying sports action could contribute to this storytelling and explain the game to casual viewers. Although instant replay debuted in the United States during the Army-Navy Game on CBS in 1963, Arledge would soon leverage the technology to show the intricacies of football, helping casual audiences better understand the game and contributing to football’s rise as the most popular sport in the United States.

In 1964, Arledge first broadcast the Winter Olympic Games, obtaining the contract from CBS. ABC first broadcast the Summer Games in 1968 and would continue to broadcast the Summer Games for the next 20 years, with Wide World of Sports airing many of the qualifying events for both the Summer and Winter games. These broadcasts included Tommie Smith and John Carlos protesting during the medal ceremony after they won gold and bronze, respectively in the 200 meter race and the massacre in Munich in 1972. The latter event led to a closer relationship between sports and journalism, and was a turning point for Arledge who would become the first executive to oversee both a network sports and news division where he created ABC World News Tonight, Nightline and 20/20.

NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle had been looking for a way to air NFL games in primetime but was banned from Friday and Saturday night airtime since the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 protected Friday high school games and Saturday college football games from being overshadowed by NFL broadcasts. Between 1966 and 1969, CBS and NBC experimented with Monday night broadcasts of the NFL and AFL respectively. With the upcoming merger between the leagues and ABC’s weak Monday primetime schedule, ABC agreed to air a weekly game, creating Monday Night Football.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Arledge continued to take chances—with varied results—including Monday Night Baseball, which suffered from a limited choice of games during baseball’s travel days. In 1976, ABC began broadcasting the North American Soccer League as soccer exploded in popularity when Pele began playing in the league in 1975. ABC obtained exclusive rights in 1979, but interest in the league began declining the following year.

Finding a home on cable

Among the first ESPN anchors were Robin Roberts (left), Chris Berman (center) and Tom Jackson (right). (Photo: ESPN Images)

After being fired as communications director for the New England Whalers hockey team, Bill Rasmussen, his son Scott and Ed Eagan, an eye doctor and insurance agent, looked to create a regional sports network in Connecticut. When they discovered it would be cheaper to launch a national cable network over satellite, they established the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network on Sept. 7, 1979, supported by an investment from Getty Oil, which obtained 85% of the network and an advertising deal with Anheuser-Busch. Many felt there was not enough sports programming to fill 24 hours a day, but the network began airing sports and events that bigger broadcast networks thought were too niche, including the early rounds of the 1980 NCAA Basketball Tournament—launching what is now known as March Madness—and the 1982 FIFA World Cup with ABC airing the final.

In 1981, ABC SportsBeat, hosted by Howard Cosell, debuted and brought hard-hitting sports journalism, which previously had been exclusive to print journalism, to television. Although the show was not highly rated, it was one of the first on television to investigate issues like drugs and violence in sports. In 1983, the program produced a 30-minute documentary previewing the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, which was critical of the Olympics’ impact and was one of the first to question the long-term feasibility of the games despite the fact that ABC had spent $225 million to broadcast them.

After Texaco bought Getty Oil in 1984, the company sold its controlling stake in ESPN to ABC, which further legitimized the cable network as a sports broadcaster. ABC had previously purchased 15% of the network before buying the remaining 85% from Texaco then selling a 20% stake to Nabisco. ESPN was able to leverage ABC’s position as a broadcast network to expand its media rights. Later that year, the Supreme Court ruled in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma that the NCAA’s control of college football broadcast rights was an unfair restriction on competition. ABC and ESPN quickly signed a deal with the College Football Association, which represented many of the top programs outside of the Big 10 and Pac 10.

Also that fall, the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 was passed, establishing national regulation of cable and helping calm tensions between municipalities wanting to protect local media and cable providers. The act helped facilitate an expansive growth of cable, making ESPN and other cable networks available in municipalities that had previously blocked or limited cable service. In 1987, ESPN debuted Sunday Night Football, which further cemented ESPN as a legitimate competitor to the broadcast networks.

By the 1990s, ESPN became synonymous with sports coverage at a time when media ownership was being deregulated. In 1990, Hearst purchased 20% of ESPN from Nabisco as the chain newspaper owner looked to expand its business into cable television. Soon after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 passed, Disney bought ABC and all its subsidiaries, including ESPN. In 1997, the Disney (now ESPN) Wide World of Sports athletic complex opened near Disney World, and Disney took control the Los Angeles Angels, adding to its sports portfolio that included the Anaheim Mighty Ducks and planning to create an ESPN West. Ultimately, Disney abandoned those plans, selling both teams by 2005. ESPN did open a Los Angeles studio near the Staples Center in 2009, but the network is consolidating its operations back to Bristol, Connecticut, and announced the closure of both its Los Angeles and New York Studios by the end of 2025.

Monday Night Football aired for the first time on ESPN in 2006. (Photo: ESPN Images)

In 2006, ABC Sports officially merged with ESPN, with the latter taking over sports coverage from its sister network. Later that year, Monday Night Football aired for the first time on the cable network. The NFL wanted to shift the marquee primetime game from Monday to Sunday, but Disney wanted to maintain their highly rated Sunday lineup, so they moved Monday Night Football to ESPN and NBC won the contract for the Sunday night game.

Growth and criticism

ESPN’s growth has not come without criticism, including the cost to cable providers and consumers, which is more than three times higher than its closest national competitor, TNT, due to increasing rights fees and production costs. Cable companies pay over $9 dollars per subscriber to carry ESPN, compared to about $3 for TNT. In spite of these prices, increasing media rights and cable cutting have led to budget crunches that have led to several rounds of layoffs, including newsroom staff in 2017 and 2023, leading to accusations that the network was moving away from sports journalism to focus more on promoting the leagues it covers.

ESPN backed out of its partnership with PBS Frontline on the production of League of Denial, which investigated traumatic brain injuries in the NFL and how the league hid their prevalence and long-term impact. ESPN’s exit from the investigation was reportedly due to pressure from the NFL. The network’s relationship with and investment in the league, which now includes NFL Media and the league obtaining 10% of the network, has increased concerns over a lack of critical coverage of the league—including issues like violence against women, public funding of NFL stadiums and accusations of racism by team owners including Jerry Jones, who owns the network’s most covered team, the Dallas Cowboys. Some journalistic organizations like Poynter have claimed that promotion of Disney properties like Disney+ and content like Pixar and Marvel films on SportsCenter and other programs undermines the network’s remaining journalistic integrity.

ESPN has weathered this criticism and has positioned itself for the future as the top sports media company in the world. It has broadcasting rights for almost any sport imaginable and a strengthened relationship with the NFL, the most valuable sports league in the world, as it launches its direct-to-consumer service on Aug. 21 and partners with Fox for a new bundled service that will launch on Oct.2. It is a new era not just for sports media, but television as a whole as one of the last holdouts of traditional cable transitions to digital streaming.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the CU Boulder Department of Ethnic Studies.

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Launching a new direct-to-consumer service this week and inking a recent deal to control NFL Media, ESPN continues evolving as the dominant force in sports media.

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Scholar dissects voter perceptions of transnational politics

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 21:24:57 +0000

Scholar dissects voter perceptions of transnational politics Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/14/2025 - 15:24

Bradley Worrell

CU Boulder political scientist Jeffrey Nonnemacher asserts that Western European national political parties use their affiliations with party families to signal their own political viewpoints

In the 2013 German national elections, the upstart political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) failed to gain a single seat in parliament. Just four years later, the AfD won 97 seats and became the third-largest political party in Germany.

The AfD made its historic inroads in the 2017 German elections at the same time it transformed itself from a Euroskeptic but relatively moderate party into a political movement that became much more closely aligned with radical right parties in the rest of Western Europe, says Jeffrey Nonnemacher, an assistant teaching professor with the �� International Affairs Program, whose research focus is political parties and elections.

In particular, Nonnemacher points to a decision by AfD’s party leader, Frauke Petry, in 2017 to host radical right leaders from across Europe, including Marine Le Pen with the French National Rally, Geert Wilders of the Dutch Party for Freedom and Matteo Salvini of Italy’s Northern League. That decision effectively telegraphed to voters the party’s shift to the right and signaled its embrace of the transnational radical right party label, says Nonnemacher, who recently published a paper in the British Journal of Political Science about voter perceptions of transnational politics.

CU Boulder scholar Jeffrey Nonnemacher is an assistant teaching professor in the International Affairs Program and the Arts and Sciences Honors Program and a lecturer in the Department of Political Science.

“My goal with this paper is to tackle the question of: Do voters care if the AfD’s leadership is spending a lot of time with France’s Marine Le Pen and the National Rally? Are voters getting some sort of information from the party family label attached to a party and the party’s relationship with that label?” he explains. In his paper, Nonnemacher contends that political parties in Western Europe are responsive to politics outside their home country—and that strategic choices to embrace a larger party family label, such as radical right in the case of AfD, do influence how parties are perceived by a country’s voters.

In a recent conversation with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine, Nonnemacher emphasized that a political party that embraces the party family signifies its commitment to the larger ideological goals associated with the party family, while parties that push back and work to distance themselves from their sister parties from other countries signal that they may not be credible champions for core issues. His answers have been lightly edited for style and clarity.

Question: Can you define what constitutes a transnational party family?

Nonnemacher: In political science—especially in comparative politics—one of the goals is to think about the ways we can compare political outcomes. One of the ways we do this is by looking at these so-called party families. These are basically categorizations of parties based upon shared histories, shared ideology and common networks of activists and leaders.

There are a whole host of party families. The largest families in Europe are the Social Democrats, which is your center-left, working-class parties, and the Conservatives, which are your traditional center-right parties. You’ve also got your Green parties, which are your environmental parties, among many other families.

These party families are now much more useful than what academics created them for, which was tools for comparisons. Today, parties within similar party families tend to behave the same, learn from each other and form groups that transcend national boundaries based upon shared ideologies.

Question: What motivated you to explore the topic of transnational parties as a source of voter perceptions?

Nonnemacher: The academic answer is that I felt there was a gap there. We know a lot about how voters in Europe today are concerned about integration and thinking about politics beyond their own borders. But we had not yet, as academics, come to terms with the consequences of this, for how they view their parties and the links between what information they’re getting and their political parties. That was the academic motivation.

The more topical answer was the rise of the radical right parties in these various countries and how these parties seemed to be learning from each other, copying each other and celebrating each other’s victories in a way that we hadn’t really seen before. You have Hungary’s Victor Orbán hosting CPAC (the U.S.-based Conservative Political Action Conference), and you have Marine Le Pen in France having these big rallies with other radical right leaders.

Hungary’s Victor Orbán hosts CPAC (the U.S.-based Conservative Political Action Conference). (Photo: Elkes Andor/Wikimedia Commons)

My motivation was trying to understand the consequences of this seeminginternationalization of right party politics especially, but also party politics more generally.

Question: What are some specific reasons why parties might choose to embrace a transnational party?

Nonnemacher: The argument I make in the paper is very much an electoral argument. Parties win elections when voters know what they stand for. That’s one of the big theories that we have about party competition, is that parties need to distinguish themselves from their competitors and be able to communicate to voters what they believe.

If a voter can’t tell the difference between one party and another, they’re unlikely to support them. And if a voter doesn’t know where the party stands, then they don’t know if they’re going to get what they want out of the party. So, parties need to distinguish themselves. They need to signal to voters what their positions are.

One of the motivations here for parties is: This label tells voters where I stand. If I’m seen alongside other Social Democrats, I can kind of bolster my credentials on being a Social Democratic Party.

The other electoral motivation is parties want to win elections, and they look to who won and say, ‘We should copy that.’ In 2021, when the Social Democrats won in Germany, Social Democratic parties across Europe all immediatelylooked to Germany and said, ‘What did they do? How did they win this election? What can we do to kind of copy that?’

Question: So, it’s not just radical right parties learning from radical right parties in other countries, but also leftist and centrist parties learning from their transnational sister parties?

Nonnemacher: Yes. One of the things I wanted to do in this paper was to make the case that it’s not just the radical right that’s doing this and benefitting from it. It’s the British Labour Party taking lessons from Germany’s Social Democrats, for example.

Green parties are an especially interesting transnational group, because inherently, they see fighting for the environment as a global issue. They view international cooperation and international learning as core to solving the problems that they are running on. Notably, almost all of them have ‘green’ in their name and almost all of them have the sunflower as their logo.

Question: What makes Germany’s AfD party a particularly noteworthy example of a national party forming associations with like-minded parties in Western Europe?

Nonnemacher: There’s probably two reasons for that. One is they exploded in Germany in terms of growing support from 2013 to 2017; the other is that by 2017, the radical right in Europe had exploded. There’s just a lot more attention on the far right, and it’s Germany, so whenever the far right does anything in Germany, people notice.

The AfD is an interesting case, because in 2013 they were not the far-right party that they are today. They have had a big transformation in the last 10 to 12 years. In 2013, they were really just angry about the European Union and the Euro crisis, and with Germany having to bail out the rest of the European Union. They were a Euroskeptic party first and foremost. They were anti-immigrant, but it wasn’t their main focus.

France's Marine Le Pen of the French National Rally has helped lead a far-right shift, particularly on immigration, in Europen politics. (Photo: Jérémy-Günther-Heinz Jähnick/Wikimedia Commons)

They had a disappointing election in 2013, where they barely missed out on getting seats in the parliament.Then by 2017, they shifted dramatically to the right on immigration. They really started to copy France’s Le Pen and other prominent, far-right leaders in Europe tobe this anti-immigrant party, just like the rest of these radical right parties, and that worked out really well for them. In 2017, they became the third-largest party in parliament, so it was a quite successful strategy for them.

By the elections in 2021, they plateaued a little bit, and then in February this year they became the second largest party in the Bundestag (the German parliament), and they’ve come to be embraced by the broader far-right movement.

Question: Why might a national party choose to distance itself from a sister party?

Nonnemacher: There are two family labels where this generally applies. The first is the radical right—or at least that was the case in the past—where if you were seen as too close to the radical right you were punished, because there was a lot of stigmas around being affiliated with that ideology.

With the AfD example, when they made the transition to embrace more radical right principals from other countries and hosted the rally with Le Pen, Wilders and Salvini to signal the AfD’s embrace of transnational radical right parties, this was incredibly controversial, both inside and outside of the party. It was a delicate balance, because there were some in the party who were very nervous that if they embraced the radical right movement they could face a backlash, because Germans are very conscious of their history. So, 10 years ago there was more hesitation about embracing their fellow party members abroad.

We see similar patterns on the left, especially when it comes to communism. Parties on the radical left are generally hesitant to embrace communists or things that look like communism because of the similar kinds of stigmas around that that exist in western and especially eastern Europe.

Question: Do you think voters are consciously recognizing these European family party associations and how their own parties are relating to sister transnational parties, or is it happening at a subconscious level?

Nonnemacher: We know from political psychology that voters rely on heuristics for a lot of things. So, just hearing the label—that a particular party is a radical right party, for instance, triggers for voters a set of assumptions about what a party stands for and what it’s leaders believe and what they are advocating for.

But I also believe that there is something much more active going on here, where voters start to make those kinds of connections between the party and the label and where voters deliberate what those labels mean in relation to their own politics.

Question: If a national party is not in alignment with its transnational party family on foundational ideological issues, does it cause voter distrust or just confusion?

Nonnemacher: I think it’s a bit of both. Definitely it causes confusion, because if you’re watching the news and you’re being told that Marine Le Pen is a radical right politician, but then let’s say you hear she is endorsing letting more immigrants into (Europe), you’re going to say, ‘Wait a minute; that doesn’t make any sense. How is she radical right, then?’

It also probably leads to distrust. If you see yourself as a Social Democratic voter and you believe in this center-left Social Democratic vision for Europe, but your Social Democratic politician is talking about de-regulating markets and shrinking the state, that’s probably going to make you say, ‘He’s not a Social Democrat. I don’t trust him to be an advocate for my goals.’

Question: Your paper focused a transnational politics in Western Europe. Do you think the paper’s findings have any relevance for the United States?

"Understanding how voters perceive their parties is a huge part of what makes democracies work. If voters don’t know what their parties are fighting for and don’t know where their parties stand, they check out."

Nonnemacher: I don’t know how well the paper’s findings travel to the United States. We have a very strong two-party system that doesn’t map as neatly to the multi-party competition in European elections. That being said, I think if we look at parties in the United States as factions of various ideological groups, we can see green factions of the Democratic Party, radical right and center-right Christian democratic factions of the Republican Party. I think for activists and people inside these parties, it matters a lot what kind of broader ideological movements that they are associated with are doing.

I’m skeptical that voters will derive the same utility, just because the labels don’t fit as neatly, and (American voters) tend to think we’re unique in our politics as voters, so we don’t tend to look abroad for political inspiration.

Question: Anything else relating to Western European voters and their perceptions of their political parties and transnational parties that you think is important to share?

Nonnemacher: I think understanding how voters perceive their parties is a huge part of what makes democracies work. If voters don’t know what their parties are fighting for and don’t know where their parties stand, they check out; they disengage, and we’ve seen that they become less satisfied with democracy.

I think anything that parties can do to really communicate their positions to voters and reaffirm for voters that they areserious about accomplishing their goals is important, because parties across Europe and the United States are having a credibility crisis right now.

What my paper does is highlight one such way that parties can go about communicating to voters what they stand for, which has a whole host of implications to address some of the big problems facing Western democracies today.

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CU Boulder political scientist Jeffrey Nonnemacher asserts that Western European national political parties use their affiliations with party families to signal their own political viewpoints.

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Moose are on the loose

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 22:43:40 +0000

Moose are on the loose Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/13/2025 - 16:43

William Taylor , John Wendt and Joshua Miller

Moose have lived in Colorado for centuries—unpacking evidence from history, archaeology, oral traditions

Moose are on the loose in the southern Rockies.

In July 2025, a young wandering bull was captured roaming a city park in Greeley, Colorado. A spate of similar urban sightings alongside some aggressive moose encounters has elevated moose management and conservation into a matter of public debate, especially across metro Denver and the Colorado Front Range.

In Rocky Mountain National Park, a recent study found that moose and elk might be to blame for far-reaching changes to valley ecosystems, as their browsing reduces important plants like willows, depriving beavers of habitat and materials for their wetland engineering. Park wildlife are generally not managed through hunting, but the park has tried techniques like fencing moose away from wetland zones. Publicly, discussion has swirled around further mitigation measures to slow or eliminate moose populations.

CU Boulder archaeologist William Taylor is partnering with paleoecology and conservation paleobiology colleagues to study the ancient animals of the Rockies.

At the heart of this debate is a basic question – do moose belong in the southern Rockies at all?

During much of the last century, moose were apparently rare in Colorado. The animals are absent from some early 20th century official wildlife tallies. Then, in 1978, the Colorado Division of Wildlife – now Colorado Parks and Wildlife – released a group of moose into North Park in north-central Colorado. At the time, biologists understood their efforts to be a reintroduction, but in the years since, wildlife managers have shifted their thinking about the place of moose in local ecosystems.

In the decades that followed, the moose expanded their range and numbers. Today, informal estimates by Colorado Parks and Wildlife put the moose population at around 3,500 animals. Under increased moose browsing pressure and a shifting climate, some mountain wetland environments are changing.

Should these changes be thought of as human-made ecological wounds caused by releasing moose? The National Park Service seems to think so.

Statements from 2025 on the park service website, and other public messaging from wildlife officials, assert that Colorado has never supported a breeding population of moose – only the occasional transient visitor. The factual basis for this idea seems to hinge heavily on an unpublished internal report from 2015, which identified only a few archaeological or historical records of moose near the park.

We are a team of archaeologists, paleoecologists and conservation paleobiologists studying the ancient animals of the Rockies.

Understanding moose and their interactions with people centuries ago means carefully analyzing different traces that survive the passage of time. These can range from the bones of animals themselves to indirect clues preserved in everything from lake sediments to historical records.

Are moose actually native to Colorado?

As scientists studying the past, we know that reconstructing the ancient geographic ranges of animals is difficult. Archaeological sites with animal bones can be a great tool to understand the past, especially for tracing the food choices of ancient humans. But such sites can be rare, and even when they are well preserved and well studied, it can take lots of care and scientific research to identify the species of each bone.

Harder still is determining the intimate details of ancient animals’ lives, including how and where they lived, died or reproduced. Such key details can be especially opaque for moose, who are solitary and elusive. Because of this, moose may not end up in human diets, even where both species have established populations. A comprehensive review of archaeological sites from across Alaska and some areas of the Canadian Yukon, where moose are common today and have likely been present since the end of the last Ice Age, found that moose were nearly absent until the past few centuries. In fact, moose often comprised less than 0.1% of the total number of bones in very large collections, if they appeared at all. In some areas, cultural reasons like taboos against moose hunting can also prevent them from ending up in archaeological bone tallies.

In new research published as a preprint in advance of peer review, we took a closer look at the idea that moose were absent from Colorado before 1978. We combed through newspaper records, photo archives and early travel diaries and identified dozens of references to moose sightings in Colorado spanning the first records in 1860 through the decade of moose reintroduction in the 1970s.

Moose sightings appear in the very earliest written records of the area that would become Rocky Mountain National Park. In his 1863 diary, Milton Estes described happening upon a large moose alongside a band of elk while on a hunting trip.

“Since elk were common I picked out Mr. Moose for my game,” he wrote.

Milton thought he had bagged “the first and only moose that had ever been killed so far south.” He was wrong.

Our archival research turned up even earlier sightings of moose in the area, along with many more across the region in the decades that followed. Diaries, newspapers and photo records from the past two centuries show the presence of not only young bulls, which at times can range widely, but also cows and calves, a sign that local breeding was taking place in Colorado before reintroduction.

These sightings recorded in diaries and newspapers don’t have to stand on their own. Moose appear in older placenames around the state, like the area once known as Moose Park along the road from Lyons to Estes Park. Written accounts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries among Ute, Shoshone and Arapaho peoples describe moose stories, hunts and songs. And though historical records don’t go too much further back than the mid-19th century in Colorado, archaeological records do.

Our survey of Colorado sites turned up ancient moose at Jurgens, near Greeley, dated to more than 9,000 years ago, and even moose bone tools among the ruins of Mesa Verde, only a few centuries ago.

Diaries, newspapers and photo records from the past two centuries show the presence of not only young bull moose, which at times can range widely, but also cows and calves, a sign that local breeding was taking place in Colorado before reintroduction.

This question of whether moose are native to the southern Rockies is not just a philosophical one – its answer will shape management decisions by the National Park Service and others.

Official narrative minimizes moose presence

The contemporary idea of moose as non-native animals reflects a different understanding than was common only a few decades ago. In the 1940s, some biologists described moose as a native species that had been “extirpated except for stragglers.” As recently as the early 1970s, Rocky Mountain National Park officials understood their moose work as a reintroduction of “wild animals once native to the park.” Our findings suggest that the valid knowledge of earlier scientists has since faded or been replaced, repositioning moose as ecological outsiders.

As moose-human conflicts and shifting wetland ecologies prompt hard conversations over how to manage moose, a range of options have been discussed in public discourse. These include courses of action such as the reintroduction of carnivores like wolves, or targeted hunting access for tribes or the public.

If moose are ‘invasive,’ they can be removed

For federal agencies, labels like “invasive” or “non-native” carry legal connotations and can be used to enable other measures, like eradication.

In Olympic National Park, where mountain goats were deemed invasive and ecologically impactful, biologists undertook an extermination campaign that involved shooting the animals from helicopters, despite warnings from archaeologists as long ago as the late 1990s that the data behind their argument was flawed.

As the animal and plant communities of our Rockies change rapidly in a warming world, this kind of policy would not only be unsupported by scientific evidence, but also likely to impede the ability of our animal communities to survive, adapt and thrive.

The historical evidence indicates that moose are not foreign intruders. Archival, archaeological and anthropological data shows that moose have been in the southern Rockies for centuries, if not millennia. Rather than treat moose as a threat, we urge Rocky Mountain National Park and other agencies to work in partnership with tribes, paleoecologists and the public to carefully develop historically grounded management plans for this Colorado native.

William Taylor is an assistant professor of anthropology at the ��. John Wendt is a postdoctoral fellow in natural resources ecology and management at Oklahoma State University. Joshua Miller is an associate professor of geosciences at the University of Cincinnati.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Moose have lived in Colorado for centuries—unpacking evidence from history, archaeology, oral traditions.

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Telling the stories of loss and healing

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 21:52:08 +0000

Telling the stories of loss and healing Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/13/2025 - 15:52

Kathryn E. Goldfarb and Lucas Rozell

Colorado’s Marshall Fire survivors find healing and meaning through oral history project

The Colorado Marshall Fire killed two people and destroyed over 1,000 structures on Dec. 30, 2021.

The news cycle has long since moved on, but people impacted by the fire are still recovering. Part of that process is through storytelling.

The Louisville Historical Museum, which is located 10 miles east of Boulder, later joined by collaborators from the �� Anthropology Department, initiated the Marshall Fire Story Project to preserve the stories of people affected.

CU Boulder researcher Kathryn Goldfarb is an associate professor of anthropology.

“This is the first time we’ve actually sat down and taken this long to talk about it,” said Lisa Clark, one contributor to the project. “’Cause we’re always like, ‘(people) have better things to do. You don’t wanna hear our pain. You don’t wanna hear our stories,’ you know. But yeah, it’s been nice to do it.”

All project contributors are quoted using their real names.

We are a cultural anthropologist and qualitative researcher who are collaborating with the Louisville Historical Museum on the Marshall Fire Story Project. Broadly, we are each involved with research that explores the importance of personal and community narratives for well-being.

However, the Marshall Fire Story Project is not a research project. We have no research questions. Contributors are simply invited to share what they would like about the fire.

While this project embraces the specificity of individual experiences, recent destructive fires in Maui, Hawaii, and Southern California show that the work we are doing is needed in many other locations.

Why oral history?

Recounting personal experiences is critical to the historical record.

Oral history has also become recognized as a powerful method for healing after trauma, both for individuals and larger community groups. Talking about traumatic events may be painful. However, narrative also facilitates meaning-making, strengthens ties within communities, and contributes to social justice efforts.

By telling their own stories in their own words, participants in the Marshall Fire Story Project shape what is remembered and how it is remembered.

Contributors to the project had diverse objectives in sharing their stories. Many welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the historical record, which Jessica Rossi-Katz described as “a record of experience.” Another contributor wanted to share their perspective as a lower-income person. Others mentioned the relevance of local stories as they apply to a global context of climate change.

As wildfires become ever more common, the themes that came up in the oral histories are increasingly relevant to community members, policymakers and scholars alike.

Stories of loss

Two people lost their lives in the fire, along with over 1,000 pets.

“I’d take losing my stuff over losing them,” said Anna Kramer, when describing the loss of her neighbor’s dogs. Kramer, an artist, did lose her stuff, including the majority of her artistic works.

Remediation workers clean the garage of Gigi Yang, a collaborator for the Marshall Fire Story Project. Due to concerns about toxins from smoke and ash residue in their homes, many residents opted for smoke remediation and deep cleaning of their homes. (Photo: Gigi Yang)

Abby McClelland’s family was away from their house when it burned.

“For a while I was really upset that we weren’t there and didn’t get a chance to take anything,” McClelland said. “And the more I think about what we would’ve taken, the more I’m like, that stuff is dumb.”

The family was able to replace their vital records and passports within weeks.

“But things like, you know, my grandmother’s rings or the Champagne cork from our wedding reception. Like things that I would’ve thought, oh, that’s so silly to evacuate that, those are the truly irreplaceable things.”

Mary Barry said the “fire was the ultimate downsizer.” She reflected on the objects she had lost – her daughter’s baby pictures, her sewing machines, a collection of books bound in blue and gold.

The fire also took Barry’s pet turtles, one of whom her husband had kept for over twenty years.

“Losing (a) house is like losing a person, where you mourn the loss of your comfort,” Barry said. This was particularly true in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, where people’s homes were their entire environment during quarantine.

Many of those whose homes did not burn suffered a different kind of ambiguous loss. Their homes were damaged by smoke, which carried with it heavy metals, hazardous chemicals and volatile organic compounds.

Shana Sutton’s family stayed in a hotel for six months while their home was being remediated. Like many others, much of the family’s belongings were deemed nonsalvageable.

“In my head,” Sutton recounted, “I was like, okay, I’m just going to pretend that they all burned.”

Concern with health impacts

As she watched the smoke from a distance, Brittany Petrelli told her brother on the phone, “I can smell how devastating this fire is.” Petrelli, a project contributor involved with the recovery effort, recounted that the fire smelled “like things that shouldn’t be burning. Rubber, plastic building materials.”

Residents with concerns about outdoor and indoor air quality as well as soil and water contamination contacted scientists at the ��, who, along with scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory, conducted air quality sampling. Ultimately, the publicized data for outdoor air quality showed little difference from other urban areas.

Residents whose homes survived but were affected by smoke continued to note symptoms such as sore throats, coughs and stinging eyes for six months and then one year after the fire.

Like others whose homes were damaged by smoke, Beth Eldridge had difficulty obtaining insurance coverage for mitigation. After she attempted to clean char and ash on her own, she experienced persistent health impacts.

After the Marshall Fire, area residents created notes of support for friends and neighbors at the Louisville Public Library; the notes were displayed in the library windows. (Photo: Louisville Historical Museum)

“Being part of an HOA (Home Owner’s Association) should give you two buckets of insurance,” Eldridge explained, “but in reality, everyone is divided and the system makes individuals fend for themselves. My insurance wouldn’t take any responsibility. The HOA insurance wouldn’t take any responsibility. … I was sick and I couldn’t get better and I needed help.”

Accounts from the project highlight uncertainty that remediated personal items were “really clean” – as Shana Sutton shared, it “makes you crazy.” Many people spoke of dissatisfaction with a lack of standards for remediation. Current standards, not specific to wildfires, do not engage the epidemiological and toxicological effects of fire byproducts, although experts in the field recognize these dangers.

Precarity and community solidarity

Being underinsured was a persistent theme in project stories, and some people recounted how negotiating with their insurance companies literally became a full-time job. After the fire, lower-income community members found themselves in an even more acute state of financial uncertainty.

A number of mutual aid groups sprung up in the aftermath of the fire, and several of those groups shared their stories with the project. Meryl Suissa started the Marshall Fire Community group on Facebook, which worked to help families replace items lost in the fire.

“I think what we’ve learned is like, yes, people are okay and they’re strong and they’re resilient and they’re gonna continue fighting,” Suissa said. “But we still have a long way to go to help them heal.”

Kate Coslett, who ran Operation Hotel Sanity, also highlighted how the community came together to contribute to organizations like hers, which delivered home-cooked meals to displaced residents.

“So many volunteers, hundreds of volunteers,” she said. “It’s September (2022), and there are still people making meals. It’s incredible … their empathy and their love, this community is just, I have goose bumps.”

Yet recovery means different things to different people. As Abby McClelland noted, there is a difference between “trauma on the individual level and trauma on the collective level.”

“I can rebuild the house,” McClelland said, “but I can’t rebuild all the houses in the neighborhood, and I can’t plant all the trees, and I can’t, you know, reopen all the businesses. I can’t reverse the trauma in the area. I can only control what’s inside my house. It’s hard to know what’s going to happen on that larger level, and how long that’s going to resonate.”

Like others who shared their accounts with the project, McClelland highlighted a necessity for policy change and governmental actions to prevent further climate-related disasters.

“Individuals can’t solve systemic problems,” she said.

Future of the project

For a community historical museum whose motto is “Be a part of the story,” first-person records constitute valuable resources for both the present and the future.

Our team is currently preparing written and oral project contributor submissions for archiving in a publicly accessible platform. In partnership with Marshall Together and the Community Foundation Boulder County, we are documenting recovery and rebuilding experiences as residents return to their homes.

The first storytellers in our project spoke of trauma and despair, but also gratitude for community. What will future stories tell us as neighbors continue to reunite and adjust to how the community has changed after the Marshall Fire?

This article was written in collaboration with Sophia Imperioli, museum associate – Public History & Oral History, and Gigi Yang, museum services supervisor of the Louisville Historical Museum.

Kathryn E. Goldfarb is an associate professor of anthropology at the ��. Lucas Rozell (MAnth'24) is a research assistant on the CU Anschutz Medical Campus.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Colorado’s Marshall Fire survivors find healing and meaning through oral history project.

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Top photo courtesy the Louisville Historical Museum

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