Steve Bornstein

Steve Bornstein (born April 20, 1952) is the chairman of the Media Networks division of the gaming company Activision Blizzard.

He previously held high-ranking roles at NFL Network, ESPN, and ABC.

While at ESPN, he organized showing SportsCenter reruns during the morning hours.

Bornstein was born and raised in a Jewish family in Fair Lawn, New Jersey to Julian Leon and Marge Frankel Bornstein.

Bornstein is the youngest of four siblings, the others being Fred, Andy, and Faye.

He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison and graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor of Science in communications.

Bornstein began his career as a producer, and later executive producer, at WOSU-TV in Columbus, Ohio.

He also worked with Warner-Amex Cable, producing Ohio State Buckeyes football programming for the company's interactive QUBE system.

In January 1980, he joined ESPN as the manager of program coordination when the cable sports network was a four-month-old start-up.

During his time as manager of programming coordination, he developed and implemented ESPN's successful programming philosophy of presenting a mix of events, sports news and special interest programming.

In 1988, Bornstein was promoted to Executive Vice President of Programming and Production.

He advanced through the network's programming and production ranks, becoming ESPN's youngest president and CEO in 1990 at age 38.

In January 1992, ESPN Radio was launched and began a rollout of 24-hour programming in October 1998.

Also in 1992, Bornstein established the subsidiary ESPN Enterprises to develop new businesses like ESPN.com, which has grown to become the leading sports news and information site on the internet.

Bornstein helped to oversee the debut of ESPN2 in October 1993 and ESPNews in November 1996.

First awarded in 1993.

During his tenure at ESPN, Bornstein's team won 59 Emmys and 57 Cable Ace Awards.

In April 1996, Bornstein was named President of ABC Sports.

In a short time, Bornstein established ABC Sports as the preeminent network of college football, creating the College Football Championship Series, and extending contracts with all major CFB conferences.

In October 1997, Bornstein directed the acquisition of Classic Sports Network and rebranded the channel as ESPN Classic, adding yet another network to the ESPN family.

Additionally, Bornstein oversaw the development of ESPN International, which has grown to include ownership - in whole or in part - of 24 television networks internationally, as well as a variety of additional businesses that allow ESPN to reach sports fans in over 61 countries and territories across all seven continents.

In March 1998, ESPN the Magazine was launched as a joint venture of Disney Publishing and ESPN with distribution being handled by Hearst Magazines.

Throughout his time at ESPN, the network created the SportsCenter franchise, NFL Countdown, NFL PrimeTime, Baseball Tonight and the Outside the Lines series.

In addition to his contributions to ESPN programming, Bornstein developed the X Games and Winter X Games, week-long extreme sports competitions.

Bornstein is also credited with the creation of the ESPYs Awards, short for Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Award.

In 1999, Bornstein was named President of ABC, where he was responsible for all the media network and cable assets at ABC/Disney.

In January 2003, Bornstein was appointed president and CEO of NFL Network and Executive Vice President of Media by then NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

While at the NFL, Bornstein oversaw the league's media division, which included the relationships with national broadcast and sponsorship partners as well as NFL-owned media assets and revenue.

In November 2003, Bornstein launched NFL Network, which was the most widely distributed sports network in the history of the industry when it launched and became the youngest network ever to win a Sports Emmy after just 58 days on the air.

On April 14, 2004, Bornstein was integral in creating the first NFL schedule release special.

The two-hour segment was the first of its kind to announce the schedule for the upcoming NFL season.

Since then, similar segments have aired each year across various competing networks in prime time.

It was also Bornstein's suggestion to move the start of each NFL Draft from Saturday afternoon to Thursday evenings in prime time.

The yearly draft has since become a staple on the NFL calendar with millions of people tuning in every year.

In 2009, Bornstein spearheaded the creation of NFL RedZone, the widely acclaimed channel produced by NFL Network that whips around live to every NFL game on Sunday afternoons delivering the touchdowns and most exciting moments to viewers.

Under Bornstein's leadership, NFL Network and NFL RedZone completed distribution deals with Cablevision and Time Warner Cable in 2012.

Currently in more than 72 million homes, NFL Network now has carriage agreements with each of the country's largest television providers including Comcast, DirecTV, DISH Network, Cablevision, Cox, Charter, Time Warner Cable, Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-Verse.

Ultimately, Bornstein would bring the league's internet and mobile assets in-house and help build NFL Media into a collection of league-owned media assets including NFL Network, NFL.com, NFL Mobile, NFL RedZone, NFL Now, and NFL Films along with the NFL's social media platforms.

While building out and growing the NFL's own media assets, Bornstein reconfigured and repackaged the NFL's television assets and helped the league bring NBC back into the fold, move Monday Night Football to ESPN, introduced flexible scheduling, and created a new package of Thursday primetime games for NFL Network which introduced the modernized version of Thursday Night Football.

What started as an eight-game, cable-only schedule, Thursday Night Football has expanded to a staple in the NFL calendar, with Amazon Prime taking over the primetime package in 2021.