Media

Sports Illustrated:
The Beginning

Sports Illustrated is a weekly sports magazine that has over 3 million subscribers and more than 20 million adult readers each week. This is including about nineteen percent of the male population in the country. The very first issue was launched on August 16, 1954. Unfortunately, it was not particularly well run in the beginning, nor did it receive any sort of profit, however sports were about to explode. Sports Illustrated proved that third time is a charm. Both in the 1930s and the 1940 two different magazines named Sports Illustrated were published, however as fast as they were launched, they failed. This was because at this time journalists believed that sports were below the attention of the serious journalist. Finally after trying to buy the name Sport for the magazine, they were given the title Sports Illustrated for a fraction of the cost. It was to be THE sports magazine, not just a sports magazine.

In 1989, the magazine published its first spin off, Sports Illustrated for Kids. It is targeted to kids, preteens, and teens up to the age of fifteen. About ten years later the magazine tried to do it again with the magazine Sports Illustrated for Women, a sports magazine about and for all women athletes. It began in March 2000 and ended in 2002 because of its weak advertising climate. However, today the original Sports Illustrated is still the most popular.