Starting Aug. 30, SportsCenter will air for 16 live hours each weekday — as ESPN gives the show seven more hours per weekday.

Hard to believe, but two years ago there were three live hours of SportsCenter each weekday. Then in mid-August 2008 — coinciding with the Beijing Olympics — ESPN added six more consecutive live hours starting at 9 a.m. ET.

Now, SportsCenter will keep going for three more consecutive hours at 3 p.m. — but on ESPNews, which has 73 million households compared with about 99 million for ESPN. Going to ESPNews also allows SportsCenter to go prime time: It will also air on that channel from 7 p.m. ET to 11 p.m. ET on weekdays.

Norby Williamson, ESPN executive vice president, figures the move is overdue. Before adding live morning hours in 2008, ESPN kept replaying its late-night show — and missed breaking stories it can now routinely cover. So, suggests Williamson, it's obvious that more hours should be added to what becomes an almost endless loop of live SportsCenter shows. "I look at it like we were late to the party. Where were we all those years? It's sort of comical we didn't do this earlier. It's crazy we weren't live during daytime five, eight years ago."

Well, ESPNews has been live, with programming that consisted of live coverage of events such as news conferences and half-hour news shows.

But in inheriting some SportsCenter hours — "It's the most popular brand we have besides 'ESPN,' " Williamson says — ESPNews gets more than da-da-da, da-da-da! In an average month, says Nielsen, one in three Americans watches at least one minute of SportsCenter.

Cindy Brunson and Robert Flores will usually co-host the three-hour SportsCenter on ESPNews that will begin at 3 p.m. ET, which will try to incorporate online elements — fan videos, interactive viewers, social media and ESPN.com's local sub-sites such as ESPNDallas.com — more than other SportsCenter shows.

Says Williamson, on integrating ESPN.com's local sites into those SportsCenter shows: "We might take five minutes and go to ESPN Dallas and tell you everything going on in Dallas."

The first hour of the new four-hour ESPNews SportsCenter starting at 7 p.m. ET will be hosted by whoever anchored ESPN's 6 p.m. ET SportsCenter. The last three hours of that new ESPNews SportsCenter will usually be hosted by Linda Cohn and Kevin Negandhi.

Eventually SportsCenter: The Movie might be a big-budget 3D Disney flick at your local IMAX.