championship series of the American Professional Slo-Pitch League. In 1980, the company was named in a Texas divorce filing. Groundbreaking for its headquarters took place one year earlier. Full-time broadcasting began in September 1980. Additional programming at the time included weekly boxing matches. NBC Sports President Chet Simmons was hired to help run the cable channel. Simmons and Rasmussen were at odds with Getty Oil executives siding with Simmons. At the end of 1980, Rasmussen was removed as company president by Getty Oil executive for ESPN, Stuart Evey, relegating him to a ceremonial role. Rasmussen left in 1981 and sold his remaining stock in 1984. Investing another $15 million into the company and no profits expected any time soon, Getty used management consultant McKinsey & Co. to assess ESPN's future. McKinsey's lead consultant was Roger Werner, who figured with another $120 million and five years ESPN would become a profit maker. Werner soon was hired by ESPN as vice-president of finance, administration, and planning and developed a new business plan. Werner developed a new revenue source beyond advertising by initiating revolutionary affiliate fees paid by the cable operators by number of subscribers starting at 6 cents. Between CBS Cable folding in October 1982 and the new CEO, Bill Grimes, they convinced most of the reluctant cable providers to pay. By 1985, the fee was 10 cents. ESPN was the largest cable channel by the end of 1983 with 28.5 million households. Also in 1983, the company began distributing programming outside the United States. Getty Oil, Anheuser-Busch and the NCAA all got involved with the new cable channel. In 1984, the U.S. ABC television network purchased a controlling stake in the company. ABC later merged with Capital Cities Communications, and the combined company was purchased by The Walt Disney Company in 1995. Multichannel ESPN started out expanding into other nations and additional channels. The ESPN International unit was formed in 1988 to start channels in other nations beginning with ESPN Latin America in 1989. In 1992, ESPN Asia was launched. ESPN partnered with TF1 and Canal+ for a made over Eurosport to enter Europe. RJR Nabisco sold its 20% stake in ESPN to the Hearst Corporation. Werner resigned as CEO and president in October 1990 for another sports CEO job. Steve Bornstein replaced him in the CEO post moving up from the second position of executive vice-president in charge of programming