Made-for-TV sports programming; sporting events that wouldn't exist were there not time slots to be filled. Arena Football, for instance, or "The World's Strongest Man"; aerobics and lumberjack championships; the X-Games. Invented long ago by ABC (see: Roone Arledge), it's now the mainstay of ESPN and its competitors; it's relatively cheap to produce (compared to extensive coverage of "real" sports) and therefore much-loved by execs.