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OT: News Corp. to Create Sports Channel to Rival ESPN
I believe the Canadian analogue to Fox Soccer was just wound up. I wonder if that might be what happens here... transferring most of it's content to the new network to fill gaps. FS+ could be kept for overflow, since they do own the rights to a lot of things.
They wouldn't have any reason to close up shop on Fox Soccer. It's just an extra fee than can charge the providers. That'd be like ESPN shutting down ESPN Classic. There is virtually nothing on it, but they continue to package it with ESPN and charging for it. If anything, Fox will package Fox Soccer with the new channel. So if the new channel can get say a big MLB package that providers won't be able to turn them down for, they can force them to take FS with it and remove it from the Sports Packages.
I guess I was thinking more along the lines of a simple rebrand and transferring properties in... Fox Soccer is already out there in something like 56 million households, so it eliminates the startup costs of a totally new network. Then they can shift all the properties they're not using to FS Plus, which would occupy the ESPN Classic-y role.
Something else to remember: Fox exercised a clause last summer that gave them majority control of the Big Ten Network. I imagine that means more college sports content could be made available, particularly basketball games.
I guess I was thinking more along the lines of a simple rebrand and transferring properties in... Fox Soccer is already out there in something like 56 million households, so it eliminates the startup costs of a totally new network. Then they can shift all the properties they're not using to FS Plus, which would occupy the ESPN Classic-y role.
Something else to remember: Fox exercised a clause last summer that gave them majority control of the Big Ten Network. I imagine that means more college sports content could be made available, particularly basketball games.
I don't believe that's possible. ESPN has exclusive cable rights outside of BTN. If you're correct, they could put games on FX right now or CBS could move some basketball games to CBS Sports Net.
I'm a skeptic that this new network will come to fruition. News Corp. already tried this with Fox Sports Net and it bombed. Many of the same properties that News Corp. had then is what they have now. FSN had a national MLB game on Thursday nights. They had rights to Pac-12 and Big 12 sports. They had ACC basketball on Sunday nights. They had Formula One and Indy Car racing. They aired NASCAR qualifying and practices. They aired NFL specialty programming. They aired soccer. And what became of it? Nothing - they went back to focusing on regional sports after losing a boatload of cash.
I don't see what's different today except that there's even more competition. The only way they could ever make it work is to perhaps get all the MLB rights. But even that isn't very impressive as national MLB ratings are falling fast. Virtually all their college rights are shared with other networks and according to the contracts, Fox always gets the lesser games. ESPN gets the priority and chooses games first except for Conference USA. I just don't see a market for it. Fox would be better off utilizing FX for more sports like Turner does with TNT and TBS.
FSN would have worked if it hadn't been for been for the local sports, though. You can't schedule for a national network when each of your affiliates is airing something different every night of the week and there are no guaranteed beginning and end times. Pirates playing on Thursday night? Welp, there goes that national game on Thursday in western Pennsylvania. Lakers go into double OT? California won't be watching that Keith Olbermann highlight show. I think a lot has changed for the better. Soccer and racing have become actual bankable sports instead of cheap filler. And college sports ratings have actually grown. As a national network as opposed to a collection of regional affiliates it could work.
I'll admit to ignorance on what the deal is exactly with the Big Ten's cable rights.
But doesn't the same thing happen on NBCSN with CSN?
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there is no affiliation between NBCSN and the CSNs
Both are owned by Comcast - and Versus (now NBCSN) did pick up some CSN games as bonus games for national coverage - but it is completely unlike the situation with the FSN, where Fox tried to use the FSNs (with their conflicting mish mash of local coverage) as a vehicle for national coverage.
FSN would have worked if it hadn't been for been for the local sports, though. You can't schedule for a national network when each of your affiliates is airing something different every night of the week and there are no guaranteed beginning and end times. Pirates playing on Thursday night? Welp, there goes that national game on Thursday in western Pennsylvania. Lakers go into double OT? California won't be watching that Keith Olbermann highlight show. I think a lot has changed for the better. Soccer and racing have become actual bankable sports instead of cheap filler. And college sports ratings have actually grown. As a national network as opposed to a collection of regional affiliates it could work.
I'll admit to ignorance on what the deal is exactly with the Big Ten's cable rights.
I agree with that somewhat. They tried to get around the regional issue with MLB by having two different games. One at 7, one at 10. If your local team aired at 7, you saw the 10 game. Obviously that caused problems in the central and mountain time zones. I don't think that would be as much as an issue today, just because every FSN has an alternate feed. That wasn't the case in 1996.
On paper, FSN should've worked. Local teams will always draw better regionally than a national game airing at the same time. That KC/CLE game might be awful nationally but it would draw four times what a NY/BOS game would draw in the KC/CLE markets. I still remember when Dolan, Murdoch and Hill hit a button in Times Square to signify the new FSN and its big national launch.
Those local games brought in huge numbers and were great lead ins for Fox Sports News, Jim Rome, etc. The problem was cost, not necessarily ratings. In many markets, Fox Sports News tied or was right with SportsCenter. The problem was that production costs were through the roof and the ad revenue was soft. At the same time, rights fees skyrocketed and Fox couldn't afford the national production costs if they wanted to keep the regional rights. Something had to give so they jettisoned most of the national stuff so they could keep the higher rated local stuff since that's what brought in the most dollars and eyeballs.
I guess I don't see what a new Fox Sports network would have that would draw a significant amount of viewers in. You take stuff off of Speed, FSN, FX, Fox Soccer and Fuel and you dilute those networks. Their worth goes down unless you kill them or find better programming. I think you'd end up with another NBC Sports Network. Some decent anchor programming but just fillers the rest of the time that struggle to get any ratings.
At Multichannel News, Mike Reynolds says Fox Sports is eying several sports properties which are coming up for grabs as potential programming for a cable channel which would challenge ESPN.
To Forbes where Trefis Team analyzes what a Fox Sports cable network would mean for parent company News Corp’s stock price.
I would really like someone to get in the mix and be a good contender with ESPN. I miss the old days of actually seeing highlights of all the games that were being played. Now, half the time is devoted to NFL Mock Drafts, or other things during Sportscenter. It's only the big name teams that get a devoted highlight set, and then the rest of the show, it's "team a beat team b" - etc.
They can get away with it because people are still going to watch that crap.
An AV Club article on Cops being scaled back mentions that Fox is loading up on rights in anticipation of launching a network and then dumping them all on Saturdays.
An AV Club article on Cops being scaled back mentions that Fox is loading up on rights in anticipation of launching a network and then dumping them all on Saturdays.
