FlipBoardBy now it’s no secret that ESPN is pretty much the vortex of suck. Hell, Deadspin was virtually built on lampooning the “worldwide leader in sports” and dutifully chronicling its demise, in addition to posting pics of athlete dong, of course. Because of this, industry observers have for some time speculated over when a serious challenge to the increasingly terrible Disney-owned network would arise, but to date it has gone unchallenged (sorry, NBC Sports Network, you just haven’t cut it). Well, those days will soon be over.
Reports the New York Times:
On Tuesday, Fox will announce its intention to start Fox Sports 1, an all-sports network, in August.
The channel will carry Nascar races, Major League Baseball games, college basketball and football, soccer and U.F.C. fights. It will also broadcast studio shows, including one that is to be hosted by Regis Philbin, a celebrated Notre Dame fan.
…
Still, Fox and its parent, News Corporation, have a companywide faith in sports as a DVR-proof way to attract viewers — especially young men — and a belief that their new sports channel will differentiate itself from the competition, as the Fox News channel has demonstrated in its successful challenge to CNN and then MSNBC. To ensure that Fox Sports 1 has some of the style and attitude that Fox Sports has had since it began in the mid-1990s, (Rupert) Murdoch and Chase Carey, News Corporation’s president and chief operating officer, brought back one of their favorite executives, David Hill, for its creation and launch. Hill, the former head of the Fox Sports Media Group, left the division last year for another job within News Corporation.
“We think sports is a huge arena that has room in it to build a really attractive businesses,” Carey told analysts on an earnings call last month. He said that the company recognizes the escalating costs of sports rights but “in a world of increasing fragmentation, we think sports continues to be a more and more important and unique part of that overall landscape.”
While I’m personally less than thrilled that Rupert Murdoch is the wizard behind the curtain on this, I’m overjoyed that a very real challenge is being mounted, as ESPN has become virtually unwatchable for me and most of the people I associate with outside of live sporting events. The Fox braintrust seems to recognize that “it’s especially important for Fox Sports to create compelling shows around the games,” and I’ll gladly welcome any alternative that doesn’t involve Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith shouting at each other and/or all day on-air birthday parties for Tim Tebow.
Never forget.
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Much like The Monday Night Wars, yes competition is better, but I’m sad that it’s run by awful people.
wasn’t there a fox sports channel some years back?? I seem to remember best damn sports show and jim rome on the channel. That said, skip bayless totally looks like serial killer ted bundy.
They have regional FOX Sports Channels
A meteor. The correct answer is a meteor into both network headquarters.
“Protect the Simmons!”
I don’t get the channel, but I’ve actually heard NBC Sports is a pretty decent channel now. It’s still a little bit niche, as the only live events they carry are soccer and hockey I believe, but they seem to have grown quite a bit in the past year. If they could survive the hockey lockout, they should be able to remain afloat and compete as well.
I’ve been pulling for them for some time, and their hockey and soccer coverage has been good, but I’m skeptical the Peacock is willing to go all in to mount a serious challenge to ESPN. They seem content to remain a bit of a niche.
yeah, and why do you believe that Fox as a newcomer will be competing with ESPN more directly than NBCSN, which has established a stronghold, and is continuing to try to build? I just don’t see a leapfrog happening, considering the NBCSN actually has exclusive commodities (NHL and MLS, and Olympics every 2 years), while Fox has what exactly?
@AB – Fox has money and ratings. Those tend to go far in the broadcast game. Fox also is part owner of the Big Ten Network, which it may be able to leverage for content. And its parent has ton of experience overseas with developing sports channels.
NBCSN also has some west coast basketball and football lately, which is nice. Also, don’t forget that NBCSN and the whole NBC Universal group (including USA and some others I don’t feel like looking up) is owned by the evil Comcast, which guarantees 20 million homes any time they want.
Fox SN’s biggest challenge is going to be getting carriage on cable systems, so unless they convert FX to Fox Sports (cue the WG howling), they won’t be able to launch (more of less) universally without spreading around a lot of cash-for-position. When I worked in Cable, we called it Launch Support, and it was in the tens of millions for some of the network groups.
NBCsports is going all out. They outbid FOX for the rights to air F1 in the states and they basically took the SPEED’s entire announce team with them.
What are they going to do differently? Jason Whitlock and Bill Reiter are going to scream at each other instead?
Still, Fox and its parent, News Corporation, have a companywide faith in sports as a DVR-proof way to attract viewers — especially young men
Wrong wrong wrong…. at least if they’re talking about the UFC. I’m a faithful fan and I never watch the FOX / FX shows live. There is so much filler and fluff in those broadcasts, I’ll DVR it and wait to start watching until near the end of the broadcast. Typically I’ll catch all of the action in a three-hour broadcast in about an hour.
It’s funny how that’s true – I’d sooner let my neighbor’s house burn down than DVR a live sporting event like football or basketball, but I have absolutely no problem watching a tape of a MMA fight. Maybe because each fight is short enough that every part of it is interesting to watch and I’m not distracted by thinking I can skip ahead of the dull parts.
@Zack: Seriously, try a basketball game on the DVR. You can start a 7:00 game about 8:15, and by the time you skip all the endless commercials, timeouts, entire teams low-fiving after missed free throws (by the way, when did that start, and why?), and you still get to see the whole game and you’re out by 9:15. It’s even more dramatic with football, as you can imagine.
Skip Bayless is more than just a Romulan extra from Star Trek 5, he’s also a pompous ass and I have no idea why anyone thinks he knows what he’s talking about.
Fox Sports: You can’t spin scores. The winners are clear.
Ball don’t lie.
As long as no Tebow (unless he does something of note), then I’m in. And think of the hot sports anchor ladies!!!
Love ’em or hate ’em, ESPN is not only the most valuable sports brand in the world, but it is by far the most valuable media brand in the world as well. It generates nearly half of Disney’s gross revenues ($40B vs $84B). To put things in perspective, News Corp. is worth $58B in its entirety. ESPN is to sports media what Standard Oil was at one time to the energy market. Competition is great, but I think you’d have a better chance raising Teddy Roosevelt from the dead and have him fire up some old school anti-trust rhetoric than penetrating ESPN’s current market stranglehold.
Here’s the thing, though, Standard Oil never had to competitively bid for the right to service their biggest customers every few years. People didn’t give ESPN a chance in hell against the Big Three until they started buying the rights to broadcast college and professional sports. If this new network can steal MLB or Monday Night Football, viewers will start to migrate over. Add to that a viable alternative to SportsCenter (and convince Zuffa not to feed ESPN highlights from UFC fights) and they’ll get even more. It won’t happen overnight but I can definitely see this as a real threat.
Fair point. Still, I’ll have to see it to believe it. It’s been how many years since they’ve seen a serious competitor? I have to imagine their experience, goodwill and various means of leverage are going to make any type of new entry competition extremely difficult.
I would also like to point out that market penetration is, at least at this point, still more possible than re-animating a dead person.
ESPN is vulnerable now because it’s mostly filler – they get 1 NFL game per week. A lot of basketball, but so do many others, and a lot of baseball – but mostly, they show talking heads. Their only real advantage is college football, but I think as the conference tango continues – there will be deals to be made. All you need then is a flagship highlight program to compete with sportscenter.
@AB
ESPN has 35 years of experience running a 24 hour a day sports network, and you’re right, most of it is filler.
What the hell are Fox, CBS, and NBC going to show? When was the last time you watched a replayed game on NFL Network?
I wonder if they will have subliminal messages during a live broadcast of college football that promotes the GOP. If so, is a Sarah Palin nip slip too much to ask for?
They’re usually pretty good at separating their political agenda from every non-news related product they put out.
As for Palin, Julianne Moore played her in an HBO movie and she shows her boobs every movie. So…close enough?
“ESPN has become virtually unwatchable for me and most of the people I associate with outside of live sporting events.”
I’ve spent years coming to the realization. I don’t know when or how I figured it out, but I just went “I can’t handle this boring crap anymore”.
As long as they show all the games of the new Big East conference, I’m OK with them showing executions live from Saudi Arabia the other 20 hours a day.
So, they’re not going to give a shit about hockey either?
NBC has an exclusive US rights deal for, I believe another 5+ years.
So Rush Limbaugh will have a job again as an NFL analyst?
If Rush is in. I’m in. Dude is completely deaf. I would love to see him try to find the right camera and hit time marks.
A station backed by Rupert Murdoch and people think that it WONT be full of Tim Tebow? Hell, the logo will probably be Tebow in silhouette.
I hope they rehire Glenn Beck to break down plays with his chalkboard.
Good, ESPN is bias and untrustworthy. Buy our product!