Author Topic: Report: Fox Launching National Sports Network to Challenge ESPN  (Read 1115 times)

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http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Sports/2013/03/04/Fox-Challenging-ESPN



 by Tony Lee 4 Mar 2013 18 post a comment
Fox will create an all-sports national cable television network--Fox Sports 1--in August to challenge ESPN.

According to the New York Times, Fox will make the announcement on Tuesday and will try to replicate on the sports side what Fox News has done in news to dominate its competition like CNN and MSNBC. Fox Sports 2 will be a "companion service," much like ESPN 2 is to ESPN.

Creating a sports network, the Times notes, has been Rupert Murdoch's "white whale" and has been "one of the few fields that his media empire has not conquered."

Fox Sports 1 "will carry NASCAR races, Major League Baseball games, college basketball and football, soccer and U.F.C. fights" and will also broadcast studio shows including one "that is to be hosted by Regis Philbin, a celebrated Notre Dame fan."

Fox believes "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."

Chase Carey, News Corporation’s president and COO, said in a world of fragmentation, "sports continues to be a more and more important and unique part of that overall landscape.”

The Times notes that when News Corporation splits into two publicly traded companies this summer, sports will be more valuable than ever, according to Fox executives, and they will make "live sports programming central to the Fox Group."

Murdoch has tried at least twice to start a national sports network. In 2004, Murdoch's efforts never got off the ground.

And, as the Times notes, in the late 1990s, "Fox tied a package of M.L.B. games and a news operation with Keith Olbermann as the star anchor on its regional sports channels. It failed."

But Fox may be better positioned this time around to succeed in its efforts.
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Offline Relic

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Re: Report: Fox Launching National Sports Network to Challenge ESPN
« Reply #1 on: March 05, 2013, 07:01:47 pm »
Great. So, we'll have the liberal ESPN, and the Jerry Springer-esque Fox. Fox programming will have banter in the booth that matches the level on ESPN's First Take?!

Bah.

Offline Rivergirl

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Re: Report: Fox Launching National Sports Network to Challenge ESPN
« Reply #2 on: March 05, 2013, 07:06:49 pm »
Heard this morning that Regis Philbin would be on the new sports show.

Offline Relic

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Re: Report: Fox Launching National Sports Network to Challenge ESPN
« Reply #3 on: March 05, 2013, 07:31:20 pm »
Heard this morning that Regis Philbin would be on the new sports show.

I am unimpressed by Fox. I quit watching Fox News, and I find some of Fox's network programming to be garbage.

Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: Report: Fox Launching National Sports Network to Challenge ESPN
« Reply #4 on: March 05, 2013, 10:37:40 pm »
The sports rights will be key. People watch sports channels for sports. Fox has baseball, soccer and NASCAR along with college football and hoops, so they should be in decent position compared to NBC (NHL, low end college) and CBS (nothing of value) Sports networks. Not quite the ESPN leviathan, but close.
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Offline truth_seeker

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Re: Report: Fox Launching National Sports Network to Challenge ESPN
« Reply #5 on: March 05, 2013, 11:23:10 pm »
In recent years Fox covered sporting events of interest to me. Everything in the world, in life, is NOT political.

Formula One, DTM (Deutsche Tourwagen Masters), American LeMans Series, 24 Hours of LeMans, Austrailian Super V8, etc. 

Only Speed TV and Fox carried these types of racing, no others.  I am bored in a few minutes, by NASCAR.
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