Further to my thoughts on the FOX vs. ESPN war and the use of QSTI to set FOX a part, I found this article in a back issue of the New York Times. It should be noted that this year the Series is on FOX.:
Sports Networks Ready to Rumble
By MARK LANDLER
All politics is local, the late House Speaker Tip O'Neill used to say.
But what would that diehard Red Sox fan have said of sports?
Given the loyalty that sports fans in Boston and other cities have for their hometown teams, one might conclude that sports, too, is basically a local affair. But professional sports also creates genuinely national heroes like Tiger Woods. Even a perennially winning team, like the Chicago Bulls,can generate a national following.
Whether sports is a local or national phenomenon is more than grist for a slow night on WFAN talk radio. The issue is at the heart of an epic battle for supremacy in TV sports. The combatants are two vast media companies, Walt Disney and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., both of
which are known for creating entertainment icons like Mickey Mouse
and Bart Simpson that defy any sense of local identity.
Now those companies are fixing their sights on the flourishing sports
business. And they are pursuing markedly different strategies. Disney's main vehicle is ESPN, the cable network it picked up in 1995 through its acquisition of ABC. With more than 70 million subscribers, ESPN is the undisputed leader in sports television. It is also the epitome of a national sports channel, covering sports with a broad brush much as Sports Illustrated and the broadcast networks did in previous decades.
But ESPN's primacy is coming under attack by Murdoch. His Fox TV
network has been cobbling together regional sports networks around the
country to create a loose federation of channels called Fox Sports Net.The aim is to exploit a perceived weakness in ESPN's coverage by
offering home games to viewers in local markets.
Fox recently added New York's two regional sports networks, MSG
and Sportschannel, by investing $850 million in the parent company of
the networks, Rainbow Programming. MSG will soon begin to
intersperse its coverage of the Yankees with games from other cities and Fox's daily roundup program, "Fox Sports News."
"It is simple," said David Hill, the chief executive of Fox Sports and the architect of Murdoch's plan, "Sports are tribal. Fox Sports Net drives a fan's basic instincts of loyalty and ownership." Murdoch has launched a blitz in recent months to snap up the channels
and local sports franchises he needs to turn Fox Sports into a true rival of ESPN. In addition to Rainbow, Fox has a joint venture with cable giant Tele-Communications, which owns 10 regional sports networks through its programming arm, Liberty Media.
As if that's not enough, Murdoch this month agreed to pay $350 million
to acquire the Los Angeles Dodgers. He plans to use the team as the
linchpin for Fox Sports West, his regional network in that market. In Los Angeles alone, Murdoch has locked up TV rights to all six of the city's pro teams: the Dodgers and Angels for baseball, the Lakers and Clippers for basketball, and the Kings and Mighty Ducks for hockey.
All told, Fox Sports controls more than 20 regional sports networks
with almost 60 million cable subscribers. Hill said Fox planned to stamp these local channels with the same production style and edgy tone that characterizes the Fox network's coverage of football, baseball and hockey.
If Murdoch succeeds in his strategy of fashioning a national sports
empire on the appeal of local games, he will write a new chapter in the annals of sports on television. |
