Fox Sports 1 Update

[Jet915]

Today's game I'm sure got massive ratings even though it was on Fox. US team making the finals was obviously the best case scenario for Fox.

[robinreed]

A thread on the realignment board is discussing recent changes made or announced by Fox Sports.
Much of it is negative and I have often been negative about Fox Sports as opposed to ESPiN myself but not to the extent I see on this thread. However that may be because I only watch Basketball and Football on Fox Sports 1 and assiduously avoid Nascar, Soccer and the quasi sports such as freak boxing which Fox counts so much on. In any case there are several interesting comments on the board.

Most of the comments are I believe from Big East outsiders and apparently from football fans more than any other sport but as football is by far the most viewed sport in the USA that should not be surprising.
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Fox Sports1 is cutting back its TV news operations
Wow! I guess it hard trying to keep up with the world wide leader in sports. It sounds like Fox Sport 1 is going to follow the foot steps of Fox News

In the first link scroll down to #2 in The Noise Report.
http://www.si.com/more-sports/2015/06/29...bjectivity

http://awfulannouncing.com/2015/fox-spor...ation.html
RE: Fox Sports1 is cutting back its TV news operations
I still think Fox Sports-1 should make itself the G5 Network of record. Cover everything--just like now, but make a real effort to cover the G5 far more competently, fairly, completely, and respectfully than the other networks. Create a loyal niche and build from there. It's not that hard---you don't need 22 hours of Johnny Manziel to be successful covering the mainstream stuff. You can make an effort to competently cover the G5 without hurting your coverage of the mainstream sports stories.

The G5 fans are a significant college educated affluent audience that is not only igored, but largely made fun of and dismissed---just like the conservative news viewers prior to the emergence of Fox News. No reason a similar formula wouldn't work for Fox Sports-1. Grab the CUSA rights---pick up some excess AAC, MW, MAC, and SB games and get rolling. Build around your Pac12/Big12 content. Once the rep is built, you can shift some content over to FS-2 and make that a viable network when bigger properties are acquired.
RE: Fox Sports1 is cutting back its TV news operations
Fox has no coherent vision for FS1/FS2, no effective plan for drawing viewers in to watch the channels regularly, and now we see that they give up easily and don't have the persistence to keep investing the money needed to build the channels as a viable alternative to any ESPN channels.

The next question is, how long will it be until Fox throws in the towel and sells FS1 and FS2? Another year? Two years, max?
It seems FS1 had more viewers when it was known as Speed. NASCAR viewership went down on the Fox channels, but higher on ESPN.
RE: Fox Sports1 is cutting back its TV news operations
I actually disagree. The news updates- I've never looked at those as being all that important. I think they were thinking it would set them apart from ESPN- but it never really took- like a lot of things at FS1..

As far as the live reporting for events they don't have the rights to- Outside of maybe a few interviews, I don't think it matters if the talking heads are talking in Cleveland or in Los Angeles(to just use the NBA finals as an example). And they can do the interviews via satellite.
RE: Fox Sports1 is cutting back its TV news operations
I actually disagree. The news updates- I've never looked at those as being all that important. I think they were thinking it would set them apart from ESPN- but it never really took- like a lot of things at FS1..

As far as the live reporting for events they don't have the rights to- Outside of maybe a few interviews, I don't think it matters if the talking heads are talking in Cleveland or in Los Angeles(to just use the NBA finals as an example). And they can do the interviews via satellite.

I think this is one thing where it really looks a lot worse than it really is. I don't think the casual fan will notice much of a difference quite frankly. I've been down on FS1 for a lot- but this isn't one of those things.
RE: Fox Sports1 is cutting back its TV news operations
Outside of watching the Ufc, I don't watch fs1 at all but Wedge is right. It's like they have no vision for it at all.

Total agreement.

I mainly have been keeping an eye on the Fox effort because they could be a big boost to the G5 down the road.

They seem to have no idea at all of what they want to do with FS2 other than take up space on the channel guide at least NBC's vision for Universal Sports is understandable even if I don't like it.

Before the last round of bowl talks they publicly said they wanted to work with anyone looking to start a bowl and to try to get existing bowls. Meetings come and go and they sign zero existing bowls and zero new bowls. CBS Sports was the only one to take a new a game.

Little Rock and Austin from what I've heard couldn't get anyone at Fox to talk to them. A few games that had hoped to move to better dates with Fox couldn't get anything firm from them.

It's like they picked a strategy for bowls and within two weeks ditched it.

If they don't get a decent piece of the Big 10, they will have one notable property east of Ames, IA, the WVU Mountaineers. No NFL, no NBA, no NHL. They will have a piece of MLB but regular season games tend to not be a significant draw.

They've locked in 7 CUSA games for FS1 (more can be added, they have an 8th but it is under the Big XII contract) but there is no obvious strategy. One Sunday game, one Thursday game, three Friday games in two different time slots, two Saturday games under the contract in different time slots.
RE: Fox Sports1 is cutting back its TV news operations
FOX still owns the rights for Big East basketball. It's not an elite property, but to dismiss it as "not relevant" would be a little misleading.
RE: Fox Sports1 is cutting back its TV news operations

The problem is college basketball regular season isn't all that meaningful. In the scope of TV sports, it's really not relevant at all.

Even with the scope of what fox has right now- I'd put NASCAR, UFC, Big 12 fb, Pac 12 fb, MLB, World Cup, US Open, and even MLS ahead of Big East basketball.
RE: Fox Sports1 is cutting back its TV news operations

When the New Mexico Bowl with Arizona and Nevada draws a larger TV audience on ESPN vs a head-to-head match-up of the #1 college basketball team being upset on CBS (Indiana-Butler) and Utah State vs. Toledo Tater Bowl also draws a larger audience that day, it is hard to say regular season college hoops is terribly relevant.
RE: Fox Sports1 is cutting back its TV news operations

I thought FS1/FS2 college football content and quality was good, but I really struggle to understand how a major broadcast network failed to understand its target demographic as badly as Fox did with FS1/FS2. Doesn't every network try to maximize carryover viewership by clustering like programming, probably best exemplified by NBC's "Must See TV" Thursday night lineup? Did Fox actually buy PAC12 content because they thought that the typical Stanford fan would stick around after the game to watch Nascar and UFC? Nothing like a four hour Nascar lead in to your 10 PM PAC game seeing as how widely popular Nascar is in among college educated left coasters. It is simply mysterious to me what collection of assumptions they were operating under which made this seem like a good programming arrangement.

[Vill]

Um ok. Those links don't work by the way.

[stever20]

just saw the SF got a 6.1 on Fox. Will be interesting to see what the ratings are tonight on FS1 of the other SF.

[billyjack]

Is there any way to get FS1 ratings for each region of the country? Or specific cities?

Our home cities and states are the most important areas, so hopefully ratings are decent there.

On the other hand, i think that there is a region of the country (ok, the South) that will just specifically resist watching Big East games, and the ratings will be poor there. And there's really nothing that we can reasonably do to capture an audience there. But at the same time, that region is probably skewing our numbers quite a bit.

So, again, does anyone have ratings for specific regions of the country? And does anyone have a ratings comparison for 2014 vs 2015 for various regions?

[stever20]

Is there any way to get FS1 ratings for each region of the country? Or specific cities?

Our home cities and states are the most important areas, so hopefully ratings are decent there.

On the other hand, i think that there is a region of the country (ok, the South) that will just specifically resist watching Big East games, and the ratings will be poor there. And there's really nothing that we can reasonably do to capture an audience there. But at the same time, that region is probably skewing our numbers quite a bit.

So, again, does anyone have ratings for specific regions of the country? And does anyone have a ratings comparison for 2014 vs 2015 for various regions?

conceptually what you say makes sense. But when you have a game like Xavier/Cincy drawing double what Big East games draw(at least double even)- Cincy isn't that big of a draw.

Also when you have Big East games on FS1 averaging like 120-130k viewers- you take just the DC/Philly/NYC markets- you have 12.8 million homes just between those 3 markets. Other markets are about 4 million homes- and then you have Chicago with 3.5 million homes. So you have over 20 million homes in big east cities. Even if half of them don't have cable(a stretch)- that's 10 million homes.

[MUPanther]

Japan-England on Fox Sports 1: 2.333 million viewers




http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/884476.html

fox has added 10 nwsl games on to the networks schedule. july 22, 29, & aug 5th games will be on fox sports go the rest on fs1.
2015 NWSL National Television Schedule:

Date Home Team Away Team Time (ET) TV
Wednesday, July 22, 2015 Portland Thorns FC Seattle Reign FC 10:00 PM FSGO
Wednesday, July 29, 2015 Houston Dash FC Kansas City 8:30 PM FSGO
Wednesday, August 5, 2015 Portland Thorns FC Boston Breakers 10:00 PM FSGO
Friday, August 7, 2015 Houston Dash Sky Blue FC 8:30 PM FSGO
Sunday, August 9, 2015 Portland Thorns FC Chicago Red Stars 9:30 PM FS1
Friday, August 21, 2015 Houston Dash Seattle Reign FC 8:00 PM FS1
Sunday, August 30, 2015 Portland Thorns FC Washington Spirit 9:30 PM FS1
Sunday, September 13, 2015 Semifinal 1 TBD FS1
Sunday, September 13, 2015 Semifinal 2 TBD FS1
Thursday, October 1, 2015 Final TBD FS1

[Jet915]

If anyone is curious why Portland is televised alot, it's because Alex Morgan plays for them.

[stever20]

A bit surprised the first 2 Houston games back after the WC aren't on TV-
they have Carli Lloyd, Meghan Klingenberg, and Morgan Brian(the last 2 actually are staying at the house of Jeff Van Gundy).

really surprised as well that the Portland/Seattle game isn't on first game back. Doesn't Seattle have Hope Solo?

[marquette]

I wonder what they are paying for the rights to those women's soccer games. My curiosity is based on the fact that professional women's soccer players generally make less than $20,000/year (and I'm being generous, range is $6,000-30,000). If Fox was paying even a nominal $50,000/game it could really make a difference for some of the players. There are only 9 teams in the league, so a total of $500,000 for all ten games would equate to about $2,600/player. It doesn't seem like much, but for some of the newer players that could be a nearly 50% raise. Then again, MLS paid for ESPN to televise their games in the beginning.