Welcome to The Holy Land of Hoops

First of a 7 part series reviewing the first year on air.

http://awfulannouncing.com/2014/fox-spo ... tions-game

very good article. Think that was/is part of fox's problem- they had put such expectations that they couldn't possibly meet.

It'll be interesting to see in football season how the year to year comparisons start coming up.

Fox has a legitimate chance of competing with ESPN if it gets a few key properties. And by competing, I mean comparable ratngs to ESPN2 or even ESPNU. It will be a very long time before anyone can challenge the main network.

It needs more than MMA, soccer, a golf major, etc. What it needs is the NBA, for as many games a week as possible. Yes, the Big East would have to.work around that. It needs to at least get part of the Big Ten's next deal in 2016. It can't let ESPN run away with that package, especially since no other major conference is up for bids until the mid-2020's. Furthermore, it needs to try to get more eastern college conferences' games sublicensed to them. The Big 12 and Pac-12 are only going to carry so much interest in the vastly populated eastern time zone states. Fox needs basketball and football games from the ACC, SEC, and other leagues if it wants to have a chance to get an eastern audience.

Get those properties and the studio show will take care of themselves. Without them, it is still pretty hard to distinguish FS1 from NBCSN.

As I predicted when it launched, my provider (Verizon FIOS) has recently moved FXX HD to a different spot in the lineup to presumably make room for FS2 HD. Currently FS1 is channel 83( SD) and 583 (HD), FS2 has moved to 84 (SD) and 584 is now vacant and presumably the location of FS2 HD when it's ready. These are in the heart of the ESPN and local and other sports networks for me. I live in MA.

I think the biggest challenge for the BE and FS is the size of our schools. The schools with the biggest ratings have 4 ingredients: winning basketball, tradition, star players/coaches, and alumni base. The latter is something we cannot control as our schools are much smaller than some of the huge state schools. However our schools do have elements of the first 3 ingredients so we can generate and maintain interest, I'm just not sure at the level FS would need to garner huge numbers. Hopefully with Big 10 challenges and marquee matchups against big name opponents from OOC as well as success in March we can overcome that last part.

dmac80 wrote:As I predicted when it launched, my provider (Verizon FIOS) has recently moved FXX HD to a different spot in the lineup to presumably make room for FS2 HD. Currently FS1 is channel 83( SD) and 583 (HD), FS2 has moved to 84 (SD) and 584 is now vacant and presumably the location of FS2 HD when it's ready. These are in the heart of the ESPN and local and other sports networks for me. I live in MA.

I think the biggest challenge for the BE and FS is the size of our schools. The schools with the biggest ratings have 4 ingredients: winning basketball, tradition, star players/coaches, and alumni base. The latter is something we cannot control as our schools are much smaller than some of the huge state schools. However our schools do have elements of the first 3 ingredients so we can generate and maintain interest, I'm just not sure at the level FS would need to garner huge numbers. Hopefully with Big 10 challenges and marquee matchups against big name opponents from OOC as well as success in March we can overcome that last part.

Agree with most of what you said. I think a good starting point is to try and have as many ranked teams as possible. Like it or not, but we are basically trying to steal away the ESPN audience. So if Xavier (or anyone) is ranked and the ticker shows us playing while ESPN is just sportscenter or some show, then someone might switch.

dmac80 wrote:As I predicted when it launched, my provider (Verizon FIOS) has recently moved FXX HD to a different spot in the lineup to presumably make room for FS2 HD. Currently FS1 is channel 83( SD) and 583 (HD), FS2 has moved to 84 (SD) and 584 is now vacant and presumably the location of FS2 HD when it's ready. These are in the heart of the ESPN and local and other sports networks for me. I live in MA.

I think the biggest challenge for the BE and FS is the size of our schools. The schools with the biggest ratings have 4 ingredients: winning basketball, tradition, star players/coaches, and alumni base. The latter is something we cannot control as our schools are much smaller than some of the huge state schools. However our schools do have elements of the first 3 ingredients so we can generate and maintain interest, I'm just not sure at the level FS would need to garner huge numbers. Hopefully with Big 10 challenges and marquee matchups against big name opponents from OOC as well as success in March we can overcome that last part.

The most important thing frankly is success in March. We have to show up then. Tournaments like last year- we just can't have. For one, it plays a factor in next years rankings, which as DudeAnon brought up- is huge in getting the ratings for FS1. Like 2 years ago, when Georgetown lost to Florida Gulf Coast- you just know the voters took that into account when they were doing their initial ratings last year.