The Sports Net That Fox Built

Cable World,  Oct 27, 2003  

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Because Nielsen Media Research only measures each FSN regional network on an individual market basis, FSN is never included in rankings of the most-watched national networks. This creates an ongoing frustration for executives at the network, whose local ratings for home-team games are routinely in the double-digits. On the programming front, clearing shows with the 20 local networks is always an issue, presenting a tricky puzzle for the folks who actually lay out the program grids for the networks and for the ad sales folks on the network side who may find themselves having to explain why Beyond the Glory didn't run in Seattle due to a Mariners doubleheader. When new programs are introduced they have to be cleared with each network individually. The 20 regionals range in size from the 2 million subscribers for Fox Sports Arizona to the 10.4 million subs for Fox Sports South.

FSN "is truly a broadcast model with a network of local affiliates as opposed to your typical cable network model which is single feed across the whole country," Thompson explains. "We sort of have the best of both worlds. Now that does create some problems for the national side of the business, which I think everyone at FSN initially found out. You think you can program a show that's going to go to 75 or 80 million homes and 40 million of them are off doing some local event."

The solution, he says, is to create shows that can fit in various time slots. As for scheduling national sporting events, FSN concentrates on high-quality sports such as PAC 10 and Big 12 football and ACC basketball.

"Sometimes conflicts are inevitable, and they are going to happen," Thompson says. "But we've done a pretty good job identifying certain times and days of the weeks when the regionals know that's probably going to be a network window."

Having access to content from 20 different networks - and the personalities and analysis from the various regions - can also be a huge boon. Greenberg is hoping to take material contributed by the various regional networks as fodder for a news show focusing on the hot issues of the day, possibly in the 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. slot. The show, tentatively called Airwaves, is being tested Friday afternoons on Best Damn Sports Show; Greenberg expects it to launch in mid-November.

"Usually we push stuff out to them," he says of the regionals. "Now they are going to be helping us, because there is an amazing amount of talent when you think of how many pro teams we have."

In the past, FSN's programming philosophy was "let's make a lot of it, let's make it cheaply and let's run it to death," says Greenberg, whose single-minded focus these days is to develop new shows for the network's 4 to 7 p.m. block and its Sunday night and 10:30 p.m. weeknight slots. Behind this was the realization that the networks' bread and butter was the games. He says he sees no reason why FSN shouldn't be able to launch a great program on the back of a regional news show that garnered a 2.4 rating following, for example, a St. Louis Cardinals game.