Fox Sports launches direct challenge to ESPN dominance

NEW YORK -- Fox, in announcing Tuesday that it will launch the 24-hour Fox Sports 1 network on Aug. 17, is mounting what executives say will be a direct challenge to ESPN.

"Our hope is that we can be equally professional" with ESPN, says David Hill, who led Fox Sports when it launched 20 years ago and is overseeing the new channel. "It's going to take us a while. We're not expecting to knock ESPN off in the first week or two. It's going to take two to three years. It will be a slog."

FS1 will debut in about 90 million TV households compared to about 99 million on ESPN and ESPN2. It will have a daily 11 p.m. ET Fox Sports Live show meant to directly challenge ESPN's SportsCenter. Hill, noting that head-to-head competition said, "The quality of sports journalism on ESPN is world-class. It's not going to be easy. But we'll give it a shot."

In a news briefing, as well as a glitzy show for advertisers, Fox repeatedly stressed it had successfully launched a broadcast network in the 1980s and a cable news channel in the 1990s when conventional wisdom supposedly said there wasn't room for newcomers.

But Fox execs conveniently left out its failed attempt in the 1990s to create ational TV sports programming, led on-air by then-ESPN refugee Keith Olbermann. And the analogy to the news channel isn't necessarily relevant. Unlike sports, where locking up TV rights to big events is the norm, everything in news is up for grabs. Fox News didn't have to, say, worry about long-term TV rights to the White House being already locked-up.

By contrast, ESPN has locked up plenty of big-time TV rights, including Monday Night Football and college football's championship game.

But ESPN vs. FS1 won't exactly be David vs. Goliath. Fox, through new or renewed deals for MLB, NASCAR, college football and basketball, UFC and other sports, says 55% of FS1's programming, including studio shows, will be live – compared to 73% on ESPN.

There was some muted cockiness in the air at the announcement.

"ESPN, quite frankly, is a machine," says Fox Sports programmer Billy Wanger. "We're trying to take on the establishment, no different than what Fox broadcast did in launching in the 1980s and Fox News did in the 1990s. We're going to have to scratch and claw (against ESPN). But we have no illusions."

In response to Fox's announcement, ESPN spokesman Mike Soltys says, "We like our position. We've always had vigorous competition so there is really nothing substantially new here. Others are beginning to recognize what we've long known – the power of live sports."

FS1 will represent the latest in the long migration of marquee sports from broadcast TV to cable/satellite.

Starting in 2014, FS1 will carry regular-season MLB games for 26 weeks – but the Fox broadcast network will go from its 26-week schedule to just 12 regular-season game broadcast windows. Fox also says an unspecified number of its MLB postseason games, in divisional and LCS play, will migrate from Fox to FS1, as will an unspecified number of NASCAR Sprint Cup races and UFC mixed-martial arts events.

Fox is closing in on a deal for the TV basketball rights for the Catholic colleges, including Georgetown and Marquette, that are leaving the Big East but likely will keep the conference name. But the deal wasn't announced Tuesday.

"We applaud the schools for taking hold of their own destiny," says Fox Sports co-president Randy Freer. "Those are iconic basketball brands and will be one of the top basketball leagues in the country. … Hopefully, it will get wrapped up in the near future."

And, says Fox Sports co-president Eric Shanks, "The rights we acquire will be a beast. Get the joke?"

And yes, FS1 will offer light comedy. Its new shows will include Rush Hour, weekdays at 5 p.m. ET and hosted by Regis Philbin.

Philbin, 81, says he initially talked to Fox about just doing a monthly show. He says he'll joined by three to four panelists and he's "thrilled. I've always been a big sports fan."

Other shows will include Fox Football Daily, weekdays at 6 p.m. ET. It will include appearances by Fox's various football analysts and announcers, including Terry Bradshaw, Jay Glazer, Howie Long, Erin Andrews and Mike Pereira. Andrews Tuesday wasn't ready to fill in details on that show or her role on FS1 generally. "I've been told to keep my mouth shut," she says. But FS1 is "great because it shows there are so many opportunities here."

Andrews, who left ESPN for Fox last year, suggests ESPN is probably thinking of how to counter FS1. But then, she says, ESPN always worried about any possible competition: "It was a conversation that always came up when I was there. It was, 'What she we be worried about?' "

FS1 will also air an NFL pregame show that begins before Fox's and CBS' broadcast network shows – thus taking on the ESPN and NFL Network pregame shows. Fox rules analyst Pereira says he hopes to be a part of that.

"I would like to be able to teach a little bit. You can't do that in just 140 characters on Twitter," he says.

And Fox, which has next season's Super Bowl in New York, will use FS1 for saturation coverage in the days leading up to the game.

FS1 will also take on ESPN, as well as HBO Sports, in sports documentaries. Its Being series begins in the fall with a film on Mike Tyson.

FS1 will be used to replace Fox's Speed channel. Fox is considering converting its Fuel TV channel, in at least 30 million TV households, to a Fox Sports 2 cable spinoff channel. But Fox's Freer says "we're not prepared to say anything on that now."

Shanks says the new channel faces two key challenges. "We already have a handle on games people actually want to see," he says. "The other big problem is (viewer) inertia. Inertia is a big deal."

Given its substantial live sports, FS1 will clearly be ahead of sports channels backed by other broadcast networks – NBC and CBS. Each has become more aggressive, partly by landing talk show personalities from ESPN. CBS Sports Network cable channel got Jim Rome and Doug Gottlieb. NBC Sports Network cable channel got Michelle Beadle.

But those channels haven't attracted live sports that attract big audiences at a time when live sports is becoming increasingly valuable to advertisers. Viewers have to watch it in real-time and thus must sit through ads – even as more viewers are skipping through commercials as they watch other TV shows via their DVRs. And live events, suggests Shanks, is what separates FS1 from other cable channels chasing ESPN: "If you put together great shows with no rights (to air events), nobody will come to you."

Cleatus, the animated robot that crashes around Fox's NFL coverage, was shown scaling New York's Empire State building in a splashy video for advertisers. Which suggests that Fox, which once made pucks glow onscreen on its NHL coverage, might never make FS1 comparable to ESPN – but it won't be for lack of hype.