Tuesday, May 25, 2004
The Business of America
The Fox Networks Group today announced the launch of three regionalized Fox College Sports channels.The three channels will feature men's and women's competitions across a broad range of NCAA-sanctioned sports highlighted by perennial powers from the ACC, Big 12, Pac 10, SEC, as well as other top conferences. The three networks will combine to telecast more than 800 live NCAA events over the course of a year.
If it means more college basketball on television, I'm all for it. But as a business decision...I'm skeptical. As Rudy Martzke of USA Today noted in February, Fox's regionalized sports channels haven't been a big success. Why expect a similar arrangement to succeed if the stations focus exclusively on collegiate content?
Fox Sports Net tried to take on ESPN in the late 1990s, but its regional sports network concept fell short, and it turned to regional sports news.
"It was doomed to failure," said Fox Sports Chairman David Hill, who was asked by News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch to evaluate the creative aspects of a combined national sports channel venture with a cable operator such as Comcast. "It was a group of regional networks that thought they could compete nationally and you can't."
