Impressed with Fox's "audacious capture of the NFL" and
"aggressive" coverage of hockey and boxing, ELECTRONIC MEDIA
named Fox Sports President David Hill to its annual "12 To Watch"
list for 1996. The "stakes are rising" for Hill, according to
Jon Lafayette, as he will oversee the $2B joint venture between
Liberty Sports and News Corp. as CEO, and "perhaps the toughest
problem in sports: bringing disaffected fans" back to baseball
with Fox's coverage of MLB. Hill said he was "unbelievably
thrilled with what's happening with hockey. You just get a vibe
that hockey is really starting to pulse." On MLB coverage, Hill
said they will try to "re-energize the coverage of games so that
it becomes a sport for the youth of the country, which seems,
according to demos, something that's slipped away." Asked about
the growing importance of sports to a network and the future of
rights fees, Hill noted "sports rights are the classic Economics
101 ... while there's limited supply and increasing demand,
you're going to get an upward spiral on rights fees" (ELECTRONIC
MEDIA, 1/22).
