THE ECONOMIST profiles Fox Sports Net and its "clever"
regional approach to sports TV and writes that it "is
beginning to inflict some nasty wounds on Disney's ESPN,
which has dominated American sports programming for nearly
20 years." But it notes that ESPN "is not about to drift
into financial difficulty. As cable TV goes digital, there
will be more space for more sports networks, and there is
probably still demand for more sports. ESPN has a
stunningly successful brand, and Disney's master-marketers
are thinking up ways to use it. ... Still, [News Corp.'s
Rupert] Murdoch and [Liberty Media's John] Malone look like
[they will make] a lot of money out of Fox Sports Net --
money that would, if ESPN had seized its opportunity, have
been Disney's" (THE ECONOMIST, 8/8 issue).
WILL FOX PASS? In Dallas, Barry Horn writes that if
Disney's NHL TV rights bid "is such a bad deal, how come Fox
and its own cable brethren are thinking about making their
own inflated bid? One thing is certain: whoever gets the
NHL won't lose as much money on that deal as the networks
will on the" $17.6B NFL TV deal (DALLAS MORNING NEWS, 8/13).
