THE DAILY presented its findings to the editorial staff
of each of the nightly news shows monitored during February,
and ESPN VP & Managing Editor Bob Eaton, CNN/SI President
Jim Walton, and Fox Sports Net Senior VP & Exec Producer
John Terenzio discussed the results. Eaton, on the figures:
"They showed that we're doing what we set out to do, which
is to give our audience a fairly wide look at the world of
sports each night." Walton: "Nothing really surprises me on
the list." He emphasized the broad coverage of "Sports
Tonight" by adding, "Our goal really is to, without being
high-brow, give a slightly more intelligent, more thoughtful
approach." Terenzio said that his focus at FSN centers
around trying "to do a broadcast every night that caters to
every kind of sports fan, not just a hard core sports fan."
DIFFERENT STROKES: Noting the differences in coverage
of certain stories, including the ongoing IOC scandal,
Terenzio said, "We're sports broadcasters, not sports
narrowcasters. And I think in general, and not just the IOC
story, but in general, that's kind of a distinction between
us and at least one of our other competitors,
philosophically." Terenzio: "We have given an enormous
amount of coverage to the IOC scandal and I have been, quite
frankly, shocked all month that I haven't seen anywhere near
that kind of coverage on some of the others." But Eaton
said that, "For television, I thought once you did a couple
of lines on whatever the development was that night, there
really wasn't a lot more to do." Walton, on selecting the
stories for the 11:00pm ET edition of "Sports Tonight,"
including that of the Olympic scandal: "Certainly, it's like
everything we do, we have to make hard decisions as to what
we cover, and really first and foremost is the news value,
and secondly is the relevancy it has to our viewers."
DO LEAGUE RELATIONSHIPS MATTER? Asked whether
contractual obligations to leagues affected nightly news
coverage, Terenzio said, "I think along the line what you
see is where there are investments by a particular network
in live event product, then you're going to see that
reflected logically more on their newscast. So I think
that's part of the dynamic." Asked about the sharp
differences in the time devoted to auto racing between ESPN
and FSN, Terenzio said, "It's part that we obviously don't
feel that our particular viewership is as into auto racing
as perhaps (the other networks) do. Number two, we're not
the rightsholder to this large domestic auto racing series,
and therefore we don't feel that we should devote as much
time to it." Eaton, on whether programming influences
SportsCenter's coverage: "I think the best example there is,
if you look at the fact that we did more coverage, and led
more times with the NBA, which is the one league with whom
we have no contractual interest, that should pretty well
take care of that" (THE DAILY).
