HILL VOICES SUPPORT FOR "NSR"; SAYS SHOW IS STILL GROWING

          During yesterday's conference call with the media, Fox
     Sports Television Group Chair & CEO David Hill discussed the
     state of FSN's "National Sports Report."  Hill: "The
     standard of journalism within the ["NSR"] is now far greater
     than it has been before and the look and feel and the
     delivery of information is getting to where we'd like it to
     be. ... [However], I'm never happy [with the ratings]. 
     [But] I think we're doing ... about 50% of ESPN, which is
     terrific considering that the boys in Bristol do it very,
     very well and they had a 20-year lead."  Hill said the
     network changed the look of its nightly sports show for a
     "very simple reason.  We felt that sports news really hadn't
     changed in the 20 years that the genre has existed.  While
     that might be true, the audience's needs had differed
     vastly.  Just from my own experience, I know that I've got
     my computer on and I use the Internet to look at the scores
     that I'm interested [in] and we had some research done and
     we found that what we suspected was in fact true.  Something
     like 42% of males knew the results before they saw any
     sports news.  I suspect that's one of the reasons why the
     local sports news has been cut back so much in the bulletins
     because the news directors around the country realize that
     simply stating the score per se, it needs to be more" (THE
     DAILY).  More Hill, on the change: "I wasn't terribly happy
     with the original NSR and its former role as Fox Sports
     News.  Our ratings were such that I once asked if it
     wouldn't be cheaper to fly all the viewers in and put them
     in a studio" (Long Beach PRESS-TELEGRAM, 7/21).
          NOTES: USA TODAY's Rudy Martzke cites ESPN Dir of
     Communications Mike Soltys as saying "'SportsCenter's'
     ratings are as much as four times higher" than the ratings
     for "NSR" (USA TODAY, 7/21)....In St. Petersburg, Ernest
     Hooper notes FSN's "Regional Sports Report" debuted locally
     Monday "with not an overwhelming amount of pizazz, but it
     was a solid presentation."  Hooper: "It was safe and a
     respectable effort for the first day.  But if the Regional
     Sports Report is going to command our attention, it has to
     push the envelope.  With 30 minutes, it has the time to
     present longer features on an array of topics and go beyond
     the norm" (ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, 7/21).