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).