Talking Baseball With Fox Sports President Ed Goren

Goren Discusses MLB Playoff TV Coverage

Q: Boston is the one big market team left. You've got to be pulling for them.

Goren: It doesn't matter who I pull for or who I don't pull for. The games will be the games. The good news for us is that sales for our postseason are through the roof. You can say what you want but TBS had a wonderful, marvelous run -- a record-setting run -- of ratings over the last week and a half with a lot of small market teams. So who knows?

Q: How much does market size affect Fox' ratings?

Goren: It varies. Green Bay is not a big market in football, but they're a national franchise. As teams evolve, they can become national franchises. The St. Louis Cardinals for many years would have been a national franchise. It's not always size of market.

Q: What did you think of the TBS broadcasts?

Goren: It's very difficult the first time out to put together cohesive teams. It's not as if these guys work together all year. We face the same thing with the BCS. I thought overall they did a wonderful job.

Q: Did you like TBS's graphic with runners leading off first base?

Goren: We had that graphic a number of years ago, and we just didn't do a lot with it. Therefore we dropped it. When everybody's lead is nine feet, it didn't buy a lot for us, and our announcers didn't do a lot with it.

Q: Why are the postseason schedule changes helping to push ratings up?

Goren: I'll tell you why: the folks over at baseball. I think [MLB Exec VP/Business] Tim Brosnan has certainly led this charge. They were faced with a situation where they had a bunch of West Coast teams in the divisional [playoffs]. And they thought out-of–the-box and got very creative in putting together a schedule that provided a primetime exposure in effect for two out of the three games. Game One ended in primetime on a given evening, and Game Two started in primetime. The results speak for themselves.

Q: Having done this for so long, how do you get excited when you've done the World Series for three decades and the NFL for so many years?

Goren: Fear. Any time we put something on the air, that reflects on this organization and this company. That's all the motivation you need. Hell, you don't have to look beyond David Hill. He can get as excited and emotional as a 21-year-old doing their first broadcast. There's a great deal of passion here, and I guess that comes out over the air, too. The organization sort of feeds off of David and my emotion and our personalities, in a way. David's funnier than me. But we're both passionate.

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