Fox Sports President & COO Eric Shanks believes that with many live events now in place on FS1 as the cable net heads into Year 3, "there will be 'tremendous momentum' moving forward," according to John Consoli of BROADCASTING & CABLE. Shanks: "We're at least where we wanted to be, if not ahead of many of our goals." Shankes added on "a lot of metrics," the net has "surpassed our targets." Consoli noted one result of the momentum "will be the ability to have the ears of marketers and their media agencies when it comes to selling advertising." Shanks: "What’s really nice is that now we are in all the conversations when clients are looking to buy live sports." The network "increased the number of live events it televised in its second year compared to its first year by 17% -- to 779 from 664." Shanks: "It all starts with live events, because that’s what sports fans want to watch." Consoli noted all of FS1’s all-time top 10 most-watched events and 16 of its top 20 "were televised over the past year." Fox Sports Senior VP/Programming & Research Mike Mulvihill said that it is "important not to look at the viewer numbers in a vacuum but to compare them to where the older all-sports networks were at age 2." He added, "You really need to look at where we are in our life cycle compared to where ESPN2 and NBCSN were back when they were at a comparable point in time. We are a lot further along in drawing viewers than they were at our age." Mulvihill: "If marketers compare us to ESPN2 and NBCSN based on our live event viewership, I think we do very well" (BROADCASTINGCABLE.com, 8/26).
