[PaintTouches]Big East, FOX Sports 1 struggle to gain TV ratings

[PaintTouchesSays]

Big East, FOX Sports 1 struggle to gain TV ratings

Going into the  season, one of the biggest questions regarding the Big East was how much of an impact leaving ESPN for FOX Sports would have on the TV ratings. Getting a wide audience is a crucial aspect of maintaining national relevance for a regional league, not to mention a key selling point to potential […]<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=painttouches.com&blog=28348875&post=10177&subd=painttouches&ref=&feed=1" width="1" height="1" />

Source: Big East, FOX Sports 1 struggle to gain TV ratings

[JamilJaeJamailJrJuan]

You have to give things like this time. fS1 and Fs2 are certainly not having glowing success in their first year, but the bottom line is those channels are a ton of households. If you pay for anything above basic cable you're likely to get FS1. It will come around. The partnership with Fox is going to do the big east wonders long term.

[77ncaachamps]

You have to give things like this time. fS1 and Fs2 are certainly not having glowing success in their first year, but the bottom line is those channels are a ton of households. If you pay for anything above basic cable you're likely to get FS1. It will come around. The partnership with Fox is going to do the big east wonders long term.

I don't have cable.

But I can access ESPN3 through my internet provider.

That's why FS1 sucks for me.

[GoldenWarrior11]

Just give it some time.  Other than the Big East programming, they have shown PAC-12 and BIG 12 football and UFC.  Once it gets more content, which IMO is currently lacking, more viewers will turn in.  I believe they will add MLB, Formula 1, NASCAR and Golf to the slate this year - which will help.

The Big East New Year's Eve Marathon was fantastic.  I watched every game and thoroughly enjoyed the announcing, coverage and competition.  Granted, I wanted to chuck my tv out the window during the MU-Creighton game, but that's another story completely.

[Texas Western]

The quality of the TV production is high, eventually the fans and media will appreciate the quality of the competition. If the league has 5-6 teams with NCAA potential at the end of the season the interest will be there.

[rocky_warrior]

I don't have cable.

But I can access ESPN3 through my internet provider.

That's why FS1 sucks for me.

If you've tried ESPN3 this year, almost every game now requires verification that you subscribe to the channel.  So even though it worked for you the past few years, this year it's practically useless without a cable subscription (at least for comcast internet...)

[martyconlonontherun]

I''ve actually been surprised to see some of my casual sports fans flip FS1 on over ESPN

[Atticus]

I''ve actually been surprised to see some of my casual sports fans flip FS1 on over ESPN

Yeesh. I don't know anyone that watches the channel...and most people I know aren't sure if they get it or not. I tried watching fs1's version of sportscenter and it seemed like a bad SNL spoof. Just terrible.

[marquette20]

It would have been really nice if FS1 could have gotten a channel number next to ESPN. I know with my cable it's channel is by NBA TV and the other specialty sports channels. A casual viewer usually bypasses those channels. NBC sports is right next to ESPN in HD so that's why I think they get more viewers. The contet on NBC for basketball isn't better.

[MU Fan in Connecticut]

It would have been really nice if FS1 could have gotten a channel number next to ESPN. I know with my cable it's channel is by NBA TV and the other specialty sports channels. A casual viewer usually bypasses those channels. NBC sports is right next to ESPN in HD so that's why I think they get more viewers. The contet on NBC for basketball isn't better.

I agree on this one. 
You have to look hard for it on Cablevison/Optimum.  ESPN & ESPN2 is channels 35 & 36.
Then there is a block of channels like CBS Sports, NBC Sports, ESPNU, MLB Network, etc in the 140-150 range and FS1 is located by itself on channel 85 wedged between the CT state version of CSPAN & local community access TV & TCM.  FS2 is in another world by itself on channel 402. 

(By the same token the now out-of-place FXX channel previously FOX Soccer Channel is wedged in between 140-150 with the other sports channels.)

I'm guessing Cablevison is overdue for that every 7-8 years channel switcharound.

[Hards Alumni]

I agree on this one. 
You have to look hard for it on Cablevison/Optimum.  ESPN & ESPN2 is channels 35 & 36.
Then there is a block of channels like CBS Sports, NBC Sports, ESPNU, MLB Network, etc in the 140-150 range and FS1 is located by itself on channel 85 wedged between the CT state version of CSPAN & local community access TV & TCM.  FS2 is in another world by itself on channel 402. 

(By the same token the now out-of-place FXX channel previously FOX Soccer Channel is wedged in between 140-150 with the other sports channels.)

I'm guessing Cablevison is overdue for that every 7-8 years channel switcharound.

Ouch.  On Charter cable in the Madison area FS1 is within 20 channels of ESPN's HD stations.  SD I have no idea.  The problem I have with FS Live is that it tries to be SC but it tries WAY too hard to be funny.  Don't clone SC, be better.

[GooooMarquette]

Location is a mixed bag on DirecTV.  The ESPN networks are 206-209, and FS1 is 219.  In between are things like NBATV, NFLTV, etc., so not too bad.  But FS2 is 618.  It'd be nice if they could be contiguous like the ESPN networks.

As for the programming, I think the production quality of the broadcasts is good, but the on-air talent is up and down.  Raft and Johnson are fine, but there is quite a drop off after that.  

I also hate that they use the NFL theme music for hoops.  Not a very good job of branding the next sport that they hope will raise Fox's sports profile.  Give it a unique identity.  This is one of ESPN's smartest moves - you could turn on one of their networks and tell what you're watching - CFB, CBB, SportsCenter, etc - just by the background music.  Surely they have the budget to hire someone to write a pithy background theme.

[TheTulsaWarrior]

I've been in television all my life working either for an over the air TV station or a cable operation.  Fox Sports One is following the same pattern as Fox News in developing an audience.  They offer access to cable companies for next to nothing to insure being carried.  Once the agreement came up for re-negotiation Fox News got more $ from the cable providers.  It will happen with FS1 and FS2.  Fox has deep enough pockets to make it happen.

I do agree Fox Sports need to be stronger with streaming content -- live and on demand.

Marquette and the other Big East schools are getting the bucks upfront.  Right now the hardcore fans of the BE schools are watching, recruits can be told all games are on nationally (probably without a premium price) and I suspect advertisers are getting the product for a premium price as well.

[Sunbelt15]

Blame MU and Georgetown for being mediocre. No one wants to watch Villanova and Creighton.

[ZiggysFryBoy]

Dish has FS1 pretty close to the ESPNs.

If FS1 could add in games stats and other Fox-like innovations to the broadcasts, I think that would help.

[bradley center bat]

College basketball doesn't start for some people untill this week, as college football is over. CBB doesn't get the ratings at all untill March. In Nov & Dec, unless you are watching your team play, only a die-hard like me tunes in for Youngstown State at St. John's or Chicago State at DePaul.

FS1 will get a shot in the arm when MLB start this year on that network.

[WarhawkWarrior]

Cost me an extra $5 on DISH over my existing plant.  Had FS2 but not FS1

[spartan3186]

Blame MU and Georgetown for being mediocre. No one wants to watch Villanova and Creighton.

Talk about blue and gold glasses, holy cow. I love Marquette as much as anyone, but Villanova is definitely just as prominent of a program as MU.

The problem isn't with the top 2 teams in the league, it's that the league as a whole has been somewhat mediocre this year. People will flip to FS1 to see Top 25 match-ups -- whether its Nova vs Creighton or MU vs Georgetown. One Top 25 team means ZERO Top 25 match-ups. The casual fan doesn't just turn on a game between unranked teams.

I think people on message boards tend to forget that we're not exactly normal. Posting on message boards puts us in the top 5% of the most fanatical.

[bradley center bat]

2013-14 Bowl Game TV ratings
http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-football-tv-ratings/#bowls

The lesser bowls kills regular season college basketball. Oh well, it is what it is!

[Nukem2]

2013-14 Bowl Game TV ratings
http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-football-tv-ratings/#bowls

The lesser bowls kills regular season college basketball. Oh well, it is what it is!

Guess some folks are easily entertained by the Toilet Bowl... 

[Canned Goods n Ammo]

Basketball, and specifically college basketball doesn't draw a ton of eyeballs.

HOWEVER, it delivers a key demo (beer drinking dudes with expendable income), and offers "live" content, which usually isn't fast forwarded.

The traditional way of evaluating television ratings isn't necessarily applicable anymore, especially when you are considering revenue generation / ad sales, and the advent of recorded entertainment.

FS1 may never draw huge ratings, but again, that doesn't mean they aren't able to make money. The business models are changing rapidly.

[ChicosBailBonds]

It would have been really nice if FS1 could have gotten a channel number next to ESPN. I know with my cable it's channel is by NBA TV and the other specialty sports channels. A casual viewer usually bypasses those channels. NBC sports is right next to ESPN in HD so that's why I think they get more viewers. The contet on NBC for basketball isn't better.

One housekeeping exercise...when I said Cold Turkey I was merely taking a break and will continue to for awhile.  Too many crazy things going on right now, but chuckled at a few of the threads I saw.  Well done.


To answer this question, channel positioning is very important for some channels and less so for others.  It is also an important leveraging tool.  As I mentioned in the past, pretty much no one has a deal with Fox Sports on FS1 or FS2 and they had to cave at the end to get carriage of the channels because no one was just going to automatically spend a bunch of money for a new channel just because.  Programming costs are already insanely high which have to be passed on to customers who are not thrilled by price increases.

So sure, FS1 would make a ton of sense to be right next to ESPN or within the neighborhood.  Then again, it would also be nice to be able to stream FS1 to customers as well. Notice how many distributors don't stream FS1 right now?  Notice how many have FS1 maybe in a spot that isn't ideal?  Lots of other fun things like that, but that's the nature of the beast.  As contracts are done over the next 3 or 4 years and they cycle through, I would not be surprised to see channel placement change as a result, but the distributors will also want concessions for that.  Being next to ESPN helps FS1 with ratings, it's a no brainer.  There is give and take with all of this stuff, but that's why you're seeing them (in my opinion) in channel locations that might not always make the most sense.

The other is disruption for the customer.  Typical channel guides don't just have a bunch of openings to slot in.  If you do move a channel, it often means moving another one out causing further disruption, customer confusion, etc.  Some channels may be contractually tied to a specific channel location and cannot be moved. 

Just a bit of background.

Go Warriors.....some of us were there for the 1,000th victory in MU history against Xavier as we upset them and Mr. Larkin back in the late 1980's.

[bradley center bat]

Guess some folks are easily entertained by the Toilet Bowl... 

College football is the best sport! I wish some of that could come the hoops way, other than just March.

[chapman]

One housekeeping exercise...when I said Cold Turkey I was merely taking a break and will continue to for awhile.  Too many crazy things going on right now, but chuckled at a few of the threads I saw.  Well done.

Worthy "cheat drag" for all of us.  It would be an injustice to not get CBB expertise in a television discussion.

[Coleman]

The only way I see this having potential for being a positive is if FOX starts to put more Big East basketball on the mothership, like at least one game a week.

Obviously that's not happening this year but that's the only way I see a Big East game being able to draw the kind of viewership they would be able to on ESPN.

We could get the best of both worlds in having the luxury of every game televised on FS1, but still being able to draw the big ratings on FOX 4 or 5 times a year. Probably won't happen though.

[bradley center bat]

The only way I see this having potential for being a positive is if FOX starts to put more Big East basketball on the mothership, like at least one game a week.

Obviously that's not happening this year but that's the only way I see a Big East game being able to draw the kind of viewership they would be able to on ESPN.

We could get the best of both worlds in having the luxury of every game televised on FS1, but still being able to draw the big ratings on FOX 4 or 5 times a year. Probably won't happen though.

Xavier at MU got moved to Fox.

Don't really know what you mean by big ratings. Most college hoops game doesn't draw a 1.0 and won't with many games on 6 different networks.

[Coleman]

Xavier at MU got moved to Fox.

Don't really know what you mean by big ratings. Most college hoops game doesn't draw a 1.0 and won't with many games on 6 different networks.

If you look at the graph on the Paint Touches original post, the Big East games on FOX got almost the same ratings as those on ESPN.

That's what I mean by "big" ratings...

Yeah, I know MU has 2 games on FOX this year (Ohio State and Xavier), which is decent, but I think to really make up for the lost viewership we are getting by being on FS1 it probably needs to be more like 4 or 5 a year. Will it ever happen? Probably not

[77ncaachamps]

Another example of no longer being on ESPN.

At the ticker (at the top of ESPN's page), they usually have the Top 25 scoreboard.
But you have to click on Full Scoreboard to see all the games that day, right?

Wrong. The link takes you to the Top 25 and other games hosted on ESPN's family channels.

So, where's the Marquette-Xavier game?

You have to go another step to the Big East (or ALL games) scoreboard to find it.

I'm bookmarking the BE scoreboard for future reference.

[Jet915]

It's all about content.  When FS1 got big games and big events, UFC or big college football games, they got viewers.  It's that simple.  When they get better content, the ratings will go up.  MLB this year, US Open and big NASCAR races in 2015.  Big Ten (which Fox owns half of Big Ten Network) is up for bid in 2016 along with NBA and maybe Thursday night NFL.  Fox will ATLEAST get one of those.  It might never get up to ESPN ratings but in a few years, after they get better content, they will be up there with ESPN2 which will be a win IMO (they are already ahead of NBC Sports Network and CBS Sports Network).

[nathanziarek]

For my wife and I the biggest thing ESPN provides is their ecosystem.

We dove into "cord shaving" about two years ago when I figured out I could subscribe to a basic tier of cable, not take ownership of a cable box (and the associated fees) and then be able to utilize all the cable-required apps out there.

For ESPN, it's awesome.

But, because FS1 doesn't have an agreement with TimeWarner, their app doesn't work for us. When I'm home at night with nothing to do, I'll toss on a random game from WatchESPN. I'd much rather watch Big East games, but I simply don't have that option.

(I've been trying to get my father-in-law to loan me his username / password for AT&T so I could sign into FS1Go with that, but he's resisting. Probably for the best, since my goal was to get as close to cord cutting as I could without resorting to "stealing". He's saving my soul, I guess. BUT -- If Chicos is reading, this is the market. Get me a package that provides a bunch of streaming and doesn't nickel and dime me for HD upgrades and receivers I never use. Make this special online-only package ala cart while you're at it, and you get a tiny little foothold into migrating that strategy over to your other offerings. Gosh I'm brilliant )

[mr.MUskie]

Being next to ESPN helps FS1 with ratings, it's a no brainer. 

No doubt that's true, so does ESPN have the clout to keep FS1 out of the neighborhood?

[ChicosBailBonds]

No doubt that's true, so does ESPN have the clout to keep FS1 out of the neighborhood?

Well, ESPN has contracts that come around also.  So sure, they would like to prevent that stuff, but that becomes a chit to play there as well.  IMO

[ChicosBailBonds]

For my wife and I the biggest thing ESPN provides is their ecosystem.

We dove into "cord shaving" about two years ago when I figured out I could subscribe to a basic tier of cable, not take ownership of a cable box (and the associated fees) and then be able to utilize all the cable-required apps out there.

For ESPN, it's awesome.

But, because FS1 doesn't have an agreement with TimeWarner, their app doesn't work for us. When I'm home at night with nothing to do, I'll toss on a random game from WatchESPN. I'd much rather watch Big East games, but I simply don't have that option.

(I've been trying to get my father-in-law to loan me his username / password for AT&T so I could sign into FS1Go with that, but he's resisting. Probably for the best, since my goal was to get as close to cord cutting as I could without resorting to "stealing". He's saving my soul, I guess. BUT -- If Chicos is reading, this is the market. Get me a package that provides a bunch of streaming and doesn't nickel and dime me for HD upgrades and receivers I never use. Make this special online-only package ala cart while you're at it, and you get a tiny little foothold into migrating that strategy over to your other offerings. Gosh I'm brilliant )

Brilliant for you, unbrilliant for Fox, ESPN, etc, etc.  Fox, ESPN, all want (and need) the guarantee of millions of subscribers (whether you watch or not) and the associated subscriber fees that go along with those subscribers.  So much so, they have bid enormous dollars on NFL, MLB, college sports, etc with those subscriber numbers baked in.  You make it a la carte or online only, they get a fraction of those numbers and a fraction of those fees, which means none of this stuff happens.  They're committed to many of these sports contracts until 2023.

[bradley center bat]

If you look at the graph on the Paint Touches original post, the Big East games on FOX got almost the same ratings as those on ESPN.

That's what I mean by "big" ratings...

Yeah, I know MU has 2 games on FOX this year (Ohio State and Xavier), which is decent, but I think to really make up for the lost viewership we are getting by being on FS1 it probably needs to be more like 4 or 5 a year. Will it ever happen? Probably not

The one game on Fox was Ohio State at MU, which was lost because it was a college football Saturday. Plus, Ohio State football was on at the same time as the basketball game.

I think FS1 will do great! People will be shocked to see how much MLB will be on FS1 and won't be on Fox. I think Fox only has 12 reg. season games, All-Star Game and World Series. The rest is on FS1.

We see what FS1 has in shows for Super Bowl week as well.

[ChicosBailBonds]

The one game on Fox was Ohio State at MU, which was lost because it was a college football Saturday. Plus, Ohio State football was on at the same time as the basketball game.

I think FS1 will do great! People will be shocked to see how much MLB will be on FS1 and won't be on Fox. I think Fox only has 12 reg. season games, All-Star Game and World Series. The rest is on FS1.

We see what FS1 has in shows for Super Bowl week as well.

People are going to be equally shocked (potentially) of how many distributors choose not to broadcast those MLB games on FS1 because they are not part of the original contract and require an additional fee.  What I'm saying is that just because FS1 will get MLB games in April, distributors don't have to take them and can choose to black them out rather than pay the cost increase to put them on the air.  It has happened before and I would bet it happens again to some distributors. 

[nathanziarek]

Brilliant for you, unbrilliant for Fox, ESPN, etc, etc.  Fox, ESPN, all want (and need) the guarantee of millions of subscribers (whether you watch or not) and the associated subscriber fees that go along with those subscribers.  So much so, they have bid enormous dollars on NFL, MLB, college sports, etc with those subscriber numbers baked in.  You make it a la carte or online only, they get a fraction of those numbers and a fraction of those fees, which means none of this stuff happens.  They're committed to many of these sports contracts until 2023.

No, I get the "guaranteed" aspect of cable. It's really a pretty amazing system when you think about how it spreads the costs around so I'm not paying $20/month for just ESPN.

My brilliance (the smiley was the clue that it was sarcasm...forgot my teal) was in creating a wholly new offering that could run ala cart from scratch and beta test with a small audience. I don't believe the current model can work indefinitely. The company that figures out the next model wins. The companies that continue to say "but what about subscriber fees?" is going to love.

[TheTulsaWarrior]

One other note -- I'd be more concerned if the production quality of the broadcast sucked.

[WarriorFan]

Ratings would be better if they showed the game they advertised!  DePaul should have gone to FS2 and the headline game should have started on time on FS1.  Terrible mistake.