THEY'VE BEEN A little bit giddy at the Fox Broadcasting Co. since they acquired the rights to the NFL last month.
Maybe more than a little bit."This has been an exciting month at FBC - after this morning, affectionately known as the Football Broadcasting Co.," said Sandy Grushow, president of Fox Entertainment. "We are absolutely elated to have the NFL."
During the recently completed Television Critics Press Tour, "NFL on Fox" paraphernalia abounded, including footballs, jerseys and bags.
And, as a matter of fact, the shift of the National Football Conference to Fox after 37 years on CBS came as quite a shock to the entire broadcasting industry. When Lucie Salhany, Fox Broadcasting Co. chairman, called her company's four-year, $1.58 billion deal a "truly astonishing acquisition," she wasn't alone.
"I've been in network broadcasting now for 20 years, and we've been involved with the NFL as a company for up to 25 - that move was shocking," said Robert Iger, president of the ABC Television Network Group. "I mean, that's a huge change in terms of our business. And from a personal standpoint, I think I'm still, to some extent, aghast because it is such a huge change."
The immediate question for football fans is - what difference, besides a different channel, will the switch to Fox mean for viewers?
Fox's approach
In all probability, the change in the game broadcasts won't be great. Despite a plethora of commentators making ridiculous cracks about Fox putting Luke Perry and Bart Simpson in the broadcast booths, that isn't going to happen.
"The NFC is a tradition in this country. We are not going to deliver a bad telecast," said Fox's Salhany. "We're not going to change something that's been a tradition. We respect it."
Fox signaled its intention of maintaining much of the status quo by hiring CBS veterans John Madden and Pat Summerall as their lead announcing team, Terry Bradshow as a studio host, and CBS senior producer Ed Goren as Fox's executive producer for the NFL.
Fox Sports President David Hill, a native Australian, is almost reverential when he talks about broadcasting the NFL.
"Let me tell you that we're not going to trivialize it. Homer Simpson will not be in the broadcast booth," he said. "We realize we've been given a sacred trust, in sporting terms, and we're going to treat it with the reverence that it deserves. What you will see different is promotions, marketing and the pre-game show."
Expect a huge marketing blitz about the NFL on Fox - a blitz that company executives say will extend throughout the year, and which will be aimed at attracting younger viewers to the game.
As for the pregame show, the most obvious change will be that it will expand from 30 minutes to an hour. As to the content of that pregame show, "The quickest shapshot I can give you for our vision of the pregame show is a combination of `NFL Today,' `60 Minutes' and `Entertainment Tonight,' " Hill said.
Hill, who has experience with both the NFL and the WLAF in Australia and Great Britain, said the games themselves will continue to have the same starting times (11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. locally), that he'll have two-man broadcast teams, and that he'll keep the same number of cameras and tape machines for the main games and actually up those number for the regional games.
He's also a big proponent of having ex-jocks in the broadcast booth.
"The only person who can really tell you what it's like, can really explain the human emotion, really talk about the pain, really talk about the anguish, really talk about the pride is someone who's been there," Hill said. "Everything else is visceral. Everything else is secondary experience. So that what you have to do is work with the athlete to give him the communication skills necessary to translate that."
Fox's reach
Fox officials are trying to dampen speculation that fewer people will be able to see NFC telecasts because Fox has fewer affiliates, and because many of its affiliates are low-powered UHF stations.
"The NFL coverage on Fox will be competitive with the other networks. We'll deliver 98 percent of television households," Salhany said. "To boost affiliate coverage, we'll secure new affiliates . . . or make secondary affiliates of other network stations.
"The day after the Fox and NFL deal was announced, more than 40 of these affiliates called us."
In other words, in areas where there are no Fox affiliates, independent stations or CBS or ABC affiliates will pick up the games.
"We would prefer that they just become primary Fox affiliates in those markets. If that can't be the case, then we will negotiate with them," Salhany said.
That does not, however, answer all the questions. For example, the Fox-owned station in Chicago, WFLD, is Ch. 32 on the UHF dial - and cannot be picked up in all households without cable.
"You have a lot of people who are going to have a difficult time who normally just flip on the set and get the Bears," said NBC West Coast President Don Ohlmeyer. "And the Bears fans are a little tough, you know? I mean, they'll come and burn your house down.
"I think reason would tell you that just from the strength of the stations and the strength of the reach, the ratings shouldn't be quite the same (on Fox)."
The cost
You won't find anyone in the television industry who believes that Fox can possibly make a profit on its four-year, $1.58 billion deal to carry the NFC.
Even Fox executives won't make such a prediction, preferring to be as obtuse as possible about answering financial questions.
"It's amazing," said Fox's Salhany. "We made the announcement and the phones just started ringing from advertisers calling and saying, `We're with you. We love you. We know what you're doing. We're looking for that young audience. We believe you'll grow, you'll market the NFL.' So I don't think it's going to be an issue."
Still, since Fox paid a lot more for the same pact than CBS had - about $100 million more per season - and since CBS had lost money at the lower level, it's virtually impossible for Fox to end up in the black on the NFL.
"We were losing on an average $100 million a year over that four-year contract," said CBS's Stringer. ". . . If I had paid the $400 million (per year in the Fox deal), we would be losing somewhere between $160 and $200 million (a year). I can't do that. I wouldn't do that. It would be unfair to the company."
A relatively impartial observer of these events, ABC's Iger, put Fox's huge outlay of cash into perspective.
"Clearly there are huge benefits to Fox in acquiring the NFL, and benefits that go well beyond the bottom line because they did not buy this to make money," Iger said. "And I don't think even they believe they're going to be able to make money. I certainly don't think so.
"But I don't think it's going to be quantified from a pure bottom-line standpoint, nor perhaps should it."
What it means to Fox
Fox, of course, had more in mind than just the bottom line when it outbid CBS for those NFC rights.
"Even though we think of ourselves as being around forever, we're just 7 years old and this will really put us on the map," Salhany said. "We'll broaden our audience reach, we'll increase our circulation, and that's very important to both us and our affiliates."
Among the other considerations Fox had in mind when it forked out that $1.58 billion were:
- The addition of the NFL helped Fox hold onto affiliates thought to be wavering on proposals to realign with either of two new networks - Paramount or Warner Bros. - and attract new affiliates.
- The Fox-owned stations stand to make a bundle, particularly because six of the eight Fox stations are in NFC cities.
- It's a platform from which to promote other Fox programming.
"The biggest effect is the promotional value that it brings the station - the opportunity for viewers who may not be the typical Fox viewers to find us," said Steve Carlston, vice president and general manager of Fox-owned KSTU-Ch. 13 in Salt Lake City. "People who have never seen `X-Files' will be exposed to `X-Files.' What it will do for the `Star Trek' number could be out of this world."
(KSTU is tentatively planning to bookend the NFL with broadcasts of "Deep Space Nine" and "Next Generation.)
"It will give our news more exposure," Carlston said. "I can't buy that kind of promotional vehicle. (Fox Chairman and CEO) Rupert Murdoch can, but I can't."
"It's a locomotive, in terms of driving other programming - using it as a vehicle to promote their other programming, particularly male-oriented or young demographic-oriented programming," said ABC's Iger. "It would be very difficult for them to just create from scratch, so buying it was critical.
"It puts them on the map in a way they've haven't been on the map as a more traditional network. And that's very significant."
The value of using sporting events to promote other programming is not an absolute, however.
"I think it's always been overrated. It's the program, ultimately, that will succeed or fail," Iger said. "CBS came out of the Albertville Olympics with massive promotion for `Fish Police.' "
The ABC exec acknowledged that such promotion can bring viewers to a program, but it can't keep them there. And he recalled the 1988 Winter Olympics, which his network broadcast while he was president of the "silly Entertainment Division (that) promoted `Super Carrier' throughout Calgary. I saw more promos for aircraft carriers in the middle of the skiers and skaters than I ever thought was possible. And it died."
What it means to CBS
In addition to the affront to the network's pride, the loss of the NFL will hurt CBS' owned stations and its affiliates in the pocketbook.
Locally, KSL-Ch. 5 is estimating a six-figure loss in revenue.
And CBS is looking for some way to fill its Sunday afternoons. The network has already given the 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m. time slot back to the affiliates, and is looking for something to fill the rest of the afternoon.
CBS has heard proposals for "everything from Martha Stewart, to interactive, to bizarre sports - which we won't be doing - to family movies, to multiplex programming, to programming shows we al-ready have. . . . You'd be surprised how many lunatics are coming out of the fringes, clutching pieces of paper," Stringer said. "It takes a long time to read these papers, and maintain a straight face."
CBS officials won't talk specifics, but they're known to be considering the Canadian Football League, which is expanding into the United States.
CBS Sports is also making a play to get back into the college football game. The network is trying to pick off the Southeastern and Big East conferences. And there's speculation that CBS is trying to finance a college football playoff.
CBS also will lose that promotional platform, and the strong lead-in the NFL gave its Sunday prime-time lineup - a night CBS dominates in the ratings.
" `60 Minutes benefited and really became a hit, to some degree, because of the NFL lead-in," said NBC's Ohlmeyer. "I mean, if you go back and look at it historically, that football lead-in helped to flow people into that show, and that show is an institution. And the institution is not going to disappear."
"I mean, `60 Minutes,' in April with no football lead-in, still does a heck of a number. . . . But I must tell you, we're going to attack Sunday night as hard as we can attack it."
CBS Entertainment President Jeff Sagansky scoffs at predictions that his Sunday night lineup will suffer greatly.
"I don't think it's going to have any impact on our Sunday night schedule. Keep in mind the fact that NBC, of course, has had football for 20 years and they haven't been able to launch anything on Sunday."
(And what NBC seems to be ignoring is that, in addition to competing with a still-strong CBS on Sundays, it will have to battle a strengthened Fox.)
And despite losing the NFL, Stringer has no regrets about not trying to outbid Fox. "Again, I'm not in the business of going bankrupt for sporting events. You have to remember that I did that," he said, referring to his network's ill-fated, billion-dollar baseball contract.
The bottom line
When all is said and done, local viewers probably won't see much of a change between CBS broadcasts of the NFC and those on Fox. They'll see more hype and a jazzed up pregame show, but the games themselves will go on much as before.
The switch is a definite boon to Ch. 13 and a bit of a bane to KSL, but it's not like KSTU will suddenly be on a par with KSL in the overall ratings.
The same goes for CBS and Fox on a network level.
"My hunch is . . . that the benefits to Fox will be greater than the negative impact on CBS," said ABC's Iger. "And I think if you look at it from that standpoint, it helps justify why Fox was willing to pay as much for it as they were, and why CBS was not."