Fox Sports

When Fox bumped CBS from NFL telecasts two years ago, skeptics coast to coast wondered about the quality of Fox's football programming. However, Fox hit the ground running, as it did last season with its NHL telecasts. Baseball on Fox also is expected to be top level. Earlier this week, Fox became the major player in baseball's new television deal. Under the five-year contract, Fox will air three World Series, two All- Star Games and up to 20 Saturday afternoon Games of the Week.

You can almost see the thin arc of jagged blue light bouncing from one electrode to another, the mysterious liquid bubbling in tubes and beakers in the background. Studio analysts Terry Bradshaw and Jimmy Johnson will be in a laboratory of sorts tomorrow afternoon when they "co-analyze" the Chargers-Cardinals game from Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. Now, which one is Igor and which one Dr. Frankenstein? Like the well-worn horror tale, this experiment by Fox Sports could produce a monster - two guys sounding like they're watching a game in a sports bar after spending too much time with the bartender.

Troy Aikman didn't need long to find a new job. Aikman, who retired from the NFL this week, is joining Fox Sports as a game analyst, an industry source said yesterday. Fox had been in talks with Aikman since he announced Monday that he was ending a 12-year NFL career in which he quarterbacked the Dallas Cowboys to three Super Bowl titles. Aikman will fill Matt Millen's slot on the network's No. 2 NFL announcing team, alongside play-by-play announcer Dick Stockton. Millen left after last season to become president and CEO of the Detroit Lions.

The decision to put the Chicago Cubs-Atlanta Braves game in prime time paid off for Fox Sports. Game 1 of the Chicago-Atlanta series got a 7.5 national rating, a 15 percent increase over last year and the highest for a playoff opener since 1999, the network said yesterday. Although the New York Yankees have played their first-round playoff games in prime time during the last decade because they are a big TV draw, Fox decided to show the Cubs and Braves on Tuesday night. The decision was made in part because of the national following those teams have and because the Yankees' opponents, the Minnesota Twins, are not as big a draw.

If you think the high school football season is long now, there are some national television people who disagree. FOX Sports Net has announced that it is planning a mythical national high school championship game for late December of next year. The two competing teams will be chosen from the also-new FOX Sports Net Fab 50, a national ranking that the network hopes to update weekly with the nation's supposed top 50 high school teams. No date or location of the game has been chosen, but FOX seems determined to move ahead with the project, even though several high school athletic associations have been already either voiced their displeasure or vowed to forbid any of their member teams from participating.

If you found yourself smacking the television set wondering what happened to the sound at various moments during yesterday's Eagles-Panthers broadcast, it wasn't your TV's fault. "The dropoffs in audio were caused by a transmission problem from the remote to Fox' broadcast center in Los Angeles," said Ileana Pena, director of communications for Fox Sports. "We apologized to our viewers immediately [which was done during the broadcast by announcer Dick Stockton] and fixed the issue as soon as we possibly could.

Tim McCarver is close to signing a deal that will allow him to call about 40 games for the New York Yankees this season, according to published reports. McCarver, fired by the New York Mets last week after 16 years as the team's analyst, is also Fox Sports' lead national baseball analyst. McCarver said he was unaware of an imminent deal discussed in yesterday's editions of the New York Post and New York Times. His agent, Bob Rosen, said yesterday he had not been contacted by the Yankees or WNYW, the Fox affiliate that will televise Yankees games.

Cincinnati pitcher Mike Morgan yesterday issued a written apology to Reds manager Ray Knight and said he intended to make his next scheduled start. On Sunday, Morgan said he could never play for Knight again. GM Jim Bowden strongly backed Knight. "The players don't run the Cincinnati Reds," Bowden said Tuesday. Fox Sports' broadcast of the All-Star Game drew record-low ratings, the third straight year the game drew fewer viewers than the previous year. The American League's 3-1 victory over the National League on Tuesday had an 11.8 rating, down 11 percent from 1996, which drew a 13.2 rating.

Legendary NFL announcer Pat Summerall and Fox Sports agreed yesterday to a short-term contract extension that will take the broadcaster through Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002. The announcement of the extension, the terms of which were undisclosed, does not necessarily signal the end of the career of Summerall, 70, who is set to start his eighth year with Fox after calling games for CBS Sports for 33 years. "I don't perceive it as a farewell tour, not in any way," Summerall said from Los Angeles, where he is attending the annual "NFL on Fox" seminar.

John Madden ended the suspense quickly. Madden, viewed as the premier NFL analyst on television, has signed a new, five-year agreement to remain with Fox, the network announced yesterday. The NFL this week announced a new TV package, worth at least $17.6 billion over eight years. The big surprises in the package were CBS's wresting AFC games away from NBC and ESPN's pickup of the entire Sunday night package, ending TNT's run. Ever since Tuesday's announcement, speculation was that Madden, a free agent, might depart for ABC to work on "Monday Night Football," or return to CBS, where he worked before joining Fox in 1993.

For most, two National League Championship Series games coupled with an Eagles game make for a jam-packed weekend on the couch or in the stadiums. For Fox Sports, it makes for a weekend full of work. It starts off Saturday night when the Phillies meet the Giants in Game 1 of the NLCS. The following day, the Eagles will face off against the Falcons at 1 p.m before the Phillies and Giants meet in Game 2, at 8:19 p.m. All three games will be carried on Fox. To adequately cover three important games in 2 days, a lot of manpower is required.

Fox announced that it will use "video game-style coverage" during the baseball playoffs. According to Fox Sports president Eric Shanks, cameras will "zip" over the field of play, providing "a video game view of baseball for the first time. "   Are either of you excited for the new camera work Fox is billing as "a television first"? Being the sober journalist that I am, I will reserve judgment until I see the result. But if it's anything like that giant, plodding  transformer-like figure in a helmet that's been featured on Fox Sports forever, I'm skeptical.

If you found yourself smacking the television set wondering what happened to the sound at various moments during yesterday's Eagles-Panthers broadcast, it wasn't your TV's fault. "The dropoffs in audio were caused by a transmission problem from the remote to Fox' broadcast center in Los Angeles," said Ileana Pena, director of communications for Fox Sports. "We apologized to our viewers immediately [which was done during the broadcast by announcer Dick Stockton] and fixed the issue as soon as we possibly could.

Former NFL player and Fox Sports broadcaster Bill Maas, who attended Marple Newtown High and the University of Pittsburgh, was charged with drug possession and weapons violations after a roadside safety check in Peoria, Ill. Maas, 45, and a passenger in his Hummer, Sarah J. Murphy, 27, were arrested late Friday by Illinois State Police. During the stop, police indicated that Maas seemed nervous, and he agreed to a search of his vehicle. Police found a .22-caliber revolver, 5 grams of suspected marijuana, 6 grams of suspected cocaine and 28 pills of Ecstasy.

Sure, the Super Bowl is the biggest deal of the year for Fox Sports. The network will have about 400 people at the game, which has a chance of getting the biggest audience in the history of American television, beating out last year's Super Bowl on CBS, and which may be watched by 800 million people worldwide. But it's not Fox's only big deal. On Tuesday morning, amid planning for the Super Bowl, Fox executives took time to meet with NASCAR officials about the Daytona 500, which Fox will televise on Feb. 20. "We leave here on Monday and head down to Daytona," said David Hill, chairman of Fox Sports.

On Wednesday and Thursday, NBC and CBS made last-minute decisions to pull new episodes of some of their top prime-time shows - including The West Wing, ER and CSI - to avoid going up against the ratings juggernaut of postseason baseball. They anticipate no such moves in the coming week. With the Cubs and Red Sox eliminated, no one's all that afraid of baseball anymore. The Fox Network, which airs the games, has ended up with what looks like the least desirable of the four World Series matchups that were possible as of a few days ago. All the people at Fox can do now is hope that America isn't too bored with the ever-present Yankees while the network tries to build up the Marlins, a team with a low profile, a modest home market, and a small national fan base.

The decision to put the Cubs-Braves game in prime time paid off for Fox Sports. Game 1 of the Chicago-Atlanta series got a 7.5 national rating, a 15 percent increase over last year and the highest for a playoff opener since 1999. While the New York Yankees have played their first-round playoff games in prime time during the past decade because they are a big TV draw, Fox decided to show the Cubs and Braves on Tuesday night. The decision was made in part because of the national following those teams have and because the Yankees' opponent, the Minnesota Twins, is not as big a draw.

The decision to put the Chicago Cubs-Atlanta Braves game in prime time paid off for Fox Sports. Game 1 of the Chicago-Atlanta series got a 7.5 national rating, a 15 percent increase over last year and the highest for a playoff opener since 1999, the network said yesterday. Although the New York Yankees have played their first-round playoff games in prime time during the last decade because they are a big TV draw, Fox decided to show the Cubs and Braves on Tuesday night. The decision was made in part because of the national following those teams have and because the Yankees' opponents, the Minnesota Twins, are not as big a draw.

This week, the people who run the business of sports gathered at the Waldorf-Astoria to discuss the future of sports. And they ended up discussing the future of television. The two, of course, have been pretty much one and the same for years. That's more true these days than ever. Much of the conversation at the World Congress of Sports was either discouraging or cautionary: about the likelihood that rights fees paid by broadcast and cable television have peaked and about the threats and opportunities posed by new technology such as high-definition television and streaming video over the Internet.

The television networks have long since figured out that they have paid far too much for the right to televise NFL games. But this regular season, and the first round of the playoffs, have served to remind them that pro football remains an extremely attractive commodity. In 2002, viewership for the pro game grew by about 5 percent, twice that much among men ages 18 to 34. Most of the growth was recorded by Fox and ESPN. ESPN's ratings were up 17 percent on Sunday nights. Even ABC, which had suffered ratings declines for seven consecutive years on Monday nights, managed to hold about even this season with the arrival of John Madden in the booth - despite a relatively unattractive slate of games and one blowout after another.