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.

THERE HAS BEEN talk of the Phillies starting their own network a la the New York Yankees. That almost certainly won't happen for a variety of reasons. Now comes talk of another possibility: That Fox Sports will bid for the broadcast rights for Phillies games when the team's current contract with Comcast runs out in 2015. According to a report on Yahoo, Fox Sports, which is launching Fox Sports 1 in August, will pursue the Phillies. "They want Philadelphia," a source with knowledge of Fox's plans told Jeff Passan of Yahoo.

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.

STAMFORD, Conn. - Officials call Connecticut the sports-media headquarters of the world, with the 19-building complex that is ESPN in Bristol and offices for World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. and the Yankees' YES Network here. Now they can add NBC Sports. Lured by generous tax credits and modern TV studios, the Comcast Corp.-owned NBC Sports is bailing on 30 Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan - the most prestigious address in the TV business - after rehabbing and reconfiguring a Clairol hair-products factory for $100 million.

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.

Fox Sports Media Group, a division of News Corp., is elbowing into the national 24-hour cable sports arena with Fox Sports 1, which will debut Aug. 17. It had been one of the worst-kept secrets in the media business that Fox was planning a sports cable channel, as it acquired billions of dollars in TV sports rights over the last 16 months. The company officially disclosed the new channel at a New York media event Tuesday and said it would air NASCAR, Major League Baseball, college football and basketball, soccer, and Ultimate Fighting Championship events.

Whether you are a wild-eyed fanatic or a sports agnostic, you are paying a lot in your monthly bundled cable-TV bill - about 50 percent of the programming costs - for football, baseball, and other live games. And that price will continue to rise for two basic reasons: The audience for sports is vast and insatiable, and media companies are spending billions more each year for the broadcast rights to keep fans glued to their TVs. The soaring prices for sports rights are being shouldered by almost everyone who pays a TV bill but falling hard on those who don't care about sports and often don't know how much they are paying for entertainment they aren't watching.

Fifteen years after it first televised the Phillies, Flyers, and Sixers games on its own regional sports network in Philadelphia, Comcast Corp. has launched its 11th sports channel in a partnership with Major League Baseball's Houston Astros and the National Basketball Association's Rockets. The 24-hour Houston channel went live Oct. 1 from Houston's Pavilions entertainment-and-dining district and adds to a rapidly growing multibillion-dollar regional sports network industry. Although the channels are popular with TV viewers, there are now concerns that multiple networks televising different teams within the same TV market - a recent development - will add to future cable-TV bills as consumers pay for the channels in their bundled TV bill.

DOVER, Del. - Fox Sports still doesn't know the reason for the broken television cable that interrupted last week's Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway for nearly 30 minutes. Artie Kempner, the lead director for Fox Sports NASCAR and NFL, apologized during yesterday's prerace drivers meeting. "It's a personal project for us, because we work with these guys every week," Kempner said. "We want to let them know we don't ever want to be the story. " Kempner, a Wilmington resident, said the investigation by Fox Sports into what caused the cable to snap and fall onto the track and grandstands continues.

Fox Sports said Monday it still had not determined why an overhead TV camera cable snapped during the Coca-Cola 600 in Concord, N.C. The network said that use of the camera is suspended indefinitely. Charlotte Motor Speedway said 10 people were injured when part of the drive rope landed in the grandstand; three were checked out at hospitals and released. Several drivers, including then-leader Kyle Busch , reported damage to their cars. COLLEGES: Gloucester County College routed Waubonsee (Ill.)

STAMFORD, Conn. - Officials call Connecticut the sports-media headquarters of the world, with the 19-building complex that is ESPN in Bristol and offices for World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. and the Yankees' YES Network here. Now they can add NBC Sports. Lured by generous tax credits and modern TV studios, the Comcast Corp.-owned NBC Sports is bailing on 30 Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan - the most prestigious address in the TV business - after rehabbing and reconfiguring a Clairol hair-products factory for $100 million.

THERE HAS BEEN talk of the Phillies starting their own network a la the New York Yankees. That almost certainly won't happen for a variety of reasons. Now comes talk of another possibility: That Fox Sports will bid for the broadcast rights for Phillies games when the team's current contract with Comcast runs out in 2015. According to a report on Yahoo, Fox Sports, which is launching Fox Sports 1 in August, will pursue the Phillies. "They want Philadelphia," a source with knowledge of Fox's plans told Jeff Passan of Yahoo.

Fox Sports Media Group, a division of News Corp., is elbowing into the national 24-hour cable sports arena with Fox Sports 1, which will debut Aug. 17. It had been one of the worst-kept secrets in the media business that Fox was planning a sports cable channel, as it acquired billions of dollars in TV sports rights over the last 16 months. The company officially disclosed the new channel at a New York media event Tuesday and said it would air NASCAR, Major League Baseball, college football and basketball, soccer, and Ultimate Fighting Championship events.

Starting in 2014, cable will be needed to watch much of the Major Leagues' postseason. Fox Sports 1, the new sports cable network launching in August, will join TBS in carrying the American League and National League Championship Series. In the past, all the Fox games would have aired along with American Idol and The Simpsons on the regular Fox Network. This move makes the World Series the only part of baseball's postseason on free TV completely.   Teixeira teed off Yankees slugger Mark Teixeira will miss the World Baseball Classic because of a strained right wrist.

The rebranded NBC Sports Network is looking for sports fans. The National Hockey League lockout and a transition to new sports programming - after dropping UFC mixed-martial arts bouts and bull-riding - resulted in the Comcast Corp.-owned 24-hour sports network posting eight months of lower prime-time viewership in 2012. In December, its worst month, an average of 58,000 homes tuned in to the channel during prime time compared with 158,000 homes the previous year, according to Nielsen.

PISCATAWAY, N.J. - As Bruce Springsteen's "Candy's Room" blasted into the tailgating crowd, young men and women bounced up and down in the bed of a pickup truck. To howls of "Give me an R!" they responded gleefully. It was Thursday evening outside Rutgers University's High Point Solution Stadium before a final regular-season game that pitted the Scarlet Knights against the Cardinals of the University of Louisville for the Big East football title. The Knights lost the game, nationally televised on ESPN, in a wild 20-17 finish.

ESPN, a division of the Walt Disney Co., has reached an agreement to televise all of the Bowl Championship Series college playoff and championship games through the 2026 football season for about $7.3 billion, or $610 million a year. The 12-year, 84-game deal announced Wednesday includes the Orange, Sugar, and Rose Bowl games and is part of a recent boom in professional and college sports rights as TV networks seek to secure highly watched games for audiences. The Inquirer reported on Sunday that ESPN, Fox Sports, Comcast/NBC, Turner, and CBS had agreed over the last 20 months to pay $72.4 billion for the national rights to televise live games well into the next decade.

Whether you are a wild-eyed fanatic or a sports agnostic, you are paying a lot in your monthly bundled cable-TV bill - about 50 percent of the programming costs - for football, baseball, and other live games. And that price will continue to rise for two basic reasons: The audience for sports is vast and insatiable, and media companies are spending billions more each year for the broadcast rights to keep fans glued to their TVs. The soaring prices for sports rights are being shouldered by almost everyone who pays a TV bill but falling hard on those who don't care about sports and often don't know how much they are paying for entertainment they aren't watching.