Fox moving top game to 11am slot

Red Five

Red Five

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For college football fans within the Big Ten and Big 12, you may want to look away.

FOX, which has first television dibs on all Big Ten games and several Big 12 contests this fall, plans to place its top matchup every Saturday in the noon timeslot, according to New York Post reporter Andrew Marchand.

This is the network's latest attempt to unseat ESPN's College GameDay and the Worldwide Leader's early game as go-to programming for fans. Urban Meyer, Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart are among the new analysts being ask to lead FOX's revitalized college football efforts as the media company tries to combat ESPN and CBS Sports for viewership.

https://247sports.com/Article/College-football-2019-schedule-Big-Ten-Big-12-FOX-media-rights-132020272/

 
Also a peek on how the sausage is made in the article

"As you know, we share rights with ESPN for three of the five power conferences [Big 10, Pac 12, Big 12]," Mulvihill said. "The way that those rights are allocated is that the conferences themselves don’t decide what games will be on what network. That’s unlike the NFL, where there’s an NFL broadcasting department that puts the schedule together and they decide that Packers-Patriots is going to be on NBC and Cowboys-Eagles is going to be on Fox at 4:25. That’s a collaborative process, but in the end the NFL makes those decisions.

"In the college draft, the conferences put together a game schedule [with the dates] but then we and ESPN sit down and actually choose game windows in the Spring where we’ll say — and we have the number one pick in the Big Ten draft — we’re going to take the first selection on November 24th. We pick that date obviously with an eye toward it being Ohio State-Michigan, but we don’t literally take Ohio State-Michigan. We just take the right to have the first choice on November 24th. And then ESPN will choose the right to have the first choice on a week in September. And we’ll come back and use our first pick in the Big 12 to take the number one pick in the first week of October which will be Texas-Oklahoma."

Mulvihill says the process of slotting games and who gets what matchups can be exhausting for networks.

"As the season goes on we’ll say, Okay we’re up to Week 7. We have the first pick. We’re going to use that first pick on Michigan-Michigan State," Mulvihill said. "ESPN then has the second pick, and they [hypothetically] thought they were going to use it on Penn State-Iowa, but because events on the field are unpredictable they’re actually going to use it on Wisconsin-Northwestern. Because you’re drafting windows and not actual games, once you get to the season in progress and you’re surprised by which teams are better than you thought and which teams aren’t as good as you expected, you can adjust and make sure that you’re getting the best game in the best window."

 
Some people may complain about this but I am looking forward to it. It seems like it will increase the chance that we'll have the 'best' football matchups all day long whereas that 11 a.m. time slot often had some of the least favorable matchups of the day.

I also think it's sort of funny that this indirectly says Fox doesn't really care much about the Pac 12, or, doesn't think they'll have a top matchup game this upcoming season. No way they'd slot a game for 9 a.m. on the west coast.

 
Enhance said:
Some people may complain about this but I am looking forward to it. It seems like it will increase the chance that we'll have the 'best' football matchups all day long whereas that 11 a.m. time slot often had some of the least favorable matchups of the day.

I also think it's sort of funny that this indirectly says Fox doesn't really care much about the Pac 12, or, doesn't think they'll have a top matchup game this upcoming season. No way they'd slot a game for 9 a.m. on the west coast.
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Yup, I love this. The last few years, it's seemed like all the good games were on at the same time, which sucked.

 
I certainly understand that perspective from Greg, but I think Fox is trying to dominate this time slot because of the stiff competition with ABC during the 2 and 6 p.m. slots and it will likely help ratings of their new pregame show.

 
11am games tend to suck for recruiting and general atmosphere (although Severe has been ranting that the 06 Texas game was 11am and was one of the loudest in memory). 

But from a sitting at home and watching standpoint, I like 11am games better than 2:30 games.

 
Enhance said:
I certainly understand that perspective from Greg, but I think Fox is trying to dominate this time slot because of the stiff competition with ABC during the 2 and 6 p.m. slots and it will likely help ratings of their new pregame show.
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Fox tried the big pregame show a handful of years ago when they brought over Erin Andrews from ESPN.  No one watched it then and it was dropped after 1 year. And if I had to bet no one will be tuning in to see Meyer, Linehart, and Bush.

 
BigRedBuster said:
That doesn't mean it doesn't suck for us.
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I know - it was my passive aggressive way of saying I don't think Fox cares about Nebraska's recruiting plights in the least.  :lol:

Red Five said:
Fox tried the big pregame show a handful of years ago when they brought over Erin Andrews from ESPN.  No one watched it then and it was dropped after 1 year. And if I had to bet no one will be tuning in to see Meyer, Linehart, and Bush.
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Eh - it wasn't just that gameday show that failed - a TON of Fox Sports 1 unique programming failed. Though, admittedly, Andrews' gameday show certainly failed the hardest (I think ESPN's Gameday outdrew it in the ratings at a ratio of 25-1 or something God-awful like that).

It depends on the execution and branding. Everything ESPN's Gameday does is pretty remarkable from a presentation standpoint, and Fox thought they could compete with a piddling 30 min. program in a studio. Their goal will ultimately be to take it on the road, and pairing their "Gameday" in the hour before a major 11 a.m. matchup will likely help ratings.

Meyer and Leinart are intriguing as analysts, so I disagree that nobody will tune in to see them. They don't have the pull of Herbstreit and Howard, no question, but they're intriguing nonetheless. I don't get Bush and am uninterested in him, primarily because I can't think of any examples of him behind an anchor desk. It also depends who they get to "anchor" the show because those guys are analysts - they need a broadcaster with experience to coordinate and manage everything IMO, and I don't think they've got it with those three guys.

 
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