Fox Soccer ready for World Cup, HDTV http://blogs.marketwatch.com/worldcup/2010/03/05/fox-soccer-ready-for-world-cup-hdtv/ Broadcast giant Fox is ramping up coverage for the upcoming World Cup and is finally making the plunge into high definition. For soccer and “football” fans in the U.S. and abroad, it’s about time. The world’s most beautiful game rarely looks like it in old-fashioned standard definition. Faces are blurry and the grass looks dull green. Only problem is, Dish Network is the sole cable or satellite operator in the U.S. to start showing Fox’s soccer programs in HD. Negotiations are still ongoing with carriers such as DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Verizon FioS. The hope is that they will add Fox’s high-def soccer channels to their lineups very soon. In addition to five-year-old Fox Soccer Channel, the broadcaster has launched a premium channel called Fox Soccer Plus, available in both standard and high definition. “We’re in discussions with everyone who carries Fox Soccer Channel today,” said David Nathanson, an executive vice president and general manager at the station. “Ultimately we believe distributors and operators will choose to carry [HD] in the near future.” Although the World Cup will be broadcast by ESPN in June, Fox plans mucho coverage. Exhibitions involving World Cup nations will be shown from time to time and Fox is airing two new shows, Passport to South Africa and Ticket to South Africa. Passport is a series of nine 30-minute episodes that examines the teams from the 32 countries that qualified for the World Cup. Once the games begin, respected commentator Andy Gray will lead a group of experts to offer live analysis of each day’s games after they end. Ticket to South Africa will air every night during the World Cup. Aside from World Cup coverage, Fox is increasing broadcasts of the English Premier League and other leagues around the world like the Italian Serie A. Plus it will continue to carry major tournaments such as UEFA Champions League and FA Cup, while adding new exclusives. Many of those games will air on the new Fox Soccer Plus, which will carry 130 EPL contests. Another 130 will be broadcast as usual on older sibling Fox Soccer Channel. Between those two channels, Fox will carry more than 75% of all Premier League games. The best news: virtually all of the Fox soccer programming will be in native high-definition signals with full-screen view. Rarely will viewers see sidebars or downconverted video feeds of lesser quality. “The bulk of the content you find in the network will be in HD,” Nathanson said. “It’s truly the best way to experience soccer.” - Jeffry Bartash Some interesting info, I had not seen before. Thanks to coasterbob for the original link.
Somebody needs to work on their math. 130 + 130 = 260. The Premier League has 380 games per season and 75% of that is 285. If FSC and FS+ have 130 games each and ESPN2 has 83 games like it has been posted, that will cover over 90% of the games in 2010-2011.
You're right. Their math doesn't work. A lot of those would have to be tape delayed. There are usually 5-6 matches that kick off Saturday at 3 pm. If they are double counting matches that way, it's quite misleading. I don't see the big deal about Fox Soccer getting HD for the World Cup. Won't they be restricted to still photos of World Cup matches like they have been in the past?
mucho?? I would hope the EPL deal would have included some World Cup replay rights. Or it's more looking at arrows on a heat map. Or maybe those football magnets Warren Barton was playing with on Sunday.
I hope they get rid of the creepy Proactiv commercials by then. Seriously, is there an abundance of soccer fans with an major acne problem? Over and over and over again with that annoying ass commercial
I guess it's possible they made a deal with ESPN to show World Cup highlights on FSC. I wouldn't think ESPN would want to share.
Disney/ESPN was able to trade the rights to sportscaster Al Michaels (who wanted out of his contact with ESPN, Inc. in order to jump to NBC to call Sunday Night Football) to NBC Universal for: 1. Access to video highlights to the Olympics 2. Copyright to a number of films involving Mr. Walt Disney's cartoon character "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit", which was sold to Universal Studios before Mr. Disney founded his own company. (I am not joking. The rights to Al Michaels was traded for the copyright to a cartoon character and highlights to the Olympics among other intellectual property.)
Correct. Expect at least 9 EPL matches from each round to be televised in the U.S. during the 2010-2011 season Expected breakdown for rounds held on weekends: 23 matches on Saturdays at 7:45am or 8:45am ET - ESPN2 (or ESPN Classic in case of programming conflicts, i.e. Australian Open Tennis) Saturdays at 10am ET or 11am ET - 1st pick to ESPN2 (or ESPN Classic for 11am ET kickoffs), 2nd pick to FS+, 3rd pick to FSC, 4th and 5th picks via tape-delay to FS+ Saturdays 12:30pm or 1:30pm ET - FSC 23 matches on Sundays before 9:59am ET (usually 8:30am ET or 9:30am ET) - 1st pick to ESPN2 (or ESPN Classic) Sundays after 10am ET (usually 11am ET or 12noon ET) - 1st pick to FSC (FS+ would get most if not all of the leftover matches on Sunday) 12 matches on Monday nights (at 3pm or 4pm ET) - FS+ == Midweek rounds (Tuesday and Wednesdays): ESPN2 (or ESPN Classic) would have 1st overall pick of each round; then on each day, FS+ would have 1st, 3rd, and 5th picks of remaining matches while FSC would have 2nd and 4th picks.
Not here during the Winter Olympics ESPN delayed and reduced the amount of US version of SC we receive and when they showed Winter Olympic highlights they had a message saying Olympic footage not available in this region. The funny thing is that during the Aus/NZ version of SC half the time they were using NBCs footage and a day after the winter Olympics were over they went back to showing 2-3 live US version per day which which they gave us a full dose of Olympic footage. The Olympic games both Winter and Summer is the only time I have ever seen ESPN block out footage into Australia, I remember during the Summer Olympics in China they were doing there top 10 countdown at the end and about 7 out of the 10 were blocked out which I found funny at least we still got sound
who are ya, who are ya, who are ya, who are ya oi oi oi wonder where are i can get a "(insert club name here) supporters are tossers" t-shirt
i owed 150,000 dollars on the ten credit cards i picked up but with debtcredit i only paid $7.50. thanks magic loan sharks, i think i'll go bowling now