At the tender age of six, FOX Sports 1 has recently been touting the success and growth of its studio shows throughout 2019 , offering a blend of debate, interviews and analysis on a daily basis via series like Undisputed and The Herd, which have found their footing, and joining the likes of First Things First and Lock It In. Cynopsis Sports asked Charlie Dixon, Executive Vice President, Content, FS1 about the growth and development of the channel’s pillar programming, the daypart, and how it is impacting advertising. (Side note: The Big Lead reported on Sunday that First Things First host Cris Carter has been suspended from the show, pending a FOX investigation. He was off the morning program on Thursday and Friday.)
Dixon on the growth of FS1’s daily studio shows: A common thread in cable ratings seems to be this sense of overall attrition, but we’re thrilled to be seeing positive gains for the daily studio shows with year-over-year growth across the board on FS1. We constantly compare ourselves to the prior year, trying to beat ourselves and succeed. For example, last month finished as the studio shows’ most-watched October ever and our second-best month all-time, out-ranked only by January 2019 which we’ll aim to beat in 2020. The best part of that story is we’ve been doing it consistently now for four years. That’s not the common trend across cable television these days.
On the keys to success: It begins and ends with talent for us. We’re not a formula-based network. We make big bets whether it’s in live sports or in our studio shows, betting on personalities that people want to watch. That’s what viewers come for. But equally important is that there’s not a sameness to our network. From Skip Bayless to Colin Cowherd to Jason Whitlock, they do not look at the world in the same way, but the one thing they do share is an unyielding love of sports.
On Skip Bayless and Undisputed: If we look at the overall day-part as a fine automobile, the engine would be Undisputed led by Skip and Shannon Sharpe. The show has been an unbelievable year-over-year, double-digit increase success story for four consecutive years, right in the key part of the day. Undisputed remains the driving force behind the sustained growth, pulling in the highest average and total audiences on FS1. Once Skip has the ball and he generates the ratings, Colin takes it, then passes it down to the line to Jason and that’s how the network continue to grow.
On advertisers: While the daily figures are strong in their own right, these show ratings are most impressive when viewed across weeks or months. For example, Undisputed’s daily average audience of nearly 200,000 viewers correlated to 3.4 million viewers in total audience for October 2019, a +37% increase over 2018. This audience is the core fan, and the linear product is just the beginning of the process. We reach avid sports fans across all platforms with incisive opinions throughout the day, a valuable base that is young and diverse, who keep coming back across the entire FOX Sports content portfolio.
