Over the last calendar year, FOX Sports has broadcast its fair share of marquee events and attained viewership records within several of its properties. Standing out from the rest of the pack is Super Bowl LVII, which garnered accolades for the most-watched television program in American history with an adjusted average final viewership of 115.1 million households. While FOX Sports draws high ratings and various revenue streams from these flagship sports properties, it has a deep daily studio lineup to enhance the network’s comprehensive portfolio and bring viewers informative and entertaining discussion.
Entering last fall, FOX Sports 1 (FS1) Executive Vice President of Content Charlie Dixon unveiled a new studio lineup with the revamped edition of Speak and a change in time slot for First Things First. Combined with The Herd featuring Colin Cowherd, along with Undisputed with Skip Bayless and Shannon Sharpe, the programming slate experienced aggregate growth and is continuing to bolster its reach as the new football season begins.
That is not to say, however, that there have not been embedded permutations therein, specifically pertaining to Undisputed introducing a new cast to debate Bayless, which includes former National Football League stars Richard Sherman, Keyshawn Johnson and Michael Irvin. Furthermore, after months of deliberation, Craig Carton made the decision to leave WFAN to ink an exclusive deal with the company to host The Carton Show on television each morning, hopeful the product sustains its proliferation in audience.
“I guess my concern was just in discovery and viewers finding the show and understanding the new lineup,” Michael Mulvihill, FOX Sports president of insights and analytics, told Barrett Sports Media. “I think a lot of weekday TV and daytime TV is about habits that are formed over years, and in some cases decades in the case of really long-running shows.”
The disquietude, however, was ephemeral upon accumulated growth according to the traditional Nielsen Media Research numbers. Combined with traffic on social media and other sources of viewership, FOX Sports feels confident that its offerings will reach its fans despite hastened levels of cord cutting. The latest Nielsen Gauge report divulges that streaming is responsible for 38.7% of television viewership, marking a ninth straight month of leading in share percentage over broadcast, cable and other unmeasured data sources.
This past August represented the 12th consecutive month of growth for First Things First, featuring Nick Wright, Chris Broussard and Kevin Wildes. The early afternoon program concluded the 31-day stretch with a 77% increase in year-over-year (YoY) viewership, marking its best August ever. In addition, Speak with Joy Taylor, Emmanuel Acho and LeSean McCoy continues to garner double-digit growth, marking the tenth consecutive month of elevated viewership levels and a 39% rise YoY. As a whole, FS1 is up 10% on a total-day ratings basis for the year and has attained its best audiences since 2019. Dixon oversees these programs and is positioning them to stay relevant amid a dynamic media ecosystem, which, in part, is based off market analytics.
“I think the health of these shows suggests a larger story about the resilience of sports in this environment of cord cutting and declining pay TV subscriptions,” Mulvihill said. “Everybody recognizes that cord cutting is real – pay TV [subscribers] are going down – and yet these shows are doing their best viewership ever.”
| Show Name | Start Time (EST) | End Time (EST) |
| The Carton Show | 7 a.m. | 9:30 a.m. |
| Undisputed | 9:30 a.m. | 12 p.m. |
| The Herd | 12 p.m. | 3 p.m. |
| First Things First | 3 p.m. | 4:30 p.m. |
| Speak | 4:30 p.m. | 6 p.m. |
As of last measurement, FOX Sports 1 reaches more households with cable television than ESPN, marking the first time that occurrence has come to fruition since the network’s launch in 2013. While the difference between the two outlets is slim, FS1 is now the most carried television network in the country. Moreover, it believes that it will be able to withstand and adapt to threats posed by the declining reach of cable television. At the same time though, it will not maintain false equivalencies that the model is in a state of inertia and will persist in adapting and ideating to stay competitive with ESPN.
“I think we’re coming to an opinion that cord cutting is something that’s mostly a choice being made by non-sports fans,” Mulvihill said, “and that sports fans are staying in the bundle and continuing to watch shows like this. It’s not just us – I think the ESPN trend is pretty good; the ESPN2 trend is pretty good. There’s a dynamic here that’s happening around sports more than it’s happening to sports.”
ESPN recently introduced a new daytime programming lineup ahead of the NFL season, headlined by the addition of The Pat McAfee Show to its linear and digital platforms. McAfee inked a multiyear, multi-million dollar licensing deal that permits ESPN to distribute 235 episodes of his program each year. Competing in the slot against McAfee on FS1 is Colin Cowherd’s simulcast radio program, The Herd, which has been televised by the network since 2015.
Cowherd and co-host Jason McIntyre have propelled the show up 39% YoY and nine consecutive months of growth, in addition to generating consistent engagement on social media. While McAfee’s show has only been on ESPN for just over a week and was partially impacted by the Charter dispute with The Walt Disney Company, Mulvihill is encouraged by the lack of disparity between the early metrics.
“There’s not a lot of daylight between McAfee’s show and Cowherd’s show,” Mulvihill said, “and we just want to do everything we can to make it even more competitive.”
Similar to McAfee’s show being broadcast on ESPN, the new Undisputed is in its incipient days, having only been on the air for two weeks since returning from a two-month hiatus. The network is utilizing its deep pool of talent, along with new voices Rachel Nichols, Josina Anderson and Lil’ Wayne, to enhance discussions and present a variety of perspectives.
Each one of the studio programs televised on FS1 are meant to appeal to different characteristics of the sports audience, discussing similar topics in unique ways. At the same time, these programs can be one vehicle to drive audiences to watch live game telecasts, such as head coach Deion Sanders and the Colorado Buffaloes. Big Noon Saturday has televised the first two Colorado matchups of the regular season and disseminated one of the most followed stories in the world of sports. Studio shows of late have been encouraged to lean into the story as much as possible, even though they probably would be doing so anyway, and understand that they can contribute to the larger conversation about given topics.
“The interest that we see in a game tends not to come from our own promos; it comes from just the chatter and buzz that’s created by this whole industry of sports coverage and sports talk,” Mulvihill articulated. “I think our shows are a significant part of it, but they’re only part of it. We need that industry of sports talk and sports journalism to thrive to drive interest in our games.”
FOX Sports knows that it has a formidable opponent in ESPN, which refers to itself as “The Worldwide Leader in Sports” and possesses a bevy of live game rights. The company is optimistic that it will be able to keep competing with ESPN and other sources of sports media content to maintain its emergence as one of the premier networks in the landscape.
“I think we’re making great progress and we just want to continue that trend,” Mulvihill said. “We want to get more and more competitive all the time, so we’re encouraged by what we’re seeing and we’ve got sort of a mandate to try to keep it going in a positive direction.”
Derek Futterman is an associate editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, email Derek@BarrettMedia.com or find him on X @derekfutterman.
First Things First is great. The guys have good chemistry and don’t take themselves too seriously.
You’d think the author would do a little bit of research to provide context to the spin from Fox’s PR office.
Using YOY comps for First Things First when it was a super early AM show until September 6, 2022? Comparing McAfee TV audience with Cowherd’s without mentioning that McAfee’s core audience can watch his show for free in the tens of thousands on YouTube? Not showing the huge, growing gap between First Take and Undisputed this month?
I would expect more from a seemingly neutral outlet which supposedly covers the business thoroughly.