Sports Remains Television’s Top Commodity

In the big-money business of TV sports, 1995 was the year of 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008.

Those were the five Olympics that NBC bought during a four-month, $4 billion spending spree which seems to have become a way of life in the television industry.

Everybody was buying everybody and everything in 1995, and a lot of it was sports driven.

The Walt Disney Co. went so far as to admit that ESPN was the driving force behind its $19 billion takeover of ABC-Capital Cities Inc., the biggest in U.S. corporate history.

“The industry has a love affair with sports,” NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol said. “And with major sports events, you are buying the certainty that you’ll have a large circulation of viewers. You can’t do that with a series.”

The year’s TV sports news also was marked by labor troubles in both baseball and the NHL, and the death of one of the industry’s icons, Howard Cosell, who was 77 when he died of a heart embolism on April 23. Cosell had been with ABC for more than 40 years.

The Baseball Network, discontinued after the season because of a June decision by ABC and NBC, was a victim of the baseball strike and of its own decision to regionalize the playoffs. It was replaced by a five-year deal that included NBC and newcomer Fox, which promised to bring back the Game of the Week. The contract also includes ESPN and Liberty and will put playoff games on cable for the first time ever.

If you’re keeping score, that moved NBC, Fox and ESPN forward, while ABC stood pat, awaiting further impact of the Disney takeover, which was still pending at year’s end.

The entire CBS network, meanwhile, remained in a sports-induced tailspin, despite the Westinghouse Broadcasting Co. takeover, and it was banking on its new college football presence, especially in the bowls, to make 1996 not only a new but better year.

It wouldn’t be totally correct to say that NBC stole the spotlight from Fox this year. It’s more like they bought it.

“Other people were buying other people, we were buying events,” Ebersol said.

In August, NBC circumvented the traditional bidding process on Olympic Games by forging a twoGames, $1.27 billion deal with the International Olympic Committee, landing both the 2000 Sydney Summer Games and the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games.

That was a serious blow to Fox boss Rupert Murdoch, an Australian by birth who was keen on televising the Games of his native land. It also was just the beginning of NBC’s Olympic precedent setting.

In December, when it spent an additional $2.3 billion for three more Games - two summer, one winter - it became the first network ever to buy Olympics that didn’t even have cities yet. NBC also will be the first network to televise five consecutive Olympics and six out of seven Games, including Atlanta in 1996.

Add the $400 million that NBC spent for its five-year share of the baseball package in November, and NBC’s parent company, General Electric Co., shelled out nearly $4 billion in four months to acquire sports.

“The amount of money paid for these five Olympics and baseball is more money than General Electric paid for NBC 10 years ago this month,” Ebersol said. GE purchased RCA Corp. in 1985 for $6 billion, of which about $3.2 billion was for NBC.

“The greatest thing about the Olympic deal, from the standpoint of the viewer, is that it guarantees that free TV will continue to exist well into the 21st century,” he said. “This is the first major sign that viewers are going to see major events on TV the same way in the next century as they have for the last four decades. As much as this business is about the future, it’s also about ‘Back to the Future.”’

After entering the sports scene with the NFL and NHL in the past two years, Fox finally was upstaged, although it was not silent.

Besides getting ready for its first fling at baseball, Fox forged an alliance with boxing promoter Don King to bring Mike Tyson to free TV. First scheduled for Nov. 4, it was postponed to Dec. 16 by an injury to Tyson. Although that knocked it out of the ratings sweeps period, it still was a landmark for Fox.

With a 16.1 national rating, the fight gave Fox the most-watched evening of programming in its nine-year history.

Baseball, however, will have the greater long-run impact on Fox. After a season without a World Series, the major leagues finally got players on the field again in 1995, and NBC and ABC split the postseason down the middle as The Baseball Network came to an end.

“Now we become a 52-week per year sports network,” said Fox Sports president David Hill. “We, of course, are thrilled to add this jewel to our schedule.”

Under the new contract, Fox promises not only to return the game of the week to network television, but baseball promised that every playoff game would be available to viewers, meaning many of the first-round games will go on ESPN.

While the Disney-Cap Cities deal sparked imaginations, especially at ESPN, the Westinghouse-CBS peregrinations evoked yawns. What could one possibly do for the other, industry analysts asked. It remained to be seen as 1995 came to a close.

CBS Sports could only look to 1996, which it would start by televising two of the top three bowl games - the Fiesta and Orange, both of which it took from NBC. Still without NFL or Major League Baseball, however, CBS’ big sports properties would continue to be the colleges.

“Remember 1990, when CBS had the ‘Dream Season?”’ Ebersol asked. That was the year CBS had the World Series, Super Bowl, Final Four and NBA championships?

“In 9-1/2 months on NBC, viewers will see the World Series, Super Bowl, NBA Finals, U.S. Open golf championship, Wimbledon, Olympic trials and the Atlanta Summer Games,” Ebersol said.