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MAFFEI: Fox Sports San Diego is close to being reality

MAFFEI: Fox Sports San Diego is close to being reality
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The deal is in place, but an announcement on the Padres' new TV provider is about a month away.

Still, progress is being made.

Henry Ford, the senior vice president of Fox Sports Ohio, has been hired as president and general manager of Fox Sports San Diego. No announcement has been made, but industry sources say it's a done deal, and a good deal for San Diego.

Ford has run Fox Sports Ohio since November 2009. Fox Sports Ohio reaches 4.5 million households in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, western Pennsylvania, western New York and West Virginia.

Ford has also worked as general sales manager at Fox Sports Network in Detroit.

He has extensive experience in newspapers, having served as a senior director at the San Francisco Chronicle and in executive positions with Gannett-managed Detroit Newspaper Partnership, Tribune Company's Newsday and Knight Ridders' San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times.

An announcement on Ford could be made soon, with the Padres' deal with Fox still on track for an announcement in early January, industry sources said.

Already, though, Fox has talked with Cox Communications about renting its Channel 4 studios just outside Petco Park. Channel 4 carried Padres games for the last 11 seasons, and its studios are first class. Several former Channel 4 employees have been recommended for positions with Fox.

Because of the short turnaround between the announcement of the deal with the Padres and the start of the 2012 season, Fox this year is expected to carry Padres games on FSN-Prime Ticket, which is carried on Time Warner in San Diego, but not Cox.

Cox has never wanted to carry FSN-Prime because that network airs Dodgers games, which are blacked out in San Diego. If the Padres replace the Dodgers on that network, it would then make sense for Cox to pick it up. That would give San Diego viewers access to more Southern California sports — UCLA, USC, the Anaheim Ducks and high schools.

Eventually, Fox Sports San Diego is expected to land on its own channel with content similar to FSN-Prime and Fox Sports Ohio, which carries the Cincinnati Reds, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the AHL's Lake Erie Monsters and many Xavier, Cincinnati and Dayton games.

Though San Diego doesn't have such a variety of sports, there's reason to believe that Fox Sports San Diego would cut deals with San Diego State, USD, UC San Diego, Cal State San Marcos and Point Loma Nazarene. The San Diego Sockers are a popular indoor soccer team that could be a target, especially if the team can get an arena built. And high school sports would be a definite target; new CIF San Diego Section commissioner Jerry Schniepp said the section would love to be involved.

The deal with the Padres should have been announced months ago, but has been hung up in the baseball commissioner's office by the Dodgers, who are working through the McCourts' divorce case and the sale of the club.

Dodgers owner Frank McCourt had been courted by Fox, Time Warner is now a player in the L.A. market, and McCourt wanted to launch his own Dodgers network: DTV. Fox and the Dodgers were in U.S. Bankruptcy Court on Wednesday and Thursday.

When the Dodgers deal is settled, Fox Sports San Diego can get to work.

 


 

Chargers notes

  • Kevin Harlan and Solomon Wilcotts will call Sunday's Bills-Chargers game, but the game isn't a sellout and will be blacked out in San Diego. The blackout covers a 75-mile radius from Qualcomm Stadium.
  • Chargers fans can listen to Sunday's game on radio at 105.3 FM and 1360 AM in San Diego, 101.3 FM in Southwest Riverside County and 570 AM in Los Angeles. 
  • By NFL rule, San Diego loses the CBS morning game (Chiefs-Jets) and gets only one game in the morning: Saints-Titans on Fox. The Raiders-Packers game will replace the Chargers in the afternoon on CBS.

 


 

Around the diamond

  • Tim McCarver, the lead analyst on Fox's coverage of major league baseball, was selected as the recipient of the 2012 Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually for excellence in baseball broadcasting by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. McCarver has been an announcer for the last 23 seasons and called a record 22nd World Series and 20th All-Star game in 2011.
  • Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver will be the guest on MLB Network's "Studio 42 with Bob Costas" at 6 p.m. Monday.

 


 

Local notes

  • John Kentera and Jack Cronin will anchor the morning show from 6-10 a.m. the next two weeks on XX Sports Radio 1090.
  • With football over, XX 1090 moves its prep coverage to basketball. The Friday schedule starts tonight with games at 6 and 8 from the Eastlake Tip-Off Classic.

 


 

College football

  • There are only three games on TV Saturday, but one (Army vs. Navy) is a big one. Kickoff is at 11:30 a.m. on CBS. Verne Lundquist and Gary Danielson call the action with Tracy Wolfson on the sidelines. The Heisman Trophy candidates will be in the CBS New York studios at halftime.
  • ESPN will carry the Heisman Trophy presentation at 5 p.m. Saturday. Immediately following the Heisman show, ESPN will air "The Marinovich Project." It's the latest installment of the "Year of the Quarterback" and tells the story of the rise and fall of former USC and Raiders quarterback Todd Marinovich.
  • ESPN has 33 college bowl games, starting with the Dec. 17 New Mexico Bowl and running through the Jan. 2 Rose Bowl.
  • ESPN has all three bowl games involving San Diego — the Dec. 17 New Orleans Bowl, which matches San Diego State and Louisiana-Lafayette; the Dec. 21 Poinsettia Bowl in Qualcomm Stadium that pits Texas Christian against Louisiana Tech; and the Dec. 28 Holiday Bowl in Qualcomm Stadium with California facing Texas.
  • Washington State credited TV money with the hiring of football coach Mike Leach to a deal worth $2 million per season. Cougars officials said they couldn't have done it without the $20 million a year in TV money that each member of the Pac-12 will receive from the conference's new TV network.
  • The Mtn. will air a Poinsettia Bowl preview at 11:30 a.m. Sunday. A New Orleans Bowl preview airs at 12:30 p.m.

 


 

Ratings game

  • Last Sunday's Packers-Giants game drew a 17.6 rating for Fox with 29.8 million viewers. That's the highest-rated regular-season NFL telecast on any network since Week 14 of 2007, when the the Steelers-Patriots got an 18.4 rating for CBS.
  • Last Thursday's Eagles-Seahawks game on the NFL Network was seen by an average of 5.9 million viewers, up 9 percent from the same week last season. At the midpoint of the network's Thursday telecasts, games are averaging 7.1 million viewers, up 24 percent from last season.
  • Last Sunday's Lions-Saints game on NBC got an 11.9 rating with 9.2 million households, down 18 percent from last season and NBC's lowest-rated game of the season that didn't go up against the baseball playoffs.
  • Last Saturday's college basketball game between No. 1 Kentucky and No. 5 North Carolina drew a 2 rating for CBS with 1.5 million viewers.
  • The SEC on CBS averaged a 4.2 rating, the highest-rated college football package this season on any network. The highest-rated regular-season college football game was the Nov. 5 LSU-Alabama game on CBS, which got a 11.5.

 


 

Around the dial

  • HBO will have a replay of last week's Miguel Cotto-Antonio Margarito super-welterweight title bout at 6:45 p.m. Saturday.
  • CBS Sports Network signed a multiyear agreement with the Professional Bull Riders (PBR), beginning in 2012, making the network the primary station for the PBR's 27 live events.

 

John Maffei's TV/Radio column appears every Friday. He can be reached at 760-740-3547 or jmaffei@nctimes.com.

 

Call staff writer John Maffei at 760-740-3547.

Copyright 2012 North County Times. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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