Football, Fox, and Broadway Joe

Not necessarily in that order.

Throw your mind back to 1969, Super Bowl lll, the Jets versus the Colts. If you’re of a certain age, it was, one helluva game. I was a little kid in New Jersey, the entire neighborhood was at our house, we had a new color RCA, the dads were shouting “The bomb Joe! Throw the bomb!” The Colts were favored by a spread of eighteen points. Days before the big game, Joe Namath had batted his emerald eyes and told reporters that the Jets would win. In fact, he guaranteed it. Naturally it was assumed he’d had one too many as was his habit. But he was right. The Jets crushed the Colts 16-7. The Jets defense held the formidable Colts to zero points until the fourth quarter. In the aftermath of this stunning upset, Don Shula, the Colts head coach, departed Baltimore and went on to build the Miami Dolphins. Football had been televised since 1939, but Joe Namath, now Broadway Joe, made football sexy.

For decades the three big networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC split the airing rights to different packages of games depending on conference. It was a satisfying arrangement. Fast forward to 1993, the networks were about to renegotiate their NFL deals. The country was still bruised from the 1990-1991 recession. Companies were in cost cutting mode, including television networks, their parent corporations, and the teams some of which were quite leveraged were looking to increase revenue. As it stood, ABC had Monday Night Football, NBC had the AFC games and CBS had the golden goose package, the NFC games. The NFC had won nine straight Super Bowls and had teams in Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, Dallas, and San Francisco. Sports is driven by loyalty which in turn drives viewership which of course drives advertising dollars. The networks never negotiated aggressively for their deals, there were three packages and three networks, there are only so many ways the deck could be shuffled. But the world of TV was expanding and broadcast newcomers were straining to get a piece of the action. The three most consequential newcomers at the time were Turner, ESPN, and a quirky network owned by an Australian media mogul called Fox. Fox known mainly for adult nighttime comedy had some of the most popular shows, Joan Rivers, The Simpsons, Married with Children, Melrose Place, X-Files, but viewers needed to brave the upper limits of their dial to find it. Also no one was tuning into Fox during the day. The owner of Fox, Rupert Murdoch wasn’t satisfied with being a distant number four channel and he had identified exactly how to catapult over his competition for the big money; football, a sport he knew so little about he called games, matches. 

In 1993 power shifts between the team owners representation and networks were rumbling, Paul Tagliabue the new NFL commissioner thought his sport deserved more respect meaning more money so he proposed a new bidding procedure to include a fourth bidder. This was the first time that there were more suitors than opportunities. Murdoch’s Fox, which had attempted to muscle in on the NFL in 1987 and was rebuffed, was offered a chance to bid on either the CBS (NFC) package or the NBC (AFC) package and both legacy networks could match the Fox offer to retain the rights. From a purely sports perspective either would have given Fox a huge boost. The going rate for the NFC deal had been $265 million/year (for a four year deal) and Larry Tisch the CEO of CBS, was angling to offer $250 million. He saw no reason that wouldn’t be accepted, CBS and football were, well, everything, nothing could change that. Besides who else was there?

Rupert Murdoch might not have even heard of Broadway Joe, but he understood that everything on television was entertainment and the sexier it was the better it would sell. The man can close a deal. Fox met the team owners with promises to overhaul the entire presentation of the game, from doubling cameras on the field up 12 to heightened audio to create a more dynamic atmosphere for the viewers at home. Why only six months of football when there are twelve months in a year? He promised to promote the NFL relentlessly to make it the star feature of his network. The owners were intrigued. But there was the issue of Fox’s weak affiliate reach.

The second consequential event that changed everything was the 1994–1996 United States broadcast television realignment. The relevant part of which is that a few months later Murdoch was able to purchase a 20% stake in New World Communications and add the critical affiliate markets he was missing, he and Ron Perlman, the owner of New World, had been talking for months. Murdoch felt the CBS package was within his grasp, but he needed to scare Tisch away from the table. He did this by offering a whopping $1.6 billion for four years for the NFC rights or $400 million a year. Larry Tisch who had just grudgingly agreed to up his number to $300 million was stunned. He’d been outbid for something he didn’t even realize he’d have to fight to keep in the first place. For whatever the reason, he couldn’t or wouldn’t counter and CBS lost.

After 38 years, CBS lost the NFL to Fox. Corporate deals rarely stray from the business section of the paper, but this upset just exploded all over everything. Football is family and people were practically in hysterics wailing “Bart Simpson is going to be doing the NFL!” Joe Buck recalls. Greg Gumbel and John Madden commentated on the last game with CBS in a cloud of despair, commiserating with colleagues about the end of an era they’d assumed had no end.

Meanwhile over at Fox the Aussies were speechless. They, the upstart up-the-dial smart-ass adult cartoon network were now the home of America’s most beloved and hallowed pastime, a game they had virtually no understanding of. Not only were they clueless, they needed to create an entire multi-city infrastructure of out thin air not to mention an aura of credibility asap or they’d have no advertisers or viewers. 

There was one man, larger than life, almost larger than the game itself, a mythic brilliant everyman analyst who was synonymous with football and would bring the sport with him to Fox ; CBS’s John Madden. Murdoch offered him the moon and he took it. With Madden on board, other people and pieces more or less fell into place. 

NFL football was soon permanently reordered through a lens of telegenic entertainment. Pregame shows went from a dry thirty minute rundown to a five hour bro-tainment extravaganza. Everything became flashier, more personal, more fun to watch, more exciting to be a part of. Stadiums got more elaborate, uniforms got jazzier, the rules changed, everything changed. And so it is today.

Twenty seven years ago an extraordinary bet by a virtually unknown foreigner on a sport he never watched created what we now take for granted. Did Fox Sports do what Murdoch envisioned? Undoubtedly. Fox became a household name and advertisers flooded in, enabling him to turn his attention to building his empire worth tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars.

Murdoch had the prescience to understand that to dominate the American television industry, he needed to win over American hearts. He created a space where Americans are most at ease, where they could be at home all day on Sundays with the family or out at the bar with their buddies. A place they could grow up and grow old together. A place they would never leave. What better way to accomplish this than with football. Our devotion to sports and particularly NFL football is at the core of our modern life from coast to coast. This evil genius got what Ted Turner never got. Fox became the “most watched most trusted” media brand in the country. Fox Broadcasting Company is many things; The Simpsons, American Idol, The FX, Nat Geo, Fox Business are all part of the zeitgeist of American pop culture. But then there is Fox News.

Fox News, what it represents, the horrific damage it has done to this country is inseparable from Fox Broadcasting is inseparable from Rupert Murdoch. And there would be no Fox News without Fox Sports. Fox Sports brought the eyes and the cash. Fox News and NFL football are welded together. 

Why did I write this piece? First, I love football and the Super Bowl, starting with Super Bowl lll- a day indelibly etched in my mind. (I have a separate little piece about Tabatchnick’s deli relating to that). Regarding the Fox/ NFL story? There’s nothing like a “the moment that changed everything” kind of tale. Also, I think it’s important, for fellow football fans especially, to be aware of it. Not to be a bummer, but to be reminded that the influence of powerful people is very long, it reaches into things we trust, love, and rely on, not just Facebook, Amazon, and Mein Pillow. Three men in the United States have wielded diabolical power for decades, Mitch McConnell, Charles Koch and Rupert Murdoch. This is Murdoch’s story, or part of it. Why he, or any of them have systematically destroyed this country is the big question. For me, Murdoch is the anomaly, he’s in the entertainment business for christsake. How could he so good at it and such a bad person. Honestly, I don’t get it. There is no way for the NFL to divorce itself from Fox now (is there?). I don’t think they ever would. Even after the January 6th insurrection. Though it can’t hurt to ask.

Football has come under attack and/or scrutiny for many things, sexism, brain trauma, cheating (ahem Tom Brady), racism, Colin Kaepernick. It has a lot to answer for. And some of these issues are being addressed. Some. Today is the big game. Yay! I have my favorite snacks all ready. I hope it’s a great game with no serious injury, I hope Dr Rick from Progressive has a new ad and I hope my team (Kansas City) wins. And I’m glad it won’t be on Fox, in fact it’s on CBS.  

To write this, I relied heavily on Wiki pages and primarily this article. https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2018/12/13/18137938/nfl-fox-deal-rupert-murdoch-1993-john-madden-terry-bradshaw-howie-long-jimmy-johnson-cbs-nbc