Networks Make Double Play of Historic Homers

Baseball history translated into a $6-million evening for Fox Broadcasting on Tuesday, as St. Louis’ Mark McGwire broke one of the most coveted records in sports--Roger Maris’ home run record. The network scrambled to rearrange its prime-time schedule and sell ad time on the game, which delivered on its history-making potential a little more than an hour into the game.

Meanwhile, ESPN, which aired McGwire’s record-tying game Monday also experienced a rating and sales spike over regular season baseball.

In addition to boosting ad revenue, the opportunity to broadcast McGwire’s record run has had another, potentially bigger benefit to Fox and ESPN. Both are part of larger entertainment conglomerates, and they can use the baseball games to promote other shows or products owned by their parent companies. The baseball audience is primarily men, which advertisers like because men are harder to reach through media buys than women.

The situation underscores the opportunities and challenges of the networks’ use of sports as a backbone to their programming. Enormous amounts of money are being spent: Fox, NBC and ESPN paid $1.7 billion over five years, beginning in 1996, for baseball TV rights, a fraction of the amount being spent on football.

In many cases, analysts say, the money spent for broadcast rights can’t be justified by ad rates. But sports programming can guarantee a particular audience and sometimes, for example as McGwire sought to break a heralded record, there are sudden benefits.

Fox and ESPN have been eyeing each other jealously as they take turns showing games. While it was in McGwire’s interest to hit home run number 62 as soon as possible, the channels hoped it would drag out a few more days. ESPN is set to air tonight’s St. Louis game.

St. Louis’ Saturday and Sunday games gave Fox the highest regular season ratings ever in its two years of airing baseball: Both attracted a 15 share, meaning 15% of households that had their TVs turned on watched the games.

Sources say Fox probably got about $100,000 for 30-second spots on Tuesday night’s game; the average number of ad “units” sold during a baseball game is 60.

The ad rate is roughly three times what Fox would normally get for a nationally televised regular season game on a Saturday afternoon, though it’s far smaller than the highly rated and younger-skewing “Monday Night Football,” for example. Those telecasts reportedly command upward of $350,000 per 30 seconds of ad time; huge prime-time hits such as NBC’s “ER” can command $500,000 for an ad.

Fox’s regular Tuesday night lineup isn’t in that league, though they probably would get more than $100,000 per spot on returning animated hit “King of the Hill,” which ended last season with a cliffhanger. Fox’s other shows originally scheduled for Tuesday were the new blue-collar comedy “Costello” and a one-hour special, “Guinness World Records.” Neither of those shows would have garnered top ad rates.

The “King” and “Costello” episodes will air in their regular times next week, still in advance of the launches of many network shows. The decision to preempt Fox’s prime-time lineup was made by executives at the end of Monday’s record-tying game, according to Fox Sports spokesman Vince Wladika.

Fox made the opposite call Saturday, when it chose not to run the St. Louis game live in Los Angeles and a number of other markets, and ran its regularly scheduled (and pre-sold to advertisers) cartoons.

Wladika said the decision to preempt Tuesday night’s programming was a no-brainer. “This is a game of national significance. It’s akin to seeing man walk on the moon for the first time.”

The competition over baseball broadcasts highlights the role that sports have come to play in the entertainment business. Both Fox and ESPN are part of giant media companies. News Corp.’s Fox is a sister company to the 20th Century Fox film studio; ESPN is owned by Walt Disney Co.

Fox--which recently used its newly acquired Dodger Stadium to promote its new show, “That ‘70s Show”--made the most of the prime-time preemption by promoting “King” and “Costello” during the game. One spot, for instance, had “King” star Hank Hill urging McGwire to hurry up and hit his record home run, so that “King” could start its season.