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What: “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel”

When: 10:30 tonight, HBO

Now appearing monthly, “Real Sports,” in this month’s edition, takes a look at the ESPN-Fox cable television rivalry in the featured segment. ESPN, which has been around for 20 years, likes to think there really isn’t much of a rivalry. Fox, meanwhile, has a different perspective.

Keith Olbermann, former anchor on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and now with Fox Sports Net’s “Fox Sports News,” says, “We want to win. There is now a competition where there wasn’t one two years ago.”

ESPN’s Dan Patrick says, “Fox wants there to be a war, they want to be noticed. I understand that logic; that’s never been our style.”

The two key figures in the rivalry are ESPN chairman Steve Bornstein and Fox Sports chief David Hill, and both were interviewed by “Real Sports.”

Maybe the key question posed by reporter Armen Keteyian to Hill is: “What is the much-ballyhooed Fox attitude?” Hill seemed perplexed. “I don’t know,” he told Keteyian. “It is. . . . if you say you’re cool, you’re not. . . . It’s just there.”

From Bornstein: “The less I acknowledge that, you know, that I put them in the same breath, the better I feel about it. I look at Fox as a bit of a mosquito. I have to deal with them occasionally. But again, my interest is not what my competitor is doing. My real interest is what we’re doing. Are we still the leader in sports television?”

To illustrate the rivalry, “Real Sports” points out that Fox spent $2 million to become a sponsor of the New York Yacht Club’s Young America, a favorite in the America’s Cup, an ESPN event. Fox can put its logos all over the sail and hull. Hill calls it a clever marketing ploy. Bornstein says, “It’ll never get on our air. We’ll win. It’s an ambush and it’s not going to work.”