Subscribe to Television News Daily Fox Offers 10 New Shows For 2019-'20, Sports Remain Key by Wayne Friedman , Yesterday
The Fox broadcast network, now part of a smaller overall TV company, will get a big entertainment revamp this season: four new comedies and six dramas.
But sports and sport-related programming still command a major part of the Fox brand.
Starting this fall -- three of the 10 new shows will get their launch -- including its “WWE Smackdown Live” series, which will air on Friday, in Fox’s entire two-hour prime-time slot that night.
Fox believes the series can be a marketing tool when it comes to promoting other entertainment series in its lineup -- especially co-family viewing, according to Eric Shanks, CEO-executive producer, Fox Sports.
“When families are watching together, that’s more of an opportunity to help create circulation for the rest of the week,” he said, during a press conference before Fox’s upfront presentation on Monday.
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Add “Smackdown” to “Thursday Night Football," and its NFL programming on Sunday -- as well as Fox’s animated prime-time comedies. This produces a key four-day concentration for marketing and programming. “It is amazingly important for Fox to bring families together from Thursday through Sunday,” he added.
A year ago, Fox made ratings improvements in the fall for prime time, with the exclusive airing of the whole “Thursday Night Football” series -- 11 games -- as well as new reality TV show “The Masked Singer.” For much of this season, Fox has been recording higher ratings than the previous year, the only big TV network to do so.
Through May 5, Fox prime time is up 7% to a Nielsen 1.6 rating/7 share among 18-49 viewers (from a 1.5/6 a year ago) when looking at live program plus seven days of time-shifted viewing and live program same day for the most recent weeks. In total viewers, Fox is up 11% from 5 million to 5.56 million.
Fox had the highest share of any broadcast network of gross rating points -- 55% in 2018 -- coming from sports programming, according to MoffettNathanson Research. The NFL gives Fox a massive 42% in gross rating points when looking at its total viewers in Nielsen’s C3 measure, 157.8 million. Other sports: Major League Baseball contributes 7% (25.7 million) and NCAA Football, also 7% (24.5 million).
The network's efforts around sports -- the NFL, Major League Baseball, and other franchises -- raise questions about new TV revenue opportunities with legalized gambling in some states.
But Shanks, president of Fox Sports, doesn’t see efforts inserting specific gambling content into sports programming.
Concerning the NFL, he says: “Our pre-game shows on Saturday or Sunday are going to be reflective of what the viewer wants and that is not going to be heavy-handed when it comes to gambling.”
He adds: “In the near term, the revenue driver is engagement ... If you can raise the national rating for our NFL regular season by a tenth of a point, that’s probably more revenue in the next year or two than from [TV revenue around] sport waging.”
As has been previously reported, Shanks say for the upcoming Super Bowl there will fewer commercial breaks, “which will tighten up the inventory of the most valuable unit types -- the A’s and ‘Z’s.” Those spots are the first and last TV spots in a commercial pod.
Three new shows to start this fall include: “Prodigal Son,” a new crime drama in which the lead character is the son of a convicted serial killer. He's made hunting murderers his life’s work. It gets the 9 p.m. time slot on Monday. At 9 p.m. on Wednesday, “Not Just Me” is a family drama in which a father reveals to his daughter that, as a fertility doctor, he used his own sperm to conceive more than 100 children.
On Sunday, at 8:30 p.m. “Bless the Harts, an animated comedy, follows a Southern family that is always broke, and forever struggling to make ends meet. It features voices of Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph and Ike Barinholtz.
Other shows coming during the season include four dramas: “9-1-1: Lone Star,” an extension of Fox’s current “9-1-1” series about Los Angeles first responders. “Deputy,” a modern cop drama with “the spirit of a classic Western,” where a detective becomes a Los Angeles County sheriff.
“Filthy Rich” is a Southern Gothic family drama with some soap-opera side effects. And “neXt” is a “fact-based thriller” about some deadly, rogue artificial intelligence.
Three midseason comedies: “Duncanville,” an animated comedy focused around an average 15-year-old boy with a rich fantasy life; “Outmatched,” a live-action family comedy about a blue-collar couple in Atlantic City trying to raise four kids – three of whom just happen to be certified geniuses; “The Great North,” another animated comedy where a single dad tries to keep his kids close, especially his daughter and her artistic dreams.
FOX FALL 2019 SCHEDULE
