Fox Sports

Super Bowl winning coach Sean Payton and Fox Sports are deep in negotiations to make the former Saints head coach an NFL studio analyst. Payton would be on Fox NFL Kickoff, the network’s Sunday morning show, and would contribute to its top pregame show, Fox NFL Sunday, according to sources. Fox and Payton have discussed only studio positions, not a job as a game analyst. Fox’s lead analyst spot is vacant because Troy Aikman left for ESPN.

NASCAR delivered the most-watched race at Bristol Motor Speedway since 2016 on Sunday night when an average 4,007,000 viewers tuned in as the Cup Series raced on dirt for the second consecutive season.

While several spring football leagues have popped up in recent years, none have come close to packing the production-technology punch that is expected in USFL broadcasts. All games will be produced in 1080p HDR with many up-converted to 4K. Regardless of the quality of play on the field, one thing is for sure: the broadcast will look unlike any football game you’ve watched before. Above: Eight cameras have been mounted inside the stadium in Birmingham, Ala., to serve the optical tracking system that automatically measures first downs.

The USFL kicks off Saturday night in Birmingham, Ala., when the New Jersey Generals face the Birmingham Stallions. Fox and NBC Sports will each carry 22 games, including Saturday’s opener. It is the first time since the 2007 regular-season finale between the New England Patriots and New York Giants that a game will air on multiple broadcast networks. (WBRC photo)

On Friday, Davis was named Fox Sports’ lead baseball play-by-play announcer. Davis takes over for Joe Buck, who left Fox for ESPN’s Monday Night Football. Buck was Fox’s lead baseball announcer since the network started televising games in 1996, calling 24 World Series and 22 All-Star Games. Davis’ debut as Fox’s top voice will be May 28. He is already used to working with analysts John Smoltz and reporters Tom Verducci and Ken Rosenthal after doing some games with them last season after Buck cut back on regular-season games.

Kevin Burkhardt, who has been the Fox Sports host of the World Series and its No. 2 NFL play-by-player, will be named the No. 1 voice on Fox’s NFL games. Burkhardt and Fox are finalizing a new long-term contract, according to sources, that will make him the voice of the network’s Super Bowls.

On Friday, Fox granted Buck permission to speak with ESPN, according to sources. A deal is expected to come to fruition shortly. With Fox, Buck had one year and near $10 million remaining on his contract. Fox, though, is letting him out early as a gesture for his years of service to the company. He is expected to sign a contract in the five-year, $60 million-$75 million range with ESPN.

Fox has the Super Bowl next year, and it has already lost its top NFL game analyst, Troy Aikman, to ESPN. It is deciding whether it will allow the face of its network, Joe Buck, to follow Aikman and join Monday Night Football. And now, The Post has learned that Fox’s top NFL sideline reporter, Erin Andrews, will become a free agent shortly. Fox would like to keep her, according to sources.

An organization of owners and executives from the original United States Football League filed suit Monday in Los Angeles to block Fox Sports’ planned launch of a new version of the legacy league. Fox Sports’ USFL is scheduled to begin play April 16, with all eight teams using the same franchise names, logos and other materials associated with the original USFL, according to the lawsuit.

For the first time, Fox Corp. will hold a unified in-person upfront presentation that includes entertainment programming on the Fox broadcast network, as well as pitches for Fox Sports and Fox News, the company said Wednesday. The in-person presentation, set for May 16, will also depart from tradition (or at least pre-pandemic tradition) by leaving midtown Manhattan for lower Manhattan, holding the advertising pitch at an event space that used to be the trading floor for the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Executives from Fox Television Stations, Vice Media and Fox Sports distinguished temporary pandemic-driven production changes from those likelier to settle in for good in a panel at TVNewsCheck’s Television Production in a Changed World virtual conference last week.

Public cloud technology has moved into the realm of widespread broadcaster acceptance, discussions at this week’s Devoncroft Partners’ Executive Summit confirmed, although there’s wariness that legacy vendors can make the transition along with them. Labor shortages and supply chain problems also surfaced as major concerns.

Mark Evans will take over sports ad sales for Fox Corp. in a changing of the guard that will see Seth Winter, who has led that role for Fox in recent years, step down in February of next year. Evans has been named EVP of ad sales for Fox Sports and will report to Marianne Gambelli, president of ad sales for Fox Corp.

ESPN, Fox and other networks are ramping up their sports betting efforts.

After a 2020 “bubble” of neutral sites, the MLB returns to a more traditional postseason format this fall. Big onsite crews are back, vaxxed and masked, and they’re deploying new cameras and presentation graphics to give the games their sharpest look yet. Above, Fox’s Megalodon camera unit features a handheld mirrorless Sony camera with a shallow depth-of-field lens and a stabilizing gimbal rig that provides a very different up-close look of players.

With the addition of 10 live-streamed sports channels to the AVOD service, expect lots of cannibalization from pay TV networks as the game progresses.

The use of jam band music by Fox Sports during some Major League Baseball games has fans — and some band members —  lighting up social media. “It kind of became a thing,” says Joe Carpenter, the lead audio mixer for Fox Sports.

There’s a new purpose-built Major League Baseball field in Dyersville, Iowa, set to host the first MLB game ever in the state, on the farm where the 1989 movie Field of Dreams was shot. The game is on Thursday, Aug. 12, between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox with pre-game hoopla starting at 6 p.m. ET on Fox.

David Katz, EVP of digital at Fox Sports, will leave the Fox Corp. division this fall after three years. Katz is departing to “return to my entrepreneurial roots,” he wrote in a memo to Fox Sports staff Monday. He also will serve as non-executive chairman of ThePostGame, the digital sports content and marketing agency he founded in 2007 and previously ran before joining Fox Sports in September 2018.

Fox Sports says that it will be the broadcast partner for a reboot of the league set for spring 2022. Fox is also an equity investor in the USFL’s parent company, The Spring League. The football league, which was originally active from 1983 to 1985, counted future NFL stars Doug Flutie and Herschel Walker among its players.

In decades past, the networks’ sports departments were usually given just a sliver of the overall time in any upfront presentation. In 2021, Fox Sports is stepping out on its own. The Fox Corp. unit on Friday put on a separate presentation to advertisers, rather than just having Joe Buck take up a few seconds of the proceedings during the usual Monday-afternoon pitch devoted to the Fox broadcast network.

Sportscaster Dick Stockton, who called more than 1,500 games cross the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, as well as collegiate sports and two Olympics, is retiring after more than 55 years behind the microphone. Fox Sports, which has employed Stockton since the division launched in 1994, announced his retirement today.

Executives from Fox Sports and CBS Sports are among those predicting a sports production future with dramatically reduced onsite staff, greater operational efficiencies and cost savings, though with a fallout of job losses for mobile production personnel.

Networks, mobile truck companies and tech vendors agree the pandemic will impact HDR and UHD production through this year through a combination of equipment availability, complex new remote workflows and financial constraints.

Besides having to do all profiles virtually due to COVID-19 protocols, there has been keeping up with late-breaking news and trying to hold the usual lively debates while being socially distanced. Above, l-r: Charissa Thompson, Tony Gonzalez, and Michael Vick discuss NFL topics on the set of Fox NFL Kickoff during a 2019 show.

In a different era, the sportscasterer winding down after a long night of calling balls, strikes, first downs, field goals or what have you might be eager to get to the bar. Joe Buck of Fox Sports yearns merely for a steaming bowl of chicken noodle or creamy tomato. Buck’s head is no doubt crammed with baseball stats and football maneuvers, but he has reason these days to keep a little space in his mind for the condition of his throat. His current Fox Sports schedule may have him talking to fans for 17 of 18 consecutive days.

New remote production techniques, distributed workflows and onsite safety protocols have dramatically reshaped sports production. As COVID-19 continues to be a threat, sports producers can expect less travel, trucks staying in place and a slowdown of UHD production until the crisis abates.