Not a surprise he’s leaving ten. There is nothing for him to do there.
Ten is a sporting desert. Nothing exclusive, barely any actual live sports that the masses watch. Disaster!
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All thanks to the management of the past, well done Murdoch and Co for that one. 
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Is Howie actually leaving Ten? As it’s not FTA. Although we know Foxtel don’t allow Eddie McGuire to do sport at Nine so safe to assume he is.
Loss for Ten, but echoing CMO, what do they really have. He gave Ten a great 15 years*.
*Earliest evidence I’ve seen of him at Ten was a Ten News Melbourne report from 2004 with Mal Walden and Jennifer Hansen.
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Andrew Symonds and Mark Howard join Fox Cricket’s new line up
Watch on Foxtel, start streaming today. Head to foxtel.com.au/sports
FOX SPORTS, on Foxtel, today announced one of Australia’s most all-round talented cricketers, Andrew Symonds , and popular sports presenter, Mark Howard , will join the network ahead of the launch of the revolutionary FOX CRICKET channel.
Led by Adam Gilchrist and Shane Warne , Symonds and Howard join Jessica Yates , Mel Jones , Michael Hussey , Brett Lee , Mark Waugh , Allan Border , Isa Guha , Kerry O’Keeffe , Michael Vaughan and Brendon Julian in the best commentary line-up assembled.
Affectionately known as “Roy”, Symonds said he’s excited to join the all new coverage as part of the biggest shake-up of Australian cricket broadcasting: “This is a breath of fresh of air for the game and I can’t wait to get stuck into the action this summer in what will be a new era for Australian cricket.
“I’m looking forward to this new challenge, I’ve caught up with my new commentary teammates at FOX CRICKET, and we will have fun while providing good insight and analysis while we illustrate the modern game”.
Howard believes the viewers will be the real winners, “I have seen what FOX SPORTS has been able to do with other sports by giving the fan at home exactly what they want, I feel honoured to be working besides the best cricket minds and personalities the game has to offer and I’m sure the Australian public will love all the new innovations for cricket, as well as our all-new commentary line up. Bring on the summer of cricket!”
FOX SPORTS Head of Television , Steve Crawley , said: “When we began building a team of commentators the first one we signed (Adam Gilchrist) said you’ve got to get Howie and Symmo on board and we already had their names pencilled in.
“We brought them together this week and it’s a blessing how well they get along – already they’re a team. The Fox Cricket team. And we’re ready to rip.”
As the new home of cricket, FOX Cricket, exclusively on Foxtel, will deliver more cricket to fans on more platforms starting this summer.
All men’s Test Matches, One-Day and T20 Internationals plus every game of the Big Bash League will be shown LIVE, ad break free during play and available to stream. Women’ cricket will receive unprecedented coverage with Women’s Internationals and 23 WBBL games LIVE.
Foxtel’s dedicated 4K channel (channel 444), which takes to the air in October, will bring cricket fans Foxtel in 4K just in time for the November 4, Australia v. South Africa, Cricket ODI, which will kick off Foxtel’s sports coverage in 4K, bringing the sights of the game to fans like they’ve never seen it before.
FOX SPORTS will broadcast the Prime Minister’s XI plus for the first time, fans can watch the Governor-General’s XI LIVE.
The JLT Sheffield Shield Final returns to TV and FOX SPORTS will show 13 JLT One-Day Cup matches along with the annual Allan Border Medal and Belinda Clark Award.
FOX SPORTS’ cricket coverage will include Australia’s Test and ODI Series against Pakistan beginning October in the UAE.
FOX SPORTS is exclusively available on Foxtel.
Wonder whether Howard will do anything else for Fox aside from cricket? Could easily see him being part of their motorsport or even AFL (if his Triple M commitments don’t prevent it) coverages in some form next year
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From Foxtel’s Customer Updates on their home page:
On Monday 17 September 2018, FOX SPORTS 501 will be rebranded to FOX CRICKET, a dedicated 24/7 cricket channel. FOX CRICKET will have every ball & every wicket of every Test Match, ODI, T20, BBL Match and Women’s International Match in Australia, ad-break free during play. Some of the FOX SPORTS 501 content and regular programming will be moved to the other FoxSports channels included in the Sports Pack.
I guess this means the new channel will be set to go for their first broadcast of the new deal, which is a JLT One-Day Cup match between WA and NSW from the WACA on 18 September!
Probably a good idea to select Fox Sports 501 as the home for Fox Cricket, since that channel is commonly available in a lot of the hotels and holiday accommodation places (well, at least those with the usually small selection of Pay TV channels in addition to local FTA services) that many people will be watching cricket on TV in over the Summer.
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Two things:
- Had a feeling that they would use 501 for Fox Cricket when they started scheduled live FFA Cup matches to air on 503. For context, 501 was the primary channel A-League last season.
- Unless Fox Sports More becomes a full time channel, Fox’s scheduling logjams are only going to get worse. It’s already an issue sometimes and with no mechanism to deal with them (eg: an online streaming service), there’ll be things not shown live which really should be
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Saturdays in February to April 2019 will be the first big test when Fox Sports has to cover AFL, NRL, Super Rugby, A-League, F1, tennis, golf, cricket and surfing on the same night.
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I stayed in 2 separate hotels last week (thanks Jetstar for canceling a flight) and they both had limited foxtel - but they both had fox sports one. Ironically the one i stayed at which was a stones throw from etihad didn’t even have fox footy.
they have used Main Event in the past for logjams as well - i remember a few years ago Fox8 went all simpsons over the school holidays - they showed WWE on main event
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They really need more sports channels for next year. There trying to cover to much sport as it is.
Can’t see it being an issue. They still got 4 Fox Sports Channels (503,505,506,507) and 5 if you include Fox Sports News.
Worst case they maybe can use FOX8 again for sports.
506 is almost 24/7 motorsport, the only time there is any other sports apart from motorsport on 506 is when all other channels are busy showing live sport.
When you actually look at they entire volume of sport and live sport that they are trying to cover (and its getting bigger) it just simply can’t fit into four channels, it will barley fit into that plus an extra two. An easy example is every saturday there will be two out of the four taken up straight away. four afl and super rugby. So if they wanted to cover any think extra there won’t be a lot of options left.
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Perhaps Fox Sports can use 502 and 504 (Fox League and Fox Footy) for general sport during the NRL/AFL off-season instead of showing replays of games and repeats of shows such as The Beep Test and Bounce.
There is still many Foxtel owned channels they can use. FOX8, Arena etc.
Problem is Fox wouldn’t want to be using those channels on a regular basis for ‘overflow’ content (which will happen if they don’t introduce another general sports channel)
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Just saw a fox cricket promo at the end the fox cricket logo was white on a blue swirled background
Looks different.