The new lineup, which launches April 2, will ring down the curtain on FSN's original master plan, beginning with the hiring of Keith Olbermann and Chris Myers in late 1998, to go mano a mano with ESPN's SportsCenter for national news supremacy. The regional shows now are clearly the network's primary focus. This all makes sense. Regional sports will begin at 10 p.m. nightly, or immediately after the conclusion of NBA, NHL or baseball games.
News is certainly a major piece of that.
The one-hour news block is a fairly good representation of our network as the best of both worlds, as a hybrid of good national and local programming. Now when we come out of a local game with a local program, we have the best chance to retain our local audience that we built up with that home team game. Dolgin disagreed enthusiastically with the suggestion that the reduction from two hours of national news to a half-hour per night represents a retreat on the part of the network. He said the combined news desk is churning out more news programming than ever. The amount of news has not changed.