Fox Sports’ national networks, Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports 2, will debut on Aug. 17 in what the parent company is calling “the biggest sports cable network launch in history, and one of the largest network launches ever.”

But it might not have happened at all if Fox Sports had not been outbid by ESPN in 2008 for the rights to college football’s Bowl Championship Series.

“Losing the rights to the BCS to ESPN was a wake-up call for us,” said Michael Mulvihill, SVP of programming and research for Fox Sports. “When that happened, we knew we were living on borrowed time.”

According to Mulvihill, Fox executives took the loss of the prestigious BCS hard. They sat down and viewed the entire sports landscape from a rights perspective and saw that many other deals would soon be available.

“It was now or never,” said Mulvihill. “There were a lot of broadcast rights coming up that we knew would be [signed] for 10, 12, 15 years. We didn’t want to be left out in the cold.”

With the distribution deals unveiled on Wednesday with Time Warner Cable, DirecTV and Dish, Fox Sports 1 is expected to reach 90 million homes and will have 5,000 hours of programming. There will be about 900 live events in the first year and news shows filling half the day, according to Mulvihill, who was part of a Fox Sports 1 panel at the Cynopsis Sports Business Summit in New York on Wednesday. The rest of the air time will feature original and studio programs, including “Crowd Goes Wild” hosted by Regis Philbin.

Fox is seeking not to make the same BCS mistake twice. Fox Sports late last year renewed its deal with NASCAR for eight years, then this month extended the alliance for two more years, through 2024, and added three more Sprint Cup races and 14 more Nationwide Series events to its overall package.

Also this month, Fox Sports signed a 12-year deal with the U.S. Golf Association that begins in 2015, a five-year deal with the International Motor Sports Association beginning this year, a multi-year deal with FIA Formula E Championship racing beginning in 2014 and a multi-year alliance with The Jockey Club for a thoroughbred racing series, also beginning next year.

Key Fox Sports 1 programming will include MLB, NFL pre- and post-game shows, global soccer, boxing, UFC, horse racing, college hoops and college football, although not any BCS games.

“We are programming two types of shows for every type of fan,” said Mulvihill, “male, female; urban, rural; devoted and casual. There are 8,760 hours in a year, and you appreciate that number when you have to fill programming 24/7.”

As for the BCS loss to ESPN in 2008 and the upcoming battle for viewers, Mulvihill commented, “We like to think that we have established ourselves as a strong competitor. ESPN doesn’t have to lose for us to win.”

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