With Fox Sports 1 launching Saturday, here is a scouting report for one of its signature shows.

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Fox Football Daily

When: Weeknights at 6 p.m. ET.  Fox NFL Kickoff premieres Sunday, Sept. 8, and airs from 11:00 AM-12:00 PM ET every Sunday morning during the NFL season.

Cast: Host Curt Menefee, NFL insider Jay Glazer, Brian Urlacher, Randy Moss, Ronde Barber, Scott Fujita, Mike Pereira, Joel Klatt. Also, Fox’s big guns, Terry Bradshaw, etc., will make appearances.

Competition: The myriad of NFL daily shows elsewhere.

Concept: This line from Fox says it all: “Fox Football Daily covers the NFL and college football in a live, fast-paced show combining up-to-the-minute news, highlights, features and analysis presented in Fox NFL Sunday’s signature “info-tainment” style.”

Info-tainment? In other words, Fox’s version is likely to be looser and more free-wheeling than the other football shows. Check out the video.

Fox also is banking on its high-profile analysts to attract viewers.

“Great players step off the playing field every year, but I’m confident in saying that no network has ever been able to add four former players of this caliber at one time as Fox Sports 1 has,” said Fox Sports 1 executive producer John Entz. “Add the names Urlacher, Moss, Barber and Fujita to Bradshaw, Long, Johnson, Strahan, Aikman, Lynch and our many other top-flight football analysts and it’s easy to see our quality and depth.”

Wildcard: Randy Moss. He’s outspoken, and there is a lot of potential for him to be good here. However, as he was as a player, there’s always an element of uncertainty with Moss. Will he make the necessary commitment to make this work? You can’t just show up and expect to be good on TV too.

What could possibly go wrong? Besides Moss, you have other first-timers as analysts in Barber, Urlacher, and Fujita. Will they be any good? Will they be able to critique players who were their teammates? More importantly, will they have something to say?

TV is littered with many big name stars who came up woefully short as analysts. The goal is for these guys to avoid adding their names to the list.

Prognosis: Of all of Fox Sports 1’s new shows, this one appears to have the most potential to work. Menefee is a pro, and the analysts will have appeal. A key guy is Glazer. Given his relationships with the former players turned analysts (especially Urlacher), he could be a glue to the show, bringing out the best in them.

My latest column for the National Sports Journalism Center site at Indiana looks at the long-range prospects for the new Fox Sports 1.

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You know this is coming.

The new Fox Sports 1 launches Saturday. Within weeks, maybe even days, there will be stories evaluating ratings from the new sports network compared to the industry giant, ESPN. In some circles, there will be a daily tick-tock, much like following the scoreboard at a basketball game.

Barring some huge upset, Fox Sports 1′s rating will be miniscule. Or at the very least, not even register when put side-by-side with ESPN. Then, boom, there will be the inevitable headlines proclaiming Fox’s new network a complete failure. Maybe even an epic disaster, given all the hype for the launch.

And that would be a mistake.

You need to be looking through a big picture when you evaluate the new Fox Sports 1. As in the biggest window you can imagine.

For all the talk about 2013, the larger view for the new Fox Sports 1 is more about 2023. Make no mistake, despite all the programming that is launching now, the new sports network is a long-term play for Fox.

“I’ve always said our success is going to be judged by years, not days and months,” said Bill Wanger, the executive vice-president for programming for Fox and Fox Sports 1. “Quite frankly, our ratings are going to be pretty small in the beginning. All new networks start out small. It takes a while for people to get used to the channel. So we have no illusions of coming out of the gate and being a behemoth. We’re in for the long haul.”

Wanger noted that it took Fox 13 years to become number one among the networks. But this is the point: Fox got to the top in network television.

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Fox Sports 1, though, snapped up one of those nice houses last week. It paid big money (a reported $1.2 billion over 12 years) to secure the rights to the U.S. Open and other United States Golf Association events, beginning in 2015.

Wanger said the move wasn’t meant as an opening statement, although you could have fooled people in the industry.  It seems like a pretty good indicator that Fox Sports 1 is going to be a major player.

Fox doesn’t get those rights if it doesn’t have a Fox Sports 1. Hence the need to create the new network.

“We realized that to be competitive in future rights negotiations for premiere packages, we needed a fully distributed and highly rated national cable sports channel to be successful,” said Eric Shanks, Fox Sports’ co-president and COO, told investors this week.

Next up are the rights to the NBA, with the league’s TV deals expiring in 2016. I’d be surprised if Fox Sports 1 doesn’t land part of that package. NBA games would elevate the new network to another level.

“The NBA is a big fish,” Wanger said. “We’re going to be aggressive for those rights.”

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And there’s more.

With Fox Sports 1 launching Saturday, here is a scouting report for one of its signature shows.

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Crowd Goes W!ld

When: Weekdays 5-6 p.m. ET.

Cast: Regis Philbin, Veteran Wall Street Journal sports columnist Jason Gay; professional tennis player turned comedian Michael Kosta; four-time Pro Bowl defensive end Trevor Pryce; Sky Sports host and news anchor Georgie Thompson; Guyism.com personality Katie Nolan.

Competition: Pardon The Interruption and Around the Horn on ESPN.

Concept: Given the eclectic cast, this has to be the sports version of The View.

From Rachel Cohen of the Associated Press:

Sports may be the theme, but in some ways “Crowd Goes Wild” won’t feel much different from Philbin’s old morning talk shows.

He’ll open up each edition of the Monday-through-Friday program with a commentary, and then later interview a guest — who could be an athlete or an actor. There will be debates on the hot sports topic of the moment, but Davies vows the conversations will be more nuanced than one person arguing the pro and another the con of the issue.

And while the NFL, of course, will be the most popular point of discussion, everyone involved promises talk about a broad range of sports. That will inevitably include tennis, a favorite of Philbin’s.

Even if the denizens on social media howl that no one cares about tennis, Davies is comfortable that the tone of the show will allow for a wider range of topics.

“We’re not a sports news show; we’re a sports entertainment show,” he said. “The standard for us: We’re not trying to set the agenda of what America are talking about on a daily basis. We’re frankly trying to be funny a lot of the time.”

Wildcard: Regis. Do you think?

I mean, the idea of building a new sports show around an 81-year-old man is pretty far out there. He then reinforced the age issue by forgetting the names of his new teammates during an appearance on Letterman.

Regis, though, is Regis. Fox Sports 1 hopes he will be an interesting and unpredictable host and not some wacky old uncle making wild statements. Come to think of it, maybe Fox Sports 1 would prefer the wacky old uncle thing.

What could possibly go wrong? Oh my goodness, where to begin?

Besides Regis going off on tangents about the glory days of Ara Parseghian at Notre Dame, there are a number of ways this show could come off the rails.

This format relies on chemistry more so than anything else. Will this somewhat weird collection of various parts (former player, sportswriter, two women, comedian) be able to come together as a team? There’s the potential that this show could be a yuk fest, with everyone trying to get in their funny lines in an effort to be the break-through personality.

If the producers add a laugh track, you know the show is in trouble.

Prognosis: There’s a feeling among sports media types that this show has the most potential to undergo an overhaul sooner than later. Again, it comes down to the chemistry issue and the Philbin factor.

Then again, this whole thing might work. Things actually stick when you throw them against the wall. You just never know.

In my latest Chicago Tribune column, I write about the biggest story of the year in sports media: The launch of Fox Sports 1 this week. You also can access the column via my Twitter feed.

From the column:

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Fox Sports 1 will make a strong debut, arguably pursuing a more ambitious agenda than NBC Sports Network and CBS Sports Network. It has a healthy menu of live content (college football and basketball, NASCAR, MLB games in 2014, the U.S. Open beginning 2015, World Cup in 2018, and a lot of UFC).

However, it goes beyond live programming. Fox Sports 1 also is developing its own studio shows to compete directly with ESPN. A new daily NFL program features former Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher, and at 81, Philbin will host the sports version of “The View.”

The centerpiece will be “Fox Sports Live” (daily at 10 p.m.), the network’s answer to “SportsCenter.” It will be a hybrid of anchors reporting news and highlights along with the panel-style debate that ESPN has made so popular. To give the show its own look, Fox imported Jay Onrait and Dan O’Toole, who formed an extremely popular and irreverent sports team in Canada. Think Olbermann-Dan Patrick in the ’90s.

Implied in all this is the message is that ESPN is old and stale while the new network is going to be fun and offer a fresh perspective.

“We have to be different. We have to be the alternative,” said Bill Wanger, the executive vice-president for programming for Fox and Fox Sports 1. “Otherwise, people won’t change the channel from ESPN to try Fox Sports 1. Sports isn’t the news of the day. Sports is fun. It is lighter. People see it as an escape and entertainment. We’re going to give people what they need. It’s going to be in the execution and the tone of how we do it that’s going to be different.”

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And then there was this from Wanger:

This is a long-term play for Fox Sports 1. For all its bravado about being the upstart daring to take on the ESPN giant, Fox Sports 1 is realistic about what will happen when it flips the switch on Saturday.

“I’ve always said our success is going to be judged by years, not days and months,” Wanger said. “Quite frankly, our ratings are going to be pretty small in the beginning. All new networks start out small. It takes a while for people to get used to the channel. So we have no illusions of coming out of the gate and being a behemoth. We’re in for the long haul.”

With Fox Sports 1 launching Saturday, here is a scouting report for one of its signature shows:

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Fox Sport Live

When: Every night at 11 p.m. ET, with refreshed editions airing at 12 a.m. ET and 1 a.m. ET.

Cast: Jay Onrait, Dan O’Toole, Charissa Thompson, Gary Payton, Donovan McNabb, Ephraim Salaam, Andy Roddick.

Competition: SportsCenter on ESPN, and the new Keith Olbermann sports talk show on ESPN2.

Concept: Eric Shanks, Fox Sports co-president, explains that it is essentially “two shows in one.”

“You have Jay and Dan at the update desk,” Shanks said. “You have Charissa, Gary, Donovan, Andy, Ephraim and other experts from other sports joining as needed. This show has a lot of different gears and that is why we want to make sure that we can go in a lot of different directions and actually add a bit of spontaneity to sports television. The beauty about sports, and why people watch it, is you never know what’s going to happen.”

Wildcards: Onrait and O’Toole were wildly popular in Canada. Fox Sports 1 hopes they will be wildly popular in the states, much like the must-watch team of Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick in the 90s.

In a Q/A with Steve Lepore of SB Nation, O’Toole said:

“When Fox approached us, we said, “We want to keep doing what we’re doing.” And to Fox’s credit, they said, “We basically want to pick up your show and move it to Los Angeles exactly as it is.” The biggest testament to that is that they wanted our producer to come as well, to sort of keep the structure of the show as similar as possible, just in a slightly more agreeable timeslot for us so we can go for drinks after the show [laughs].”

Big picture: How can Fox Sports 1 be different than SportsCenter, making viewers switch away from the long-time staple?

Scott Ackerson, Fox Sports executive vice-president for studio production: “What is not out there? What can we create that currently isn’t being done? That’s the approach that we took to the show…The foundation will be the amount of highlights that are done by Jay and Dan, but we also noticed that there wasn’t any type of opinion-based discussions in any of the late-night show. They were centered on around the next and rehashing the previous day.”

That’s where the panel comes in. Thompson will moderate with some significant star power in Roddick, Payton and McNabb.

Payton:  “I’m not just a basketball fan, I’m a sports fan.  We’re going to have a great time because we get along together, and we have a lot of insight of everything. We’re going to have fun.”

McNabb: “We believe the viewers and listeners want to hear Andy give his insight about basketball and football.  They want to hear Ephraim and I give our insights about basketball, track, NASCAR, etc. They want to hear something different instead of us just talking about our given sport because that’s easy. They want to hear our insight and see how deep and prepared we are to talk about all these given sports.  Its energy, excitement, little bit of laughter, some seriousness, but most importantly we’re being informative for everyone that’s watching.”

What could possibly go wrong? After hearing the word “fun” used repeatedly in the teleconference introducing the show, perhaps setting an all-time record, Tom Hoffarth of the Los Angeles Daily News wondered if Fox Sports Live would be a reincarnated version of  Best Damn Sports Show Period.

“We’re going to have fun,” Payton said.

“It’s the combination of being entertained, having fun, and not taking ourselves to seriously,” Thompson said.

“We went into this project to find people that we believe could speak intelligently on multiple topics, would be interesting, can be serious when they need to be serious but could have fun when they needed to have fun,” Ackerson said.

Get the idea? It’s going to be fun.

Fun, though, is a tricky proposition in TV. It can turn quickly into lame. And despite what McNabb says, I’m not so sure I want to hear his take on “basketball, NASCAR (really, Donovan?), and track. I want to hear him on football.

Obviously, with two formats and so many people, there’s the distinct possibility the show could feel disjointed. Pace will be at a premium here.

Also, what happens if the Canadian guys’ act doesn’t transfer over to the states? Given their track record up North, I like that Fox was willing to take the risk on a couple of unknowns here. But it is hardly a given that what plays in Toronto will play in LA.

Prognosis: I do give Fox Sports 1 credit for attempting to take on the SportsCenter powerhouse, something NBC SN and CBS Sports Network have declined to do. I’m intrigued by the Canadian guys (sorry, but quick way to identify them). However, I fear the panel concept could be plagued with potential pitfalls.

When it comes to studio shows, Fox nailed it with Fox NFL Sunday. Not so much with its MLB and college football shows.

Fox Sports 1 has a lot riding on Fox Sports Live. It will set the tone for the new network, giving it an early identity for better or worse.

This much is sure. It will be different. Now we’ll see if different works.

This makes a lot of sense.

Fox Sports already has offered Greg Norman, 58, the lead analyst’s job for its U.S. Open coverage.

Tim Rosaforte at Golfdigest.com reports that fellow Australian, David Hill of Fox, has to reached out to Norman.

“David Hill has reached out to me, we have spoken and yes, they have offered me the job,” Norman confirmed in an email sent from his home in Florida. “I am flattered to have been asked and I look forward to having discussions with my good friend (Hill) in the very near future.”

It would seem to be an ideal fit for Fox. The two-time major winner and Hall of Famer would has the resume required to sit in the 18th tower of a big event. He also isn’t shy about voicing his opinions on anything and everything. And if a player is choking down the stretch, well….

The arrangement also would work out perfectly for Norman, who likely isn’t interested in taking on a full schedule. Whether he would do the other USGA events that Fox will carry (U.S. Women’s Open, U.S. Senior, U.S. Amateur, among others) remains to be seen. However, this is 99 percent about the U.S. Open for Fox.

Landing Norman would be a good first move.