Fox Sports 1 went live early this morning and has been getting talked about pretty extensively on social media. But Awful Announcing posted this video of the moments where Speed ended and Fox Sports 1 launched. All things considered, it went pretty smoothly.
There have been some hiccups this morning, mostly revolving around narrow black bars on the side of the picture. Some have talked about the bars being larger or a bigger inconvenience than I have experienced on my DirecTV feed. They are occasionally there, but the network says they are addressing them for everyone. So even this minor issue is likely only very short term.
Brian Stann has also already made an appearance, discussing ACC football on FS1’s NCAA preview show. Stann’s delivery was a touch stiff, but better than I expected considering his lack of experience professionally talking about college football.
UFC programming is running over on Fox Sports 2, with UFC Unleashed playing this a.m.
They have ran a lot of ads for tonight’s UFC card as well as the new Monday Night Fights boxing cards thus far.
Anyway, we’ll see how FS1’s live programming looks later tonight when UFC Fight Night: Sonnen vs Shogun goes down. Also, how much play the UFC event gets on the first ever edition of Fox Sports Live at 11 p.m. ET.
Update: Fantastic Finishes — a show focusing on legendary endings to sporting events — just aired highlights and the end of Chael Sonnen’s first fight with Anderson Silva. It’s a little funny that the first actual UFC footage on the network is tonight’s headliner tanking it in the final moments of a fight he had in the bag. But, at the same time, this is part of what FS1 means for the UFC. On general sports shows like this, you never saw MMA featured on ESPN or wherever.