Speaker Presentation Response Papers - Assignment Example

He was very effective in his explanation of his career graph and explained how he tasted the cable television business at different places moving from Portland to Miami to Phoenix to Houston to Washington DC in an eight year period. In this time period he enjoyed various posts such as regional manager for marketing, sales manager etc. According to Bob Thomson, “He got a good taste of Cable television world over through this”. He steadily progressed throughout his career and by 1998 he was made the Vice President of Fox Sports International.

According to Bob Thomson, Fox Sports International at that point in time comprised of various channels across the US such as Fox Soccer, a Spanish service for Fox as well as channels in Latin America, Central America, Middle East and Eastern Europe. Under his leadership, they had also started selling FOX rights to people throughout the world. These were some of the biggest milestones in his career. He was made the CEO in 1999 and President of FOX Sports Network by 2000. He got tired by 2009 and he retired.

Bob Thomson managed to make the audience stifle some giggles as he spoke about his retirement in 2009. He maintains that he still does some work for FOX sports, for Direct TV cable networks and Yes TV. When Thomson had left the company the operating profit was 1.1 billion dollars and the revenue was 3.2 billion dollar and has a net worth of 18 billion dollars today. How Sports changed over the years? Thomson moved on to explain how TV has changed over the years. He began with the time of World War II.

At that point, sports was being broadcasted by one or two channels only—CBS and Dumont. Sports was being used as a means to propogate the selling of TV sets back then but today Thomson explained, it is used as a means to sell subscriptions world over. Thomson was very sound on his knowledge as he drew comparisons between what happened then and what happened today. Back then, he explained most of the shooting would take place in the sun as there would not be enough lights at night. The cameras used to be big.

Thomson said they are big today but they were even more big at that point in time. The sets were nonexistent and there was non concept of rights then. Thomson raised a very valid statistic regarding how back then the total no of TV sets in United States were only 10 billion while today there are as many as 110 billion TV sets. This in my opinion raises a very valid point regarding the growing integration of TV world over. 1960s and 1970s: The 1960s and 1970s as explained by Bob Thomson, I feel were a very important era in the world of Sports Television.

He termed this era as the start of “explosion of sports programming”. A very important point of this era, I felt was the growing commercial nature of advertising. By the 1960s, there was no longer one sponsor but multiple sponsors were called in. This was to capitalize on advertising revenew. Advertisers sought to target 19-54 male population through these sports channels. The challenges that arose: By 1980, the real challenges for Sports TV started emerging. This was when niche channels and non sports programming channels, started taking viewership away from mainstream networks.

This was a very crucial period in Sports TV programming. Traditional sports sponsors began moving their advertising dollars into other areas as networks tried to raise advertising rates. An important point raised by Thomson was the importance of