Fox Sports has finally filled Jamie Horowitz’s position. Horowitz, the company’s former president of national networks, was
fired in July over sexual harassment allegations, with no immediate replacement named. Now, as per John Ourand of
Sports Business Journal, Fox has brought in Big Ten Network president Mark Silverman in that role. And, interestingly enough, Silverman will continue to oversee BTN (which is 51 per cent owned by Fox, 49 per cent owned by the conference, and operated by Fox) as well.
Here are more details
from Ourand’s piece:
Fox Sports hired Mark Silverman as President of National Networks, a position that has been open since July when the net fired Jamie Horowitz. Silverman, who currently is president of Big Ten Network, will have a bigger role than Horowitz, in that he will oversee all programming, production, marketing and digital for Fox Sports, FS1 and FS2.
Silverman will oversee all the live events and studio shows produced by those nets. Silverman, who was hired 11 years ago as BTN’s first and only president, will also continue to oversee that channel.
The “bigger role” comment appears to be mostly about live event production, as Horowitz seems to have held those other responsibilities. When he was hired
in April 2015, Fox said he would “oversee all programming, marketing and scheduling for Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports 2, reporting directly to [Fox Sports president Eric] Shanks.” However, John Entz was
simultaneously promoted to “president, production, and executive producer,” “responsible for all live event production, pre- and postgame coverage, as well as studio and technical operations.” And while Horowitz didn’t initially have control of digital, he
controversially took that department over between September 2016 and January 2017, eventually
firing all of Fox Sports’ writers and pivoting their website
to video clips from their debate shows. (Which
hasn’t gone well, to say the least.)