The National Sports Report

The ''National Sports Report'' is a sportscast that aired on United States television channel Fox Sports Net.

Brief history

The program premiered on November 1, 1996, when FSN was launched, as ''Fox Sports News''. The show, which succeeded the Prime Network's ''Press Box'', aired twice a night, at 6 and 10 p.m (the 10 p.m. edition was later referred to as ''Fox Sports News Primetime''), and also aired in the mornings from 6 to 9 a.m. It was the national network's equivalent to ''SportsCenter''. The tagline leading into all commercial breaks for the first year or so was "''Fox Sports News'' rolls on." The show was originally broadcast from Stage 2 of the original Fox Television Center in Los Angeles, before relocating to Stage 2B of the Fox Network Center at the Fox Studio Lot in LA's Century City district. For a time, ''Fox Sports News Primetime Newsbreaks'' aired on then-sister network FX (which at the time was co-owned by Liberty Media along with many of the FSN affiliates).

By 2000, the show was renamed to the ''National Sports Report'' and the shows were cut to a half-hour each. The Sunday night program was briefly renamed ''The Keith Olbermann Evening News''. The hour-long show was anchored by Olbermann, the former ESPN sportscaster, with Alex Flanagan as a reporter.

Kevin Frazier (now at ''Entertainment Tonight'') was famous for refusing to say the name of tennis phenom Anna Kournikova on-air because she had never won a singles tournament. Instead, he used nicknames like "Miss Thang" or " From Russia With Love" (as in the James Bond movie). Frazier wanted to make a point that she was overrated and received too much publicity for her lack of talent.

On April 1, 2001, Olbermann reported that Michael Jordan had decided to come out of retirement and return to NBA basketball with the Washington Wizards. Although the story was presented as an April Fool's joke, Jordan would sign with the Wizards the following September.

The set and anchors of the ''NSR'' also appeared on another Fox production, the short-lived sitcom ''Inside Schwartz'', analyzing the decisions of the lead character.

Regional sports reports

Beginning in the summer of 2000, many markets paired the ''NSR'' with a ''Regional Sports Report''; to facilitate easy transfer of stories and footage between FSN and their affiliates, a series of interconnected bureaus were set up at many of the FSN affiliates, with some handling the production of more than one regional report:
*New York: New York
*Boston: New England
*Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh, Midwest
*Atlanta: Southern, Arizona
*Dallas: Southwest
*Chicago: Chicago, Bay Area, and Ohio
*Denver: Rocky Mountain
*Los Angeles: Southern California, Minnesota
*Seattle: Northwest, Detroit

The ''Southwest Sports Report'' was originally broadcast from two studios, with the other in Houston. This occurred because co-host Spencer Tillman apparently did not want to uproot his family from Houston.

Cancellation

In 2002, the ''NSR'' was cancelled outright due to declining ratings; FSN opted to instead air two-and-a-half minute news capsules, twice an hour, during primetime programming on nights that did not have live sporting events (beginning at 5:30 PM and continuing to 2:00 AM), as well as four newsbreaks per hour during ''The Best Damn Sports Show Period'', which by this time had become FSN's flagship show. FSN would not "replace" the show until ''FSN Final Score'' debuted on July 3, 2006.

None of the regional reports exist today, or hardly resemble the original report format. In 2002, Cablevision, which owned several FSN affiliates at the time, removed them from the networks they owned at the time, including New York (now still owned by Cablevision as MSG Plus), Chicago (now defunct), Bay Area (now owned by Comcast as Comcast SportsNet Bay Area), and Ohio (now owned by Fox Sports Group directly) reports from the air. The ''New England Sports Report'' remains as a talk show called ''New England Sports Tonight'', later renamed to ''Boston Sports Tonight'', since Comcast's acquisition of the network as Comcast SportsNet New England, though a separate news program called ''SportsNet Central'' has since launched. In many of the remaining markets, it has been replaced by ''FSN Live'', though in most cases this show is exclusively a team post-game show rather than a regular program, with the team name replacing ''FSN''; news tickers mostly fulfill the news role for most FSN networks, along with promotions since 2013 guiding viewers to sister network Fox Sports 1's national sports news show (and direct successor to ''NSR''), ''Fox Sports Live'' (which has also been cancelled as of 2017).

Anchors

* Lionel Bienvienu
* Kevin Frazier
* Kevin Garcia
* Brad Goode
* Suzy Kolber
* Steve Lyons
* Alan Massengale
* Chris Myers
* Keith Olbermann
* Chris Rose
* Lauren Sanchez
* Randy Sparage
* John Wall
* Van Earl Wright
* Jeanne Zelasko

References

{{Reflist

Fox Sports Networks original programming
1996 American television series debuts
2002 American television series endings
American sports television series