Joe Buck becomes the next big broadcasting domino
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His long-time NFL broadcast-booth partner has bolted Fox for ESPN. Will Joe Buck follow Troy Aikman?
That’s the next big domino to fall in this game of broadcast bingo. (Sorry to mix board-game metaphors. But, hey, that’s Life.) Buck has one year left on his contract with Fox. Via Andrew Marchand of the New York Post, Buck is making $11 million per year.
Marchand adds that “the expectation” is that Fox will let Buck listen to ESPN. Peter King suggests in his Football Morning in America column that Fox would indeed let Buck leave, given that the network wouldn’t want a lame duck in a job that consists of handling the top play-by-play spot for both football and baseball.
Buck has become an institution at Fox. He joined the network when it first got an NFL package in 1994, and he became the top play-by-play announcer after Pat Summerall retired to cap the 2001 season. Now, 20 years later, Buck could be saying see ya later to his long-time home.
Would Buck do it, or is he simply trying to get the best deal possible from Fox? The best way to get the best deal from Fox would be to create the impression he’s got one foot out the door. Still, he’d be giving up the ability to call two Super Bowls in the next three years; ESPN/ABC is still five years away from its return to the rotation.
Then there’s the size-of-audience factor. At Fox, Buck plays to many millions more than would hear and sometimes see him on ESPN, given the lingering realities of over-the-air broadcast TV versus cable.
At a time when the money for NFL in-booth broadcasters is going bonkos, maybe Fox is going to retreat to what it regards as sanity. On one hand, the market is what it is. On the other hand, no one is tuning in to any NFL game to hear a certain announcer. The game itself is the drawing card.
That said, having the right broadcasters gives big games the feel they deserve. For Fox, the question is how big will they go with money for Buck in order to keep him around — assuming he wants to stay.
