Their Formula Works for Fox

Two people usually preside over a network sports department. One is the chairman and/or president, who runs the business side, and the other is the executive producer, who handles production.

The chairman/president will say five cameras are enough to cover an event; the executive producer will ask for 10.

At Fox -- the big network, not the cable offshoot -- things are a little different. David Hill, 57, is the chairman, and Ed Goren, 59, is the president-executive producer.

They could be one and the same.

“You cut David open and you’ll find a producer inside,” says Scott Ackerson, the producer of Fox’s NFL pregame show.

No one has to cut Goren open. He is a producer through and through.

And he and Hill think so much alike, it is scary.

Wednesday marks the 10th anniversary of Fox’s wresting the NFC rights away from CBS. Hill and Goren recalled a significant story from the embryo days.

“The greatest thing that happened was that a certain coach [Jimmy Johnson] had an altercation and a falling-out with a certain owner” -- Jerry Jones, Hill said. “There was a press conference in Dallas announcing the divorce, and Ed looked at me and said, ‘I’m going to the airport.’

“I said, ‘Call me from Dallas tomorrow afternoon.’ ”

Goren, who went to Fox from CBS, explained how it probably would have worked at any other network.

“I wouldn’t have been told to call from Dallas,” he said. “I would have been told, ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ not without X number of meetings to discuss what you’re going to do, what you’re going to offer and how you’re going to use him.”

Anyway, Goren’s trip to Dallas turned out well, with Johnson being hired for the first of his two stints at Fox. And the network has been flying by the seat of its pants ever since.

Remembering Back

The lead headline in The Times’ sports section on Dec. 18, 1993, read: “Married ... With the NFL.” It was a takeoff on the Fox hit show, “Married ... With Children.”

The lead paragraph on our story: “NFL football without Pat Summerall and John Madden? Without Greg Gumbel and Terry Bradshaw?”

No one at the time knew that all but Gumbel would switch from CBS to Fox.

“My first reaction when I heard we lost the NFL to Fox was anger,” Bradshaw said this week. “I thought that the NFL had lost its mind going with Fox.

“I figured that CBS wasn’t in danger of losing out because of its strong relationship with the NFL. I was scared too because I figured I would also be out of a job. I thought Fox would want to develop its own talent.”

The Main Man

A key move for Fox was hiring Goren, who was well-liked and respected at CBS. Goren’s presence made it easy for many of those at CBS, some of whom worked in front of the camera and others who worked behind it, to go over to Fox.

But if one person has been the most responsible for Fox’s success over the last 10 years, and not just with football but with baseball, NASCAR and other sports as well, it is Hill.

He could be described as the Roone Arledge of his era, except he is a much nicer person. Hill returns phone calls and never big-times anybody. He is just a regular guy.

Hill is not a Harvard man, or a Stanford man. In fact, he never went to college.

A native of Australia whose father worked in open-hearth steel mills, Hill says, “I took a job at the Sydney Daily Telegraph about four hours after graduating from high school.”

At the time, he loved surfing -- and hated school. He didn’t care much for spectator sports either. But by the time he was 30, after he’d gone from the newspaper business to television, he was hired to start an Australian sports channel. With the success of that venture came a job in 1988 with Rupert Murdoch to launch two sports networks in London.

His many innovations, including putting a continuous on-screen clock on soccer telecasts, made him the ideal person to launch Fox Sports.

Under Hill’s reign, Fox has won 57 Emmy Awards, “more than any other single sports network, cable or broadcast,” the Fox press material says.

His greatest innovation was one of his first -- the continuous-score graphic on the screen. At first it was criticized and ridiculed. But Hill knew it would eventually be accepted. He had been through the same thing in London with the on-screen clock.

These days, it would be hard to imagine a sports telecast without a continuous-score graphic. It would be hard to imagine a lot of things without David Hill and Fox Sports.

Prep Football

It’s a big weekend for high school football. Channel 9 has the Southern Section Division I championship game tonight between Long Beach Poly and L.A. Loyola at the Home Depot Center in Carson. Derrin Horton, Solomon Wilcots and Steve Hartman are the announcers. Fox Sports Net has the much-anticipated Division II game between Mission Viejo and Newhall Hart on Saturday night, with Mike Lamb, John Jackson and Petros Papadakis announcing.

Recommended viewing: Some of the nation’s top prep quarterbacks will be featured in the second of a series, “EA Sports Elite 11,” to be shown Saturday at 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. on ESPN2. Part one was shown in November. The backdrop for the show is Andy Bark’s Elite 11 camp for quarterbacks held each July at San Juan Capistrano. The camp’s head coach is Mission Viejo’s Bob Johnson and counselors include David Carr and Carson Palmer. Mark Houska is the executive producer of the show.

Short Waves

ABC will televise the final two rounds of the Target World Challenge at Sherwood Country Club, featuring PGA Tour player of the year Tiger Woods and an impressive field.... NBC will televise two year-end golf specials, one Saturday at 12:30 p.m. and the other Sunday at 10:30 a.m.... San Diego’s Mighty 1090, which can be heard in L.A., has a new two-hour show Saturdays at 4 p.m., “Golfing Around,” with Charlie Jones, Jack Woods and Tom Addis.

Readers still seem confused about how to get the Tennis Channel. If you’re not an Adelphia, Altrio, Cox or Time Warner cable subscriber, you’re out of luck. And in most cases, the Tennis Channel is on a separate pay tier, meaning it is grouped with other sports channels.

Bill Romanowski has joined Fox as a game commentator for the final three weeks of the season. Sunday, he’ll be paired with Chris Myers at the Carolina-Arizona game.... Good guy Dick Enberg has teamed with Fran Benedict, the widow of longtime L.A. sports broadcaster and journalist Chuck Benedict, to start a student-aid fund through the Glendale Community Foundation. Details: (818) 241-8040.

Speaking of good guys, Dodger Spanish-language announcer Jaime Jarrin will be inducted into the Southern California Sports Broadcasters Hall of Fame on Feb. 2.... Angel Spanish-language announcer Jose Mota was a finalist for an English-language radio announcing job with the Texas Rangers but pulled out of the running because of his fondness for the Angels and Southern California. Mota is also co-host, along with Terry Smith, of the weekly “Angel Clubhouse” show on KSPN (710). The show usually airs on Monday or Tuesday at 7 p.m.... Bud Greenspan’s Salt Lake City Olympic film is now available on DVD and can be ordered through olyparks.com.

Tonight’s Laker game on Fox Sports Net is available to some Time Warner subscribers in high definition.... Charter has added Mark Cuban’s high-definition sports channel, HDNet, and his HDNet Movies.... Don King’s five-title-fight pay-per-view extravaganza Saturday at Atlantic City, N.J., will be available in HDTV through Voom, a division of Cablevision. King has put together a nine-man announcing team, including blow-by-blow announcers Barry Tompkins and Col. Bob Sheridan and host Jim Hill.