Jim Martin master juggler - manages Fox Sports Net

Jim Martin likens his job to the carnival game "Mash the Mole," where you have to bring a big rubber mallet down on the head of the six or so plastic vermin as they rapidly, and randomly, pop out of little holes. To score well, you have to be fast and have a sense of how the moles work.

As the executive vp, head of business operations, Fox! Liberty Networks, Martin has a lot of moles to mash.

Martin handles the daily operations for Fox Sports Net, Fox/Liberty's group of regional sports networks, FX and other domestic Fox/Liberty interests such as Fox Sports World, Fox Sports Americas, Speedvision and Outdoor Life.

He oversees distribution, which means having a soup-to-nutsunderstanding of all 22 regional networks. He also has to deal with rights acquisitions, the area of cable television that is raising subscriber bills and lawmakers' interest in regulation. And if that isn't enough, he deals with team relations and directs Fox/Liberty's corporate transactions such as business investment and acquisitions. All this makes Martin's world far more complex than his peers at national networks. "There's not an overall box you can put it all into," says Martin.

One would expect a man with that many balls in the air to be electrically charged, perhaps manic. But Martin's slightly gruff voice rarely changes pitch. He affords himself a chuckle, but only a few, as if his reserve is limited.

Perhaps he is pacing himself,

Bob Thompson, executive vice president, rights acqusitions and regional network operations for Fox Sports Net, has worked with Martin since the early 1990s and has come t appreciate Martin's multitasking abilities. Thompson says Martin, in his present role as the transactions guy at FSN, also has a knack for negotiations. "He knows when to push an when to pull, but he also knows when to stop" in order to close a deal, says Thompson.

Martin now faces a marketplace where sports rights are going through the roof for both broadcasting and cable. While his network is not in the running for astronomical national rights, he sees rights to local sports going up as well. That's dangerous game to play as the Federal Communications Commission turns its eye to cable-bill bumps. What makes this ha news for the regionals is that historically they have not attracted advertising. A Kagan Media study commissioned early this year by the National Cable Television Association found the typical regional sports network gained less than 30 percent of its revenue from advertising. The vast majority of revenue for regional networks comes from license fees, a revenue stream that could easily be dammed by regulation.

Martin has to ensure that affiliate deals make business sense for his company in the face of rising costs without creating enemies at cable systems across the country and in Washington. "It's getting more expensive for us all the time, but having local teams, especially local collegiate and even scholastic teams, on our systems is really important," says one top 10 cable company programmer who requested anonymity.

Raised in Seward, Alaska, Martin graduated from the University of Wyoming with a degree in accounting, then got his lay degree from Notre Dame in 1980. His first media job was in 1990 as a corporate lawyer for Tele-Communications Inc., where he first started touching sports deals while handling mergers and acquisitions for the giant cable operator A year later, Mar tin attracted the attention of Peter Barton, the former head o TCI's Liberty Media and a notoriously aggressive contract negotiator, who offered him the job of vice president and COO.

"He rescued me from the legal profession," says Martin who spent the next four years working with Liberty Media's growing sports businesses.

In 1995 however, finding himself eager to work in the field Martin took the job of president of regional network opera ions for Liberty Sports. In his new gig, Martin managed Liberty's owned-and-operated Prime Sports regional networks and other regional channels owned by Liberty.

At that time regional sports networks were a jumble of various services with different ownership, programming, marketing and image. Uniting them had long been the goal of Barton, and TCI/Liberty had acquired 10 regionals that were being operated independently. Martin's job was to consolidate the regionals under one management.

In October 1995, Martin helped create Fox/Liberty Networks and in 1996 was named COO of the merged regional services managed by Fox. Less than a year later he was promoted to his present position. The next move was to create his network of networks. "There were two major players, us and Chuck Dolan at Rainbow, whom we had partnered with on two networks in Chicago and San Francisco," says Martin.

After several years of talks, Fox/Liberty and Cablevision in January agreed to reconfigure their existing regional sports networks under the Fox Sports Net name, which is equally owned by Cablevision's Rainbow Media and Fox/Liberty. The joint network presently serves almost 60 million subscribers across the country, up from just 22 million at the end of 1996.

"From a programming perspective this allows us to do a lot more than we could ever do as a bunch of maverick sports services," says Martin. "It gives usthe critical mass that will let us acquire the programming that will take us to the top level."

But beyond programming that attracts passionate viewership from regional fans, Martin knows that Fox Sports Net has to surround local games with quality national programming that will attract the size audience advertisers want to see from a national service.

Martin says the national network has yet to break even, but is close. The regional networks are profitable, and as an overall venture Fox Sports Net is beyond break-even.

"Margins are being squeezed because of the sports-rights situation, but it is already a positive venture for both partners," says Martin. Looking forward, Martin says the company needs to finish the consolidation of the regional business by bringing new markets into the fold and being open to further acquisitions of sports niche programming. He'll also have to deal with some competition in the form of ESPN. The national sports network has entered the regional game with an LA-based network.

While his job seems hectic, Martin says having to constantly put out fires in dozens of different markets while keeping an eye open for new acquisitions keeps his job fresh. "You have to have an instinct for what's happening," says Martin. Like knowing where the next mole is going to pop up.

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