News Corp. unveils long-anticipated Fox Sports cable channel

In the latest sign of how valuable the media industry considers sports programming, News Corp. unveiled plans for Fox Sports 1, a new national cable channel it hopes will eventually challenge Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN empire.

Scheduled to launch in mid-August in almost 90 million homes, the channel's initial lineup is to include NASCAR, college football and basketball, ultimate fighting and soccer. Next year, Fox Sports 1 is to add regular-season and postseason Major League Baseball to its lineup. Fox Sports is already eying rights to the National Basketball Assn. and is ready to pounce should the National Football League go forward with creating an additional package of games for cable. In an era when viewers have literally hundreds of networks to choose from and can use digital video recorders and video-on-demand as well as newer services such as Netflix to watch TV on their terms, sports has been seen as the one form of programming that can stand up to technology.