World Series: FS Southwest Tells Rangers’ Series Story

After losing to the San Francisco Giants in 2010, the Texas Rangers return to the Fall Classic for their second-straight shot at winning the club’s first World Championship.

Fox Sports Southwest, the Rangers’ television home during the regular season, will continue to follow the American League champions throughout the Series, with a focus on great storytelling. For the first time, the World Series will be broadcast on the parent company of both teams’ regional sports networks; Fox Sports Midwest airs St. Louis Cardinals’ regular-season contests.

For the World Series, Fox Sports Southwest will add a 30-minute pregame show and continue to televise a one-hour live postgame show.

“For the ALDS and the ALCS, we streamed the pregame show only,” said Mike Anastassiou, senior executive producer, Fox Sports Southwest. “The postgame shows that we’ve been doing have been on the linear channel since the beginning of our postseason coverage. For the World Series, we’re going to put the pregame on the linear channel as well.”

When the Rangers travel to St. Louis, they will be joined by a Fox Sports Southwest producer, Website correspondent, talent, and photographer. The remote crew will integrate live reports from Busch Stadium with the Fox Sports Southwest studio in Irving, TX, via uplink truck.

At home, the network will use four local loops already in place between the Irving studios and Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, sending individual camera feeds from the ballpark to the studio and cutting the show in the Irving control room.

Mark McLemore and John Rhadigan take postgame show on location.

Former Rangers third baseman and current Double A Frisco RoughRiders manager Steve Buechele will join former Rangers infielder Mark McLemore, John Rhadigan, Dana Larson, Emily Jones, Ric Renner, and FoxSportsSouthwest.com Rangers correspondent Anthony Andro for Fox Sports Southwest pre- and post-game coverage.

The linear-channel coverage will give fans the Rangers’ point of view, providing game highlights and player interviews and broadcasting Major League Baseball’s satellite feed of pre- and post-game press conferences.

The network plans to ramp up Rangers coverage on the digital side as well.

“We’ll be tweeting, posting on Facebook, engaging our viewers in the conversation,” Anastassiou says of the network’s commitment to social media. “We’ll answer tweets with our panelists from the studio and take some relevant comments and crawl those along the bottom of the screen.”

In addition, FoxSportsSouthwest.com will feature video of postgame press conferences, player interviews, and announcers commentary, and Andro’s daily reports and updates will be posted on the site. Because of the network’s college-football commitments, Game 3’s pregame show on Saturday Oct. 22 will exclusively stream online.

Throughout the Series, Fox Sports Southwest plans to continue delivering the same comprehensive coverage that Rangers fans expect, with the same opens, rejoins, bumps, and closes deployed all season modified slightly to include a World Series logo.

For the network, there was no need to drastically alter the broadcast philosophy if the regular-season formula worked.

“We’re producing everything in HD,” says Anastassiou, “and we’re just going to rely on our storytelling ability.”

If the Rangers win their first World Series in franchise history, Fox Sports Southwest will have one great story to tell.