Fox Sports 1 sets early schedule amidst hints of a Fox Sports 2

Fox Sports 1 arrives in 17 days, and hopes to make noise in the world of sports television. As we go on in August, I’ll have a lot more coming on the launch of the new FS1. For now, they’ve laid out their initial couple weeks of programming. You can read it here, but let’s scour through it to see what looks interesting.

Fox Sports 1’s first live broadcast day is largely what they told us it would be earlier in the year when the network got announced in New York City. A lot of NASCAR, a lot of UFC. However, there’s also the premiere of Fox Sports Live (which, for one Saturday night only, will be a preview of the show you’ll typically see Monday-Friday), a college football show, as well as a show called Fox Sports 1 on 1. The latter two were previously unannounced. It’ll be interesting to see what Americans tune into more on that first morning: a new network with NASCAR practice, or NBCSN’s new Premier League package.

Day two on Sunday is mostly the same, with motorsports and mixed martial arts sharing the stage yet again. Things really kick into gear on Monday. That’s when Fox premieres their new soccer show (Fox Soccer Daily), a half-hour NASCAR show to continue the transition from SPEED (NASCAR Race Hub), and two more hour-long studio shows. The first, Crowd Goes Wild (though we’ve seen it written Crowd Goes W!ld, which, ugh) stars Regis Philbin. The second, Fox Football Daily, stars the usual lovable characters from Fox’s NFL coverage. Fox caps it off with their first boxing night via their partnership with Golden Boy.

Tuesday, Aug. 20, is largely a soccer day, with UEFA Champions League playoffs and CONCACAF Champions League action (stuff that would have, in the past, aired on Fox Soccer). A similar pattern of studio shows (there’s apparently a weekend edition of Crowd Goes Wild), UFC, soccer and NASCAR continues for another week or so, with a high school football game mixed in.

FS1 really starts to mean business on Thursday, Aug. 29, when college football returns. FS1 has five college football games between Aug. 29-31. Also, their Fox College Saturday program premieres on Aug. 31. The best of FS1’s football slate is a late-night, 10 p.m. ET showdown between Boise State and Washington. Overall, Fox has a fairly decent slate to start off with, but it’ll obviously be something to watch over a long period of time.

Meanwhile, Fox Sports 1 may not be the only new sports network making its debut on Aug. 17. In fact, it may not be the only one to launch with the Fox brand on it. According to a report by Sports Business Journal, cable and satellite providers have been told to prepare for the long-suspected but mostly kept under wraps Fox Sports 2 to debut on the same date as FS1. FS2 will be what was previously known as Fuel TV.