I’ve no idea what coin the Fox presenters, commentators and “journos” are on but I’d say they’d be on pretty good money compared to the average Joe. To my eyes and ears it’s like they are clearly making hay while the sun shines for every single last minute before they are put into hibernation. Some of them could stay there, permanently.
People like Matty Johns are easily on well into the mid 6 figure salary range.
And notice how several of the Fox League team had some connection with him, whether it was when he was previously at Ch9, or Triple M, Telegraph etc. As they say, it's not what you know; it's who you know
Fox cutting costs asap. We now have a daily show on in a morning and evening.
And now you're stuck with segments such as this:
Well...NRL360 ended last night. Hmmm...
Seriously, if the NRL lockdown goes on for months, Fox League (as well as Foxtel in general, since NRL fans comprise a large portion of Foxtel's overall subscriber base) is well and truly screwed....
there's only so much the Fox League presenters will be able to crap on about before the whole team and conversation becomes obsolete, and even the most diehard RL fans will eventually switch off whilst the profile League "personalities" such as Slothfield/Kent/Hooper etc. fade into insignificance and irrelevance (they think they're somebody when they are nobodies trying to get attention off the back of people who are already getting attention, that is the players who are the stars of the show). Not to mention, the majority of the presenters have the personality of a brick wall, or have close to zero media presenting skills, which comes across with the constantly stuttering, ummmming and ahhhing ad nauseum. It's a very boganish (a.k.a. pub talk) look that reflects poorly on the public image of the game.
Their programs simply serve no purpose nor context at all without any matches being played. It's a completely different scenario is this were the off-season (October-February), where filler content is used while the cricket season takes centre stage in Australia during that time of the year, and the league wouldn't be haemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars as the NRL season would've been completed (like the recent 2019/20 cricket season which pretty much finished just before COVID-19 cases started increasing exponentially. Only the final round of the Sheffield Shield, the Sheffield Shield final and 2 ODls of a useless New Zealand tour of Australia were canned, that would've been played in front of no more than 15-25% full stadiums maximum during the NRL season without the COVID-19 crisis. So, no major loss at all to Cricket Australia with those matches being scrapped).
However, with no other sporting comps taking place in the country and it's during their NRL footy season, I just don't see how Fox League can justify continuing to produce hours of "live discussion programs" over the next few months. There's only so many stories ex-players can tell and reminisce about from the good old days, so many jokes and stupid pranks they can share etc.
