The modern media landscape continues to shift from linear to digital. Many broadcast journalists who spent the majority of their careers communicating through television have migrated to streaming verticals, where audiences are younger and increasingly receptive to shorter forms of content.
But for Aaron West, the internet is the only storytelling platform he’s ever used. West, 32, is the co-host of Fox Sports’ FIFA Women’s World Cup Now show that will stream live on Twitter. He’ll be hosting the show alongside Karina LeBlanc, a goalkeeper who represented Canada at five different World Cups.
“I’ve never actually done linear TV, so the only thing I know is digital,” West said last week at Fox’s World Cup send-off event in Manhattan. “We’re using Twitter as kind of a character in the show. This will be the biggest platform I’ve had. It will be my little face out there for thousands, millions of people to see everyday.”
After playing four years of soccer at Davidson College, West started a blog about soccer. He then progressed to writing for other outlets, including Goal.com, a soccer news website owned by Perform Group. As he was sharing his articles and soccer analysis on Twitter, his account caught the eye of leadership at Fox Sports. In April 2016, he moved to Los Angeles to join Fox Sports’ digital team as a soccer writer.
“Twitter is how I got my first job at Fox. I was just writing, blogging, tweeting things about soccer constantly,” West recalled. “The VP of Fox Sports before was Mike Foss, he had seen my work on Twitter. Honestly, Twitter is where almost everything I have has come from. That’s my baby. It’s all come full circle.”
But in June 2017, Fox Sports shifted much of its content focus to video, and eliminated its writing staff. Though Twitter as a platform had helped to build West’s career in journalism, Fox’s staunch alliance to chasing video views on social media sites then helped fuel his termination just 14 months after he arrived in LA. Editorial staff at media publishers across the country fell victim to the same trend. Foss, who helped hire West at Fox Sports, was also let go. (He’s now a senior director at ESPN.)
Data on video viewership provided by Facebook had pressured Fox and other media outlets to pivot, but that data was in fact highly misleading. A recent lawsuit claims Facebook inflated its video metrics by as much as 900 percent, according to the Wall Street Journal. Web traffic on FoxSports.com dropped 88 percent in the four months after the company dismissed its editorial staff, according to Richard Deitsch.
“My job is gone,” West tweeted in June 2017. Copa90, a video-first soccer media outlet that began as a YouTube channel in 2012, reached out to him, and offered a new job. West joined Copa90 as a social producer and presenter a month later. He ran the company’s Instagram and Twitter accounts, and got his first experience of being on-camera as a host for Copa90 video content. As Fox pivoted to video, West did too.
Now, West is returning to Fox Sports to bolster its World Cup coverage. He will be co-hosting a nightly live show on Twitter, and vlogging throughout Paris during the day in what will be his first World Cup experience. Twitter reported last year that Fox Sports’ nightly live recap show during the 2018 men’s World Cup drew 7.1 million video views.
The @FoxSports and @FoxSoccer Twitter accounts will also feature video highlights of every goal in the tournament, seconds after being scored. This year’s Twitter coverage will include more pre-World Cup content. Fox has promised to debut new ways for Twitter’s audience to interact with the show through features such as weekly Q&A’s.
“My [Twitter] audience is relatively diverse. I talk about a lot of different things. If it’s going on in the world, I’m probably talking about it on Twitter. If you look at my feed it’s wildly random. I’m excited to bring that randomness to the World Cup.”
West’s future at Fox Sports still remains uncertain once the tournament is over, but having reinvented himself as a video host, his strengths may now better align with the corporation’s new direction.
“I’ve had David Neal [an executive producer at Fox Sports] himself tell me that they know [digital broadcasting] is the future,” West said. “I think they really understand that non-linear is where the next generation lives, so they’re putting a lot of stock into it.”