Primetime Is Going To Get Worse
There were a lot of changes to broadcasts this year, so think of this one as a companion comic to the previous one.
I hope you are a fan of a big-market, popular franchise! If so, you are likely to see your team on primetime whenever the NFL feels like it! If you are not a fan of a large media market franchise…I’m sorry. I did not want this. I don’t like this. It’s terrible. I don’t want to watch the same 6-7 teams in primetime every week either.
First off, the other changes: We now have a Black Friday game. Okay, whatever. Don’t have a strong opinion on that.
Games are, as Adam Schefter called it, “free agents”, and no longer bound to networks. For as long as I can remember, CBS mostly covered AFC games and FOX mostly covered NFC games. If you liked, say, the Giants, and you lived in their media market, they would be on FOX. This is apparently just…gone now? CBS and FOX can just decide to air whichever games they want? So FOX can just have an afternoon game of the week between the Bengals and Ravens if they so choose? I don’t know how the two networks are going to sort this out between them. Obviously, they’d both want the better matchups of the week. I wouldn’t be surprised if they simply kinda follow tradition.
Teams can now be on Thursday Night Football twice! This sucks! Thursday night football is already a rough week for those teams but they could plan for it well enough and if you were lucky it was early in the year. I’m also surprised this wasn’t true already, but I guess not. I got confused by the Denver Broncos being in like 5 straight primetime games early last season.
Teams are now no longer guaranteed a primetime slot. This ABSOLUTELY sucks. The season has more than enough primetime games to give every team multiple games if they set it up properly. The schedule is released now, and the Chiefs, Cowboys, Giants, Eagles…they are all flooding the airwaves at night. The Cardinals, Colts, Falcons, and Texans literally have zero. That’s simply bullshit. This was one of the better things about Thursday night football, every team got their turn to be in the spotlight at least once. Does the average NFL fan want to watch the Houston Texans in primetime? No. That shouldn’t matter. Give those suffering souls a chance. It’ll still make a ton of money and millions of people will still watch. But you gotta make ALL the money at ALL times. The NFL would put the Cowboys in every single primetime slot every week if they could get away with it.
Packers still have 4 primetime games despite it being the Love boat this season.
“Does the average NFL fan want to watch the Houston Texans in primetime? No.”
I mean we went toe to toe with Philadelphia last year on TNF. Presumably if that was the only game people watched the Texans play, they would come away with the idea that we aren’t as bad as our record shows. They would probably want to watch once this year too, even if it’s because we are different from the 7 teams that play from primetime.
Flex TNF primetime scheduling would really suck for the players.
Also CBS is still airing most of the AFC games. Fox is still airing most of the NFC games. This may change during the season, but the networks remain tied to the respective conferences.
Wasn’t that game close for a bit until someone got hurt. I know Pierce was going OFF that night and then had to leave near the end if I’m not mistaken.
Found Waldo! Uh, I mean, Kyler.
I’m old enough to remember when CBS was the NFC, NBC was the AFC, ABC was Monday Night Football (only), and Fox was the upstart network that was The Simpsons, Married With Children, and not much else. So it was a surprise to everyone when Fox put in a giant bid when the NFL TV contract was up for renewal, and grabbed the NFC away. CBS then responded by grabbing the AFC, and eventually the NFL created Sunday Night Football in order to give NBC something.
So you can blame Fox for starting the daisy chain of random prime-time games we have now.
Hard to believe that we’re coming up on 30 years since Fox got the NFL. The decision was announced in Dec 1993
Interesting story about how Fox pulled it off
https://www.theringer.com/platform/amp/nfl/2018/12/13/18137938/nfl-fox-deal-rupert-murdoch-1993-john-madden-terry-bradshaw-howie-long-jimmy-johnson-cbs-nbc
Jerry Jones acted as an intermediary between the NFL & the billionaire tyrant Rupert Murdoch
Fox received DEATH THREATS over the score bug
And they had to engineer the tech front scratch
CBS was devastated by the news & tried to calm the troops over the news
Madden had offers to go to ABC & NBC. He eventually did in our timeline after SB XXXVI. NBC’s pitch to Madden: we’ll put you on a train!
Another fallout from the NFL getting Fox was it scrambled several TV stations across the US. In DFW the TV lineup was
4: CBS
5: NBC
8: ABC
33: Fox
For one season (1994), most Cowboys games were on 33. During the summer of 1995, they went to the following lineup which pretty much remains the same to this day
4: Fox
5: NBC
8: ABC
11: CBS
33: eventually the WB (remember the WB?), now CW
And so NFC East starts a new boy band to surpass NSYNC.
You know the cowboys have 6 prime time games which is annoying and stupid. The giants and eagles have 5 each which is way less annoying but still kinda weird. Then there’s Washington who only has one prime time game this season. I’m not complaining, I actually like that since I hate watching my team on prime time but the absolute gap between them and the other three is strange.
Also I wish prime time was balanced between all teams. Fuck ratings give me equality/communism.
PHI, DAL, & NYG made the playoffs last year. PHI also played in the Super Bowl. Those teams are in the Top 5 US media markets (NYC #1, PHI #4, DAL #5). WSH is in the 8th largest
All but two of the Cowboys games are in the early window (LAR Week 8, at CAR Week 11). 7 are in the late Sunday DH slot with 6 on Fox & 1 on CBS (NYJ Week 2). 3 SNF, 2 MNF-Sat, & 1 TNF. Week 18 TBD
(flex rules could change those numbers)
Is Sexy Trevor the new Sexy Rexy?
Remember that one year when the Seahawks had like 37 primetime games? I hope that never happens again. It sure would be nice if they spread things out better instead of worse, though.
“CBS and FOX can just decide to air whichever games they want?”
This is actually incorrect. Each team of each conference has minimums for much they have to be on their respective network, and there’s still rules about who can pick which games to be on their network. This is mainly about the games neither network cares about as much. The playoffs are also still using the old structure.
When we eventually get a 2nd bye week (which I assume comes with 18+ games) I desperately hope that they make it so that Thursday/Friday games always come after a bye week. Having only 3 days rest is ridiculous and with increased schedules it’s just going to make the injury issues worse, and I think that the NFLPA needs to make this a serious discussion point
I really wish it could be the best teams/most intriguing teams in prime time no matter the “mArKeT siZe” or some shit. Not interested in watching struggle ball in those spots. I understand that they can’t just flex the time slots all the time and it takes a lot of foresight with these, but city size should be irrelevant. With all the revenue the league pulls in, I don’t like to see them with their pockets inside out, telling certain teams to fuck off from prime time.
The Jags actually have 3 primetime games(Thursday @ Saints, Monday @ Bengals, Sunday vs Ravens) plus 2 London games.
If I had to guess about how CBS/FOX will divide up games, it’ll probably just be what they’ve done for the last decade or so. They had already been swapping conference games as far back as 2014, but it just became more prominent with the big conference matchups as of recent. I doubt we’ll see a wholesale switch right away. Probably just a slight up-tick in the number of 4PM NFC games on CBS and AFC games of that type on FOX.
In a couple of seasons, however, that will definitely not be the case anymore. Gonna be a free for all at that point and I can’t say that I’m excited for it.