The NFL Schedule: Or Regional Action

Please excuse my lateness. Now the final part... Part V:

FOX/CBS (and NBC) are all national broadcasters with 100 - 200 regional affiliates and some owned-and-operated stations each. So all games played on Sunday are available for free, and the games you see that day depend where you live and which game(s) your local station selected to air. Each station picks the game(s) they want to air that week from the list of possible games, and the FOX/CBS network center in Los Angeles/New York City will send the game via satellite to your local station. So networks show games regionally, usually, depending on where certain teams' fans are located. Places where there's no real fan following get the top advertised game that week.

FOX/CBS may switch your market's game to a more competitive one during the game, but only if one team is ahead by at least 18 points in the second half. However, NFL rules say a primary team market must show the local home team's game the whole way through. Stations also have the option of requesting a constant feed of a game.

If a primary market team is part of the second game of a doubleheader, that game takes priority and must air at 4:15 ET, whether the game before it is over or not. This rule is also for secondary markets if the team is playing on the road. Stations may also request this. The rule conversely works when the local team's game starts at 1:00 ET. The late game is then joined in-progress.

The 49ers and Raiders are not scheduled to start games at the same time, unless they are playing each other. To help this scheduling problem, both teams are usually forced by the NFL to be scheduled for at least one primetime game each year, regardless of how well either played the year before. Even if they played on different networks at the same time, one game would have to be blacked out due to NFL rules. This can also be resolved in part by scheduling home games for one team during the other's bye week, especially the week the 49ers (NFC) play a game on CBS or the Raiders (AFC) play a game on FOX.

The New York Giants and Jets are in a similar situation, except, because both teams play in the Eastern time zone, occasionally the scheduling conflicts can be fixed by putting one of their games in the early time slot and the other in the late time slot. However, it is impossible for both teams to play a home game in the same day, since they share the same stadium. The only exception is if both teams play a game on a neutral field outside the country, as you'll read below.

Finally, the NFL also schedules special games during the regular season, such as an annual game in London and a few Buffalo Bills home games in Toronto. The London game is treated just as any other AFC or NFC road game, where the NFL alternates each year which conference is the home/road team. While the Toronto Bills games could be in primetime, CBS/FOX usually air all of them depending on the opponent.

When a market's regionally televised game ends before the others, FOX/CBS may change to bonus coverage of the ending of another game. However, the NFL has two rules designed to maximize the ratings of the late games on the network with the doubleheader. First, bonus coverage after any early time slot games cannot be shown past the start of the late time slot. This prevents people from continuing to watch the bonus coverage instead of seeing the beginning of the late doubleheader network's game. A station originally getting the game featured during bonus coverage will stay with it unless they are leaving to show a local team.

Second, bonus coverage cannot be shown after a late game on the single-game network because it will run in opposition to the ending of the late doubleheader network's game(s) and NBC's pre-game show. However, the single-game network usually schedules most of its top games in the early 1:00 ET time slot, so this does not tend to be an issue.

If the doubleheader network's games all finish before 7:30 ET, it is supposed to conclude the post-game show within ten minutes to not compete with NBC's Sunday night pre-game show. If any games finish after 7:30, the post-game program can run until 8:00 ET.

These complicated scheduling practices are a large part in why it takes so long for the NFL to put it's regular season schedule together. I hope these series of blogs has done a great deal of good in explaining this often over-looked process.