Last weekend, according to ESPN’s website, FOX was showing 4 different football games as the first half of its Sunday double-header (1:00 pm Eastern). My affiliate in Tucson, however, showed a movie.
Today, as the NFL pregame show finishes up, presumably to usher in football games across the nation, we segue to an infomercial.
WTF? Why do people in other areas get a football game while I get crap? ( I do get the second game of the day). I wrote Fox last week but never got a response. I live in Tucson, BTW.
I don’t know if they do this everywhere, but years back when they were having trouble selling Saints tickets, the game was blacked out on TV locally if the tickets didn’t sell-out.
This was to encourage more people to actually go to the game and then the game was aired for the benefit of the people who couldn’t get tickets because they were sold out.
It appears to be because of Blackout rules… see the Wikipedia Article which says among other interesting things:
I assume that the FOX affiliate in Tucson is close enough to the Cardinals stadium to fall under these rules. Although looking at the NFL schedule, the Cardinals’ game last week against New Orleans was an away game played at the SuperDome, so I have no idea.
Today’s game IS in Phoenix, so that may be the reason for today.
Fox is allowed to show just one game in the Tucson and it should be the Cardinals game if it sold out. CBS gets to show two games, but since the Cardinals are home, you just get one game from CBS too.
Your best bet is to move to L.A. Plenty of football to watch here. However, the late game here will be Miami vs. New England. Which I means I will go out for lunch and a walk.
Ok, Opus 1, your situation is simple today: Fox doesn’t have a double-header today. You are getting the late game presumably because you will get to see the Cardinals at 4:05 Eastern. If they aren’t sold out, you’ll get an alternate game.
As for last week, I can’t answer why you would not have been shown the Cardinals game at New Orleans, which was at 1:00 Eastern (unless it was the case that Fox didn’t have the double-header last week, either, and Tuscon decided to air a late game rather than an early game).
Tucson is likely designated as an “alternate home market” for the Cardinals. So most of the time, the Cardinals would get shown in Tucson if they sell out, but road games are on a case by case basis. The Chargers are set up that way for Los Angeles. L.A. viewers see every Chargers home game (they sell out now), but only most of the road games.
There was a bit of a grumble up here because the final game of the Patriots regular season this Thursday will NOT be shown on most local networks in New England, only one Boston network and one NH network will show it, which leaves most of Maine, VT, and NH, and good parts of MA, CT, and RI without being able to see what could be the game that has the Patriots finish the regular season undefeated.
VT Senator Patrick Leahy tried to get the NFL to allow other local stations to show it, since the Pats are a New England team, not a Boston team, especially since there are lots of homes in northern NE that only get over the air stations and can’t get the NFL network is they wanted to, but the NFL said no…bastards. :mad: