I don’t understand this. There are 8 early games and 5 late games today. Fox is showing two games here, but CBS is only showing a 1:00 one. The afternoon is filled up by paid programming and filler. It seems to me that any game that CBS could show would get them more ratings than that stuff, and they’re surely producing an afternoon game somewhere, so it wouldn’t cost them any more money. And it’s not black-out related, since the early CBS game IS the local game.
So is there some obscure reasoning for this? Or is it just my local crummy affiliate?
I’m pretty sure it’s an NFL rule. That’s the way it’s been for at least the last few years since I’ve been watching football. On any given Sunday, of CBS and Fox, each gets one game and the other gets two. But it’s not your affiliate because I’ve seen the same thing all over the place and also the commentators often make a big deal of the fact that it’s a “Doubleheader Sunday here on [CBS or Fox]” on those Sindays where they get two games.
Like many things in life, I would say “It’s always been that way.”
The NFL thinks that if you televise too many games, people won’t come to the stadiums. The present system has been in effect since the early 1970s I believe.
To say its an NFL rule is to give the NFL too much credit. It is purely a contractual arrangement between the NFL and the TV networks that pay the NFL for the right to broadcast the games. The NFL insists on having that clause in the contracts, and since its no skin off the broadcasters’ nose, and since the NFL is a hot property, they comply.
As NFL’s rating decling though, it will be interesting to see if that clause remains in future contracts.