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NFL considering pulling the plug on Thursday Night Football?

mvcg66b3r

mvcg66b3r

According to Mike Florio and Pro Football Talk, the NFL is seriously considering reducing the TNF schedule or eliminating the games entirely when the rights agreement ends after the 2017 season.

The league realizes that, with every team playing once on a short week each season, many of the Thursday games necessarily will have reduced appeal. Adding extra prime-time games to the Sunday/Monday inventory also has created a sense that the league has saturated the marketplace with stand-alone evening games.

Options include (but aren’t limited to) getting rid of Thursday games completely and possibly starting the package at Thanksgiving and continuing it through the end of the season, with games likely to generate broad interest selected in April for November/December programming. Thursday Night Football debuted a decade ago as a device for providing game content for NFL Network, allowing the league-owned operation to generate higher fees from cable and satellite providers.

As the source explained it, the money generated from NFL Network due to the annual slate of exclusive games isn’t large enough to make it an impediment to broader efforts to strike the right balance between giving national audiences enough, but not too much, pro football — and to ensure that games played in prime time are truly worthy of being seen.
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Has the league saturated the marketplace with bad games between bad teams that not a lot of people have interest in watching? Absolutely. How many seasons do we have to sit through a Thursday night Jags-Titans epic struggle or watch the Browns’ annual primetime appearance? The extra Thursday game has also further diluted the quality of games elsewhere in primetime (especially Monday Night Football) and the games that are shown on Sunday afternoons in traditional timeslots.

Make no mistake about it, the NFL is facing this dilemma because of their own greed and single-minded pursuit of revenue. From the start everyone knew that Thursday Night Football was sacrificing a lot of things – quality of play, player safety and well-being, popularity amongst fans – but the league went all out with it anyways.
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http://awfulannouncing.com/2016/nfl-considering-pulling-the-plug-on-thursday-night-football.html
 
mvcg66b3r said:
http://awfulannouncing.com/2016/nfl-considering-pulling-the-plug-on-thursday-night-football.html
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I think a simple move from Thursday to Friday might solve some problems. First, it lengthens the week, except for the Monday Night opponents, but it would be easy enough to not allow a Monday night opponent to play on the following Friday. Second, Friday is a fun, "ready for the weekend" night and who knows ratings could be good, though traditionally Friday is not a good ratings night. I suppose it could conflict with high school football, but generally different audiences. Why not give it a try?
 
seatownmedia said:
I think a simple move from Thursday to Friday might solve some problems. First, it lengthens the week, except for the Monday Night opponents, but it would be easy enough to not allow a Monday night opponent to play on the following Friday. Second, Friday is a fun, "ready for the weekend" night and who knows ratings could be good, though traditionally Friday is not a good ratings night. I suppose it could conflict with high school football, but generally different audiences. Why not give it a try?
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The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 (enshrined as 15 USC 1293) would mandate blackouts of any Friday or Saturday game during the HS/collegiate season:

"The first sentence of section 1291 of this title shall not apply to any joint agreement described in such section which permits the telecasting of all or a substantial part of any professional football game on any Friday after six o'clock postmeridian or on any Saturday during the period beginning on the second Friday in September and ending on the second Saturday in December in any year from any telecasting station located within seventy-five miles of the game site of any intercollegiate or interscholastic football contest scheduled to be played on such a date if—
(1) such intercollegiate football contest is between institutions of higher learning both of which confer degrees upon students following completion of sufficient credit hours to equal a four-year course, or
(2) in the case of an interscholastic football contest, such contest is between secondary schools, both of which are accredited or certified under the laws of the State or States in which they are situated and offer courses continuing through the twelfth grade of the standard school curriculum, or the equivalent, and
(3) such intercollegiate or interscholastic football contest and such game site were announced through publication in a newspaper of general circulation prior to August 1 of such year as being regularly scheduled for such day and place."

I sure hope there's a TV station located 75 miles from the nearest high school!

The NFL has only done Saturday games in the waning weeks of the season for this reason, and its only Friday games have been to avoid Christmas and a hurricane (an understandable extenuating circumstance).
 
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Raymie said:
The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 (enshrined as 15 USC 1293) would mandate blackouts of any Friday or Saturday game during the HS/collegiate season:

"The first sentence of section 1291 of this title shall not apply to any joint agreement described in such section which permits the telecasting of all or a substantial part of any professional football game on any Friday after six o'clock postmeridian or on any Saturday during the period beginning on the second Friday in September and ending on the second Saturday in December in any year from any telecasting station located within seventy-five miles of the game site of any intercollegiate or interscholastic football contest scheduled to be played on such a date if—
(1) such intercollegiate football contest is between institutions of higher learning both of which confer degrees upon students following completion of sufficient credit hours to equal a four-year course, or
(2) in the case of an interscholastic football contest, such contest is between secondary schools, both of which are accredited or certified under the laws of the State or States in which they are situated and offer courses continuing through the twelfth grade of the standard school curriculum, or the equivalent, and
(3) such intercollegiate or interscholastic football contest and such game site were announced through publication in a newspaper of general circulation prior to August 1 of such year as being regularly scheduled for such day and place."

I sure hope there's a TV station located 75 miles from the nearest high school!
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Interesting. Had no idea as probably most do not. This seems a bit antiquated, but if that is the law then it is the law. Probably could be overturned with the power of the NFL today, which is perhaps 10X bigger than it was in 1961. But it does explain why NFL Saturday games never happen before December.
 
seatownmedia said:
Interesting. Had no idea as probably most do not. This seems a bit antiquated, but if that is the law then it is the law. Probably could be overturned with the power of the NFL today, which is perhaps 10X bigger than it was in 1961. But it does explain why NFL Saturday games never happen before December.
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The problem with that is that the NFL depends on high school and college football to develop its players. Any attempt by the NFL to undercut those levels of the sport would end up in its worst possible interest.
 
Maybe I'm mis-reading Les Moonves, but my interpretation of what he said a few months ago is that CBS would be interested in obtaining full rights to TNF. Not this split with NBC. They want the whole enchilada.

So the hesitation seems to be completely on the side of the NFL and the NFL network, which doesn't have 100% clearance anyway. Perhaps they feel if they pull back a bit, it will increase the rights fee.
 
Raymie said:
The problem with that is that the NFL depends on high school and college football to develop its players. Any attempt by the NFL to undercut those levels of the sport would end up in its worst possible interest.
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Big10 will be playing on Friday night despite objections of rust belt high school athletic assocations
 
Raymie said:
The problem with that is that the NFL depends on high school and college football to develop its players. Any attempt by the NFL to undercut those levels of the sport would end up in its worst possible interest.
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Fair enough, but what about college and high school games on Thursday? Obviously in 1961 this wasn't an issue, but here in 2016 it is apparently also not an issue.
 
It screws with CBS and NBC's primetime schedules. It is definitely saturation of the sport...and also screws with local news/revenue on Thursdays. Leave it to Sunday, Sunday Night and Monday Night (ESPN).
 
The NFL can do pretty much what it wants. If they can do it on Thursdays, they can probably do it on Fridays. This is not the end of discussion. Perhaps they need to overcome some technicalities, but if they want to, they can. This is the power of the NFL today.
 
seatownmedia said:
The NFL can do pretty much what it wants. If they can do it on Thursdays, they can probably do it on Fridays. This is not the end of discussion. Perhaps they need to overcome some technicalities, but if they want to, they can. This is the power of the NFL today.
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You obviously don't understand. This is a federal law. You can't break a federal law, especially if you're a monopoly. Especially if you're the NFL. The NFL can't change this. If they could, it would have happened already. They can't. Move on.
 
I do understand the appeal process. Do you? But I am through arguing this. All things can change, and the NFL has tremendous power. BTW, what are we arguing about anyway? Friday night NFL? Really? Doesn't really matter at the end of the day. Just a thought I brought up, nothing more, nothing less. Relax.
 
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seatownmedia said:
OK, understood. But the post was not clear. In the end, the NFL disrupting college and high school is a non-issue IMO.
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college football is disrupting high school football more than the NFL, NFL doesn't want to play on the lowest watched nights of the week anyway, they do have playoffs on Saturday nights but it's dark and cold in the most of the country and more people stay home
 
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