NFL on American television

[citation needed] This has raised questions about the impartiality of the networks' coverage of games and whether they can criticize the NFL without fear of losing the rights and their income.

From 1978–2001, this happened in 1982 to the Detroit Lions, Buffalo Bills and Houston Oilers, 1987 to the Miami Dolphins and Dallas Cowboys, 1991 to the Minnesota Vikings and 2001 to the Jacksonville Jaguars.

ET) are ever scheduled, partly to avoid conflict with religious services in those cities; Denver had three noon MT kickoffs at Mile High Stadium late in the 1972 season, but the experiment was never repeated.

Likewise, the late Sunday afternoon games during Week 11 of the 1993 season included both the Kansas City Chiefs at the Raiders and the Atlanta Falcons at the Rams.

The season-kickoff game for the 2012 season was moved up a day — to a Wednesday, in order to avoid conflict with President Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Since the NFL tries to avoid scheduling Thursday night games during the season which would require the visiting team to travel more than one time zone (excluding the Week 1 Kickoff),[82] the five teams in the Pacific Time Zone — the Las Vegas Raiders, Los Angeles Chargers, Los Angeles Rams, San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks — would have more limited scheduling options in years that the AFC West and NFC West divisions don't face each other in interconference play.

Starting in 2022, the Amazon Prime Video subscription service will hold the rights to broadcast TNF and because of this, the NFL will continue to require these games to be syndicated to the team's local markets.

In the first instance, the Panthers and New York Giants saw a late season game flexed due to the winner of that matchup clinching home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs as the top seed.

Networks have the option of waiving protection to allow for a Sunday night airing, as happened with a game between the unbeaten Kansas City Chiefs and one-loss Denver Broncos in Week 11 of the 2013 season.

For this final Sunday Night contest, the league prefers to flex-in a matchup in which at least one team must win in order to qualify for the playoffs, regardless of what happens in the other week 18 games.

[91] Since 2010 when the NFL began scheduling only divisional matchups in the final week, it is possible an intradivisional game that appeared on national TV previously could be selected again.

In the future, the NFL may use flexible scheduling to allow the Lions or Cowboys to host a prime-time game, provided an Eastern time zone team is given the early (12:30 p.m.) slot.

The second of the two contests played that day, the Miami Dolphins versus the Kansas City Chiefs, ended up being the longest game in NFL history.

Since 1973, the NFL has maintained a blackout policy that states that a home game cannot be televised locally if it is not sold out 72 hours prior to its start time.

However, the removal of these rules are, to an extent, purely symbolic; the NFL can still enforce its blackout policies on a contractual basis with television networks, stations, and service providers, a process made feasible by the large amount of leverage the league exerts upon its media partners.

[109] On March 23, 2015, the NFL's owners voted to suspend the blackout rules for 2015, meaning that all games will be televised in their home markets, regardless of ticket sales.

If a team calls a timeout and the network decides to use it for a commercial break, a representative from the broadcast crew stationed on the sidelines wearing orange sleeves makes a crossing motion with his hands to alert the officials.

Due to the NFL understanding television at an earlier time, it was able to surpass Major League Baseball in the 1960s as the most popular sport in the United States.

As of 2025[update], Super Bowl XLIX on NBC in 2015 remains[citation needed] the most watched telecast by average in U.S. history, attracting 115 million viewers for both halves of the game.

Although ratings for the NFL have declined steadily after the Super Bowl in 2015, the latter remains the only program on U.S. television to have attracted at least 100 million viewers on a single night annually since the 1983 series finale of M*A*S*H on CBS.

[119] The style of pro football broadcasting has seen several changes since the 1990s, including female hosts and sideline reporters, visual first-down markers, advanced graphics, new multi-camera angles, and high definition telecasts.

The network also withdrew its partnership with the PBS series Frontline on the 2013 documentary League of Denial, which chronicles the history of head injuries in the NFL, shortly after a meeting between ESPN executives and league commissioner Roger Goodell took place in New York City, though ESPN denies pressure from the NFL led to its backing out of the project, claiming a lack of editorial control instead.

[145] Counterprogramming, where other networks attempt to offer a program which is intended to compete with the NFL audience for a regular season game, playoff game or the Super Bowl (as Fox did in 1992 with a special segment of the sketch comedy series In Living Color during Super Bowl XXVI), has also been heavily discouraged with the consolidation of rights among the major networks; ESPN generally airs low-profile niche sports, non-conference men's and women's college basketball (often featuring teams in non-NFL markets or non-football schools, as high-profile non-conference games usually occur in November and December during the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks), and minor league sports on Sunday afternoons, along with basic audio-only 'carousel' reports of current NFL scores by reporters from NFL stadiums on their other networks resembling those on ESPN Radio or Fox Sports Radio.

NBC, which has the Sunday night package, will run Golf Channel on NBC coverage, including the Evian Championship (a women's major held in France), a PGA Tour Challenge Season, or an international team tournament (depending on year, Ryder, Solheim, or President's Cup), motorsport (IMSA SportsCar Championship and NASCAR Cup Series late-season events; all serve as lead-in programming to Football Night in America), and Olympic sports which the demographic is focused towards women, such as ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating.

Likewise, since 2010 ABC has run low-profile same-week repeats of their programming in solidarity with ESPN or women's sporting events; in 2011, it did air the INDYCAR season finale in Las Vegas, which was abandoned after reigning Indianapolis 500 champion Dan Wheldon (a resident of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers market in St. Petersburg, FL) was killed on Lap 11 of 200.

In years when it does not carry the game, Fox has often purposely burned off failed sitcoms and dramas to discourage viewers from tuning away from the game, with other networks generally running marathons of popular reality or drama programs (for NBC, The Apprentice has filled this role) merely to fill the evening rather than an actual attempt to counterprogram, and CBS notably runs themed 60 Minutes episodes consisting of past stories featuring figures that fit the episode's theme.

Daily fantasy sports, which are structured to prevent being classified as gambling, air advertisements on the NFL's partner networks on game days, but originally not during time controlled by the league.

[156] The NFL also bans advertisements in several other product segments, including “dietary or nutritional supplements that contain ingredients other than vitamins and minerals, [..] or any prohibited substance”,[157][158][159] energy drinks, birth control, condoms, and hard liquor.

Information on injured players or rules interpretations are relayed from NFL off-field officials to the TV producers in the truck, who then pass it along to the sideline reporters or booth announcers.

During the 2020 season, NFL sideline reporters instead were stationed in the lower portion of seating areas due to COVID-19 protocols, with news relayed to them by team officials or off-air staffers instead.