National Games
National broadcasts of marquee matches occur on Thursday, Sunday and Monday nights. NBC has broadcast rights to Sunday night games. These are televised under a special "flexible schedule" that allows Sunday afternoon games late in the season to be moved to prime time. NBC also has broadcast rights to the opening night kickoff game.
Other regular season nationally televised games include those on Thanksgiving. Afternoon Thanksgiving games mirror the aforementioned AFC and NFC packages. AFC away games are on CBS and NFC away games are on FOX. Since the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys — the traditional hosts of Thanksgiving Day games — are both NFC teams, one of the two games must be an intraconference game, and the other an interconference game. This setup provides one game each for FOX and CBS. From 2006–2011, a third game (no fixed teams) was established on the NFL Network. Starting in 2012, the third game is an NBC game, meaning in the future, rules may change to allow both Dallas and Detroit an intraconference games (one Fox, one NBC), provided the third game is an AFC game (CBS).
Monday Night Football is currently aired on ESPN, and Thursday Night Football is broadcast on the NFL Network; however, in the markets of the participating teams, the respective cable channel is blacked out. The cable station's feed in the markets of the participating teams airs via broadcast syndication to an over-the-air station. Typically, the team's flagship station for the preseason games will hold such rights, as teams will usually sell the preseason and local ESPN/NFL Network games as one package. Only over-the-air stations in the market of the participating teams may bid on this syndicated package.
This led to controversy in 2007, when the New England Patriots were scheduled to play the New York Giants at Giants Stadium in their regular season finale on the NFL Network, in what was to be a chance to complete the first 16–0 regular season in NFL history. After the Senate Judiciary Committee threatened the NFL's antitrust exemption if it did not make the game available nationwide, the NFL relented and made the game the first in league history to be simulcast on three networks. The game aired on the NFL Network, as planned; on NBC, which would normally have the rights to prime time games; and, since the away team was an AFC team, on CBS. (The game also aired on ABC affiliate WCVB in Boston, as are all Patriots games broadcast on cable, causing this game to be available on 3 over-the-air stations in the Boston TV market). This however, did not lead to the NFL offering this package to other channels; the games remain on the NFL Network as of 2011.
Beginning in 2012, there will be a Thursday night game every week of the season, for the exceptions of weeks 16 and 17. Each game is aired on the NFL Network, for the exceptions of the Week 1 NFL Kickoff and Thanksgiving games, which are aired on NBC. The kickoff game for the 2012 season was pulled one day forward 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 which would require the visiting team to travel more than one time zone, the four teams in the Pacific Time Zone — the Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers, 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. Exceptions to the NFL's one-time zone rule include the Chiefs–Chargers and Cardinals–Rams games in 2012 (the latter game occurred during Daylight saving time, which Arizona does not observe), and the 49ers–Rams and Raiders–Cowboys games in 2013. As a result, all of the Thursday games that have involved the aforementioned west coast teams (since 2012) have been intra-division match-ups, for the exception of the Raiders–Cowboys game in 2013, which will occur on Thanksgiving.
Read more about this topic: National Football League On Television, Sunday Regional Games
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—Robert Frost (1874–1963)