ESPN Monday Night Football is a live television broadcast of weekly National Football League (NFL) games on ESPN in the United States. From 1970 to 2005, it aired on sister broadcast network ABC. Monday Night Football was, along with Hallmark Hall of Fame and the Walt Disney anthology television series, one of the longest-running prime time programs ever on commercial network television, and one of the highest-rated, particularly among male viewers. MNF is preceded on air by Monday Night Countdown.
NFL Primetime is a sports television program that has aired on ESPN since 1987. The show is presented similarly to ESPN's own SportsCenter, featuring scores, highlights, and analysis of every game of the week in the NFL. As of 2019, the program airs on ESPN+.
NFL Network is an American sports-oriented pay television network that is owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and NFL RedZone. Dedicated to American football, the network features game telecasts from the NFL, as well as NFL-related content including analysis programs, specials and documentaries. The network is headquartered in the Los Angeles suburb of Culver City, California, and broadcasts its worldwide feed from Encompass Digital Media in Atlanta, Georgia. The NFL Media Campus, as well as the Network's headquarters, is scheduled to relocate to Inglewood, California by summer of 2021, where a new office building and studio will be located next to SoFi Stadium.
The NFL Today is an American sports television program on CBS that serves as the pre-game show for the network's National Football League (NFL) game telecasts under the NFL on CBS brand. The program features commentary on the latest news around the NFL from its hosts and studio analysts, as well as predictions for the day's games and interviews with players and coaches. Originally debuting as Pro Football Kickoff on September 17, 1961, the program airs before all NFL games broadcast by CBS, and generally runs for one hour.
The television rights to broadcast National Football League (NFL) games are the most lucrative and expensive rights of any American sport. Television brought professional football into prominence in the modern era after World War II. Since then, National Football League broadcasts have become among the most-watched programs on American television, and the financial fortunes of entire networks have rested on owning NFL broadcasting rights. 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.
The NFL on Fox is the branding used for broadcasts of National Football League (NFL) games produced by Fox Sports and televised on the Fox Broadcasting Company (Fox). Game coverage is usually preceded by the pre-game shows Fox NFL Kickoff and Fox NFL Sunday and is followed on most weeks by post-game show The OT. The latter two shows feature the same studio hosts and analysts for both programs, who also contribute to the former. In weeks when Fox airs a doubleheader, the late broadcast airs under the brand America's Game of the Week.
Football Night in America (FNIA) is an American pre-game show that is broadcast on NBC, preceding its broadcasts of Sunday night and Wild Card Saturday National Football League (NFL) games. The program debuted on September 10, 2006, when the network inaugurated its Sunday prime time game package. The 80-minute program airs live at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time, and is broadcast from Studio 1 at NBC Sports Headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut. Prior to 2012, Football Night in America originally broadcast from the GE Building in New York City, first out of Studio 8G from 2006 to 2012 and in 2013, from Studio 8H, where Saturday Night Live is also taped.
NBC Sunday Night Football is a weekly television broadcast of National Football League (NFL) games on NBC in the United States. It began airing on August 6, 2006 with the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, which opened that year's preseason. NBC took over the rights to the Sunday prime time game telecasts from ESPN, which carried the broadcasts from 1987 to 2005. Previously, NBC had aired American Football League (AFL), and later American Football Conference (AFC), games from 1965 until 1998, when CBS took over those rights.
College Football Scoreboard is a program on ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC that provides up-to-the-minute scores and highlights during the college football season. The official name is College Football Scoreboard presented by Honda. The name of the show was College Gameday Scoreboard until 2006. It airs four times a day, at 3 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. ET on ESPN and at 3 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. ET on ESPN2. It also airs on ABC as an interlude between the 12 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. afternoon games and airs before Saturday Night Football as games usually start at 7:30 p.m. ET. The 3 p.m. ET programs on both networks are thirty minutes long and the 7 p.m. ET programs on both networks lead up to College Football Primetime. However, it is subject to being, and often is, pre-empted due to earlier games running long into the show's timeslot, and often games run into each other without any kind of Scoreboard interlude.
The NBC television network's in-studio pre-game coverage for their National Football League game telecasts has had a rather inconsistent history in comparison to other pre-game shows. The following is an overview of the various titles and formats relating towards NBC Sports' NFL pre-game coverage.
NFL GameDay is an American television program that features highlights of the National Football League games for the day. It airs on the NFL Network, having debuted on September 10, 2006. The program starts at either 11:30 p.m. Eastern time or the moment that NBC Sunday Night Football concludes, whichever is later. When NBC does not carry a game, it begins at 8 p.m. ET, or after NFL RedZone goes off the air, which happened twice in 2006, on October 22 and December 24, and also on December 31, 2017.
NFL Replay is a program that airs on the official television channel of the National Football League, NFL Network.
A graveyard slot is a time period in which a television audience is very small compared to other times of the day, and therefore broadcast programming is considered far less important. Graveyard slots are usually in the early morning hours of each day, when most people are asleep.
Point After is a program that aired on the NFL Network. This program contained press conferences and interviews given by National Football League and college football players and coaches. Most material was pre-recorded, but occasionally the network goes live to the press briefings.
NFL RedZone is an American sports television channel owned and operated by NFL Network since 2009. As a "special" game-day exclusive, it broadcasts on Sundays during the NFL regular season from 1:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern, or when the last afternoon window game ends. RedZone provides "whip around" simulcast coverage of all Sunday afternoon games airing in-progress on CBS and Fox.
Fox NFL Kickoff is an American sports television program that originally debuted on FS1 on September 8, 2013, and moved to Fox Broadcasting Company (Fox) on September 13, 2015, and serves as the secondary pre-game show for the network's National Football League (NFL) game telecasts under the NFL on Fox brand.
On August 28, 2012, it was announced that ESPN and Major League Baseball had agreed on a new eight-year deal that increased ESPN's average yearly payment from about $360 million to approximately $700 million.
During the early 1960s, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle envisioned the possibility of playing at least one game weekly during prime time that could be viewed by a greater television audience. An early bid by the league in 1964 to play on Friday nights was soundly defeated, with critics charging that such telecasts would damage the attendance at high school football games. Undaunted, Rozelle decided to experiment with the concept of playing on Monday night, scheduling the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions for a game on September 28, 1964. While the game was not televised, it drew a sellout crowd of 59,203 spectators to Tiger Stadium, the largest crowd ever to watch a professional football game in Detroit up to that point.
Recently, the NFL's TV broadcasters have suffered annual financial losses because advertising revenue is unable to keep up with the rising costs of broadcast rights.
