The history of the National Football League on television documenting the long history of the National Football League on television. The NFL, along with professional boxing and wrestling (before the latter publicly known as a "fake" sport), was the pioneer of sports broadcasting during a time when baseball and college soccer were more popular than professional soccer. Because of the NFL's understanding of television in the past, they were able to surpass Major League Baseball in 1960 as the most popular sport in the United States. Today, NFL broadcasting contracts are among the most valuable in the world.
Video History of the National Football League on television
From infancy to national success
NBC was the first major television network to cover the NFL match, when on October 22, 1939, he broadcast matches between the Philadelphia Eagles and Brooklyn Dodgers; the network is still only in its infancy, with only two affiliates, the modern WRGB (now a CBS affiliate) at Schenectady and W2XBS in New York City. Part of the game still survives through the film, but the film is not a recording of a television broadcast (television broadcast recording did not start until 1948). The use of a side camera, a single camera used in a 1939 broadcast, will be the standard for all future NFL broadcasts until 2017; the angle is perfect for estimating the size of the yard, compared to the camera phone angles that began appearing in the 21st century.
Regular game broadcasts started after World War II and the first televised NFL championship was a 1948 game between the Eagles and the Cardinals.
In 1950, the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins became the first NFL team to have all of their games - going home and going - broadcast on television. In the same year, another team made a deal to select the broadcasted game. The DuMont Network then paid a $ 75,000 rights fee to broadcast the 1951 NFL Championship Game nationwide.
From 1953 to 1955, DuMont also broadcasted the NFL match on Saturday night. This is the first time that NFL equipment is broadcast live, from coast to coast, in prime time, to the entire season. The broadcast ended after the 1955 season, when the DuMont Network was folded. DuMont was a less than ideal partner for NFL broadcasts: with only eighteen affiliates in 1954, it was dwarfed by the amount of "Big Four" coverage (later the Eastern Division of the Canadian Football League) having his contract with NBC, which had 120 affiliates at the time.
In 1955, NBC became the television house of the NFL Championship Game, paying $ 100,000 to the league. 1958 NFL Championship Game played at the Yankee Stadium between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants suffered a sudden sudden death. The game, dubbed "The Greatest Game Ever Played", was widely watched throughout the country and is credited with the increasing popularity of professional football in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
CBS began broadcasting the regular NFL season matches chosen in 1956.
In 1959, big market teams like Bear and Giants had all their games on television, but small markets like Packers and 49ers still have not. After becoming an NFL commissioner, Pete Rozelle works to ensure that every team gets all the games on TV.
Maps History of the National Football League on television
War with AFL
When the American Football League (AFL) rival started in 1960, he signed a 5-year television contract with ABC. It became the first cooperative television plan for professional soccer, in which the results of the contract were split equally among member clubs. ABC and AFL also introduced mobile cameras, in the field (as opposed to fixed midfield cameras from CBS and NFL), and the first having a "miked" player during the game broadcast. Because the AFL also has the names of players sewn on their T-shirts, it's easier for TV viewers and people in the game to find out who it is.
In the 1961 season, CBS held the rights to all but one of the NFL teams; Cleveland Browns has a separate contract with Sports Network Incorporated (SNI) to bring their games through a regional network. However, Browns and SNI were forced to violate their agreement when the NFL and CBS drew up a plan for their own results after CBS agreed to broadcast all regular season games for an annual fee of $ 4.65 million. The antitrust special release, the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, was passed in Congress to accommodate collective contracts, which limit the days on which the league can broadcast their matches. The cost of CBS then increased to $ 14.1 million per year in 1964, and $ 18.8 million per year in 1966.
With NBC paying AFL $ 36 million in 1965 to broadcast its game, and a fierce battle over college prospects, the two leagues negotiated a merger agreement on June 8, 1966. Although they did not officially merge into one joint league until 1970, the conditions of the agreement are that the winners of each league championship match will meet in a contest to determine "world champions of football."
The first AFL-NFL World Championship game ever played was played on 15 January 1967 between the NFL Packers champion and AFL champion Chiefs. Because CBS holds the right to nationally broadcast the NFL match and NBC reserves the right to broadcast an AFL game, it is decided that both will include the first match. The next three AFL-NFL World Championship Matches, the premiere Super Bowl, are then divided by two networks: CBS broadcasts Super Bowl II and IV while NBC includes III.
Install AFL-NFL Merger
When the AFL and NFL formally joined in 1970, the combined league divided its team into the American Football Conference (AFC) and National Football Conference (NFC). It was decided that CBS would broadcast all NFC teams (including playoffs) while NBC would be responsible for all the AFC teams. For interconference games, CBS will broadcast it if the visitors come from NFC, and NBC if the visitor comes from AFC. Both networks have a rotation policy for the Super Bowl.
ABC also agreed to broadcast a regular-season game per week on Monday night. ABC aired the first issue of Monday Night Football on September 21, 1970. MNF pushed the limits of football coverage with its break down spotlight segment, the occasional quips from Howard Cosell and Dennis Miller, and celebrity guests like John Lennon, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and President Clinton. During 36 years of running on ABC, Monday Night Football is consistently among the most popular prime time every week during the season.
As a league broadcaster, ABC, CBS, and NBC have their own talent. Broadcasters like Cosell, Frank Gifford, and Al Michaels (from ABC); Pat Summerall and John Madden (from CBS); and Curt Gowdy, Dick Enberg, Marv Albert, Jim Simpson, Kyle Rote and Jim Lampley (from NBC), all have their own unique analysis of the game. Individual networks have different innovations in their scope. For example, CBS The NFL Today is the first pre-match show to have a female co-host (Phyllis George). On December 20, 1980 NBC made history by broadcasting matches between the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins without an announcer. NBC has also tried a one-broadcaster football when Dick Enberg called the New York Jets visit to the Cleveland Browns on December 12, 1981 without his peer, Merlin Olsen, in the accompaniment. NBC is not a pre-recorded interview with players and coaches from both teams who fill the sections where Olsen will speak. On December 27, 1987, NBC unveiled the first female-by-play soccer broadcaster at Gayle Sierens, who partnered with Dave Rowe in a game between Seattle Seahawks and Kansas City Chiefs who in their own way, set up prints for today's female sportsmen. This is the only time a woman has been called play-by-play in regular season NFL matches, until this year when Beth Mowins partnered with Rex Ryan on ESPN for a match between Los Angeles Chargers and the Denver Broncos on Monday, September 11
In 1978, the NFL increased its revenue from ticket sales and TV by expanding its regular season from 14 games to 16. Next, the playoff format expanded from 8 teams to 10 teams, enabling the league to deliver any other post-season games to CBS and NBC. This is partly due to the 1976 league expansion being 28 teams.
Meanwhile, the Super Bowl becomes an annual ranking blockbuster, allowing the broadcasting network to generate millions of dollars in advertising revenue. Four of the ten highest-rated television broadcasts of all time (in the US) are the Super Bowl. When the league signed a new 5-year TV contract with three networks in 1982, it allowed ABC to enter the Super Bowl rotation; Super Bowl XIX is the ABC debut. Since then, the network that broadcast each Super Bowl is determined by the contract negotiated with all its broadcasters. Each network announcer generally gets one Super Bowl before accepting the second. This process repeats before the network shows a third event, even though the TV contract usually expires at that time.
Expansion to cable and satellite TV
Cable TV became commonplace during the 1980s, and the NFL was keen to seize the opportunity in 1987.
In 1986, the United States Football League, while pursuing an antitrust suit against the NFL, signed an agreement with ESPN to bring the game on Sunday night. When the suit failed and the 1986 season was canceled, the NFL dipped in and took the time slot, creating ESPN Sunday Night Football in 1987. ESPN became the first cable network to broadcast a regular seasonal NFL game. Chris Berman helped redefine the show before and after the game when he launched the NFL Countdown and NFL Prime Time, and they have become the highest pre-ranked and post-game show on television. The cable network contract to show ESPN Sunday Night Football is one of the turning points in their growth, turning them from a small cable network into a marketing empire.
When ESPN first started the NFL game on television in 1987, he only broadcast a Sunday night game during the second half of the season. Meanwhile, ABC, CBS, and NBC retained their rights to Monday Night Football, NFC and AFC, respectively.
In 1990, TNT Turner's network began broadcasting Sunday night games for the first half of the season. The 1990 joint contract with ABC, CBS, ESPN, NBC, and TNT totaled $ 3.6 billion ($ 900 million per year), the largest in TV history. One of the main factors in raising the right cost is that the league changes the regular season so all teams will play their 16-match schedule over a 17-week period. ABC was also given the right to broadcast two Saturday matches on the opening weekend of the postseason. This is possible after the league expands the playoff format to include more teams.
TBS also broadcast the famous 1982 "strike" game. The NFLPA called for a three-week strike into the season that reduced to nine games. In October, two "all-star" exhibition matches were held with NFC and generic AFC teams in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. and aired on TBS. Ratings and presence in both games are minimal.
In 1994, the league signed an exclusivity agreement with direct broadcast satellite service (DBS) DirecTV to launch the NFL Sunday Ticket, a satellite TV subscription service that offers every regular seasonal NFL match.
Broadcast Broadcast
NFL leave CBS after 38 years
When the contract was signed in December 1993, CBS (which has been home to a 38-year-old NFC game) lost their rights to the newborn Fox Network, and it just so happened that CBS also lost its MLB coverage (which never recovered) after that year the same one. Fox offered a record then $ 1.58 billion to the NFL for four years, much more than the $ 290 million per year offered by CBS. Fox is only seven years old and has no sports division, but started building his own coverage by hiring many former CBS personalities like Summerall and Madden.
NFL Fox's ownership rights make the network a major player on American television by attracting new audiences (and affiliates) and platforms to advertise other events. Meanwhile, CBS lost some affiliates (especially those owned by New World Communications in the NFC market) to Fox, and ratings for other offerings languished. CBS lost a number of affiliates, mainly in Atlanta, Detroit, and Milwaukee, where it fell into low-powered UHF affiliations that are unacceptable in some areas.
Because of satellite television, NFL Sunday Tickets in the local market, and time rules, satellite subscribers are required to use an antenna to pick up local affiliates. CBS is destroyed by the loss of over-the-air availability of these stations beyond the reach of some markets. Since 1994, the situation in Milwaukee and Atlanta has increased due to the ownership of committed stations and the acquisition of high-profile syndication programs, along with a digital transition of field equalization to be accepted through UHF-only, while the Detroit CBS station continues to struggle for relevance and exists primarily as pass- through automatically for CBS programming, along with shows from network syndication networks, CBS Television Distribution.
ABC, NBC, TNT and ESPN renew their contracts in the meantime. TNT can get a provision that Atlanta Falcons, based at Turner Atlanta's home, will perform on TNT once a year, regardless of previous season record.
NBC loses NFL while
Meanwhile, NBC's rebound in overall ratings in both the 1980s and 1990s after years of under-ranking was partly due to the ongoing coverage of the NFL. With the renegotiation of television contracts in early 1998 ushering in an era of multibillion-dollar broadcasting agreements, the era of pro football broadcasting is coming to an end. CBS, stung by Fox's surprise bid four years earlier, is aggressively trying to regain broadcasting rights. CBS agreed to pay $ 4 billion over eight years ($ 500 million per season) to show AFC games.
NBC, meanwhile, has indicated a desire to bid Monday Night Football rights in 1998, but gave up when financial bets rose sharply. Thus, after six decades, NBC, the network that has shaped television football broadcasts, lost its rights, marking a slow start to the sporting division, culminating in an unproductive 2004-05 inaugural season, when NBC did not take the premier Sports Championship during prime time (NBC had lost the broadcasting rights of Major League Baseball in 2000 and the rights of the National Basketball Association in 2002; they had acquired National Hockey League rights in 2004, but the league was in lockout, and furthermore, it was popular in major league at the time).
NBC's efforts to replace the NFL with other professional footballers, including XFL in 2001 and Arena Football League coverage from 2003 to 2006, proved very unsuccessful. Like the previous CBS, NBC then decided that not having the NFL rights did not undermine its overall rating to justify above the necessary high-cost fees.
Another network also signed an eight-year agreement in 1998. Fox extended its NFC deal by approving contracts worth $ 4.4 billion ($ 550 million per season). ABC retains its old rights to Monday Night Football by also paying $ 4.4 billion over eight years. ESPN approved a $ 4.8 billion ($ 600 million per season) deal to become a single NFL game cable broadcaster, marking the end of a league association with TNT. Like previous TV contracts, Super Bowl coverage is shared between broadcast networks.
Thursday Kickoff Game
In 2002, the NFL began scheduling a special Thursday night Kickoff opening match, which took place on Thursday after Labor Day leading to the opening Sunday of the NFL game. The event includes pre-match concerts and other television shows. The first series of events were held in New York and Washington, D.C., respectively, to celebrate the endurance of the two cities after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The 2002 San Francisco 49ers and New York Giants game was held on 5 September and broadcast on ESPN. The 2003 edition featured Washington Redskins hosting the New York Jets on September 4, 2003, and the game was broadcast by ABC. Since 2006, NBC has broadcasted a Kickoff game ( see below ).
Starting in 2004, the NFL started giving the opening game prize to the defending Super Bowl champions as their official title defense start. The opening banner of the Super Bowl championship team at their stadium has been at the core of the opening ceremony.
In 2012, the inaugural match between New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys aired on Wednesday, September 5, to avoid a conflict with the final night of the Democratic National Convention in which President Barack Obama delivered his acceptance speech for party nomination.
In 2013, there are changes in the format. The Baltimore Ravens are still playing in kickoff matches, however, due to scheduling conflicts and parking with the Baltimore Orioles; Ravens opened on the road against the Denver Broncos.
Financial loss leads to another rearrangement
Recently, NFL TV broadcasters have suffered annual financial losses because advertising revenue can not keep up with the increase in broadcasting rights.
However, the current broadcasting contract, which began in 2006, resulted in a substantial increase in total cost of rights. Fox and CBS updated their Sunday afternoon broadcast packages through 2011, in both cases with moderate increases. Furthermore, the league and DirecTV signed a five-year extension to handle their exclusivity in the NFL Sunday Ticket.
Although relatively high, if decreased, the TV ratings, ABC decided to end its relationship with the NFL after a significant loss of money on Monday Night Football . In addition to fees, part of this decision may be the result of ABC's premier inaugural entertainment schedule bounced back during the 2004-05 season, especially on Sunday nights with Desperate Housewives; thus ABC will not be able to meet the league preferences reported for Sunday night matches on broadcast television compared to Monday.
Therefore, Monday Night Football moved from ABC to ESPN, both owned by The Walt Disney Company. Cable networks pay $ 1.1 billion per year from 2006 to 2014 for their rights. Unlike broadcast networks, however, ESPN can generate revenue from subscription sales, in addition to traditional commercial breaks (ESPN customer costs are the highest of any American cable network, more than quadruple of TNT's second place). Wired network coverage starts at 1:00 pm. ET with SportsCenter Special Edition: Monday Night Kickoff . The 2009 edition saw the game itself begin at 8:30, with Mike Tirico, Ron Jaworski, and Jon Gruden in the broadcast booths.
Meanwhile, NBC, after losing its AFC package to CBS in 1997, was able to regain broadcasting rights with a deal worth an average of $ 650 million per year to broadcast a package Sunday night from 2006 to 2014 (no more than what ESPN uses to pay the same rights). This new deal includes the Super Bowl in 2009 and 2012.
NBC's coverage also includes two pre-season games (including the annual Game Hall of Fame), the first two Wild Card games of each season, and Kickoff Game opening every Thursday, similar to the ABC broadcast rights package. The main difference is that NFL allows NBC flexibility in selecting games in the latter part of the season. ABC has no right to be flexible with their Monday Night Football schedule and choose matches based on team records in previous seasons (as NBC did), which often leads teams with a record loss to play each other on Monday night then at this season.
The movement was meant to destroy NBC from its rank slump; However, at one point in the last decade, this did not happen, and although NBC's Sunday Night Football has (and continues to be) the top-ranked program of the network and in the top 30 for the audience, it does not lift the rest of the schedule. For the time being, NBC has really been in fourth place and is losing huge amounts of money, so much so that the network has to cut out an hour of prime time programming from a weekday schedule that supports The Jay Leno Show, a slightly lower budget talk that lasts five months. The network has since been slowly returning to second place in the network ratings.
The NBC Sunday Night Football coverage starts at 8:15 pm ET with Al Michaels serving as play-by-play broadcaster, Cris Collinsworth as a color commentator, and Michele Tafoya as a single side reporter. Each broadcast starts with a pre-game show airing at 7 pm. ET entitled Football Night in America , hosted by Bob Costas.
In addition, for the first three years of the contract, the network that brought the Super Bowl also broadcasted the Pro Bowl on Saturday night after the championship game. In 2007, CBS broadcasted both games, followed by Fox in 2008, and NBC in 2009. In 2010, the Pro Bowl was played the weekend before the Super Bowl, broadcast by ESPN. The 2010 deal is intended as a one-off situation to protect the Winter Olympics in Vancouver starting next week (as well as the NBA All-Star Game and Daytona 500), but the NFL played the 2011 and 2012 games in Honolulu a week before the Super Bowl.
The NFL network was created by the league in 2003 and was given a separate broadcast game package. The eight-game package consists of prime time games which in 2006 and 2007 began airing from Thanksgiving until the end of the regular season. Five matches aired on Thursday night and three on Saturday night, the last one starting Sunday 15 this season. Starting in the 2008 season the ratio and date of matches changed: there are now seven Thursday night games starting in the first week of November and continuing into Sunday 16. There is only one Saturday night game, aired during Week 15 or 16 (usually 16, but when Saturday is Christmas Eve, it will air in week 15). NFL could theoretically decide to sell this packet to another network if the NFL Network broadcast does not generate enough revenue. NFL Network will also bring some pre-season games. The introduction of the NFL Network game also marked the end of regular season games on Saturday afternoon on a network broadcasted Sunday afternoon: CBS, Fox and NBC.
2011 and beyond
ESPN renewed its contract with NFL in 2011 which extends to ESPN NFL broadcasting rights through the 2021-22 season. ESPN increased the purchase price for an eighteen-game package, which will be included in 2015 Pro Bowl. Cable television operators have condemned the contract, noting that ESPN has the highest levy of retribution fees from every national cable television channel, almost five times higher than its closest competitor (TNT), and raising costs every year. Nevertheless, other networks intend to follow by renewing their contracts through 2021-22, increasing their price by more than $ 1 billion per year. The remaining networks announce that they are updated with the NFL on December 14, 2011. Both new ESPN and broadcast deals are valid in 2014-15 and will continue through the Super Bowl LVI by 2022.
As for the rest of the changes, they consist of the following:
- The NFL Network will broadcast 13 (later increased to 16, then 18) Thursday Night Football match from Sunday 2 through Sunday 15 excluding the Thanksgiving night game on Sunday 12th at NBC. All teams will play a nationally televised game of the season during the season and 26 teams (all except the Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions who always play on Thanksgiving, whoever their opponents in a given year, and two teams playing in the NBC Thanksgiving game) will appear on NFL Network Thursday Night Football. (This provision is no longer strictly enforced: in 2017, the two teams playing on Thanksgiving face off on Thursday night next week's game.Kickoff games do not count for every team from one game on Thursday per year.
- Saturday night will return to another network as a "flexible night" to accommodate vacations and other scheduling conflicts; ESPN uses Saturday's game (Falcons at Lions) on December 22, 2012, to avoid playing games on Christmas Eve as it had to be done in 2007. It was during that Falcons-Lions game that Detroit Calvin Johnson set the NFL record for the most accepting yard in one season (he finished the season with 1,964 receiving yards).
- Flexible scheduling will start earlier this season and will allow the game to shift between Fox and CBS as well as NBC. It will also help mandate all 32 teams will appear on CBS and Fox at least once every year if possible.
- Beginning in 2014-15, NBC will only broadcast one final game of Wild Card Weekend, instead choosing to add the division round match. An additional wild card game is taken by ESPN, which, from 2015-16, will return the game to ABC, returning the network to NFL coverage for the first time in a decade; ESPN will still broadcast the game itself as well. This change also eliminates two issues with Wild Card games that are directly related to the syndication of cable games.
- Teams that do not appear on Monday Night Football during the season can play in the Wild Card game. Since the NFL only sells syndicated packages to teams that play Monday night games during the season, logistics that sell closed offer packages from one playoff game to a local television station on Monday morning for Saturday's match would be impossible. While in 2014, Carolina and Arizona play on Mondays during the season, stations with Monday night packages can show matches in the local market.
- The logistics of local rights holders must clear up to four hours of broadcast time (some of which may have been sold for infomercials) for games, and sell all local ad breaks, within five days of notification also played into the move to the ABC deal.
- The NBC's Spanish channel (originally reported as Telemundo's air-line network, but later converted into cable only) started the Spanish Sunday Night Football broadcast. (Prior to this, Telemundo had aired Spanish comments on the second audio program of the main NBC channel, but not on Telemundo itself.)
- The NBC Sports Network will initially start broadcasting Sunday morning's pregame events competing against the ESPN Sunday NFL Countdown in 2014-15. (It never materialized, due to the rapid shift of channels in the direction towards English football in autumn 2014 and heavy competition from other unofficial NFL previews on ESPN, Fox Sports 1 and CBS Sports Network.)
- ESPN will regain exclusive rights to the Pro Bowl, if the match resumes (the league has decided to stop the contest), starting in 2014-15. Starting the 2017-18 season, this game will also be broadcast on ABC.
In addition, all networks are granted the right to stream games on the Internet through the Everywhere TV initiative, but not to mobile devices (such as Verizon Wireless, via its NFL Mobile app, retain exclusive rights to all 7 inch (18 cm) or smaller devices until 2017 season); right streaming rights are effective, as NBC and Verizon bring the online Super Bowl XLVI for the first time. NBC pays an average annual $ 950 million annual rights fee for its broadcasting rights; CBS $ 1 billion, and Fox $ 1.1 billion; the actual amount is slightly lower at the beginning of the contract and higher at the end to compensate for inflation.
On 5 February 2014, the league announced it had sold eight weeks of the Thursday Night Football package on the NFL Network to CBS, which beat ABC, Fox, NBC, and Turner Sports competitors. The NFL Network will simulate the CBS games Thursday night from week 2 to 8, will continue to play Thursday night games from Sunday 9 onwards, and will also hold two Saturday night games (Week 16 doubleheader) for the first time since 2011, game that aired on CBS. All of these games (except for one Saturday Night game NFL Network game) will be announced by CBS mainstream commentary team Jim Nantz (play-by-play) and Phil Simms (color analyst). The deal with CBS was originally only for the 2014 season, with the league having the option to extend it for additional seasons. CBS paid an additional $ 275 million for the package. Local CBS affiliates automatically get local simulcast rights for any game that is only done on the NFL Network. The league is exercising an option to extend its deal with CBS until the 2015 season. For 2016 and 2017, the league will split the packet of ten Thursday night matches between NBC and CBS, each paying around $ 225 million per season for five games; The CBS game will be at the beginning of this season as before, while NBC will include later in the season. Under the terms of the NFL Network retransmission agreement with cable providers, the NFL has incorporated provisions requiring seven games in the Thursday Night Football package only on the NFL Network; for the 2018 season, prospective bidders will be free to bid on packages ranging from between four and eleven matches.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia