NEW YORK – The National Football League will team with long-time broadcast partner CBS to produce and televise Thursday Night Football for the 2014 season, it was announced today by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, CBS Corporation President and CEO Leslie Moonves and CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus.
CBS will air eight early season games that also will be simulcast on NFL Network. NFL Network will also televise eight late-season games in the run-up to the playoffs. The mix of games will include 14 on Thursday nights and two late-season games on Saturday.
The full slate of 16 regular-season games will be produced by CBS with its lead broadcasters and production team, including Jim Nantz and Phil Simms, on all Thursday night games. In a new twist, NFL Network hosts and analysts will be featured in the pregame, halftime and postgame shows along with CBS Sports announcers.
The agreement is for the 2014 season with an additional year at the NFL’s option.
“NFL Network built Thursday into a night for NFL fans,” said Goodell. “Our goal is to bring these games to more fans on broadcast television with unprecedented promotion and visibility for Thursday Night Football on CBS.”
“We are very pleased to build on our outstanding partnership with the NFL by expanding our coverage to Thursday nights,” said Moonves. “CBS is a premium content company and the NFL represents the best premium content there is. I look forward to all this new deal will do for us not only on Thursday nights, but across our entire schedule.”
“The NFL is the most powerful programming in television,” said McManus. “To add a primetime NFL package to our successful Sunday AFC package further strengthens our position in the sports marketplace. We look forward to having Jim and Phil and our top production team showcased in primetime on Thursday nights.”
CBS will air eight early season games that also will be simulcast on NFL Network. NFL Network will also televise eight late-season games in the run-up to the playoffs. The mix of games will include 14 on Thursday nights and two late-season games on Saturday.
The full slate of 16 regular-season games will be produced by CBS with its lead broadcasters and production team, including Jim Nantz and Phil Simms, on all Thursday night games. In a new twist, NFL Network hosts and analysts will be featured in the pregame, halftime and postgame shows along with CBS Sports announcers.
The agreement is for the 2014 season with an additional year at the NFL’s option.
“NFL Network built Thursday into a night for NFL fans,” said Goodell. “Our goal is to bring these games to more fans on broadcast television with unprecedented promotion and visibility for Thursday Night Football on CBS.”
“We are very pleased to build on our outstanding partnership with the NFL by expanding our coverage to Thursday nights,” said Moonves. “CBS is a premium content company and the NFL represents the best premium content there is. I look forward to all this new deal will do for us not only on Thursday nights, but across our entire schedule.”
“The NFL is the most powerful programming in television,” said McManus. “To add a primetime NFL package to our successful Sunday AFC package further strengthens our position in the sports marketplace. We look forward to having Jim and Phil and our top production team showcased in primetime on Thursday nights.”
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Please don't cancel Crazy Ones.
ReplyDeleteSo TBBT is moving back to Monday's, I guess.
ReplyDeleteThey could always delay it's return.
ReplyDeleteI am not familiar with football, so I have no idea when the eight games will end.
I'm guessing Elementary will be moving too? (the renewal is certain after the news about its syndication)
ReplyDeleteI think they did this only to prevent ABC from acquiring those rights.. and I wonder what they will do with their Thursday line-up, they have many more weeks left in the season after those 8 weeks end.
ReplyDeleteThey might move TBBT to Monday's and delay rest of the Thursday night schedule til November.
ReplyDeleteCould be. Might be a way to anchor Monday now that HIMYM is done.
ReplyDeleteI'd say they will delay the start of the other shows until November. That will allow them to air more episodes in mid-season with fewer repeats.
ReplyDeleteIf ‘Big Bang’ moves to Monday Fox will really be screwed, IMO.
ReplyDeleteThe fun competition will be TBBT vs The Voice.
ReplyDeleteOh man where the hell is Elementary going?
ReplyDeleteThere has been some speculation for quite some time that it will go on Sundays. Not that there's any evidence for it, though.
ReplyDeleteInteresting.
ReplyDeleteUgh! Guess we'll find out in May when they announce at the Upfronts..
ReplyDeleteWouldn't be a surprise. With the news that upon syndication, CBS gets $3m per episode (http://www.spoilertv.com/2014/02/elementary-cbs-will-earn-3-million-per.html), putting it on Sundays makes more sense than to put a show there that needs the ratings more.
ReplyDeleteTrue, but I have a feeling that whatever Fox puts in the 8-9 slot won't even get a 2.0. And knowing Fox, it'll probably be Bones. Which will really suck, especially if it is its last season. :( This is all JMO, though.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is are the 8 games 8 weeks in a row or are they every other week?
ReplyDeleteAssuming CBS is airing 8 weeks of football starting with 9/11 (since 9/4 is the kickoff game that still goes to NBC), the first two weeks are before the Fall schedule starts anyways. So this is really a six week delay from 9/11 to 10/30, with three Thursdays in November before Thanksgiving. My guess is that if CBS simply pushes some shows' debuts back by six weeks, it will mostly be returning shows. They likely won't want to premiere new shows in November. This may actually be good for the bubble comedies.
ReplyDeleteSomething that could happen: The actual games start at 8:30, so CBS could put in TBBT in that timeslot giving it a massive lead-in, with the pre-game show going to the CBS Sports Network; this is because, if memory serves me right, pre-game, while heavily viewed are not as big as the game, and giving the pre-game to one of CBS' sister channels could help give a boost there.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's a 4th possibility I hadn't think of. Still, I find it odd that CBS would "waste" the TBBT lead-in on a sports event rather than on their own programming. It's possible, yes, but I find it a bit oddish. Maybe they just air reruns there.
ReplyDeleteUgh,another night getting Eye Alerts telling me when the shows are going to start.Don't know if i what that again.I wound up dropping The Good Wife because the football game ran over all the time,my dvr recording half of the show,if that! Bitch,bitch,bitch,lol...
ReplyDeleteBut omabin meant after all the games, not after the game. T_T.
ReplyDeleteI was talking about after the game,not before.
ReplyDeleteI believe you misunderstood. During the 8 weeks in which CBS will air Thursday Night Football, the games coverage, as far as I understand, is supposed to last from 8h30 to 11h, which means there will be no show airing at 10pm. What I meant was that after the games finish (in November), it's likely that Elementary keeps its 10pm slot. I also think it's quite possibly they launch something new at 9pm (possibly something more serialized). No idea what they will do with the 8pm slot though.
ReplyDelete"Thursdays at 8 would become wide open though."
ReplyDeleteHow so? Whatever goes against TNF will probably get trampled. JMO And I'm betting Fox is keeping The X Factor. But who know.
People are being a bit overdramatic here. First the NFL season starts ahead of the TV season, knock out two weeks there; the World Series is on one Thursday and so that's an easy "repeat" replacement. FOX starts several series the first week in November, I don't see why CBS wouldn't do the same with its Thursday slate. It also means 5-6 less repeats during the entire regular season; throw in Thanksgiving and NCAA Tournament; Xmas and NY are on Thursday, so I count 10-11 weeks that either don't count or originals wouldn't air anyway. If the season is 36 weeks long and TBBT airs 24, it's almost repeat free. That's a huge win for CBS because TBBT could end up as the #1 show in TV.
ReplyDeleteOH! Lol,yes I misunderstood what you meant! Yeah,we can speculate till May and now that CBS has this deal and the deals with WGN and ION where & when Elementary is shown might be more important now than it would have been this morning....
ReplyDeleteThe TNF games are not particularly high rated and they certainly aren't higher rated than The Big Bang Theory. Here are the numbers the games pulled this past fall:
ReplyDelete12/12 - 3.3
05/12 - 1.7
21/11 - 2.9
14/11 - 2.4
07/11 - 2.4
31/10 - 2.5
24/10 - 1.8
17/10 - 2.3
10/10 - 3.1
03/10 - 2.8
26/09 - 3.2
These are respectable numbers, particularly considering they are averages from 8pm-11pm (most of the times networks cannot average these high numbers throughout the whole night, even if they have one or two shows during the night that do better).
However, I was actually referring to the post-game period (the whole other ~27 weeks remaining) in which there will be no TBBT in the slot if it is, indeed moved. I don't think CBS will actually move it though, they will probably just delay the premiere of Mike and Molly a bit and do one or two special previews of TBBT on Mondays to launch the new comedies there.
Oh, okay. But are those ratings for the 'NFL Network' only? I'm asking because not everyone gets that channel.
ReplyDeletePlease keep TBBT away from my shows. Seriously will eat Monday shows if moved there. If so, I'll have to hope TBBT viewers don't watch the same shows as well.
ReplyDeleteOr hopefully if it's moved some Monday shows will move as well.
If it's Bones last season and it's parked at 8pm on Monday it's actually a good idea. Bones proved itself on Friday, and it being the final season ratings/viewers don't have to be that great because they won't be fighting for a renewal like some other shows.
ReplyDeleteI hope they do that instead of moving shows around.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but it'd be nice if it could stay at at least 2.0, especially if it is the last season. But I'm not sure it can against TBBT. JMO, though.
ReplyDelete