Part of the job of a top programming executive at any sports network airing National Football League games is to lobby Howard Katz, the NFL’s senior vice president of broadcasting and media operations, regarding the games your network really wants.
Everyone wants Dallas Cowboys games for the obvious reason — they are far and away the league’s marquee team when it comes to viewership. The NFC East and North teams are also popular given the market size/fandom of those cities. For ESPN, though, there was one game they really wanted outside of the usual requests, and Burke Magnus, the network’s executive vice president of programming and scheduling and point person with the NFL on schedules, was overjoyed when he learned on Thursday afternoon that his network had landed it:
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The season-opener for the Oakland Raiders.
Magnus said his network loved the idea of getting Jon Gruden’s first game back coaching in the NFL — and ESPN’s will air the Rams at Raiders on Sept. 10 at 10:20 p.m. ET, the back end of its opening week doubleheader that commences with the New York Jets at Detroit Lions (7:20 p.m.).
“The Raiders were a pretty good team two seasons ago, we believe they have the core of a very competitive team, and Jon obviously was a big part of our family for a long time,” Magnus said. “The game had several angles to it. There is a curiosity factor to Jon’s return to football after so many years, it’s a good team, it’s a really good opponent. There are many reasons to watch.”
The most interesting television-related story for yesterday’s NFL schedule release was what kind of slate ESPN would get for Monday Night Football. The company’s frosty relationship with the NFL has been chronicled over the past year, most notably by John Ourand of the Sports Business Daily. Last month, Ourand had a long dissection of the relationship between the two entities, writing that “during Super Bowl week in Minneapolis, NFL executives privately described the relationship as the worst they’ve ever seen. In particular, they pointed to stories on ESPN.com and “Outside the Lines” that they felt went out of their way to portray the NFL in a bad light.” ESPN historically has had a less-than-attractive schedule compared to other rightsholders despite paying the league $1.9 billion per year.
Magnus told The Athletic on Wednesday night that it is a priority for ESPN to make sure its relationship with the NFL is “as strong as possible.” He agreed that Ourand’s piece documented some of the bumps in the road. “(New ESPN president) Jimmy (Pitaro) has made this a priority and he has already been in to see the commissioner and met on a couple of occasions with their senior leadership,” Magnus said. “It is a priority for the Walt Disney Co. It is a work in progress, but Jimmy has made it a priority.”
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To say ESPN got a better schedule this year because of some executive meetings would be a stretch. But the schedule is objectively better than years past — at least on paper. ESPN has a number of games with excellent viewership potential including 49ers at Packers (Week 6), Titans at Cowboys (Week 9), Giants at 49ers (Week 10) and Redskins at Eagles (Week 13). Magnus also believes (as do I) that the Jets at Lions has potential given the market sizes, the fact that both teams will be 0-0, and interest in the new coach of the Lions (Matt Patricia). One of the highest-rated, early-season games for ESPN last year involved the Lions in Week 2.
“I like it pretty much from top to bottom,” Magnus said. “I think it is very good based on the last several years.”
His network —as well as the other networks that air primetime games — will be hoping for a viewership turnaround. Viewership for the primetime games — MNF, NBC’s Sunday Night Football, and the shared Thursday Night Football package (between NBC, CBS, NFL Network and Amazon last year) – all declined for the second straight season. NBC averaged 18.2 million viewers for its set of games, the package’s lowest figure since 2008, when it averaged 16.6 million. MNF trended up for most of the season before a couple of late-season dogs sent the series to its lowest audience ever at 10.757 million. TNF averaged 10.937 million viewers, including 13 Thursday night games, one Sunday morning game, two Saturday afternoons, one Saturday night and a Christmas Day game (on a Monday afternoon). It was the lowest TNF numbers since the broadcast networks became partners in the package in 2014.
In a move that will help the networks, especially when it comes to programming that follows NFL games, the NFL announced it was moving up kickoff times in 2018 for prime time games. NBC’s Sunday Night Football will now kickoff at 8:20 p.m. ET (10 minutes earlier), ESPN’s Monday Night Football will now start at 8:15 p.m. (15 minutes earlier), and Fox’s Thursday Night Football will begin at 8:20 p.m. ET (five minutes earlier).
“The commissioner believes it’s more fan-friendly to start the primetime national games earlier,” NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy told The Athletic on Thursday. “We have spoken to fans around the country on a variety of matters related to the viewing experience and many said it would be better to have games conclude by around 11:30 p.m. ET.”
Some additional notes of interest from the NFL schedule release:
- Fox’s Sunday afternoon schedule features 113 regular-season games. It includes 35 NFC divisional matchups — 10 from the NFC South, nine each from the NFC North and NFC West, and seven from the NFC East. As for what might be the network’s most-watched game (excluding Thanksgiving), I’d bet on the Eagles-Cowboys in Week 14.
- Fox’s Thursday Night Football schedule premieres Sept. 27 with the Vikings at Rams. The TNF schedule also includes Eagles at Giants (Week 6), Packers at Seahawks (Week 11) and Saints-Cowboys (Week 13).
- CBS gets the Super Bowl this year as Super Bowl LIII will be played February 3, 2019. It is the 20th time CBS has broadcast the Super Bowl, the most of any network.
- The regular season schedule for CBS includes 10 appearances by New England, Pittsburgh and Denver, and nine appearances by Oakland. The network gets a rematch of last year’s AFC Championship Game, New England-Jacksonville, in its first national window in Week 2. CBS will also have more NFC games than ever before, including four cross-flex games. One of those games is Dallas at Washington on Oct. 21 at 4:25 p.m. ET.
- NBC’s 19-game schedule begins with Eagles-Falcons on Sept. 6. Fourteen of NBC’s 18 scheduled games (Week 17 is TBD) involve at least one playoff team from last season. The Eagles, Patriots, Steelers, Cowboys, and Packers appear three times each. The marquee regular season game looks to come Nov. 4 when the Patriots (Tom Brady) host the Packers (Aaron Rodgers). The last and only meeting between those quarterbacks — Nov. 30, 2014 — the two combined for 613 passing yards and four touchdowns in a 26-21 Packers victory.
- The games exclusive to the NFL Network include Ravens-Bengals (Week 2); Jets-Browns (Week 3); Texans-Jets (Week 15); Browns-Broncos (Week 16).
(Top photo: Jeffrey Brown/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
