NFL considering pulling the plug on Thursday Night Football?

Cotton

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NFL considering pulling the plug on Thursday Night Football?

Posted by Matt Yoder on Nov 28, 2016 08:45

Nobody likes Thursday Night Football. The players and teams don’t like it because if the extremely short week and the toll that it takes on everybody involved. The fans don’t like it because the quality of play takes a noticeable dip from games that are played on Sundays because of the short week. And shoot, the networks probably don’t like it either because they have to pay an extra couple hundred million dollars for games that they could have the rights to air on Sundays.

But in Roger Goodell’s quest for world domination and putting the NFL on your televisions seven nights a week, Thursday Night Football has expanded into a full season’s worth of games. A few years ago, it was initially expanded to a half season as a ploy to put exclusive games on NFL Network and boost the league channel’s distribution and carriage fees. Then the league opened the games to the highest bidder and created not one but two television packages and a Twitter deal. Now it’s impossible to remember week to week who’s broadcasting games between CBS, NBC, NFL Network, and Twitter.

Alas, with ratings taking a tumble this season and the complaints about Thursday Night Football getting louder, the NFL could finally be coming to the realization that less is more.

According to Mike Florio and Pro Football Talk, the NFL is seriously considering reducing the TNF schedule or eliminating the games entirely when the rights agreement ends after the 2017 season.

The league realizes that, with every team playing once on a short week each season, many of the Thursday games necessarily will have reduced appeal. Adding extra prime-time games to the Sunday/Monday inventory also has created a sense that the league has saturated the marketplace with stand-alone evening games.

Options include (but aren’t limited to) getting rid of Thursday games completely and possibly starting the package at Thanksgiving and continuing it through the end of the season, with games likely to generate broad interest selected in April for November/December programming. Thursday Night Football debuted a decade ago as a device for providing game content for NFL Network, allowing the league-owned operation to generate higher fees from cable and satellite providers.

As the source explained it, the money generated from NFL Network due to the annual slate of exclusive games isn’t large enough to make it an impediment to broader efforts to strike the right balance between giving national audiences enough, but not too much, pro football — and to ensure that games played in prime time are truly worthy of being seen.


Has the league saturated the marketplace with bad games between bad teams that not a lot of people have interest in watching? Absolutely. How many seasons do we have to sit through a Thursday night Jags-Titans epic struggle or watch the Browns’ annual primetime appearance? The extra Thursday game has also further diluted the quality of games elsewhere in primetime (especially Monday Night Football) and the games that are shown on Sunday afternoons in traditional timeslots.

Make no mistake about it, the NFL is facing this dilemma because of their own greed and single-minded pursuit of revenue. From the start everyone knew that Thursday Night Football was sacrificing a lot of things – quality of play, player safety and well-being, popularity amongst fans – but the league went all out with it anyways.

It’s hard to imagine the league admitting complete defeat with their dream of owning Thursday nights in the fall so it’s possible we might see them dial back the schedule to a half season once again. That way the league can still have their Thursday night games late in the season or even put some games on NFL Network. Maybe they can even construct a mini-package of 2 or 3 games for networks to bid on so they can eek out a few million dollars.

It’s the right move to make, we’ll see if the NFL actually follows through with it in two years time or if the revenue generated from year-long Thursday Night Football is too tempting to pass up.
 

Rev

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Yes, please. Starting with this Thursday.
 

DLK150

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Works for me. Unless Dallas is playing I usually forget there's a game on Thursday nights. Sometimes even when Dallas plays, it slips my mind.
 

mcnuttz

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Thursday games should only be reserved for Thanksgiving.

They need to quit messing with a good thing.
 

dallen

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Thursday games should only be reserved for Thanksgiving.

They need to quit messing with a good thing.
If they want more prime time games they should add a West Coast game on SNF or MNF. I don't really like that idea either, but it is better than TNF
 

mcnuttz

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If they want more prime time games they should add a West Coast game on SNF or MNF. I don't really like that idea either, but it is better than TNF

We have good ideas, but we need a position of power from which to order these ideas into law.
 

data

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NFL's not pulling TNF. In fact, they'll double down and throw some other gimmick into the mix.

Color or rush not enough? How about 3-D?
Vote for winning can not enough? How about vote for which Papajohns pizza discount with 'TNF ' promo code?
Wham! halftime performance before you go-go?
How about a TV-special effect with football comet tail?
 

Cowboysrock55

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If they want more prime time games they should add a West Coast game on SNF or MNF. I don't really like that idea either, but it is better than TNF
I don't think more prime time games is a good idea. They are watering down their product and losing fans as a result. Prime time games should feel special. Not like the garbage we have endured on Thursday nights.
 

data

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I don't think more prime time games is a good idea. They are watering down their product and losing fans as a result. Prime time games should feel special. Not like the garbage we have endured on Thursday nights.
Or they'll increase the number of playoff teams to increase importance of mediocre vs mediocre teams.
 

arcticdiesel

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The extra primetime games are nice for us out of market fans- Those are the only Cowboys games I actually get to watch. I think the problem has been the quality of teams this season. Half of the games have been the teams not worth watching, and I would guess teams that don't draw major out of state fans.
 

dallen

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I don't think more prime time games is a good idea. They are watering down their product and losing fans as a result. Prime time games should feel special. Not like the garbage we have endured on Thursday nights.
Well, like I said I don't particularly like the idea. But if they are committed to adding more prime time games I think they need to stick to Sunday night and Monday night. I'd prefer they keep most games on Sunday afternoons.
 

Cotton

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Cowboysrock55

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I guess he is just ignoring the fans complaints. As seen through the lack of viewers for those games.
 

mcnuttz

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Over-saturation isn't a good thing IMO.

Sunday, Monday, Thursday, and Saturday games = loss of interest
 

dallen

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I never watch the TNF games unless we are playing. They are just bad football games. The players are still beat up from Sunday and the staff don't have enough time to prepare. Unless they make it so that you can't be on TNF except coming off a bye they need to kill it. Even then, they should just let it go. If anything they need more late Sunday afternoon games.
 

Rev

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I never watch the TNF games unless we are playing. They are just bad football games. The players are still beat up from Sunday and the staff don't have enough time to prepare. Unless they make it so that you can't be on TNF except coming off a bye they need to kill it. Even then, they should just let it go. If anything they need more late Sunday afternoon games.
This.
 

L.T. Fan

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The unis are the hardest for me to take.
 

Rev

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I agree with Fallen but to be honest I've lost interest in the sport as a whole. I watch the Cowboys but don't watch anything else. We are even going camping this weekend and I don't care if we don't make it back in time for the game. We will but that's the last thing on my mind.

I don't watch Mondays, thursday, or Saturday games unless it's the Cowboys.
 

Texas Ace

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I agree with Fallen but to be honest I've lost interest in the sport as a whole. I watch the Cowboys but don't watch anything else. We are even going camping this weekend and I don't care if we don't make it back in time for the game. We will but that's the last thing on my mind.

I don't watch Mondays, thursday, or Saturday games unless it's the Cowboys.
Been that way for me for a few years now.

There was a time when Sunday was football from morning to night, but now it's just Cowboys football and maybe a half hour or so of another game depending on what I'm doing at the moment.

I'm much more of a college football fan now.
 
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L.T. Fan

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Been that way for me for a few years now.

There was a time when Sunday was football from morning to Jiggy, but now it's just Cowboys football and maybe a half hour or so of another game depending on what I'm doing at the moment.

I'm much more of a college football fan now.
"Sunday was football from morning to Jiggy"?
 
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