| CFL on NBC | |
|---|---|
| Country of origin | United States |
| Production | |
| Running time | 3 hours |
| Original release | |
| Network | NBCSN (2012–2013) |
| Release | 2012 (2012) – 2013 (2013) |
CFL on NBC is ade facto branding for theCanadian Football League (CFL) games that have been carried on American broadcasterNBC or its sports network,NBCSN.
NBC's first run broadcasting Canadian football involved coverage of a collection ofBig Four/IRFU (the predecessor to the CFL's East Division) games and the Grey Cup in1954.[1] NBC's coverage during this period (simulcasting theCanadian national broadcaster) provided far more coverage than theNFL's existing contract withDuMont. NBC aired games on Saturday afternoons, competing against college football broadcasts onCBS andABC (at the time,college football telecasts were far more restricted than are today). The revenue from the contract allowed the IRFU to directly compete against the NFL for players during the 1950s; the American viewership arguably prompted the league to finally raise the point value of touchdowns from 5 points to 6, as it has been in the American game since 1912, in 1956, and to play some exhibition and regular season games in the United States beginning in 1957. Interest in the CFL in the United States faded dramatically after the debut of theAmerican Football League in1960.[2]
Between 1955 and 1980, only one game was televised on U.S. television, the1962 Grey Cup (which was broadcast byABC).
NBC (with the exception of its northernmostaffiliates that were located close to the Canadian border) broadcast games in theCFL for three weeks during the1982 NFLplayers' strike[3][4] The first week of broadcasts featured theNFL on NBC broadcast teams, before a series of blowout games on the network and the resulting lowratings resulted in NBC cutting back and eventually cancelling its CFL coverage. (At the time,ESPN held the U.S. broadcast rights, who sublicensed them to NBC during the strike; rights reverted to ESPN after the experiment failed.) The announcers who called the games for NBC are in parentheses.
There wereblackouts of the CFL games. The blackouts weren't exactly because of not selling out thestadiums, but for beingtoo close to Canada. For instance NBC'saffiliate inSyracuse did not get these games. Their TV listings showed these CFL games onCKWS 11 (CBCKingston, Ontario), while NBC (WSTM 3) listed “NFL FootballNew England atBuffalo (if strike settled) or movie” for Sunday, October 3.
A game between featuring the Edmonton Eskimos at the Winnipeg Blue Bombers was tentatively scheduled for 1:30 p.m.Eastern Time on Sunday October 17, even making newspaper TV listings. At the last moment NBC cancelled the broadcast. The network was worried that the game would run over its allotted time and conflict with Game 5 of the1982 World Series, which was supposed to begin at 4:30. NBC did not resume CFL broadcasts afterwards. As previously mentioned, the games it showed had mostly been blowouts and the network even ended its October 3, 1982 broadcast "Heidi Game" style before the game ended in order to not delayprime time programming.
In2008, when NBCSN was known as Versus and not yet under thesame corporate umbrella as NBC, it aired the96th Grey Cup.
TheCanadian Football League entered into a much more generous contract with theAmerica One television network that had run from 2001 through 2009. That contract allowed for the majority of CFL games to be televised in the United States, with America Onesyndicating the Canadian coverage (fromTSN or, prior to 2008,CBC) primarily toregional sports networks. A number of factors led to America One not renewing their contract after the 2009 season. On July 1, 2010,NFL Network began airing live Canadian Football League games, again simulcasting TSN. This much more limited package did not include any games in August (during theNFL preseason), any playoff games, theLabour Day Classic (one of the Labour Day games was carried in 2011 but not the other),Thanksgiving Day Classic, or theGrey Cup. NFL Network aired Thursday games, three Saturday games in July, and then Friday night games beginning again in September (afterArenaBowl XXIII; NFL Network also held rights to theArena Football League and aired a weekly game on Friday nights).[5][6] NFL Network announced it would not renew its deal with the CFL on May 25, 2012.[7]
The package was picked up by NBCSN[8][9] starting on Monday August 27,2012 with 14 games total broadcast on NBC Sports Network including 9 regular season games (including bothLabour Day Classic games) and[10] all of the playoffs andGrey Cup.[11] NBC renewed its deal with the CFL shortly before the2013 regular season, but the deal scaled back the network's playoff coverage (the network will not air the first round games and will only air the conference finals on tape delay). The 2013 U.S. TV schedule featured 11 regular season games live (including the loneLabour Day Classic contest), three tape-delayed contests in October (including the displaced Toronto-HamiltonThanksgiving Day Classic, which will air at midnight the Wednesday after), and the Grey Cup live.[12]
In an oddity, NBCSN only owned the traditional television rights to the league, while another network owned the Internet rights;ESPN3 has carried CFL games on the Internet since 2008. (ESPN Inc., ESPN3's parent company, holds a minority stake in TSN.) The CFL granted exclusive broadcast and Internet rights to ESPN in a multinational, five-year deal prior to the 2014 season, ending NBCSN's involvement with the league until at least 2019.
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