Thursday Night Football

CBS has gotten a nice boost this fall from Thursday Night Football, which posted big gains over the network’s usual Thursday lineup and helped balance out declines by a handful of aging shows. But with the NFL program’s seven-week run now over, the question is whether CBS can maintain that momentum without its No. 2 show.

The network said today it was permanently editing a song featuring Rihanna’s voice out of its Thursday night NFL telecasts — after the singer issued a profane tweet about it.

Having spent $275 million to buy the rights to Thursday Night Football, CBS is putting the full might of the company behind it to make sure all of America will be watching. “There hasn’t been an initiative at CBS Corp. in decades as large and all-encompassing as this one,” says CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus of the network’s bet on TNF.

If your TV is ever tuned into CBS it doesn’t take long to see the massive effort being put into promoting the new Thursday Night Football broadcast TV franchise. And the combined production efforts being put forth by CBS Sports and the NFL Network behind the scenes is shaping up in such a way that it will arguably be the largest week-in-week-out regular season production the NFL has ever seen.

CBS Sports still has ad inventory available for its inaugural Thursday Night Football schedule, but it has sold presenting sponsorship positions around its pregame, halftime and postgame shows.

The network wants more than half a million dollars for a 30-second spot in its coming Thursday Night Football broadcasts,which will be simulcast on cable’s NFL Network — the latest signal that TV networks believe live football gives them a greater advantage in reaching the large crowds of consumers their sponsors expect.

During the upfront season, CBS has been thumping its chest about winning an estimated $250 million Thursday Night Football package from the NFL for the 2014 season. But it might be time for CBS to wipe that victory grin off its face. Why? Because unlike its existing decades-long deals with the NFL — and others between the league and NBC, ESPN and Fox — CBS only has a one-year contract (with an option for another) for this season’s package of eight, early-season Thursday Night games.

As the five broadcast networks meet Madison Avenue this week in the annual pitch for their share of the $74 billion spent each year on TV ads, CBS is most likely to secure the biggest increase, one Wall Street analyst predicts — because it will introduce Thursday-night NFL football.

The National Football League on Wednesday night took the wraps off its 2014 regular season schedule, and while CBS’ inaugural Thursday Night Football slate is packed with divisional rivalries, some of the matchups are strictly from nostalgia.

An annual rite of spring, the NFL’s schedule release is one of the most closely watched events among sports media executives. Network brass lobby aggressively for the league’s top matchups starting weeks before the Super Bowl, then anxiously await to see how their efforts paid off. This year’s release has created even more anticipation among the league’s TV partners, thanks to the presence of CBS’s first Thursday night package.

As NFL executives pondered which network should get the coveted weeknight game package, they kept coming back to a few common themes about CBS. The league was most impressed with CBS’s status as the top-rated broadcast network in primetime. Thanks to that standing, CBS offered the biggest potential audience for the Thursday night package. Plus, CBS promised to use its top TV talent and broadcasters to present the games — not just the eight games on CBS, but also the eight games on NFL Network.

CBS may have its early-autumn Thursdays crammed with new action from the NFL, but it doesn’t sound like the network will let football tackle the comedies it has established on that night.

CBS will simulcast with the NFL Network eight Thursday night games next season and produce eight more for the NFL Network alone. Reuters reports CBS paid less than $300 million for one year. The league has an option for a second year.

The National Football League is poring over a handful of formal offers for a new Thursday night TV package, and sources with skin in the game believe the top bidder will be revealed within the next seven to 10 days. While the bids are effectively sealed, insiders say NBC has the best shot at landing the single-season showcase, given its oft-demonstrated willingness to outbid rivals for high-profile sports rights and a pressing need to repair the sucking chest wound that is its Thursday night programming lineup.

Network execs are meeting with NFL execs in Manhattan this week to discuss the bids they submitted for a slate of Thursday night games. It is thought the NFL will decide on the winning bidder within several days, and a formal announcement could come as soon as next week.

The league has used its NFL Network to televise the games, but recently put up the 13-game series for bids and received them from NBC, Fox, CBS and ESPN. Turner Sports has also bid, and there’s a strong possibility ESPN would put the games on co-owned ABC should it be chosen by the league.

Since losing Monday Night Football to its corporate cousin ESPN before the 2006-07 season, ABC has been languishing. Right now, it’s running fourth among the Big Four. If it can add the broadcast rights to Thursday games to its lineup, it would strongly declare that ABC still believes in its stations, its affiliates and in broadcasting.

The NFL is requiring that the winning bidder of its Thursday night game package simulcast the games on NFL Network, according to several sources. The NFL included the surprising language in the proposal that it sent to TV networks last week, specifying that the winning bidder’s live linear feed “will be simulcast by NFL Network.”

The channel’s expanded Thursday Night Football slate helps double ad sales dollars. The games have put up record numbers, averaging 6.35 million viewers over the course of 13 games.

Hearst-owned independent WMOR Tampa, Fla. (DMA 14), announced today that it has secured local broadcast rights to air NFL Network’s Thursday Night Football matchup between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and […]