NFL Starting Times Shifted Giving Sunday 10 More Minutes Of Football
Double header NFL football games will no longer overlap. The NFL announced today that it will be shifting the 4:15 games back 10 minutes to make sure that fans don’t have to miss the beginning of one game, or the end of another.
Double header games, aired on CBS and Fox, started at 1 pm and 4:15 pm last season. The NFL found that 44 games had to be interrupted for another broadcast to start.
“In researching the kickoff time shift, the NFL analyzed games from the 2009-11 seasons and found that 44 games required part of the audience to be switched to a mandatory doubleheader game kickoff… With a 4:25 p.m. ET kickoff time, that number that would have been reduced by 66 percent to only 15 games.”
According to Deadspin, the NFL broadcast rules required Fox and CBS to switch to the opening kick-off of a game instead of broadcasting the end of the previous games. The networks would then be forced to give updates throughout the beginning of the later game.
By shifting the NFL starting times, the league hopes to give fans an uninterrupted viewing experience. The new schedule will affect about 40 games this season.
The NFL continues:
“Approximately 40 games over the full 2012 season will be impacted by the 10-minute kickoff time shift — with half of those moves coming in games played in Mountain or Pacific time zones with 1:25 p.m. or 2:25 p.m. local starts.”
Are you happy about the new NFL schedule? Are you excited for 10 more minutes of football?
