National Football League

The NFL on TV needs changes

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

foxsports

The National Football League needs to change the way it goes about scheduling, or the ratings slide is only in the beginning phase.

Dear National Football League,

Since 1993, I’ve been a fan. Every single season I await your return and I’m saddened by your departure in early February. However, there’s something we need to talk about. Something very serious that needs to be discussed. Not just for my benefit, but yours as well.

I know you have a lot of stuff to deal with. Especially when it comes to pushing your players to wear pink while ignoring the welfare of women, but listen to me for a quick second.

Me, along with a ton of other fans, are tired of your push into primetime. Turn it down a notch. For the love of God.

It’s not that we don’t like watching primetime contests but what you’re giving us isn’t good. Too much of a bad thing will make us find better things to watch. For example, on Sunday night I was subjected to watching an absolute mess in Glendale as Seattle and Arizona fought over who wanted to lose a pivotal NFC West matchup.

I ended up watching The Walking Dead season premier and then turned it back to NBC in time for two kickers to embarrass the profession. This is just the latest chapter of terrible games in primetime. Enough is enough.

Most of us look at the money juggernaut and think that there’s no way a change will come. Then again, people are smart enough to believe you are forcing a bad product down our throats.

The primetime nights are Monday, Thursday and Sunday. All three are struggling to keep viewers tuned in.

Trouble on Thursdays

Take the NFL’s Thursday night package for example, NFL Network, NBC and CBS partner up to broadcast games on Thursday night during the week. That would be fine but it’s every single week during the season except for the last week of the season. That’s a bit of an overload and apart of that package is a deal where every single team is obligated to be featured.

This just in, not every team is special NFL. Trust me, I’m a Browns fan.

While you can’t flex out of a good or even bad match up from week to week, it’s clear that a game between the Browns and Ravens won’t get the same attention as a game between the Eagles and Seahawks. That’s why starting next season, I’d like to see the NFL scale back on how many games a featured on Thursday night.

We don’t need one every week. We will be OK, we’ve got more than 150 channels along with Hulu and Netflix. We will survive.

Saving Sunday Night

As for the Sunday night package, this is where the NFL needs to be smart and listen to the fans. The NFL has the ability to “flex” or move a game of more importance from the afternoon to Sunday night, bringing NBC a bigger audience. By NFL rule, you can start flexing games in Week 5 all the way through the end of the season. However, between Weeks 5 and 10 you can only do that twice so in some cases you’re stuck with a terrible game like the Colts and Texans earlier this season.

The NFL needs to relax it’s flexing rules because that’s no way of pushing new stars or giving everybody to see a game between elite QBs or running backs. While CBS and FOX may scoff at these ideas, everybody’s making enough money that you can make this sacrifice and in the end everybody is happy.

While you can’t touch Monday Night Football as far as flexing or scaling down those games, you can beef up the schedule to make sure that you put on games that will make people want to watch. If I’m helping organize the TV deals, I’m giving ESPN and Monday night first priority on what games get picked when putting the schedule together.

Bye Bye RedZone.

Lastly, we have to shelve NFL’s Red Zone channel. I know I’m a monster but I’ve got to slay the beast to save all of us.

While the NFL RedZone channel seems like a great idea, it’s like getting the cliff notes version of what’s really happening. Want to know why you are losing viewers and struggling? You’re giving them a microwaved version of what happened so now you render more than half your game useless.

These ideas may seem out of left field but I’m tired of seeing the product look as bad as it’s been. You can package it much better and we’ll watch it, we’re sheep. Just give us something worth watching.

Sincerely,

A concerned customer