Thursday nights, from a network perspective, are the key night of programming on their schedule.
Sunday garners the biggest audiences but Thursday has the biggest revenue share of the week. The main reason being big dollars are spent on advertising movies opening for the weekend.
I never watch Thursday night football unless Pittsburgh plays, well, used to anyways. I see it as a huge gamble.
You can develop a lot of pilots for $450-500 million and one or more will become a hit. From a network standpoint I don’t think I would have done a long term deal with the NFL for more than the current contract for obvious reasons.
The reasoning for doing this because of the loss of 20th Century Fox being sold to Disney is specious. Networks buy shows from competing studios all the time. The loss of financial interest in syndication though is a factor.
Still, bad move in today’s sports entertainment environment.
That makes sense. Looks like Fox will go to mostly sports and reality shows in the future,