The move comes months after the short-lived XFL, a joint venture between World Wrestling Federation Entertainment Inc. and NBC, posted a major league flop with its featured game-of-the-week national broadcasts also on Saturday nights.
Under the NFL's new prime-time schedule, games that used to start on Saturdays at 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time will be moved to 4:30 p.m., and ones that used to begin at 4 p.m. will move to 8 p.m. The games are carried on ABC, a unit of The Walt Disney Co.; CBS, a unit of Viacom Inc.; and Fox, a unit of News Corporation.
"We've been in the prime-time football business for a long time," said ABC Sports spokesman Mark Mandel, referring to his network's highly rated Monday Night Football franchise. "We know absolutely that it's the best formula for attracting the largest number of viewers. We're thrilled the NFL has gone in this direction."
The NFL said it made its decision because the number of people watching television generally is much higher on Saturday nights than in the afternoons.
For example, it said, on January 6 this year - a Saturday when two playoff games took place - 40.6 per cent of U.S. households used a television from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. eastern time, against 58.9 per cent that used a television at 8 p.m.
STRATEGY FAILED FOR XFL
NBC, a unit of General Electric Co., was looking at similar numbers when it entered its XFL joint venture with the World Wrestling Federation and scheduled its game of the week broadcasts for Saturday nights earlier this year.
The league went on to fold after one season largely because it failed to catch on with sports fans but some also questioned the strategy of broadcasting games on Saturday nights when the sport's biggest audience of young males tended to go out.
Mandel said ABC is not concerned that the primary audience for football might be out on Saturday nights during the new broadcast time.
"To put the XFL and the NFL in the same sentence is absurd, and any comparison is not valid," Mandel said. "Playoff football is easily the highest rated event on sports television every year regardless of the time. The prime time hour is the best way of reaching the largest number of people. This is absolutely the right decision."
