2007 New England Patriots–New York Giants game

Network television coverage[edit]

When the NFL announced its 2007 regular season schedule, the game was scheduled to air exclusively on the NFL Network, as was the case with all Saturday NFL games beginning with the 2006 television contract in an attempt to boost carriage of the NFL Network by cable providers.


The game was also offered to local stations in each team's home market under a long-standing league policy for games televised on cable networks. In the case of the Patriots–Giants game, the local rights were originally sold to WCVB-TV and WMUR-TV (both ABC affiliates owned by Hearst-Argyle Television) in the Boston / Manchester market, and MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated station WWOR-TV in the New York City market.^[1]


It was a prime time matchup of regional rivals, but as the Patriots moved closer to a perfect season, the game became even more important. Therefore, the network increasingly promoted the game via television commercials on other stations.^[2] It was clear the game was one of the most anticipated in recent history, and could therefore serve as an important promotion for the NFL Network, which had tried unsuccessfully over the previous year to expand its viewership by becoming included as an "extended basic service" on the major American cable television providers such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable.^[3]


Political pressure from the Northeast to make the game more widely viewable preceded the decision to simulcast the game on CBS and NBC. (NBC was the primary broadcast network for Sunday night games, while in 2007 CBS normally held the rights to air games when the away team was an AFC team.) The Senate Judiciary Committee's chairperson, Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and ranking minority member, Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, sent a letter to the NFL threatening to reconsider the league's antitrust exemption under U.S. law.^[4][5] Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts had pressured the league and cable companies to settle their dispute so "no die-hard Pats fans will be shut out from watching their team take aim at football history."^[6]


In the end, 15.7 million viewers watched the game on CBS, 13.2 million on NBC, 4.5 million on the NFL Network, and 1.2 million on the aforementioned local stations in New York, Boston, and Manchester.^[7] The game was the most watched program on television since the 2007 Academy Awards and the most watched regular season NFL game in more than 12 years.^[8] It marked the first time that an NFL game was simulcasted on two or more networks on a national level since Super Bowl I, which aired on CBS and NBC, the respective homes of the NFL and the American Football League at the time.


The broadcast was a complete production of the NFL Network, and because the cable channel had a unique opportunity to promote its brand by being simulcast on network television, several unusual events occurred during the broadcast. First, CBS and NBC did not air their usual studio shows leading up to the game. Instead, the networks came on the air at 8:00 eastern time and simulcast the final 15 minutes of the NFL Network's 6+ hour pregame show. The NFL Network used that time mostly to promote the channel and its programming, encouraging viewers who did not receive NFLN to call their television providers and ask for it. A "demo reel" of NFL Network programs aired during the simulcast portion of the pregame as well. This demo reel and the encouragement to call television providers were repeated on the halftime and postgame reports, also NFL Network produced. During the game itself, several on-screen graphics were shown encouraging viewers to both call their television provider and go to the NFL's "Get NFL Network" website to send automated emails to television providers.


Moreover, the NFL Network, which had devoted over 30 hours of programming in the week prior to the Patriots-Colts game in Week 9, devoted over 60 hours of programming to the game, consisting primarily of re-broadcasts of nine Patriots games from the 2007 season; they also had a special countdown clock for the game which appeared over 1,000 times in the week leading up to the game, and live coverage of Patriots press conferences that week. Moreover, NFL Network aired a six-hour pregame show devoted to the game; no NFL game, including Super Bowls, had received more coverage.^[9]


In Canada, TSN held the rights to the game, as it did for all NFL Network regular-season telecasts. After the NBC / CBS simulcast was announced, TSN's parent broadcast network CTV announced it too would carry the game, allowing CTV simultaneous substitution rights over U.S. stations broadcasting the game.^[10] This meant that, in areas of eastern Canada receiving their "big three" network affiliates from Boston, the CTV signal was seen on four different basic-cable channels, in addition to TSN's broadcast (which only differed from CTV in terms of network identification and some commercials).


This controversy did not lead to the NFL offering the Thursday Night Football package to other networks, and so the games remained exclusively on NFL Network through 2013. The Thanksgiving night game, which was part of the package until 2011, was sold to NBC beginning in the 2012 season. On February 5, 2014, it was announced that CBS would air eight, early-season Thursday night games during the 2014 NFL season in simulcast with NFL Network, with the remainder airing on NFL Network exclusively.^[11][12]