If you’re struggling to find NFL highlights on television late at night this fall, Fox is here to help. The network partner for NFL broadcastswill offer its own highlight show to wrap up coverage of Sunday’s slate of NFL games.
Variety reported on Thursday that GameDay Prime will premiere on Week 1 at 11:30 p.m. and show full highlights of NFL games from the network’s broadcast team, which will also show Thursday Night Football Games this season. But perhaps the biggest news of the announcement is that it will be a strictly national broadcast from an advertising standpoint, with the NFL handling ad sales for the program.
Fox will this season offer “NFL GameDay Prime” Sundays at 11:30 p.m. to its affiliates, according to two people familiar with the situation. The weekly “wrap” show is produced by NFL Network, which will air it simultaneously. In a unique twist, the NFL will sell the national advertising surrounding the program, these people said; affiliates will have their own ad opportunities. The league views the agreement as an “opportunistic” move, one of these people said, and is not necessarily looking to get into the business of selling commercial time for broadcasts of its games on Fox, CBS, NBC or ESPN.
The concept puts highlights on a traditional network and gives the NFL a chance to control the narrative outside of local anchors and TV broadcasts that might not value NFL football in certain markets. In a market like Buffalo, for example, there’s no local news at 11 p.m., and therefore, there’s little football coverage at night for the network. Other affiliates may air things after their local news broadcasts, though, and as Variety pointed out, some affiliates may choose to air GameDay Prime in another time slot. But at the very least, the show will be on in time for Week 1 and will continue throughout the season.
