Acme Packing Company
After a bit of a rough broadcast map last week, the Green Bay Packers have a week 12 game that should be widely accessible for large portions of the country. This week they host the Minnesota Vikings to kick off a final seven-week stretch that is dominated by divisional rivalry games, and although it’s another early afternoon kickoff at 12 Noon Central Time, several factors play into the game getting a wide audience across much of the US.
The first positive factor is that FOX, which has Packers-Vikings this week, has the doubleheader. Therefore, every FOX affiliate in the country gets a game in each of the early and late afternoon time slots, so the Packers will be competing against fewer other games for distribution. In fact, FOX has only three early games, with Giants-Lions and Seahawks-Titans as the only other competition for eyeballs.
Those other two games aren’t likely to draw significant audiences, either. Seahawks-Titans is hardly a national draw, especially with Tennessee struggling mightily this season with a rookie quarterback. And although the Giants are a substantial brand, their issues this season mean that their matchup with the Lions also has less nationwide appeal than a historic divisional rivalry game.
Here’s the map for FOX’s early games, thanks to 506sports.com. Packers-Vikings is shown in red, and is projected to be on local TV across most of the country, with pockets in the Pacific Northwest (plus Alaska) and much of the northern part of the Eastern time zone getting one of the other two games.
FOX’s doubleheader will send Eagles-Cowboys to almost every local channel across the country in the late afternoon time slot, with only Falcons-Saints competing with that game. That game will go to those two teams’ traditional home markets, with the rest of the country getting the NFC East matchup.
The map on CBS is a bit of a mess, however, with that network carrying six games this week. The biggest one there is Colts-Chiefs in the early afternoon. However, much of NFC North country will see Steelers-Bears, except for the main Green Bay and Detroit markets, which get a late Jaguars-Cardinals game due to home game blackout rules.
