Acme Packing Company
This Sunday, the Green Bay Packers host the Cincinnati Bengals as the green and gold look to get back to their winning ways coming out of their week five bye.
When the NFL’s schedule was announced back in May, this looked like it could be a premium matchup that would get a wide distribution on local television channels thanks to the league setting it for the 3:25 PM Central time slot. After all, it promised to be a top quarterback matchup between Jordan Love and Joe Burrow, with plenty of star power on both sidelines. Additionally, week six features a London game on Sunday morning and a Monday Night Football doubleheader, while only one west coast team plays at home this week, leaving the NFL with any number of games that they could select for the late afternoon.
Unfortunately for the NFL, Joe Burrow’s injury has dampened the excitement for this game from the national narrative perspective, as did the Packers’ dip after a hot 2-0 start. Shockingly, the Bengals’ acquisition of Joe Flacco did little to move the needle and CBS has dropped this game down to its second choice in the late window, keeping it on local channels only in geographical areas that have ties to the NFC North or AFC North divisions.
Here’s this week’s local CBS broadcast map from 506sports.com, which shows areas that will get Packers-Bengals colored in blue:
CBS’ top pick, shown in red, is the San Francisco 49ers against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That game gets the network’s top commentating tandem of Jim Nantz and Tony Romo. Packers fans should be pleased to hear a familiar voice on the call this week instead, as Kevin Harlan — who calls Green Bay’s preseason games and is the son of former team president Bob Harlan — will call the game along with color commentator Trent Green.
As always, if you’re in an area that does not get the Packers game on your local CBS affiliate (i.e. a red area in the map above), you will need an NFL Sunday Ticket subscription to pull in the game.
Check 506sports.com for full broadcast maps for the entire weekend.
