High School and college football seasons are about to gear up, and the NFL is right around the corner.
For those people who think Soccer is the American sport, there is a pretty definite pattern to when football games are played and when that means your favorite shows will suddenly be replaced by a server being down or some yahoo talking about how Jeremy Smith in Kankakee is having a great season as a freshman high school running back.
High School games are almost always played on Friday nights – once in a while there will be one on Saturday afternoon when there were weather issues or the school doesn’t haven’t lights on their stadium. College football is played during the afternoon on Saturday unless the game is being featured on national TV, in which case some games will be in the evening. The NFL games are on Sunday, the Sabbath of the religion of the inflated pig bladder. It used to be that Monday Night was the only other day you would find an NFL football game, but now they can appear on just about any day, as American’s can’t get enough pig bladder excitement.
High school has a relatively short season as there is no TV money involved (yet). After playing their rival teams, there is typically a state tournament to drag things out a few more weeks. College football ends just before Thanksgiving and the college “bowl” games trickle on and are mostly done by New Years Day. The NFL finishes the regular season in December, and keeps the excitement alive until the Super Bowl, played in Mid February.
It’s fairly common for stations to run shows on Mondays to talk about the weekend football games – or even worse, carry the syndicated programming, but delay it by an hour, but only on Monday.
Stations that preempt sports are unlikely to be the featured station for syndicated shows, unless there are not other options.