The Season with Peter Schrager: NFL VP of Broadcast Planning & Scheduling, Mike North

What a difference a week can make in the Big Apple. Peter recaps the response from last week’s podcast interview with Sean Stellato, and the current state of DeVito Mania in NYC, as well as a quick look at what the Bills and Bengals are doing in a wide open AFC. Then, ahead of the NFL’s Christmas Weekend slate of Week 16 games, Peter is joined by Mike North for a deep dive into the scheduling and broadcast details of the remainder of the 2023 NFL season.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
The Season with Peter Schreger is a production of the
NFL in partnership with iHeartRadio. Welcome everybody. It's now week
sixteen of the NFL season. My name is Peter Schreger.

(00:28):
I'm the host of this podcast. We call it The
Season with Peter Schrager. I'm joined by my producer, Aaron
wang Kaufman, who is out in the boondocks of Maine. Aaron,
I'm looking at you in a log cabin. I know
it's holiday time, but there's like weird lights going on.

(00:48):
Are you where? What is your situation right now?

Speaker 2 (00:51):
So I'm up at my parents' place for the holidays
and I am in like my dad's workshop, his wood shop,
and we have no power because there were huge storms
last night, so we're running off generators. Yeah, I'm I
know New York got hit too with a bunch of stuff,
and like.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Yeah, York dude.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
First of all, thank you. I love the fact that
you still found a way to get on us the
generator Thoughts and prayers. Obviously, we always give thoughts in
prayers what we do, but this is cool, Aaron. A
week ago at this time, we had Shawn Stillado on
our podcast, It was the first time a lot of
people had ever heard of Shawn Stolato. It was fresh

(01:33):
off his Monday Night appearance. What a difference a week makes.
In the week that followed our clip of Shawn Stillado
being interviewed on the season with Peter Schrager not only
ran on The Today Show, then also ran on NBC
with Willie Geist on their Sunday show. He did a
whole thing on it. But more importantly, Seawan star was

(01:54):
like a what would you even call like in the
the superva? A super Nova's perfect all right because it burst.
Let me explained super nova in that. After doing our show,
he did Pat McAfee show, which of course got big love.
I think he did part of my interruption with the
with with Wilbond and Court. Maybe he didn't do that,

(02:15):
Maybe he was on another ESPN show. I'm sorry. Then
he did Barstool in Chicago. I saw them taking photos
with them, the PMT guys who I love. Then Jimmy
Fallon on Friday Night did an entire spoof not on
de veto on Stillato, like Stilado got so big that

(02:36):
Fallon wasn't even like here's the eight here, here's Tommy,
here's this quarterback new York. He's like, no, here's the
agent of the quarterback in New York. So then Stellato
on Friday, Adam Schefter tweeted out, we knew it from
the podcast last week. Stellato is the UH inductee this
year and one of many in a very distinguished class

(02:57):
to the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame. Now
he goes in into Chicago, go he has a whole
induction Friday. The Schefter posts the news. Everyone has their
their jokes or their kudos. All that. I think Stillado
warmed up. A lot of people warmed up to Stillado

(03:18):
over these interviews. They're like, all right, this guy, he's
got two clients in the NFL right now. One of
them is is time of de Vito. You got to
respect it, the Veto and him. It's a family thing.
It's great Sunday rolls around and I'll give you a
little behind the curtain. I've got to give a I've
done millions of interviews where people ask me what's the

(03:40):
differentiator between your Good Morning Football work and your Fox
NFL kickoff work? So on Good Morning Football Monday to Friday,
I look at myself more as host, analyst, entertainer, content insider.
So when it comes to draft and like coaching hires,
like I'll put on the insider hat first. But day

(04:00):
to day we have the services of Ian Rappaport and
Tom Pelsaro and Mike Rafo. They're gonna be the ones
who we're gonna tell you if Allen Hurts is going
through a sickness. They're gonna be the ones to tell
you that Shaq Leonard might actually sign with the Eagles
or the Cowboys. Like that's there on the weekends, I
am insider. That is my role. Inside around Fox, We've
got a show and it's Carissa Thompson, the Lovely, amazing CHRISA. Thompson,

(04:24):
with Julian Edelman, Charles Woodson, Michael Vick and myself. It
is us. It is not the four of them and
then Shrieker you know, come in. I am in every
segment and my job is to give you little info
as we lead up to kickoff. There's a very specific
role and I love it, but it's here's the stuff
that you don't know yet. And I've done millions of
interviews where I explain in that role, my sole purpose

(04:47):
is in that a block from seven am, or in
this case it's it's eleven am Eastern till about eleven ten.
The first six minutes are going to be those guys
talking about the headlines and they're going to toss to
me and for four minutes, I want to give you
the viewers three things you don't know yet. And you've
already been watching NFL work for five hours, a new

(05:08):
pregame getting ready. We've everve been watching schefter. He's already
had three hits. What can I give that no one
else has? And sometimes it's like the Kingsbury nugget from
last year where I'm like, you know, Kingsbury brought a
one way ticket to Thailand and boom, there's my scoop.
Another example would be Trevor Lawrence last week in their
game against Cleveland. Everyone's hedging their bets. Everyone's riding the fence.

(05:29):
He might play, he might not. We're gonna see it's
a game time decision. Well an actives are out at
eleven thirty. I have no problem, you know, boasting and
tooting my horns saying at eleven am, I come on Fox,
like Lawrence is gonna play? Why Because someone there in
the team told me Lawren's gonna play. He's gonna play,
and he played this week. Come out there. I do
a little couple, couple easy ones and say, you know,

(05:51):
here's the day. It's on Rodgers. I give some nuggets
and no one has on Rodgers about how the week
went and the conversations that are having. Okay, fine, check
the box, all right, next thing, Tyreek, we actually don't
know yet. And I know that doesn't sound like news,
but let me explain to you this is truly as
I'm speaking to you on TV at eleven oh five,
he is working out as we speak. He'll give a
thumbs up our thumbs down at about seven minutes. Come

(06:13):
to me after commercial, which we did, and I said,
he's not gonna play. Houston Texans, no Stroud, no Nico.
They're up against it, but they love case Keenum. Here's
what case Keenum did this week for you. But my scoop,
my scoop of the week, if you will, if you
want to get into the punts, my scoop de jure.
I had shown Stillado's outfit before anyone else had it.

(06:35):
I texted Stilado Sunday morning. I said I know this
sounds crazy. Send me whatever you're wearing. I want it.
He's like, what, send me whatever you're wearing on the
field today. I want to be the first one to
tweet it out. I want to be the first one
to share with the audience. Stillado, the mensch that he is,
sends me this beautiful green suit, green pants, Jordan's all

(07:03):
laid out and on the green turtle little neck. On
the green suit, there is a patch. And the patch
is the official patch that you receive once you are
an inducted member to the National Italian American Sports Hall
of Fame. Now I show this picture, ninety five percent

(07:26):
of the audience on Twitter loving it, like yes, this
guy's five percent of them hating it, like this is
enough for done the craziest thing. And I have not
followed up with Sean because I will tell you we'll
close the loop on Sean in a bit. Someone told
me they don't give out jackets there. What do you mean,

(07:46):
no one? They Okay, they give out patches, they don't
give out jackets on.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
So Friday morning he takes the patch and gets a
custom made jacket for it.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Sounds like there was a sewing on situation. Whether he
already had the custom suit or it was a custom
suit that was made specifically for the patch, I cannot confirm.
I had not heard from Sean, but someone and there
are a lot of let me tell you something, the
agent community. If you think high school is a caddy community,

(08:22):
wait till you talk to some agents. And the love
that I've been giving Sean Stillado and the fact that
I had Shaun Stellato an agent on this podcast, I
have heard from no less than twenty agents calling me
a clown for having that guy on the podcast but
not highlighting the great work that I do with my clients.
And I've got this guy who was undrafted and then Yo,
I went to Villanovo, but then from Villanova had to
walk onto the CFL and I've been with them three

(08:44):
have me on the pocket. Stellato Stillado stirs up a
lot of feelings for people. Some people like it, some
people don't. I didn't watch the Manning cast. I don't
typically watch the Manning cast. I usually have Joe Buck
and Troy Aikman and I get really dialed in on
the down and distance and all that stuff. Someone texted
me that Peyton or Eli or both actually apologize for

(09:08):
the way they talked to us, talked down to Tolatto
last week, which I appreciate. So then the game starts
and the Saints sacks you know, Tommy DeVito seven times.
As they're doing it. The Saints players are doing the
whole fingers thing, and you could feel that kind of
the balloon, you know, the air coming out of and

(09:30):
then Darren Rvel takes if we're gonna live in that world?
Takes an absolute club to the knees to Stellato and
too tweets out the news that that Tommy had agreed
upon pizza shop appearance for ten grand, then backed out
they needed more after the Packers win. And then it
all feels like it's kind of wheezing on air right now.

(09:52):
And I'll be honest, I haven't heard from Sean Stillado
over the last twenty four hours. I just texted him, Hey,
checking in on you, So I'm sure he's dealing with
a lot of that. Moreover, the Giants announced they go
they're going back to the Veto for Christmas Day, So
here was my thing. I know, it feels like it
might have hit its peak and now we're on the

(10:13):
you know we're going down. I'm not quite done with
the tummy de Vito story. If if you take what
happened to the Eagles over the last month, three straight losses,
firing a defensive coordinator or reassigning a defensive coordinator, world
is melting in Philly. And the history that the Eagles
and Giants have had of the last few years, where
the Eagles who just dominated the Giants in these games.

(10:36):
I believe there is still some legs left in this
de Vito story. If the Veto goes in to Philly
on Christmas beats the Eagles, it's a huge deal. But
then they play the Rams who are fighting for a
playoff spot on New Year's Eve. If the Vito can
do that, then they get the Eagles again the final
week of the season. So as we thought that this

(10:58):
thing might have died in New Orleans or it might
be done and okay it's time for Tyrod Taylor, I
am not done with DeVito. I still think there's a
little bit more to the de Vito story and there
could be a silver lining to all this thing where
he plays spoiler now and the Giants have these wild
three weeks where the Veto rides off into the sunset
into the offseason, gets a legitimate contract from the team.

(11:19):
Is the backup going forward, or at the very least
can compete for that starting job moving forward. But a wild,
wild seven days. You know, last Thursday, Tommy DeVito was
on the front cover and the back cover of the
New York Post. As much as we love the Davito
story and shown Stillano not if we're doing the season
with Peter Schrager. That was a last week story. I

(11:41):
think this week it's it's teams that are ascending and
then teams that are melting down. And it's amazing to
me the difference what a couple of weeks make. You know,
the Philadelphia Eagles have now lost three straight games. They
have reassigned their defensive coordinator, Sean de Side to some
box upstairs and I don't even know what his title is.

(12:01):
They showed him on the ESPN broadcast. But the Eagles
now have that Patricia defensive coordinator their offense teams in Nimick.
They've lost three straight games. They are suddenly this team
in a crosshairs. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Bills, when they lost
to the Eagles just three weeks ago, we were ready
to write them off. They were done. They were in
thirteenth place. I think in the AFC they are now

(12:22):
the team that no one wants to see. We kind
of laid it out on the podcast couple of weeks ago,
and Aaron, as a Bills fan, I said to you,
I'm like, they're the team I don't want to face,
even after the loss against the Eagles. I'm like, they
played well against the Eagles, and they still have a
window to do this, and they get the buy at
the perfect time, and they just fired Ken Dorsey and
let's see Chiefs win, Cowboys win. They play the Chargers

(12:45):
this weekend in a game that they cannot lose, they
play the Patriots. That would be four straight wins. They'd
be knocking on the door. They'd be playing Miami in
the final week of the season, which who knows what
that could be. I just want to lay this out
some of the games coming up in the next few weeks.
This weekend, you have a Dolphins Cowboys game on Sunday.

(13:05):
Circle that huge, so big. On Monday night, you have
Ravens at forty nine Ers huge Circle that all right.
The following week, you have Dolphins Ravens circle it. You
also have Bengals Chiefs circle it, and then you have
the week eighteen stuff where it's just absolute pandemonium as

(13:25):
far as into divisional games. I'm just saying this, The
eighteen week season is so freaking long and yet the
thinnest of margins, and it changes week to week to week.
Slap me next year, Aaron. If a team in week
eleven or week twelve has a losing record, and I'm like,
they're done, they stink whatever, because I've learned it now

(13:47):
with a the Bengals, b the Buffalo Bills, and see
my dear brother Sean McVay and is Los Angeles Rams.
Those are three teams I don't want to see in
the playoffs. And I even mentioned the Browns and Flaco.
So if we're doing the season, I have to be
true to the season. It isn't decided in October. It's

(14:09):
not even decided Thanksgiving. The season is decided in these weeks,
the final five weeks of the season. And here we
are and every game matters, and thirty teams are still alive.
Only two have been eliminated, actually three, I think the
Jets were eliminated now, but it's that wide open. It
is that wild, and that's why we do this thing.

(14:31):
Speaking of the schedule, I love our guests today. If
you're a football wonk, you love this. If you are
curious about where to find your teams and where you're
gonna be watching football over the holiday weekend, you're gonna
love this. With no further ado, It's one of our
favorite guests on the podcast. He comes on time to time,
especially during the scheduling part of the season where we
get that schedule announcement, usually the week leading up to

(14:53):
and then we do a little PostScript afterwards. He's one
of my favorite guys who works for the league. He
is the VP of scheduling and planning and broadcasting and
I messed that all up, but you get the point.
He's our guy. Mike Northwell them back to the season
with Peter Schreger.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
Morning, buddy, how are you doing today?

Speaker 1 (15:10):
I'm good? Is it insulting with some of his botches?
Your title like that? Or is it like, oh, we're
all friend, let's just keep titles.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
Are titles are silly? Right? We're all in, all of
us on everything, and there are days when my job
is nothing but scheduling, and there are days when the
job really has nothing to do with scheduling, and we're
all about interacting with the clubs or a stadium manager,
a field operator, or the officiating department or a million

(15:35):
other things going on. So it depends on the day,
but basically we're all in this together and we're all
just hoping for good outcomes every weekend.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
I thought this would be a great week to have
you because we have this really interesting back to back
weeks of unorthodox scheduling where there's games that are on Saturdays,
but also you know, Monday night games are still in play,
and then we head to the Christmas holiday where, gosh,
it's hard to get my head. All right, we do
have a Thursday night game as we record this, you
have a really good one. Saints at Rams take us

(16:06):
through the rest of the Christmas weekend. A lot of
listeners are still in their week fifteen brains as they
listening on this on Tuesday and Wednesday. What is up
ahead and how you guys sort of saw this from
a thirty foot thirty thousand foot lens.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
Yeah, I mean you talk about unorthodox windows, If that's
the right word for it, I think these unorthodox windows
are becoming orthodox. You know, the nine thirty am games
at one point, where what are you guys doing? The
Thursday night schedule was new to everybody. It wasn't that
long ago, right, Most of our games were Sundays at

(16:42):
one and four o'clock. So always looking to spread out
the quality inventory, always looking to have football on television
for our fans to watch, particularly as you get down
the stretch here, like you were just I think alluding
to it is the most wonderful time of the year, right,
All these games matter, you know, best laid plans in May,
some things we got right. Some things the crystal ball

(17:02):
was a little cloudy, But all these games matter down
the stretch. So having an opportunity to kind of spread
them out across the weekend instead of all of them
concentrated at one o'clock and four o'clock Eastern time on Sunday,
where it's still a great experience for the fan to
be flipping around and trying to follow everything, whether it's
for your fantasy football playoffs or your favorite team making
a playoff run. But if we can kind of spread
them out a little bit, get them into more national windows,

(17:25):
we can almost kind of reintroduce some of these teams
to the fans as we head into the playoffs. There
are teams obviously, you know Dallas, Kansas City. Those guys
are on national television quite a bit. So I don't
think fans don't know who the quarterbacks of those teams are.
But some of these other teams, as you come down
the stretch here, are going to get a chance to
play in national windows and almost kind of reintroduce themselves

(17:46):
to the fans as we head into January because some
of these guys might be making pretty deep playoff runs.
So you mentioned it starts on Thursday. This week, Saints
rams big one in the NFC. We head into the
weekend with Saturday games. Look the Saturdays we play on
Saturdays late in the season, right, we always I always have.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
I remember going back to when I was a kid
loving those Saturday games once the college season ended.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yeah, and it's great, Like we said, those are games
that are otherwise going to get lost on a Sunday afternoon.
Last weekend was a what I would call a traditional
Saturday afternoon where we played the NFL Network tripleheader. Got
some serendipitous breaks for us to have all six of
those teams playoff relevant, all three of those games being
pretty impactful. This weekend a little bit different because the

(18:35):
Sunday night window is Christmas Eve. NBC approached us and
asked if they could look at moving to Saturday, something
we were considering, and then the conversations really kind of
solidified around Peacock and Peacock joining in the family now
as a Wildcard site as a host of a Wildcard game.
So wanted to think about with NBC the right way

(18:58):
to kind of introduce two fans that this is here
to stay. And so what we're doing this Saturday is
sort of a dry run for Wildcard weekend. We're going
to do Big NBC Saturday afternoon four thirty, and it's
gonna lead in drive in promote into a Peacock game
on Saturday night, and obviously Wildcard. We're gonna know the
six wild Card games. We're gonna dole them out strategically

(19:18):
across the weekend and across the partners. But this one
was a little tougher. We had to pick a game
in May that we thought was gonna make sense for
Big NBC on Saturday afternoon, and then it was gonna
lead into a Peacock game Saturday night. First time we're
having a regular season game on Peacock and looked for that,
you know, typical Sunday night football late in the season.

(19:39):
Steelers Bengals just sounded right, We're there. It's obviously a
little different than what we thought it was gonna look
like with a couple of backup quarterbacks, but both teams
still squarely in it. So that Steelers Bengals late season,
you know, decide playoff positioning feels good. Yeah for NBC,
Big NBC Saturday, and then that leads into the Peacock
game back in May, kind of took a flyer on

(20:01):
a game like Bill's Chargers. Felt like those were two
teams that might be there down the stretch, big exciting storylines,
quarterbacks and like we said, hopefully playoff implications. Obviously losing
justin Herbert Hurtz, but heck, the Bills might be the
most exciting team in the league right now. So yeah,
Big NBC leading into wildcard I'm sorry, leading into Peacock

(20:23):
this Saturday coming up, and then we're gonna run it
back on wild Card weekend. Big NBC leading in the Peace.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Interesting, So this is all new to me, so good
questions here from your man Schreker. The broadcast teams though,
I saw we had Melissa Stark on and I've been
talking to Tarrico. They're on the Peacock call this week
on on the Peacock app and you can find it
streaming obviously everywhere on the NBC call. Do you guys
know the announcers yet for that Steelers Bengals game?

Speaker 3 (20:47):
I think it's the Notre Dame crew. Okay, okay, that's
on it.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
It's an NBC question, it's an HONY question, but interesting
to note. You're not gonna get your familiar Collins Worth
in Tarrico on big NBC. You're gonna get them on Peacock.
But when we go to the playoffs, it's also going
to be back to back Peacock into NBC the same thing,
or we don't know.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
It's definitely going to be from a scheduling standpoint, it's
definitely going to be a big NBC in the afternoon
leading into Peacock. I think we're all going to see
how this weekend goes before we determine, you know, the
right sequencing of the games. Do you want the bigger
game in the afternoon on broadcast, leading into driving promoting
into the streaming game. Or if you really want to
get people excited about the streaming product, do you put

(21:27):
the better game there? I mean, that will certainly get
a lot of attention. These are the same kind of
conversations we have all the time, as you know, trying
to find the best use of each of these games. Yeah, look,
Turco Rico's a machine. That guy is a legend.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Just find a way to do the Peacock game.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
It's a better question for you if you talk to
somebody from NBC. But but I think you know, it
just shows NBC's commitment to the Peacock experience that they're
going to put the regular Sunday Night crew, including the talent,
on the Peacock game.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
And we've kind of had a dry run with the
Amazon and we've had ESPN Plus with the Jaguars Falcons
over in London earlier this year, so well, we're kind
of getting more and more used to the streaming. You know,
for a fact, this is going to be one where
everyone is going to be tweeting and asking where the
hell do I find this game? It's it's an interesting discussion. Now,
with the Bills still having a lot of relevance and

(22:22):
the Chargers being down, was there any discussion of flipping
those two and saying maybe putting Bill's Chargers on the
four thirty window and maybe flopping Steelers Bengals the later one.

Speaker 3 (22:33):
I'm sure there was. I don't think it was really
that serious. I think the idea all along was the
you know, call it traditional if you will, like the
more traditional late season divisional battle sounds like the broadcast
television offering. And then, like you said, we've been dipping
our toe into the water on streaming for years. Certainly

(22:54):
Amazon has demonstrated the ability to deliver you know, broadcast
level numbers on Thursday nights. So the streaming is obviously strategic,
obviously important, but also here to stay. I think this
is the new normal. And like you said, what used
to be non traditional windows, non traditional broadcast partners. I
think these things are going to become more traditional down
the road. And I think, like we said, Bill's Chargers

(23:15):
in May sounded fun, felt fun, still relevant, It's still good.
Obviously didn't necessarily see East and Stick in our crystal ball,
but you know, the Bills still have everything to play
for and playing really good. So I think it's it's
still gonna be fun for the fans to find. And
you're right. If fans are still wondering at eight o'clock
on Saturday night, where's this game, we haven't done a

(23:36):
good job promoting it and explaining it's part.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
Of the reason why we have you on today. Is
kind of helped, you know, spread the word.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
Always happy to do it.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
So that's Saturday. Then we go to Christmas Eve, which
is this real interesting kind of mesh of traditional Sunday
but then interesting wrinkle at night. Am I wrong?

Speaker 3 (24:00):
No? No, you got a one hundred percent right. Once
NBC kind of approached us with, hey, is there a
way to move off of Sunday night football that we
and they've played on Christmas Eve before, they've played on
Christmas Day before, like sometimes the calendar just falls where
it falls on NFL days. But once we started thinking
about moving NBC Big NBC to Saturday to use it
as to drive into peacock, we had a Sunday night

(24:22):
window where you know, like you said, most Sundays we
play on Sunday night after a usual CBS and Fox
afternoon slate and that's where an NFL network opportunity comes in.
You talk about unorthodox windows. Think about all the different
places NFL network's been this year with the nine thirty
ams and then the triple header on Saturday. Now we've
got Christmas Eve. There's sort of the glue that kind

(24:44):
of holds it all together. When there's a window that
is appropriate for NFL football on NFL Network, you know,
broadcast crew and talent, it sounds like football, it feels
like football. Obviously, Patriots Broncos isn't everything. We hope it
would be back in May, but the Broncos are still
squarely on these things. So you know, lucky enough to
have all these windows with at least one, if not

(25:05):
two teams still in playoff contention, and then all that
will still then leave another triple header for Monday for Christmas.
We had phenomenal success last year. I think you and
I talked about this in May. We always talked about
the incredible viewership and ratings for NFL games. Whatever it is,
forty eight of the top fifty, ninety seven of the
top one hundred. Maybe the most impressive rating from last

(25:28):
year might have been that Broncos Rams Christmas game.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
We talked about it. It was kind of.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
Playing out the string and still twenty three twenty five
million people watching. So this year the triple header shaping
up to be pretty sexy. Really excited about this again.
I think we talked about this and may kind of
go out to the clubs and ask who'd be interested.
How do you think your fans would react to coming
out on Christmas? And Kansas City and Philly both kind

(25:52):
of put their hands up. San Francisco as well, And
then you try to slot in the right opponents, and yeah,
you got three games that are pretty relevant for just
about everybody and culminating with maybe Game of the Year
type stuff. When you're thinking about Ravens Niners on Monday.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Night, think about that Ravens at Niners Monday Night, Christmas Day,
Christmas evening. But like I'm gonna go backwards. You got
Cowboys Dolphins on Sunday, and that's good point. There's a
Monster game also in the middle of the sandwich that
day is but three days? Was that? So? Is that

(26:27):
moving forward or is it just because well, obviously because
Christmas falls on a Monday, But are we gonna always
do a Christmas Day triple header.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
And now I think I don't know about always. I mean,
I think Christmas is a Wednesday next year, So I'm
not sure we're gonna I'm not sure we're gonna get
in there. But there's gonna be days when Christmas falls on,
you know, normal NFL days quote unquote, like on a
Thursday in a couple of years, like Amazon will be
there would there be room for another game in the
afternoon maybe, But when it falls on like this Saturday, Sunday,

(26:55):
Monday kind of in our traditional wheelhouse, Yeah, we've got
the inventory if we feel like we can still make
decent Sunday afternoon schedules like you hinted at, you know,
you take all the best inventory off of Sunday and
you put it on Thursday or Saturday or Monday. What's
left for Sunday afternoon. That's still the lifeblood of this league.
That's still where most fans, you know, watch their home

(27:16):
team at one o'clock and then a big doubleheader like
you said, a Cowboys Dolphins game this Sunday at four thirty.
You don't want to take all the inventory off of
Sunday just as you're trying to populate these other windows.
You got to leave some good stuff behind still for
like you said, the traditional, the orthodox windows. So it's
all one big dance, one big sort of accordion, a
little more, a little less, a little more flexibility, and

(27:38):
just trying to hopefully hit on the right games and
the right windows when you finally get to them. Here
six months, eight months, seven months after you know, the
schedule came out.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
All right, So you know, I'm fascinated by this stuff.
Maybe we're fascinating the broadcasting and scheduling than the actual
football themselves. You and I always are talking on this podcast,
but I also try to like text you one off
questions I have so to explain why you wouldn't get
a flex out of Christmas Eve. You know, Broncos Patriots
that came to an NFL network. It's not NBC. See,
it's not Fox, it's not Amazon's Monday Night Football. NFL

(28:10):
network isn't gonna be able to flex out of anything.
So we take what we get and it's Patriots Broncos.
It's still Belichick on Christmas Eve, and it's still Russell
Wilson and Sean Payton, which now becomes a little saucier
after what we saw on the sideline last weekend.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah, fascinating storylines all around. And we talked, you know,
or I talked a week or two ago with Peter King,
Jimmy train Or we were talking about flexing out of
that Patriots Monday night game, which we did, which was
Eagle Seahawks last night. You know, anybody still wanting to
follow the Patriots are going to have their opportunity. They
were on Thursday night last week. They're on Sunday night
this week and still playing hard, right, held the Chargers

(28:45):
to you know, six points or whatever it was, went
and gave the Chiefs all they could handle. I mean,
they're still playing hard, and anybody who doubts that, you know,
to tune in to watch they are playing hard. And
like you said, Denver, after that start, still in this thing.
Definitely an interesting.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
And it's funny loss I talked about on Good Morning
Football today. If they win, they're into playoffs right now.
If they had one against Detroit, right they're in. Yeah.
The loss knocks them all the way down to eleventh
in the AFC and they're four and five in the conference,
behind even Pittsburgh.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
It just shows that's marges how everybody's bunched up so tight.
One game makes all the difference, so crazy, but still
a chance to get healthy. And just to go back
on one thing you said, you know, correct, we don't
have flexible scheduling for Sunday Night. But when you say,
I know you're half joking, but NFL Network we get
what we get. Don't forget you guys have a form
of flexible schedule talking.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
About we don't have.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
Yes, that is true, but even the TVD stuff on Saturday,
you know, like we said, allowed us to pick three
of five get three good games on for NFL Network.
And I think our fans, our clubs, our stadium operators,
and our broadcasters are kind of getting used to this
concept of TBD. You have to be a little bit flexible.
We all do. Everything's written in pencil, and we're guessing,
you know, six months ago, which of these games are

(30:01):
going to matter, and then we haven't gotten there yet.
But as we look ahead to Week eighteen, literally really
every game is TBD, all sixteen games Week eighteen could
be Saturday, could be Sunday, could be Sunday Night. I
think this TBD flexibility decide when we get closer shorter
runway obviously helps us put the right games in the
right window.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
Okay, this is interesting. So we're in week sixteen now,
we just went through the slate. Are there Saturday games
on Week seventeen?

Speaker 3 (30:25):
Are there Saturday games in Week seventeen? There are again
a little non traditional. We're not playing the NFL Network
triple header, Okay, but we're playing ESPN Monday Night Football
on Saturday on Saturday Night Monday, January one. Traditional Bowl
games they've got I think the two CFP semifinals, y
So we're gonna move the Monday Night Football game from

(30:49):
Week seventeen to Saturday night December, and again talk about
rolling the dice. That's December thirtieth, and that's Detroit Dallas,
and so again in May you know, Lions Cowboys. You
hoped was going to be pretty relevant down the stretch.
It's probably bigger than we could have expected. Game could
have two teams playing for the one seed, depending on
what happens on Christmas out in San France. So yeah,

(31:10):
that'll be a Saturday game. Week seventeen, it'll be Saturday
night only, and then a full slate of Sunday including
Sunday Night on NBC no NFL game on Monday of seventeen.
The good news is that I'll allow us to set
the week eighteen schedule Sunday night instead of Monday night,
so everybody gets a twenty four hour head start on
planning and charters, hotels, tickets, traveling.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
You call it an accordion. I think it's a beautiful puzzle.
Like it's cool to watch it un fould. I love
dissecting it. That game, That Saturday night game is a
huge one. Lions, Cowboys. Did you say that's on ESPN
or ESPN plus? What's the is it streaming? Is it not?
I just want to get it all on my head.

Speaker 3 (31:47):
That one's on ESPN and ABC, that one simulcast on
both like they've done for most of the Monday nights
this year.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
It's a monster game, dude.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
Monster game, Monster game. They've had some big ones. Obviously,
Philly case was awesome. I do think Christmas Night is
going to be great with balth San Fran and to
finish it up with Detroit Dallas, a pretty good run
for our friends from.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
Oh my god, Disney doing flips right now. Okay, not
to get too ahead of ourselves. Playoffs, we now have
the seven teams in the AFC, the seven teams in
the NFC, you have the one seed getting buys, meaning
that Wildcard round is an absolute beauty. And I love
the fact there's so much football. What are the days
in the windows for the playoffs this year?

Speaker 3 (32:29):
Yeah, A couple of years ago when we expanded the
playoffs and expanded the regular season, we locked into a
wild card weekend of two games on Saturday four point
thirty and eight, three games on Sunday one o'clock, four thirty,
eight o'clock, the usual, and then a Monday night wild
card game. We've had a couple of good ones there.
It was Rams Cardinals. I think last year in the

(32:51):
Dallas Tampa last year could be heading straight back for
Dallas Tampa. No, maybe let's see a philiate. Also, thank you.
I think you even texted me, right, I think you
texted me we might be heading for Rams Lions.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
Jared Matthew Stafford.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
Come on, how interesting would that be on wildcard weekend?
And plus you think about some of these brands. Now,
you know, with only one buy as you mentioned, you
know you're probably looking at a wild card weekend that's
going to include the Cowboys the Eagles, the Chiefs. I mean,
these are gonna be really good hopefully, and a lot
of team, a lot of fan interest. So as you

(33:27):
dole those out across the weekend, like we talked about,
we'll learn a little bit from NBC this weekend, coming
up with Big NBC in the afternoon leading into Peacock.
We'll do that again Wildcard Saturday.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
Try to sequence so no matter what, there's no games
on CBS, NBC or Fox wild Card Saturday.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
Not on Saturday, it's Big NBC and Peacock, Okay. Then
on Sunday is gonna be CBS, Fox, and NBC in
some order usual Sunday if you will, CBS, Fox, and NBC,
and then of course the ESPN, ABC has the Monday
wild Card. And then as you project ahead to Divisional,
everybody's got one. CBS has one, Fox has one, NBC
has won, and for the first time, ESPN and ABC

(34:05):
are going to join the divisional weekends.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
And it'll be two games on Saturday, two games.

Speaker 3 (34:09):
To Saturday, two Sunday on Saturday, three and six thirty
on Sunday, and then come back Championship Sunday.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
We already know Championships Sunday, CBS has the early game.
The AFC, Fox says, the NFC they alternate every year, So.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
You guys alternate every year, yep, and then Pro Bowl
games and then Super Bowl in Vegas.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Dude, this is good.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
The blur man. It went fast this season flew by.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
It did. But like you know, here we are before
the season, You're like, all right, we're gonna just put
this out out there. We'll help. I gotta say, Detroit,
Kansas City, a lot of people rolled their eyes, like,
awesome game, right, Uh, it was good, and the Detroit
Lions kind of made a statement early on Thanksgiving Day.
Games were great, like they all they all were relevant

(34:56):
teams and delivered. And then we had the big upset
in the early window and then this we're in for
a stretch run right now, where I thought weren't for
a great stretch right It's unbelievable.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
This is gonna be on. All the games are gonna matter.
Look to your point earlier about having everybody bunched up
the way they are. You know, there's a couple of really, really,
really good teams, and there's obviously a couple of teams
that have looking ahead to next year everybody else is
right there in the middle, right twenty twenty two teams
throw a blanket over them. Every weekends like a playoff game.
And like you said, you could be the five seed

(35:26):
one day and the eleven the next. Look at Philly
and Dallas flipping around between the two and the five.
I mean, every game really matters, really impactful, and having
more of them in windows where fans can watch them
think is a good thing. Right. If they're all massed
up on a Sunday at one o'clock, it's just hard
to follow them all. It's hard to give them all
the exposure they deserve. So kind of picking out the

(35:46):
ones that we thought in may might be relevant, putting
them in national windows. You know, it didn't bat one hundred,
but a lot of good ones still to come.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
And this might be more of a Hans or Brian
Rolapp question, but this was the first year of the
Sunday Ticket on YouTube. There's been this universal praise for it.
I fly on Jet Blue back from LA to New York.
If you want to get into it, and they have
Sunday Ticket and they have red Zone, I don't miss
an action at all. How has that partnership been in
year one because from the viewer side and the fan

(36:14):
engagement side, I think it's been pretty flawless. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
Look, which at the end of the day is what
matters most, Right, It's all about the fans who want
to pay for this product being able to experience it
the way they want. I've heard, you know, every day
we talk about the tiling where they let you kind
of watch whatever it is for or eight games at
a time. I know some folks are still wanting to
set their own tiles, but that's probably coming someday. But yeah,

(36:37):
to the best of my knowledge, you know, they're learning
as they go. It's been fifteen weeks down and still
a couple more big ones to go. But for the
most part, it sounds like technologically for anybody who was
concerned about, you know, them being able to handle the
traffic and handle the product, I haven't really heard a
lot of you know, buffering issues or unable to find
my game or any of that kind of stuff. And

(36:57):
you know, like we started this conversation, you know, the streamers,
the digital partners, they're here to stay there. They're nothing new,
They're not going away, and they're going to become you know,
viable homes for big NFL games. Are we going to
put a you know, an Eagles Chiefs. Are we gonna
put a really big one like that on a streaming
platform and just kind of test where the ceiling is?

Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (37:21):
Probably at some point. I mean, we talked a little
bit about NFL network, right, you talked about all those
nine thirty am games. You know, that Miami Kansas City
game the best games of the year and really kind
of showed you that there is broadcast level viewership out
there for streaming partners, and that one's nine thirty in
the morning and we still got to ten eleven million
get hut factor in the local Yeah, by far. I

(37:44):
think the most watched NFL nine thirty AM game not
the most watched NFL network game, because you guys have
you know, you guys have wandered into Christmas Day here
and there and every now and then, you know, you
stumble into something big and fun and sexy on a
big window like that. So there's been bigger NFL network games,
but there haven't been bigger nine thirty a m. Eastern
time games. So that kind of shows you, you know,

(38:06):
for years it was, oh, let's make sure we don't
deploy our best assets in that window because maybe you're
not getting maximum viewership. I'm not sure that's true anymore. Again,
you're approaching broadcast level viewership for streaming services for the NFL.
That's something none of us probably could have seen coming
five years ago. And who knows what the world's going
to look like five years from now.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
Right, there's a lot of hand ringing and a lot
of debate, and it made for good offseason. You know,
angry calls on radio about Amazon being able to flex
their Thursday night games. You guys did not do that
this year. He didn't exercise it that year. We thought
there was going to be some difficulties with a twenty
eight day window to actually decide how to do it.

(38:46):
Brown's Jets is coming up. Was there any discussion? Now
you look at this, I know that Jets aren't aren't there,
But maybe Rogers and the Browns are a story.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
Talk to your boy man, have Aaron play half? Why not, right?
Show us? He show us, dude, what everybody's whistled for,
what everybody whistled for. Next year him may look even
if Rogers doesn't play, Even if if you know Zach
doesn't play. You know, when we talk about primetime windows,
you know, we always said if this game is truly,

(39:15):
you know, no longer relevant from a playoffs standpoint, that's
really where you start thinking about flexible scheduling. If one,
hopefully both teams are still playing for something, you know,
that game still feels like it's worthy of a national window.
And for those who haven't watched Joe Flacco quarterback to
Cleveland Browns this last month, the guy looks like he
looked when he was taking the Ravens to Super Bowls.
He looks the same, you know, big, tall, strong in

(39:36):
the pocket, throwing dimes. And Cleveland's been good all year.
They really have think of what they've been through with
all their injuries.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
Forty nine ers in the rain, like they've done it.

Speaker 3 (39:45):
They are with aj Walker, Yeah, they are legit. Miles
Garrett might be, you know, best player in the league.
I don't know, but we'll say anyway, to your point,
that game is still gonna matter on Thursday. And here
we were just talking a minute ago about Hey, every weekend,
the league turns upside down. So to make a flexible
scheduling decision four weeks out is tough it's always going

(40:05):
to be a challenge, and I I think Roger Commissioner
Goodell excuse me, was pretty clear with ownership when we
got the vote. This is a you know, only in
case of emergency. We flexed Sunday nights once or twice
a year. We've now flexed a Monday night Thursday nights.
I think the bars is significantly higher in part because of,
you know, the days that you have to adjust for everybody.

(40:26):
It's not just one day or a couple hours on
a Sunday, but also it's guessing four weeks from now,
which of these games are gonna be relevant. There's as
good a chances as any that you know, Jet's Cleveland
is as good as we're gonna get. So that didn't
rise to the level of needing the flex. Cleveland's been
playing really well. They deserve the national window. And like
you said, this Ram Saints game, maybe earlier in the

(40:47):
season was one that people were looking at like, hey,
that might be trouble, and now it's pretty damn important
in the NFC Wild Chart chase. Not quite an elimination game,
but the winner of that game is in a great spot.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
That one was always going to be hard. And this
is really in the weeds because you already had committed
LA was playing at home Saturday night with the Chargers,
so if you were to flex that Rams game to Sunday,
it would be literally hours after. But that's just me
being one of the point zero zero one percent who
looks at schedules.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
Also the point zero zero one percent who are worried
about things like that. But the Chargers and Rams play
on consecutive days that Jets and Giants play on consecutive days.
We knew full well that you know, a flex that week.
Having the Chargers not at home on Sunday at least
allowed for the possibility of the Rams flex to Sunday
if we wanted to. But again, four weeks ago when

(41:37):
we had to make the decision, we were hopeful that
Saints Rams was still gonna be pretty impactful, probably more
than we even could have thought. I mean, the Rams
have been playing great, winning a lot of games. They
gave Baltimore all he can handle in overtime. They're playing
as well as anybody right now, did.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
You guys flex anything beyond last night's Monday night game?
Has ever been any other flexes this season?

Speaker 3 (41:55):
We've done some stuff on Sunday afternoons that's not technically.

Speaker 1 (41:58):
The Sunday trimetime or Monday.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
We haven't flexed a Sunday night game yet. We did
one Monday night, haven't flexed a Thursday. It would be
ironic in a season with all the uncertainty, all the
quarterback injuries, all the upheaval, to only have one primetime
flex this year. But again, I think that's indicative of
you know where the bar is. We're not flexing to
try to get an extra twenty five thousand or fifty
thousand viewers. We're not flexing to get out of a

(42:22):
game with playoff implications into a game with better or
more or bigger playoff implications. It's about, here's a game
in the primetime window that was put here in May,
and by the time we're going to get there, both
teams are eliminated from playoff contention. That's the one that
we're not doing anybody any favors by leaving it in prime.
It's not good for the home fans, it's not good
for those two teams, certainly not good for the television

(42:42):
viewers are broadcast partners. So I haven't really had that
one yet. Where the primetime game is quote unquote irrelevant
and I'm not even sure there is such a thing
in this league. Every game matters while everybody's playing for something,
and it's going to be a fun stretch run down here.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
Two part question. Now we're rapping soon, but two part question.
Last night, as Drew Locke with less than two minutes
left is leading the Seahawks on a ninety two yard
incredible game winning drive to knock off the Eagles, Well,
a day earlier Chiefs Patriots is kind of a dud
of a game. Do you smoke a cigar kick back
and say, correct, flex we did it, like we nailed it?

(43:19):
Is that the thing like do you look for a
pat in the back because you're not going to get one.
But that was the right move and a lot of
people were like, how could you move my homes out
of primetime? Well, the better game was actually Monday night.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
Yeah, we're not in the business of patting ourselves on
the back. We're in the business of looking ahead and
trying to figure out what we could do right, what
we could do better. Look, the game was competitive. That
was great coming down to the wire or any fourth
quarter game within one scorer is all any of us
can ask for as viewers, and that was a pretty
exciting ending. I'm not sure the answer to was the

(43:49):
Monday night flex successful will be available until we really
do a little more accounting with the Chiefs, the Patriots,
the Eagles, the Seahawks. What was it like to change
like you did? How was fan reaction? Was the building
still full? Where there are a lot of tickets on
the secondary market? You know, don't want to be reckless

(44:13):
and haphazard with these flexes. But you know, on the
one hand, like you said, I think we got the
better game into the bigger window season, but there's a
lot more that comes into it. I'm not sure we're done,
you know, doing all the calculously until we talked to
the Patriots, talked to the Seahawks. Look, last night looked full,
sounded loud even in bad weather. That was part of

(44:35):
what we were thinking, though, you know, just the same
you play a Seahawks game on Tuesday at noon and
I assume the place is going to be full and loud.
So that all goes into what we're thinking. And again,
you know, it's not just about the Monday night flex,
but as you go back to the Sunday. That Chief's
Patriots game ended up going into Sunday at one o'clock,
which was a big game for Fox. They don't get

(44:57):
a lot of Chiefs games obviously from the AFC, so
that game still went to seventy percent of the country.
It was a lead into Dallas Buffalo, which wasn't as
competitive as we'd hope, but still probably got like family
people watching. And then you still got the green Bay
Tampa game sliding over to CBS. Some more fans could
watch that one. And how about Baker Mayfield going in
the Lambo and putting up a one fifty eight. They're

(45:17):
gonna be right there down the stretch as well. So
that one week worked out really well for everybody, but
not done until we really talked to the Patriots and
the Seahawks and find out how the fans are.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Isn't it funny you just wrote usn't aside like Tampa
green Bay, no one circled that game might have been
the game of the week. Now you have Tampa Jacksonville
this weekend, and it's like huge implications. If you were
going back and drawing up the schedule and may you
might you know, be kind and say it might have
a major game Tampa Jacksonville Week sixteen, and it's like,
that's why you can't write this. It's not scripted. You
can't write this stuff.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
Nobody knows anything in this league. But like we said,
I think this is the new normal, right. All the
games are close, which is why, unfortunately sometimes the officiating
gets a little more scrutiny because one call feels like
can really impact the game. Every game's close, every team's good,
and nobody knows anything. It's the beauty of the sport.
So anytime you turn on the television, your bound to
see something you haven't seen before, haven't seen Drew Locke

(46:09):
lead a game winning drive.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
In what three years, thousand days?

Speaker 3 (46:12):
I don't know if you saw it, but his postgame
interview with Lisa Assaults.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
Was amazing and Lisa did a great job on it.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
She did, she did, She was one quick question.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
She waited, listened, which is good. The other part to
that question is we had a dog of a Bears
Chargers game on Sunday Night earlier this season that was
you know, it felt like a stadium was mostly Bears fans.
Tyson pagent wins or did he win. I don't even
know who won. It was in hindsight now he did not.
He did not win. The Chargers won. Do you guys,

(46:42):
I know you're vulnerable, and you guys say we make
mistakes sometimes. Do you guys look at that and say, Okay,
that was when we should have or it's not like that.
It's just like, hey, move on, We're not going to
beat ourselves up week to week as far as flexing goes.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
Yeah, Look, don't forget that was week eight.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Right, nobody a part getting interview here?

Speaker 3 (46:57):
No, I understand. Look when I say it was week eight,
I don't mean like, hey, that was eight weeks ago.
While you bring it up, I mean like it was
week eight, Like do you really need to flex and
we eight? Is anybody dead and buried? You think about
the Lions last year with their start, You think about
the Broncos this year, right, I think the Broncos were
Sunday Night a week or two later after Bears Chargers.
You know again, flexes for when the game has truly

(47:19):
no longer as playoff implications. Look, Tyson bagent became a
story there for a minute, and it was kind of
fun and interesting. That's been one of the weird things
about this season, right, some of these backup quarterbacks, like
Tommy d here in New York, like, some of these
guys kind of either you know, us being introduced to
them for a first time, or us remembering, Oh I
knew that guy from college. It's been fun to see

(47:40):
these guys. Come on. Yeah, I don't know that any
primetime window is rooting for, you know, backup quarterbacks. And
again in May, Justin Fields and Justin Herbert, what do
any of us know? And then when you as soon
as you're right off the Bears, look at what they're
doing down the stretch here, playing hard and playing as
well the lion anybody in the NFC. They're gonna have

(48:01):
an impact on the wildcard race too. They're not even
out of it yet. So yeah, do we look back
on every decision we made as a scheduling team. Absolutely? Yes.
Is there time really to beat yourself up about it?

Speaker 2 (48:12):
No?

Speaker 3 (48:13):
But does a factor in your thinking going forward? Maybe
a little bit. You know, if NBC, you know, kind
of has their hand out and say, hey, don't forget
you know, we we have Bears Chargers, we'd sure like
that Cowboys game on wildcard weekend or whatever. Those are
the kind of conversations that we're gonna have over the
next couple of weeks.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
So interesting, like that's one of them they put in
their back pocket and say, we ate it. We did that,
we we you know. And then hey, Cowboys play the
Lions in the Divisional. We'd love to have that one
as opposed to Tampa versus San Francisco. I get it.
I think that's interesting. How do you feed all those
different mouths because I feel like everyone's got like the Fox,
the Fox A crew. I'm biased to Fox there, my guys.

(48:50):
They have had so many blowouts this season, yep. And
it's just it's by chance. It's just what it is.
These games are good matchups, and then you get out
there and it's San Francisco Dallas and it's well, that
might have been on MBC, but you know what I mean,
it's just one after another. Do you start getting stuff
from the networks now saying, hey, playoffs, we want Cowboys,
or hey we would love to have a little Chiefs

(49:12):
action if there's a wildcard r.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
Yeah, love, Like we talked about, We're heading for a
wild card weekend with some pretty pretty big brands. And
some pretty big stars. So I think we're going to
have would.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
You put AFC on Fox now that it's kind of
wide open, and we did that a couple of years ago, right.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
We do in a year where they've got multiple wild
card games. The way it works for CBS and Fox
is if you only have one in a weekend, it's
going to be in your conference. If you have two
in a weekend, one in your conference, the other one
could be the opposite. So for this particular season, with
CBS and Fox each only having one on Sunday after,
they're going to be conference affiliated. Same thing on divisional weekend.
So we're not going to get the Chiefs game over

(49:49):
to Fox, but they're going to end up with a
really good game. Just look at the NFC wildcard picture.
You look at the division winners. Now, you know, like
you said, everybody one through twelve is a great story
in the NFC. So we're going to end up with
some you know, pretty juicy apples I think on wildcard weekend,
and it it becomes easier to dole them out to
partners when they're all great. If you have a situation

(50:11):
where you're like, oh, that's the one that nobody wants
or that's the one that everybody wants, and if they
don't get it, they're disappointed. That one's a little tougher.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
You know.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
Moving Dallas Tampa on Monday Night last year was a
pretty big testament to the power of Monday night football,
to the strength of the simulcast ESPN and ABC together
and it did what thirty something million. It did a
monster number. Couldn't feel bad about it, But if you
were the other partners, you were like, oh, well, I
didn't get Dallas against Tom Brady. Whatever else you give

(50:39):
me isn't going to be good enough. That's frustrating and disappointing.
And we still had some great games on Wildcard weekend.
So look, more juicy apples means more happy partners. But
it's never about you know, just this weekend or just
you O US one or just this season. Right, these
are ten year broadcast deals. The goal here is for

(50:59):
everybody to be strong and healthy, you know, seven, eight, nine,
ten years from now, not just this season. And so
it moves around. Sometimes you catch lightning in a bottle.
This year seems like most of our partners are are
up year over year, which is a great position. To
be in for the schedule makers. Anybody who's down a
little bit, Hopefully they can make it up down the
stretch here and maybe they get you know, a little

(51:22):
you know, less of a lumpic coal in their Christmas
stocking when we get to playoffs.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
And I'll say, you know, that whole thing about putting
the Cowboys on Monday Night, Bucket Akmen are really good
and that production crew is really good. It's it's it's
a great product. So it doesn't feel like it's, oh,
this is cable TV. No, it's on ABC, like it's
it's simulcasted now on It doesn't feel like it's less
than by any means. And truthfully, you know what they

(51:47):
did on that Monday night game with Eagles and Jeeves,
sending their whole pregame crew to Arrowhead and like having
it all felt like an event. Fox does that every week,
CBS does that every week, NBC does it every week. ESPN.
In the last couple of years with Bucket Aikman, it
feels like they they're they're fine getting any big game
as well.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
Look, they've made a commitment right to their talent, to
their broadcast crews and to you know, when they roll
out the circus. They roll out the circus, right. They
bring radio, they bring internet, they bring a day of television.
We talk about this all the time. When you've got
like a big storyline game and you really want a
lot of attention to it, you know, you put it
on a Sunday afternoon at one o'clock, it's gonna get

(52:24):
lost a little bit. You put it Sunday at four thirty.
That's probably our most watched window. We're still getting twenty
five twenty eight million people there, but there's other games
going on and you can't really lead into it because
you're watching six or eight one o'clock games Sunday night.
Same thing. You got a whole day of football Sunday
afternoon leading into Sunday night. But you clear out a
Monday and you do an event like you said, like

(52:45):
Eagles Chiefs, You've got all day to build to it
and then have the game. Actually, you know, rise up
to that level was just perfect confluence, great set of
circumstances and really good result and really fun game.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
The last question, I'm gonna let you go because this
is a holiday week and this is you know you
and I can do that. We could do this day.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
Oh, we could go all day. Man, after I'm done
talking to you, I'm gonna have the same conversation with
the Commissioner'll see me.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
We got a lot of decisions still to make down
the stretch.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
You know, I follow this stuff as much as the football.
The silver bullet is what thirty million is like an
amazing day? Like what's the number? You look and is
that still the metric? The Nielsen ratings? The next work
cause we put it out. I see the NFL will
put it out and be like, you know, thirty five
million watch the Thanksgiving nig games and like we puff
our chest. We'll like hell yeah. But like it's a

(53:30):
different time now, there's all different ways to watch the games.
What is the hallmark of like a great, great broadcast
and a great viewing audience these days?

Speaker 3 (53:40):
Yeah, I'm not sure there's a number. Right. There have
been really fantastic NFL games that happen to find themselves
at one o'clock in the afternoon and maybe only eight
or ten or fifteen percent of the country got to
see it. The beauty of this league, though, is how
quickly our guys, whether it's NFL films with things like
hard knocks or our social media guys are obviously NFL network.
Like if you didn't get to see a game within

(54:02):
minutes after the final gun, you can get a really
good so of what happened over the course of those
three hours. And you know, you ask what constitutes success.
You know, I would tell you a game that was
high scoring, a game that was close, a game that
didn't have you know, any bad injuries or any officiating
controversies played in like that nice tight three hour windows

(54:23):
so that we can get into the next window. And
you know, the commissioner always talks about, you know, the
team losing at halftime coming back in the second half,
or the team behind in the standings getting a win
to tighten up the standings. You know, there's a lot
of different descriptions of success, but you know, at the
end of the day, it's it's are people talking about it?

(54:44):
Do they care? Are they engaged? Are partners putting in
the time and effort, Are we promoting properly to make
sure our fans know where to find the games here
when they are in non traditional windows or on non
traditional broadcast partners successes making sure that everybody knows where
the game is and then hopefully they tune in, and
then hopefully once they get there, it's a really good
product and a really close game. Whether it did eighteen

(55:05):
million or twenty five million thirty five million people isn't
as important as you know, are we maximizing the opportunity
every time we kick off the game, and are we
as a scheduling team, you know, doling out these juicy
apples in a right way so that all the broadcast
partners and all the fans feel like, hey, that seemed right,
that seemed fair, and we're appreciated of the opportunity, and

(55:25):
give us another big game and we'll do our best
on that one too.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
I'm ending with a pitch. Can I give you a pitch?

Speaker 3 (55:30):
Hit me go? What do you got as our.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
VP of Broadcasting and Scheduling and programming. Okay, So you
guys might not think in Park Avenue that we the
viewer or we the football nerd cares about who gets
what broadcast team in the playoff game or when that
playoff game is. You might just for years now it's
during the Sunday night second half, Collinsworth will roll out

(55:53):
a graphic with Tarrico or back in the day it
was Al Michael's be like, all right, well, we just
got this playoff schedule and looks like this. I think
this stuff has March Madness feelings to it of like that.

Speaker 3 (56:04):
That's can we get out one at a time?

Speaker 1 (56:07):
Let me tell you, Mike, hear me out. If we're
gonna make the schedule release and.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
Now we're gonna do it, let's do it. Go ahead,
hit me, what's your.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
Idea Sunday night after the Sunday night game that has
just been you know, wrapping up there.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
Everybody stay up till one o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
Everybody's up.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
Okay, fine you West Coasters.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
Okay, everybody's up. Or you do it at halftime. You
tossed to me, yes, because I am pitching it. Executive producer,
slash host you Annie Bo's Howard Katz, Roger Goodell in
a room okay, what's your scheduling room called? After the

(56:49):
schedule maker? What's it called?

Speaker 3 (56:50):
Foul pinchback?

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Amazing in that room with cameras then in zoom windows
like you have Michigan and Duke and Rhode Island. You've
got Eric Shanks and Brad Zaeger. In one box, you've
got mcmanuson Burston in the CBS execs and an there,
you've got all the NBC, Mark Lazareth and Rick Cordella
and and and Fred Godelli and you know Rob Hyland

(57:14):
and those guys in another box. And then you got
your Burke, Magnus, Norby Williams and Jimmy Pataro in another box.
You've got four boxes, and you guys unveil who gets
what game to the broadcast teams and to their executives
in real time for the viewers to watch how that
news goes down.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
Love it? Love it? You should? You should pitch it
to the boss man.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
Oh, I'm gonna get my five minutes with Roger Goodell
and that's what I'll pitch it now.

Speaker 3 (57:42):
Look, it's it's obviously an exciting time of year, and
everybody's excited for that information. We're more focused on just
getting it out as quickly as we can because it's
a short run way to get ready for the most
important game of the year. So I don't know that
we're gonna hold it till one am for your TV
show idea, But you know, if to the extent that

(58:02):
fans are interested in how the sausage gets made. I
think we've been a lot more honest, a lot more open,
a lot more transparent over recent years. I do think
that there's a healthy fan interest, a healthy appetite. I'm
not sure you want to see us at midnight after eight.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
Hours is if you guys came out after the game.
Because I have a feeling this year, unlike other years,
that Week eighteen Sunday night game is gonna matter, like
six different permutations are gonna like change based on.

Speaker 3 (58:29):
Look, We've been really lucky, right the week eighteen, now
Week eighteen, now Week seventeen, then the Sunday night football
game always seems to matter. After all these games, you
always still manage to find yourself into that win and
in game on Sunday Night. We've been very fortunate, and
you're right just looking at how it's shaping up right now.
You know, could be a Miami Buffalo, could be an

(58:50):
Indie Houston, could be a pit bullt. I mean, there's
gonna be a lot of stuff at stake. I think
Rams Niners is one of our Week eighteen games. There's
gonna be a lot of stuff still to play for
down the stretch and yeah, it'll be really interesting. And
you're right, you know you talk about hey, let's get
you know, Rob Hiland and Frankie Deeli up. You know
they're gonna be busy producing. I'm not sure they're going

(59:10):
to have the time and energy to look away and
argue on their behalf for wild card scheduling, but it'll
be it'll be a fun stretch run on. Hopefully we
has everybody still in it.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
If you don't got to be the NFL Network show
to do it, or you don't give me, we'll throw
it on an NFL plus. What do you say there?
You got subscriptions?

Speaker 3 (59:29):
Should be the face. You should be the face of
NFL plus two right right here? What about games man?
You've been doing sidelines forever. Do you want to you
want to get in the you want to get in
the big chair. You want to do play by play?
Do you want to do?

Speaker 1 (59:40):
And I did preseason for the Rams and the Jets
as an analyst, and I was next to an ex
player in both those and I absolutely loved it. This year,
I was hoping to do a sideline game. I wasn't
assigned any of the NFL Network sideline games. So I
was kind of bummed out. I was thinking, maybe I
be spending my Christmas in Denver, but it's gonna be
James Palmer and Sherry Burrs on the sidelines. I hope

(01:00:01):
I get back in there. I do love doing it.
Last year I did Buffalo Miami sidelines. I hit with
a snowball. Yeah, that's like my highlight as a silas.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
I can't confirm. Let me hit you with a pitch
before I let you go, let me hit you with
a pitch. You've seen that we are going to Brazil, Yes,
first time ever, South Paolo. Not sure when we're going
to play it yet, still working with the you know,
international folks. I know some folks have written some things.
Nothing set yet. Don't know when that's game Gona, we've
seen it could be. It's absolutely a conversation. I'm not

(01:00:35):
sure it's as far down the line as some people
think it is. But we're playing in Brazil. If that
game ends up on NFL network, how about the Good
Morning Football Crew goes to Brazil and calls that game
from the booth.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
All right, as you say that, I am already in
my head. Wheels in my head. Have an amazing idea.
I don't even know what that entails, but like the
Good Morning Football crew in Brazil for a week leading
up to it, sounds of it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
They do World Cups down there, they do Olympics down there.
Wait till the NFL rolls into town and you four
go in carnival. Let's go.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
I'm gonna clip this off. We're gonna roll this as
now we're in the depth of winter. We're all pale.
I'm twenty pounds, by the way. On NFL Network on Friday,
I'm gonna get Kyle, Jamie and Jason's reaction to a
week in Brazil courtesy of the fine schedule makers and
your team over there, Mike, no further ado. We will
wrap this up with a thank you to all work

(01:01:30):
that you do and the dedication that you and your
team have. I know you, Charlotte Blake, obviously Annie, everyone
in that building. It's one of the most thankless jobs.
But it is so so important and we value you
guys so much, and I love our friendship, but also
the amazing work you do and how candid you are
with me on when you come on the podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
Always happy to talk to you. I love talking to
people that want to know that really care and look,
we're all fans. That part's great. But when you learn
a little bit more about behind the scenes and how
the sausage gets made, and then it all culminates with
something big and fun, like that Philly Casey game we
talked to out or like hopefully Christmas coming up on Monday. Yeah, there's, uh,

(01:02:11):
there's there's there's some pride, but it's fleeting and you
know what's next and it never ends, and it's uh,
it's the best time of the year. Enjoying it. I
hope everybody else is enjoying it. And you certainly know
where to find me if you have any questions.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Awesome. Mike North one of our best guests, one of
our regular guests, a friend of the pod. If you
will have an awesome Christmas weekend, my friend, I know
you're a family man, but be sure to be watching
some football too.

Speaker 3 (01:02:35):
Please, no, we'll be watching take care of I'll good
seeing it. Awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
Mike North is one of my favorite guests. Aaron, before
we just recap it, I was talking about the Eagles
and him and the Cowboys in the playoffs. Listen to this.
This is the headline I just got texted as we
do this on a Tuesday morning after the Eagles lost.
If both the Cowboys and the Eagles each run the table,
the NFC East will be determined by the fifth tiebreaker

(01:03:08):
strength of victory, and right now the Eagles hold the
edge on that. That is the NFL season in a nutshell.
If both teams just take care of their business from
here on out, the fifth tiebreaker the fifth tiebreaker and
that will enforce. And the crazy part about it, that's
not just like an AFC South and the Cowboys don't
lose at home, So if they lose out in the

(01:03:31):
fifth tiebreaker, they have to go play three road playoff
games before the Super Bowl. If they win it, they
likely have two home playoff games and then a road
NFC Championship game at San Francisco. That's the season, dude,
It's nuts. Mike North, so good. What was your big
takeaway on that interview?

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
I mean, as he was going through both the wild
card weekend games and even the things leading up to it,
like he was talking about Week eighteam. Obviously, as a
Bills fan, I'm focused on the Bills Dolphins game that week,
but there are so many good games and that's not
even me, just like you know, drinking the kool aid,
Like there are so many games in seventeen and eighteen

(01:04:12):
that really matter, and then all the wild card things,
everything will be exciting. There's there's not a game in
there where I'm like, oh man.

Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
It's gonna be.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
I don't know, the Titans, you know, getting clobbered by
the Ravens or something like, it's they're all going to
be good.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
I love the dynamics of the networks. So when you
start getting into who gets the Cowboys right, like it's
the biggest ticket, let's call it like it is, and like,
how do you feed all those mouths? And then remember
a couple of years ago, Bucking Aikman were on Fox
and Aikman openly was bitching about you know, I made
a joke. He didn't bitch about it on there, but
you know I made a joke. As the Eagles were

(01:04:50):
blowing out the Buccaneers. He's like, oh, forty nine ers Cowboys,
two NFC teams would have loved to have had that game.
And it was on CBS, like all these things, and
there's all these different mouths to feed in billions of
dollars at play who gets what game and when is
that game? So that was cool and I I don't
think my pitch was that crazy, you know, just with
the NFL that's looking to monetize and broadcast every single

(01:05:12):
little thing, whether it be inside training camp or NFL
Kickoff weekend or the schedule. You're telling me fans finding
out when their team and what network their playoff game
is going to be on doesn't matter. I don't know.
I think it's pretty good, pretty sexy. And I also
I'm here for the Brazil trip. I don't see it
happening yet, but I'm here for the Brazil trip. I
don't like to get myself too excited about things. I

(01:05:33):
like to say, say grounded, but Brazil sounds pretty good.
I'll be wearing a I'll wear a thong bikini that
whole week if we get to go to Brazil. How's
that for a statement.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
Well, maybe I'm less excited for the Brazil trip now, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
Or it's the podcast. The podcast will no video. On
that note, let's give our award away for the week.
We're having fun with these. This is the season with
Peter Schrager, and this is delivering results. Presented by Uber Eat,
and the person I want to shout out who delivered
results this weekend was Joe Flacco. Joe Flacco, second straight win,

(01:06:10):
Flacco down ten in the fourth quarter, finds a way
to lead his team to a victory, and the Cleveland
Browns find themselves nine to five on the season, comfortably
in a wild card spot, right there behind the Ravens
in the AFC North and the Joe Flacco led Browns.
Flacco thirty eight years old off the couch. How fitting.

(01:06:33):
With Uber eats as the sponsor, I'm sure he experimented
and dabble little Uber eats over the past twelve months.
We're gonna go with Joe Flacco as our guy who
has delivered results, and that is delivering results presented by
Uber eats, where you can get almost almost anything, the
official on demand delivery partner of the NFL. Order now
and I want to give a quick shout out to

(01:06:54):
one of the very important behind the scenes people at
this podcast, the season with Peter Schrager. Her name is Carly.
She's from the iHeart team, and Carly's on the IR
right now. She had an injury and we know that
she's recovering. But I'm a huge fan of all the
folks at the iHeart Squad, and Carly has been a
big part of this show. I'm told she listens to
the program and she's making a very nice recovery. So

(01:07:17):
we hope to have her back on the field real soon.
And Carly, you better believe it. We hope to have
you back up and running. And I'll tell you what,
if you need some uber eats, I'm your guy. I
will order you some whatever you need. We need you
back on the field soon. But we're thinking about you, Carly.
And on that note, another episode of the season with
Peter schragerm many thanks to Mike North, who dedicated way

(01:07:39):
too much time to this silly little podcast. I know
he's a busy man, but we really enjoy it, and
I enjoy all the feedback from listeners. I'm not tooting
my own horn here when I'm saying that de veto
Stillato stuff. Last week it was, oh, I know the agent,
let's have him on. And I think it was the
first real window that we got to Sean Stillato and
then he was the story of the week. And we

(01:08:00):
like to set the agenda, like to set the tone
and we like to give you guys a peek inside.
I can assure you not everyone's talking to Mike North
this week on the eve of a very important three
week stretch for the NFL and then the playoff run.
Proud of this podcast, Proud of you Aaron, proud of
Jason English here, and proud of all the people who
work on it, but also so grateful for the listeners.
As we head to the holiday season, everyone please have

(01:08:21):
a great Christmas, great New Year, and as always, be
safe as we watch our football over the weekend. The
Season with Peter Schrager is a production of the NFL
and partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit

(01:08:44):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts.