FOR USE AS DESIRED
NFL-26                6/12/01

NFL ANNOUNCES FIRST-EVER PRIMETIME PLAYOFF GAMES

The starting times of this year’s late regular-season Saturday afternoon games and Saturday playoff games will be revised to make those national telecasts available to a wider audience, the NFL announced today.  This will include the NFL’s first-ever playoff games starting in primetime.

To significantly expand the potential audience for the four Saturday Wild Card and Divisional Playoff games this season, those games will start at 4:30 PM ET and 8:00 PM ET.  These games had begun at 12:30 PM ET and 4:00 PM ET in previous years.

The 2001 season Saturday playoff schedule will be as follows:

“This will give our fans two playoff games starting early in primetime and it will mean much larger potential audiences for these games,” NFL Commissioner PAUL TAGLIABUE said.  “The number of households using television increases dramatically as the day proceeds.”

For example, when the NFL played two playoff games last January 6, 40.6 percent of U.S. households used television from 12:30-4:00 PM ET that day compared to 58.9 percent using TV at 8:00 PM ET that night.

In the four Saturday afternoon regular-season games this season, the start times will be 1:30 PM ET and 5:00 PM ET.  The games had started at 12:30 PM ET and 4:00 PM ET in recent years. 

The start times for the 2001 regular-season Saturday afternoon games now will be as follows:

In addition, ABC’s final two regular-season telecasts this year will take place as previously scheduled on Saturday night (9:00 PM ET), December 22 (Tennessee at Oakland) and Saturday night (9:00 PM ET), December 29 (Baltimore at Tampa Bay) to avoid playing on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, which both fall on Monday.

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