This became the first ever cooperative television plan for professional football, in which the proceeds of the contract were divided equally among member clubs the National Football League would follow suit in 1961, a move that required Congress to pass the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 to accommodate such collective broadcasting contracts. These games were typically broadcast regionally on 15 consecutive Sundays and on Thanksgiving Day. The deal called for ABC to broadcast approximately 37 regular season games, the AFL Championship Game and the AFL All-Star Game. On June 9, 1960, the league signed a five-year television contract with ABC, which brought in revenues of approximately $2,125,000 per year for the entire league.
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During this era, NBC broadcast pre-recorded and edited hour-long broadcasts of NFL games in the off-season under the title Best of Pro Football. NBC would take one week off due to its coverage of the World Series. NBC covered eleven games in 1960 and 13 games in 1961 in a "Game of the Week" format. In some cases, the game broadcast was seen on CBS in the visiting team's home region. While the games were blacked out in Pittsburgh and Baltimore, they were broadcast on other NBC stations. NBC held individual team contracts with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Colts in 1959, 19.
The next three AFL-NFL World Championship Games, the initial Super Bowls, were then divided by the two networks: CBS broadcast Super Bowls II and IV while NBC covered III. As CBS held the rights to nationally televise NFL games and NBC had the rights to broadcast AFL matches, it was decided that both would cover that first game. The first ever AFL-NFL World Championship Game was played on Janubetween the NFL champion Packers and the AFL champion Chiefs. Although they would not officially merge into one combined league until 1970, one of the conditions of the agreement was that the winners of each league's championship game would meet in a contest to determine the "world champion of football." With NBC paying the AFL $36 million in 1965 to televise its games, and the intensified battle over college prospects, both leagues negotiated a merger agreement on June 8, 1966. CBS' fee later increased to $14.1 million per year in 1964, and $18.8 million per year in 1966. A special antitrust exemption, the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, was passed in Congress to accommodate the collective contract, which restricted what days the league could televise their games. However, the Browns and SNI were forced to break their deal when the NFL and CBS devised their own revenue sharing plan after CBS agreed to telecast all regular season games for an annual fee of $4.65 million. As the AFL also had players' names stitched on their jerseys, it was easier for both TV viewers and people at the games to tell who was who.Īs of the 1961 season, CBS held the rights to all but one of the NFL's teams the Cleveland Browns had a separate contract with Sports Network Incorporated (SNI) to carry their games over a regional network. ABC and the AFL also introduced moving, on-field cameras (as opposed to the fixed midfield cameras of CBS and the NFL), and were the first to have players "miked" during broadcast games. This became the first ever cooperative television plan for professional football, through which the proceeds of the contract were divided equally among member clubs. When the rival American Football League (AFL) began in 1960, it signed a 5-year television contract with ABC. Since the 1960s, all regular season and playoff games broadcast in the United States have been aired by national television networks.
Main articles: National Football League on television, History of the National Football League on television, List of NFL Championship Game broadcasters, List of Pro Bowl broadcasters, List of AFL Championship Game broadcasters, List of Super Bowl broadcasters, and List of Playoff Bowl broadcasters
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