The 1961 Sports Broadcast Act does not allow NFL Friday night telecasts from early September through mid December.
Because of a quirk in the National Football League schedule due to Labor Day being on September 1st which means the first Friday of September is September 5th, the NFL can put the Friday night September 5th game between Kansas City and the Los Angeles Chargers in Brazil on a national video platform. The NFL legally cannot televise Friday night games between the second Friday of September and the second Friday in December although the NFL does do an afternoon game on the Friday following Thanksgiving. The NFL is not allowed to compete on TV with high school and college football on Friday nights as part of the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act. On September 30th, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 which changed the NFL, the NBA, the NHL and the NCAA. For the first time a league other than in baseball could package its teams as one and sell it to a TV network. Major League Baseball had an antitrust exemption.
The key to NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle’s plan was to get all of his 14 owners to accept something called “leaguethink”. Rozelle had to sell three big market owners, the New York Giants Jack Mara, the Los Angeles Rams Daniel Reeves and the Chicago Bears George Halas on the notion that they could make more money by joining forces with the smaller markets than they could with individual TV networks. Green Bay would get the same money as New York, Pittsburgh and Baltimore would have better TV deals. NFL owners put the interest of the league before their own concerns and the league took off beyond anything that Mara, Halas, Reeves, George Preston Marshall and Art Rooney could ever imagine. “Leaguethink” enriched NFL owners despite the fact they had to give up Friday night football for most of the season on TV.
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