Saturday night’s game between the Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Chargers already carried significance as the first NFL game to be exclusively streamed on Peacock.
The matchup will also feature another milestone as NBC and the NFL announced Thursday morning that the fourth quarter will be commercial free for the first time.
NBCUniversal says there will be a 40% reduction in the standard ad time for an NFL game which should result in at least 12 additional minutes of game-related content.
Rob Hyland, the coordinating producer for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” said there have been discussions about this game since June about how to make it unique and distinct from a regular NBC broadcast.
“The limited stoppages are exciting for me as someone that wants to tell the story of the game and have the time to do it,” he said.
During one of the two breaks of 2 minutes, 20 seconds, in the fourth quarter, the announce team of Mike Tirico, Cris Collinsworth and Melissa Stark will delve more into some of the game’s storylines. The other will go to the “Football Night in America” studio team for their thoughts on the game as well as the upcoming slate of games for the remainder of Week 16.
Hyland is used to producing events with limited or no commercial breaks as one of the lead producers for NBC’s Olympics coverage in prime time.
The commercial-free quarter will be sponsored by Capital One, Hyundai and Walmart.
Saturday’s game on Peacock will be preceded by the matchup between the Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers on NBC, which should help deliver a better lead-in audience.
That will be the same case on Jan. 13, when NBC will carry the afternoon wild-card playoff game and Peacock will have the night game.
Games on Peacock will be broadcast on the NBC affiliates in the two team markets, which is the same case for games on Amazon Prime Video.
NBC and Peacock haven’t tried to set any ratings predictions, but it is worth noting that the “Thursday Night Football” package on Amazon is averaging 12.07 million viewers this season, a 26% increase over last year.
Last Thursday’s game between the Chargers and Raiders, where Las Vegas had a 42-0 lead at halftime en route to a 63-21 victory, averaged 7.98 million.
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