A primary, flagship or home television station refers to the local affiliates that carry a majority of the regular season telecasts for a said National Football League (NFL) team. This list only concentrates on television coverage since the AFL–NFL merger in 1970. This list however, does not include “official station” partnerships, where a station that only carries off-network pre-season games also carries team programming throughout the season such as coach’s shows, player shows or interview segments during station sportscasts. It also does not include individual player show agreements with stations in a team’s market.
As the NFL assigns telecast rights based on the conference affiliation of the road team, the stations listed below would be assigned all of the team’s road games (unless they were played at night). They would also carry those home games against teams in the same conference that did not fall under the league’s blackout rules. Home games against teams from the other conference, if not blacked out, would be carried on another station. Night games are aired locally either on NBC if Sunday night (or the Thursday Kickoff Game), or on any local station if it is a simulcast of a game on a cable network (as per NFL rules, and subject to blackout; ESPN-aired games are often simulcast on the affiliate of sister network ABC, especially on ABC’s O&Os and Hearst Corporation-owned stations—ESPN is an 80/20 joint venture of the Walt Disney Company [ABC’s parent] and Hearst).
Note: Teams listed in italics are teams that have since relocated.
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