Feb. 10, 1964 - Five NFL games will be televised live on Friday evenings in the fall over ABC. The deal is separate from the recent purchase of most of the league’s regular season games by CBS. No estimate of the cost of the games was available. The games, which have not been selected, are scheduled to be shown weekly at 9 p.m. starting Sept. 26 and ending Oct. 23.
The telecasts would mark the first time that professional football appears on video’s evening schedule for so many consecutive dates. The ABC coup was made with individual clubs and not with the league as a whole. The games will offer a representative sampling of the league’s teams. The sale of the five games means that for those five weeks, there will be NFL contests on Friday nights, collegiate football on Saturdays, and NFL and AFL games on Sundays.
It was learned today that ABC now plans to exercise its option to carry the full season of the AFL in the fall, making it the only network to offer games in both leagues. Starting in the fall of 1965, the AFL games switch to NBC under a five-year package involving $36 million. The placement of five NFL games on the evening ABC schedule was interpreted as possibly heralding regular evening programming of sports.
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