Alan Pergament: WIVB-TV is big NFL schedule winner with at least nine regular season Bills games (2024)

CBS NFL play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz sounded excited Wednesday night on the NFL Network talking about the eight games of the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and quarterback Patrick Mahomes that his network is scheduled to carry this upcoming season.

WIVB-TV (Channel 4) General Manager Joe Abouzeid and the station’s sales team should be even happier than Nantz because the CBS affiliate is going to carry at least nine regular season games featuring Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills.

Channel 4 was the clear NFL schedule winner among local stations.

It has two of the highest-profile Bills afternoon games at 4:25 p.m. Nov. 17 against the Chiefs and the 4:25 p.m. game Dec. 15 at the Detroit Lions. You can be assured that CBS wanted to protect the Bills-Chiefs game, considering past games between the two teams, which, as Nantz said Wednesday, have been “classics every time they play.”

The 4:25 p.m. Sunday doubleheader games actually routinely get higher ratings than prime-time games.

Channel 4 also gets the home opener Sept. 8 against the Arizona Cardinals, an NFC opponent. That game used to automatically be carried by Fox, but a year ago the NFL announced that CBS affiliates no longer were certain to get AFC road games, and Fox would no longer be certain to get NFC road games.

That enables the league to even out the schedules among the networks, regardless of conference affiliation.

That’s also why WUTV, the local Fox affiliate, has the Oct. 27 game at Seattle and the Dec. 8 game at the Los Angeles Rams that in years past would be CBS games with the AFC team on the road.

WGRZ-TV (Channel 2), the local NBC affiliate, has the two high-profile “Sunday Night Football” games at the Baltimore Ravens and at Highmark Stadium against the San Francisco 49ers.

WKBW-TV (Channel 7), the ABC affiliate, doesn’t have any games, yet, but it has the potential to carry the Bills’ “Thursday Night Football” on Prime Video at the Miami Dolphins on Sept. 12 and the two “Monday Night Football” games against the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sept. 23 and the New York Jets on Oct. 14.

Channel 7’s owner, E.W. Scripps, made a long-term deal with Prime Video last season for the "Thursday Night Football" schedule. As of Friday morning, a Channel 7 spokesperson could not confirm whether that means the local Scripps station is certain to get the TNF game with the Dolphins.

Last season, Channel 7 also was able to carry Bills “Monday Night Football” games last season that were simulcast by ESPN and ABC.

The Bills-Jacksonville game Sept. 23 on MNF won’t be simulcast because it is the first part of an ESPN-ABC doubleheader starting at 7:30. The second MNF game that night on ABC between the Washington Commanders and the Cincinnati Bengals starts at 8:15 p.m. and will have ESPN’s No. 1 team of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman on the call.

When games are on cable or streaming sites, it is NFL policy to sell the broadcast rights to stations in the markets of the competing teams. According to a Bills spokesperson, cable and streaming games are put up for new bids from the local stations each season.

With Bills games by far the most popular television programs of any week, you can expect all the local stations to consider putting in bids.

According to sources, the Bills games can generate around $150,000 in revenue for the local stations. However, they pay a considerable rights fee to simulcast games on cable networks and streaming services.

In addition to the high advertising revenue Bills games generate, they also serve to promote the local news departments on the stations that carry them and are more likely to get viewers to watch their pregame shows.

Since it doesn’t have any Bills games yet, Channel 7 would appear to be the station most determined to win the bids to at least carry the MNF games, especially since the station is a relative of ESPN as an ABC affiliate.

However, a year ago, Channel 4 won the bidding rights to a MNF game with Denver, but then lost the game to Channel 7 when Disney decided to simulcast MNF games on ABC partly because it needed content due to the actors and writers strikes in the fall.

The season finale against the New England Patriots has not been assigned a network, yet, as the NFL waits that week to see which games have an impact on the playoff picture.

Some Bills fans were surprised that the Oct. 6 game against the Houston Texans and receiver Stefon Diggs didn’t get a more prominent time slot than 1 p.m. Sunday on WIVB.

But the networks need attractive 1 p.m. games on Sunday, too. CBS is calling the Bills game against Houston and the 1 p.m. Nov. 3 home game with the Dolphins its “featured games” in that time slot.

The Bills have seven games in the 1 p.m. Sunday window this season, including games against Tennessee, the Jets, New England and Indianapolis.

They have five prime time games scheduled, which is a testament to the drawing power of Josh Allen. The Bills are one of several teams to have two games on SNF and MNF. A year ago, the team had a league-leading seven prime-time games, counting games flexed to prime time.

Of course, there is a chance the Bills could be flexed into another prime-time game this season.

Once again, WIVB has the rights to the Bills preseason games in August against Chicago, Pittsburgh and Carolina.

The good news for out-of-town members of the Bills Mafia is that the team doesn’t have any games on the NFL Network or games that will be exclusive to a streaming site that would require a subscription.

NBC’s streaming site Peaco*ck is carrying the Philadelphia-Green Bay game on Sept. 6 from Brazil.

ESPN+ is carrying the Oct. 21 game between the Los Angeles Chargers and Arizona on the same night Baltimore plays Tampa Bay on ESPN.

Netflix has two games on Christmas Day – Kansas City-Pittsburgh and Baltimore-Houston.

And Prime Video has the rights to a wild-card playoff game.

Undoubtedly, all the NFL fans who don’t live in the home markets of the teams playing and don’t have streaming subscriptions will be as upset as they were last season when the Bills-Los Angeles Chargers game in December and the Kansas City-Miami playoff game landed on Peaco*ck.