FOX 17 – The National Football League kicked off the regular season last night and the rest of the league starts on Sunday.
Every year, there are are questions about what games are on TV and where…so I’ll be putting together a guide weekly that you’ll find of FOX17Online.com. But first, here is some of the background that explains why FOX 17 shows some games and not others.
First of all, we are officially the home market of the Detroit Lions. Regardless of whether or not the game is on Fox or CBS, our market (Grand Rapids – Muskegon – Kalamazoo – Battle Creek) will show the Lions first. This is also regardless of whether or not the Lions are any good, or if the game is a blow-out.
Second, Fox gets most of the NFC games and CBS gets the AFC games. (The Lions are in the NFC, in case you didn’t know.) When the game features an AFC team playing an NFC team, whichever team is the visiting team, determines the network. Example…Lions at Bengals (AFC) will be on Fox. Browns (AFC) at Lions will be on CBS.
After the Lions, our secondary game is the Chicago Bears. After that, then the Green Bay Packers and then the Minnesota Vikings. Basically, the other divisional foes of the Lions are the backups in this market.
Only a select portion of the country will get to (have to) see the Detroit Lions on Sunday (in green). Photo from 506sports.com.
On most weeks, one of the two networks, Fox or CBS, will have a doubleheader. There will be a couple instances of two doubleheaders, but those are usually later in the season. Also later in the season, NBC and ESPN, which have Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football respectively, can swap out to have better games that what was previously scheduled, so that can mess up the CBS and Fox schedules, but we’ll get to that more when it happens.
But for now…on to Week #1:
FOX 17 will have the Detroit Lions hosting the Arizona Cardinals at 1:00 p.m. Sunday. Chris Myers and Daryl Johnston will have the call.
The Sunday morning schedule will be:
- 5:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. – FOX 17 Morning News
- 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. – Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace
- 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. – Sunday Mass from Cathedral of St. Andrew in Grand Rapids (you may need that before a Lions game)
- 11:00 a.m. – Noon – Lions Game Day
- Noon – 1:00 p.m. – Fox NFL Sunday
Fox does have the doubleheader for the opening week, so at 4:25 p.m. you can welcome Joe Buck and Troy Aikman back into your homes with the Seattle Seahawks visiting the Green Bay Packers. The Fox OT runs from 7:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
CBS has only the early game this week, which for our market will be the Pittsburgh Steelers visiting the Cleveland Browns.
Enjoy Week 1!
