"In the late 2000s, the NFL's media bigwigs realized that football fans loved their fantasy teams but disliked both commercial breaks and doing too much thinking on Sunday afternoons. Enter the NFL RedZone channel, one of the savviest things anyone's ever put on TV. The paid add-on service has moved around various homes over the years, but it's had a few constants."
"When Hanson signed on this Sunday, the promise of commercial-free football was gone, replaced by "seven hours of RedZone football." The NFL put four 15-second commercials on RedZone in Week 1. They appeared in split-screen boxes that covered half the screen and took over the audio feed. People were mad, or at least mad-ish. I would describe the tenor of my football group chats as "a little bit annoyed." The move to add commercials generated a lot of media coverage last week,"
NFL RedZone was created in the late 2000s to provide whip-around coverage of Sunday games between 1 p.m. and roughly 7 p.m. Eastern, catering to fantasy football fans and minimizing commercial interruption. Scott Hanson historically opened the channel at 1 p.m. by promising seven hours of commercial-free football. In Week 1 that promise changed to "seven hours of RedZone football" and four 15-second commercials were placed in split-screen boxes that covered half the screen and took over the audio feed. The commercials produced noticeable viewer annoyance and widespread negative media coverage, while league allies publicly defended the change.
Read at Slate Magazine
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