Arena League gets Sunday spotlight

Adam Candee

Friday, Jan. 28, 2005 | 10:17 a.m.

The National Football League is off, but live pro football will be on TV this weekend.

Gambling that they can lure football-starved viewers both in this Sunday's NFL bye week and in the hours before next week's Super Bowl, NBC and the Arena Football League moved up their opening weekend to before the end of the NFL season.

"That was the plan," NBC Sports president Ken Schanzer said Thursday. "One of the reasons we started early is, we felt if we put the season opener in the week between the conference championships and the Super Bowl -- when football fans are in the habit of coming to the TV set and watching football -- we might well attract people who were otherwise unaware of the existence of this league."

Hoping the move can kick-start middling ratings for the AFL, NBC will broadcast a national doubleheader beginning at 9 a.m. PST, featuring Los Angeles at Las Vegas as one of the late games. On Super Bowl Sunday, there will be three hours of the AFL on NBC beginning at 10 a.m. PST -- right in the middle of Fox's extended pre-game show.

"There will be a lot of people out there waiting for the Super Bowl to go on," AFL commissioner David Baker said earlier this week. "Maybe we can introduce them to some arena football at the same time."

How they are introduced will drastically change in the third year of the AFL's contract with NBC. The network plans to promote its standout players and coaches, shifting focus from simply explaining the game to the star-friendly marketing style that propelled the NBA on NBC to lofty heights in the 1980s and 1990s.

The network plans to put microphones on coaches, quarterbacks and other star players during play. The new marketing strategy will also include more interviews with and vignettes about players from around the league, as well as enhanced statistics and graphics during the broadcast.

"Now it's time to let the stars of this league shine," Schanzer said. "This is the changeover year."

There will be some new features designed to improve understanding of the arena game. Broadcasters will have play calls sent into their earpieces and NBC also plans to add a "sneak peek" feature to its lead games where a reporter and coach will break down a recent play on a field-level monitor during the game. Away from NBC, 120 AFL games will be televised on regional cable networks in an attempt to broaden the game's reach.

Still, Schanzer makes it clear that faces, not plays, are the key elements. While the league garners attention for famous team owners such as music stars Jon Bon Jovi (Philadelphia) and Tim McGraw (Nashville), and football legends John Elway (Colorado) and Mike Ditka (Chicago), Schanzer wants fans to identify with the guys on the field.

"Our intention going into this season is to focus on players," Schanzer said.

The network also hopes this is the breakout year for AFL ratings, which held steady at a mediocre 1.1 for the second straight year. The 1.1 rating equates to about a million people watching a typical game in the three-hour time block.

That is equal to the rating drawn by the National Hockey League -- for which NBC acquired broadcast rights last year -- in the 2003-04 season. The NFL drew a 10.1 rating on Fox and a 9.7 rating on CBS this season.

"We're about where we thought we would be," Schanzer said. "We hoped we would improve a little last year."

NBC renewed its deal with the AFL this offseason, cutting the previous option of four years down to two more seasons of its creative revenue-sharing plan that guarantees the network money outside of TV advertising. The deal carries no rights payment, renews at NBC's option and calls for NBC to share in revenues derived from the increasing value of AFL franchises. The NHL agreed to a similar contract with the network.