CBS will have double header Sundays on Oct 7, 21, Nov 4, 18, Dec 2. Those can just about be counted as a delayed start for TAR.
I guess that statement was a little too subtle for some people. So I will rephrase it.
EVERYONE in the Eastern and Central Time zone will have a football related delay in the start of TAR on those 5 Sundays!!If CBS has multiple late games on their double header Sundays, they will all switch to the latest ending game. This allows CBS to sync all their local markets to the same start time for 60 Minutes and the rest of the prime time schedule. A 4:25pm start time and game time of ~3 hours (optimistic estimate) gives a game ending of 7:25 pm and then few minutes wrap up. So I would assume they are planning on starting 60 Minutes at 7:35pm....a delay of 35 minutes. I personally think this is VERY optimistic projection.
As far as the 4:05 late single games, I think everyone has to analyze their own particular market. As far as my particular market, I live in an NFC town in the Central Time zone. The home team normally plays in the late games on FOX. If they are playing a visiting team from the AFC, then the game will be on CBS usually in the 4:05 time slot. When it plays a late game on FOX, the local CBS affiliate doesnt like to schedule a comepting game, so they will schedule one of the early games on CBS. When the local team goes to the east coast, they sometime have to play the early game on FOX....so that does leave the local affiliate a chance to schedule the 4:05 time slot.
I suspect that my local market will have a late CBS game on Sept 30. The local NFL team, normally on FOX, does not play that Sunday, so the local CBS affiliate will get to pick either an early game or late game that day. I suspect they will pick the Denver game, because of Manning.It odd that they never pick the other team in the state to show. I guess they dont like that team, because we never get their games. All the local network affiliates here, like to fill up that early Sunday afternoon telecast time with Infomericals.
apskip.......the 4:05 game delays WILL ONLY affect the markets where they were shown in the eastern and central time zone. These games ARE NOT nationally televised. My local CBS market rarely even schedules them, unless it involves the local NFC team playing an away game with a AFC team. In the last two years, my CBS programming has only been delayed when the local NFC team played on CBS late. The rest of the time, 60 Minutes and TAR started at the regular time. If CBS has multiple late single games, they normally switch to the game ending last so they can sync their prime time programming to the same time so they only have to produce one EAST coast feed for the eastern and central time zones, but this is not always the case. Just depends if the games are likely to end at approximately the same time.
FOX and CBS used to alternate the double header Sundays. But they seem to have reached an aggreement to allow some shifting in that arrangement. During the fall run of CBS prime time schedule, we only get 5 CBS double header Sundays. CBS has switched some Sundays with FOX. So for the 12 week run of TAR, CBS has 5 Sundays with double header games and FOX has 7. CBS gets extra double header Sundays before and after TAR has run along, with the rest of their prime time schedule. Again this switch only affects the Sunday prime time CBS schedule, but we do get less chances of football delay.
There are a lot of different rule changes this year. How that will affect the length of the game is yet to TBC...lol Also the role of the replacement referees is unknown at this time. We will just have to wait and see what happens with those aspects.