CBS Ends Raiders at Bills game Early 9/18/11

November 16, 1968, New York Jets at Oakland Raiders – Jets lead 32-29 with a minute to play.  NBC decides it has to break away from the game to play a contractual obligation movie….”Heidi”.  The Raiders come back with two touchdowns in the last minute to win 43-32, but those on the east coast…yes those Jets fans that lost, missed it.

Fast forward to September 18, 2011.  The Oakland Raiders at playing at the Buffalo Bills in what had been a very hard and entertaining game.  Then, with the score at 35-31 Oakland, and 37 seconds left in the game, CBS decided to switch to San Diego Charger Programming due to a “contractual obligation”.  With 14 seconds to go in the game the Bills score a TD to win the game 35-38, unfortunately most Raiders fans, especially those in the Los Angeles Market didn’t get to see this happen live.

The official statement from CBS Los Angeles’s Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/#!/CBSLA is as follows:


“We appreciate all of the feedback we receive from our viewers, both positive and negative, and share it with our CBS Television Network colleagues on a regular basis. The NFL considers Los Angeles to be the Chargers’ secondary market, which means CBS is contractually required by the league to show Chargers road games in their entirety. During the San Diego-New England game, CBS Sports showed the key end-of-the-game plays from Buffalo immediately after they happened.”

To be honest I know Chargers fans in Los Angeles, I am guessing not half as many Raider fans, but sure there are a lot.  What I don’t understand is why they had to to cut the game to go to two minutes of commercials and two minutes of commentary before the kickoff of the Charger game.  I get they need to pay the bills, and commercials do that.  But there would be plenty of opportunities to do that during the Charger game.  The worst thing any fan wants to do is see their team lose on delay.

The National Football League, thanks to Al Davis has abandoned Los Angeles for 16 years, and local programming continues to screw fans that stuck with the Raiders by considering us a secondary Charger market when we all know LA is a secondary Raider market first.  

Bad show CSB, really bad call.  There has to be a way to make sure fans that have invested 3 hours into a game get to watch it in full, regardless of the teams of the market.  I understand when a game is a flop and they switch to a more exciting game, but this was close, too close to be switching, especially for commercials.