KYW-TV logo, 1980s
September 12, 1994: The great TV realignment.
Because CBS (for a few years, anyway) lost their NFL contract, a lot of
stations switched networks. This didn’t happen in New York, but in Philadelphia,
on the other side of my Central Jersey base, it did: KYW-Channel 3 went from
NBC to CBS, and WCAU-Channel 10 went from CBS to NBC.
The buying into NFL broadcast rights helped turn Fox from a distant 4th among networks, behind NBC, CBS and ABC, into a legitimate 4th network. It launched Fox Sports, which has since included Major League Baseball, college football, the NHL, and professional soccer.
And since individual stations valued NFL money more than CBS money, while some of them switched affiliates with NBC, some picked up the former "independent stations" that Fox had picked up in the 1980s, losing a lot of viewers.
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September 12, 1994 was a Monday. With the baseball strike still on, and the NBA and NHL seasons' starts several weeks away, there was only 1 score on this historic day. On ABC Monday Night Football, the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Chicago Bears, 30-22 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia.
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