NFL Week #9 TV Coverage; Fox and CBS regional breakdown; NBC, ESPN, NFL Network all busy; 14 games total

• Remember to move the clock back an hour at 2am on Sunday morning, except in places like Arizona which don’t observe DST.

• Atlanta and Cincinnati have the AFC bye and the Los Angeles Rams and New Orleans the NFC bye. There are 14 games scheduled this weekend, a dozen Sunday, one on Thursday and the traditional Monday nighter.

• Apparently CBS’ Andrew Catalon and James Lofton do not work every week. The two, who do a good job, are not assigned this weekend. Spero Dedes and Adam Archuleta have the Jets-Miami game. The two teams combined record is 1-13. It’s hardly the marquee game, yet gets the big New York City market. Dedes is a Fordham man who was reared in the New York area. Like the great Curt Gowdy, Archuleta was born in Wyoming. He played for four NFL teams, starting with the St. Louis Rams for five seasons.

• Fox has the single game this Sunday and will run 5 games, CBS has the DH and 5 too, NBC airs SNF and the NFL Network will present the morning matchup from London, Houston vs. Jacksonville. A West Coaster? The game starts at 6:30 in the morning. The NFL Network is based in Los Angeles. Employees in production there will have their sleep significantly shortened. 

• San Francisco, the talk of the league, has a short week. The Niners play TNF at Arizona. Joe Buck who calls it has an even shorter gap. He’ll do tonight’s game #7 of the World Series and rush into Glendale, Arizona for the start of the NFL weekend tomorrow night. He’ll have to be quick on the prep curve. Joe and partner Troy Aikman won’t work on Sunday.

• Focus on the sidelines. Melanie Collins is relatively new to CBS, joining the main network in 2018. Prior to it, she’d been assigned to CBS Sports Network (Cable). Melanie will be with the Gumbel team this Sunday in Carolina. She is active with the Golf Channel where she hosts Big Break. A Penn State alum, Collins has contributed in the past to a range of programming on other networks like ESPN and NBA TV.

• Dick Stockton, who was assigned a preponderance of games out west during the first half of the season, will be in Philadelphia this Sunday with Mark Schlereth. Dick was born in Philly and raised in New York City.

Jake Baskin profiles Kevin Burkhardt who returns from baseball this weekend – It’s just below the schedule:

Thursday, October 31

San Francisco @ Arizona, 8:20 p.m., Fox/NFL Network

Joe Buck, Troy Aikman Fox and NFLN; Hannah Storm and Andrea Kremer on Amazon Prime

100% of USA – NFL Network reaches 63 million homes; As of June, Amazon Prime had 105 million subscribers

Sunday, November 3

Houston vs. Jacksonville (@ London), 9:30 a.m., NFL Network

Rich Eisen, Kurt Warner, Steve Mariucci, Michael Irvin

NFL Network is in 63 million homes. Will the matchup be on the field or in the booth, fighting for air-time

Chicago @ Philadelphia, 1:00 p.m., Fox

Dick Stockton, Mark Schlereth

Chicago, Philly, New York plus Illinois, South Bend and markets near the City of Brotherly Love

19% coverage

Indianapolis @ Pittsburgh, 1:00 p.m., CBS

Ian Eagle, Dan Fouts

They’ll own most of America’s geography with the exception of  NY, Connecticut and the Southeast

70% coverage

Minnesota @ Kansas City, 1:00 p.m., Fox

Kevin Burkhardt, Charles Davis

From the Upper Midwest through the Mountain Time Zone and the Southeast

42% coverage

NY Jets @ Miami, 1:00 p.m., CBS

Spero Dedes, Adam Archuleta

NY, Connecticut and 3 South Florida markets 

11% coverage

Tennessee @ Carolina, 1:00 p.m., CBS

Greg Gumbel, Trent Green

Game will run in all or most of 8 Southeastern contiguous  states. Short hop for Fort Lauderdale based Gumbel to Charlotte

19% coverage

Washington @ Buffalo, 1:00 p.m., Fox

Chris Myers, Daryl Johnson

Some 15 markets in the Mid-Atlantic, Upstate NY and Burlington, Vermont

7% coverage

Detroit @ Oakland, 4:05 p.m., Fox

Thom Brennaman, Chris Spielman

Michigan, northern half of California, Nevada, plus a few AFC markets like Pittsburgh and Indianapolis

18% coverage

Tampa Bay @ Seattle, 4:05 p.m., Fox

Kenny Albert, Ronde Barber

The Pacific Northwest, much of Florida, plus Nashville and Greensboro

13% coverage

Cleveland @ Denver, 4:25 p.m., CBS

Kevin Harlan, Rich Gannon

Will dominate the Mountain time zone, plus Oklahoma and all of Ohio, Western Pa, down to West Va.

13% coverage

Green Bay @ LA Chargers, 4:25 p.m., CBS

Jim Nantz, Tony Romo

CBS’ number one team will be seen in most of America. everywhere other than the game listed just above, Cleveland-Denver

87% coverage, more potential TV homes than any game distributed on Sunday afternoon

New England @ Baltimore, 8:20 p.m., NBC

Al Michaels, Cris Collinsworth

100% coverage

Monday, November 4

Dallas @ NY Giants, 8:15 p.m., ESPN

Joe Tessitore and Booger McFarland

100% coverage, ESPN is in some 84 million homes

**

Kevin Burkhardt returns from his four-week absence covering the Major League Baseball playoffs to call Sunday’s early afternoon matchup between the Vikings and Chiefs alongside Charles Davis. Neither Burkhardt nor Davis had much national recognition five years ago, but both have moved up the ladder quickly at Fox Sports to their current spots as the network’s #2 NFL broadcast team.

Burkhardt, 45, had some initial challenges growing in the industry after graduating from William Paterson. He left his job as sports director for a small New Jersey radio station in 2003 to take a job as a car salesman. While at the dealership, he continued sending  tapes to bigger stations and landed a part-time role providing sports updates at WCBS-AM in New York. Kevin soon became the Jets reporter at WFAN and in 2007 got a job on television with SNY as the Mets field reporter and fill-in play-by-play announcer, a position he held for eight seasons.

He got his first NFL play-by-play work on radio, spending two seasons as an announcer for Compass Media’s Dallas Cowboys package. He joined Fox in 2013 on its #4 NFL broadcast team and called his first playoff game that season, a divisional round game between the Saints and Seahawks. For the 2014 season, he would be promoted to the network’s #2 NFL announcer, a lofty role he continues to maintain. Davis became his partner in 2017 when John Lynch left to become the 49ers’ general manager.

The versatile Burkhardt is Fox’ lead studio man for Major League Baseball and also hosts some of the network’s college basketball coverage. Kevin also calls play-by-play for both sports. In 2019, Fox assigned him as the secondary play-by-play announcer for the Tampa Bay Rays, assigning him 17 games when Dewayne Staats is off.