NFL Network’s “Good Morning Football” heads to syndication
Sony returns to daily syndication with NFL show
The NFL Network’s Good Morning Football morning show may soon be available on a local station near you.
On Wednesday, the league confirmed plans that a new, separate first-run syndicated version of the show is in the works with Sony Pictures Television. Titled GMFB (an acronym for Good Morning Football), the show is being offered as a one- or two-hour strip on weekdays, either live after the original Good Morning Football airs or delayed as stations would be free to run the program in any daypart.
Good Morning Football airs on NFL Network from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Central.
GMFB is being offered on a barter basis, meaning stations would pay no cash license fee but give up half of the available commercial time per hour (roughly seven minutes) to Sony so they can sell to national advertisers, with stations keeping the other seven minutes to sell locally. Separate from the GMF show, GMFB is executive produced by Michael Davies, who holds the same role on Jeopardy! and is best known as showrunner for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire in its ABC and syndicated versions.
No station deals have been announced as of yet. The plan is to produce 42 weeks of programming and ten weeks of repackaged segments, likely during slow periods of the NFL calendar year during May and June.
In addition, the show is changing locales with the program shifting from New York City to the NFL Network’s studios in Inglewood, Calif., located next to SoFi Stadium where the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers play. The studios are home to NFL Network-produced programming such as GameDay and RedZone.
Good Morning Football is going on hiatus on March 29 to accommodate the move to Los Angeles but will return later this summer. The show is hosted by Kyle Brandt, Jamie Erdahl, Jason McCourty, and Peter Schrager, but it is unknown if they’ll continue in their roles with the cross-country move.
This is the first instance of a syndicated sport-related strip in recent memory; generally syndicated sports-related shows such as GameTime With Boomer Esiason, Sports Stars Of Tomorrow, and The American Athlete air during weekends, usually adjacent to sports programming or in off-hours as filler. Most local stations target audiences in the female 25-54 demo throughout much of the weekday, especially in daytime.
However, the NFL has a growing female audience driven home by the Travis Kelce-Taylor Swift romance – essentially bringing her fanbase into the fold. This year’s Super Bowl set a record audience with more than 123 million viewers, but one can argue that the NFL has had a growing female audience for years, even before Swift started showing up at Chiefs games.
Sony hopes this collaboration with the NFL works as the syndicator hasn’t had much luck in first-run in recent years with the failures of The Mel Robbins Show and The Good Dish, and seeing the abrupt end of The Dr. Oz Show after the host quit to embark on an ill-fated run for a Pennsylvania Senate seat. A planned series with Craig Ferguson for last fall did not go forward.