In 1968, the AFL championship game between the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets was coming down to a last minute heroic comeback engineered by Joe Namath of the Jets and, as people were in their chairs chewing off the remains of their fingernails, NBC switched to their normally scheduled program, the made for TV movie "Heidi ". Mind you, there was no ESPN, no internet, no nothing that we now take for granted and millions of viewers were left hanging wondering what happened. Instead they were tortured into seeing a ch1ldrens show, " Heidi ". The Jets won on the last few seconds of the game and went on to Super Bowl III where they upset the heavily favored Baltimore Colts 16 - 7. Many people had turned on their radio to listen to the game but radio is lame compared to TV in these situations. The NBC switchboard was inundated with complaints and needless to say " Heidi " was a ratings flop. The NFL and AFL promptly renegotiated the TV contract and the games will now be fully telecast even if it is a pre-season game. That's why it is the way it is.
And what of the millions of viewers who never gave a flying flip about the game but were intently anticipating the "Heidi" program? OK, granted, that exact example may not be particularly strong, but the point remains...there are people who want to watch their expected program over football just as much as football fans want to watch football over the programs that follow. It's aggravating that the networks have decided to prioritize the football fans over the other viewers, who are simply expected to rearrange *their* schedule arbitrarily and without warning. It doesn't help that the networks only ever schedule 3 hours for football, when the games virtually always go past that--frequently in the range of 3.5-4 hrs. It means waiting up an extra half hour to hour for any show airing after the game, which isn't always feasible when you have to get to work the next day. And sometimes the show will just be completely pre-empted and not aired in certain areas, which is how us East Coasters missed so many Futurama episodes that Fox declared the ratings too low and canceled it.
Point is: While I realize that TV networks will pander/appease/appeal to certain demographics over others, it's intolerable to me that with football (and as far as I can tell, no other sport) it is done in a way that screws over the scheduling of other programs airing afterward. Either the networks need to reschedule/allocate time for the game more sensibly, not air/schedule new programming after the games, or stop the game broadcast at the assigned time. Until they do so, it's a big middle finger to anyone whose show gets interfered with as a result of the game.