The 4:25 p.m. ET window for National Football League games is the most coveted real estate in all of content. As CBS proudly boasted in a press release last January, the NFL on CBS national game at that time averaged 24.637 million viewers for its 10 Sunday afternoon windows, more than any other sports, entertainment or news series on any network.
That number gnawed at the executives at Fox Sports for months because for more than a decade Fox had owned the top spot in regular-season viewership in the 4:25 p.m. window. In 2023, Fox averaged 24.632 million viewers in the afternoon slot.