This year, Chuck Todd became the latest prominent political pundit to jump ship from traditional television and go independent when he left MSNBC and launched The Chuck Toddcast on YouTube.
Todd isn’t just leaving television behind to make a statement; in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Todd detailed why he believes 2029 could spell doom for broadcast television, especially at the local level. That’s the year that the NFL is expected to opt out of its media rights deal, and Todd is already predicting that the move will “break” the business model of either CBS or Fox.
“The NFL may announce that they’re going to opt out of their media deals in 2029,” Todd explained.
“I think this is going to break one or more of the traditional networks. I expect Comcast to pony up whatever it takes to keep Sunday Night Football, and they have the resources to do it, and they have a rationale to do it. I expect Disney to pony up whatever it takes to match, Fox and CBS are in a different place. Can they keep up with the joneses?”
Instead of digging for money under the couch cushions to increase their bids by billions, Todd predicted CBS or Fox could be forced to partner with a digital media company to sublicense certain games and air them on broadcast TV. Just this week, reports suggested YouTube was a suitor for a national NFL game as soon as the 2025 season.
“This could be the thing that breaks the affiliate networks all over the country,” Todd added. “And then that is the moment where you could see both an explosion of YouTube and at the same time, a new consolidation.”
Others, including Puck’s John Ourand, have been sounding the alarm about the existential threat the next NFL broadcast deal could pose for the national CBS and Fox networks. But Todd is taking it a step further to describe how local TV news hangs in the balance ahead of NFL negotiations.
To explain Todd’s point, Fox and CBS together have nearly 500 local affiliate stations across the U.S. Without NFL games each Sunday, viewership and revenue for those networks would likely plummet.
A lack of competition has already contributed to the breakdown of local news, in print and TV. This type of change would accelerate that trend.
And if Todd is right, all that power is in the NFL’s hands. Live football rights are arguably the single most piece of content in media, and not having them can indeed make or break a company.