If nothing else, the National Football League will be well-covered by television this coming season.
With the addition of TNT, Ted Turner's newest network, the NFL will be televised by a record five networks in 1990.TNT will get into the picture for the first time with a Sept. 9 game at the Meadowlands between the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles, the NFL said Thursday in announcing its schedule.
The NFL also said that, for the first time, each of the league's 28 teams will appear on at least one prime-time telecast.
To accommodate all the networks - CBS, NBC, ABC, ESPN and TNT - the league added two wild-card teams and two first-round games to the playoffs. Under the new format, the 16-game regular season will be stretched over 17 weeks, giving each team one open date.
CBS will broadcast NFC games and NBC will cover the AFC, ABC will continue its Monday night telecasts and ESPN will split the Sunday night package with TNT.
Fifty-nine regular-season games, including nine Sunday doubleheaders on CBS and eight on NBC, will be televised nationally. ABC will carry 16 Monday night games, including a New Year's Eve matchup between the Los Angeles Rams and New Orleans Saints, and one Saturday night game.
TNT will show eight Sunday night games and one Thursday night contest during the first half of the season, while ESPN will carry eight Sunday night games in the second half.
At playoff time, ABC will televise a first-round doubleheader on Jan. 5. After that, CBS will cover NFC games and NBC will televise AFC games until the Super Bowl, which will be shown by ABC on Jan. 27 from Tampa, Fla.
The 1990 season is the first under the NFL's new four-year television contract. The deal is worth $3.6 billion, or $32 million annually per team.
The breakdown is $1.06 billion from CBS, $925 million from ABC, $752 million from NBC and $450 million each from ESPN and TNT.
Among the highlights on the schedule, the defending champion San Francisco 49ers will open against New Orleans in a Monday night game Sept. 10 at the Louisiana Superdome, where they beat Denver in last season's Super Bowl.
The Broncos open Sept. 9 at Los Angeles against the Raiders, who may or may not be playing their final season in Los Angeles. The Raiders had made a deal to move to Oakland, but that agreement appears in jeopardy due to a voters' drive to put the matter on the fall ballot.
The New York Jets, one of the NFL's weaker teams last season, have one of the tougher roads in the early going with games against Cincinnati, Cleveland and Buffalo.
"It's quite a challenge," Jets rookie coach Bruce Coslet said of the opener Sept. 9 at Cincinnati. "They have a great team and we're going to have a lot of motivation playing them just because I've coached there.