President Donald Trump and Fox News are American powerhouses.
Just ask the NFL.
In a break from trend last year, the football league found itself not in lockstep with a U.S. president.
And when the NFL became a presidential punching bag instead, it took hits also from Fox News.
Trump railed against NFL owners for not punishing black players who kneeled during the national anthem to protest racial injustice. Also, he panned the industry's increased regulations meant to reduce head hits on players.
One of his allies, Fox News _ which has led cable-news ratings for the past 15-plus years _ supported the president's critiques, notably that the protests were unpatriotic and a turnoff to many fans.
And yet ...
Powerful people within the 21st Century Fox empire, behind the scenes, were courting the NFL.
Before last season's Super Bowl was played, a bid of $3.3 billion landed Fox Sports the "Thursday Night Football" package for the next five seasons.
Thursday came the unveiling. It was the Rams versus Vikings from the Los Angeles Coliseum. The network's top NFL broadcast team of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman called the game, one of 11 Thursday nighters that will air this season on Fox.
It wasn't stunning that Fox Sports added Thursdays to its Sunday NFL programming to give it nearly 40 percent of the league's game-telecast product.
However, when business analysts saw the price that this one piece of NFL pie had fetched, they let out a long whistle.
"That," wrote the Sports Business Journal's John Ourand of the annual outlay of $660 million, "was a strikingly aggressive bid, as previous 'Thursday Night Football' rights holders, CBS Sports and NBC Sports, have said they lost money on their deal, which they paid a combined $450 million per year."
Fox cited better games and ad placement as incentives.
John Entz mentioned another factor this week. "Consistency," he said in a teleconference.
Entz, who is Fox Sports president of production and executive producer, noted "TNF" had appeared on a few networks in recent years.
"We're trying to find a place where people know, starting this week, where you can find it," he said. "I can't speak to all of the larger economic/White House situations, but in a nutshell, that's the basis for why we wanted to be in this business."
