RedZone Channel has, for years, been a refuge from commercials for NFL fans: A channel to turn on as soon as the Sunday games kick off and leave on until the last Sunday afternoon game ends, without hearing anything but football. Until last week.
Last week, the league-owned RedZone Channel showed commercials for the first time. Fans were not happy that the show introduced each week by host Scott Hanson with the catchphrase, “Seven hours of commercial-free football” was no longer commercial free.
This week, the catchphrase was gone.
Hanson started Sunday’s broadcast with, “Seven hours of RedZone football,” an acknowledgement that he can no longer promise that the broadcast will be commercial-free. This week’s RedZone Channel actually didn’t have any commercials, but the league is considering adding commercials to RedZone regularly during the 2025 season.
Hanson has apologized to viewers for saying last week’s show would be “commercial-free” when it wasn’t. The best option for the NFL would be to affirmatively announce that it won’t put commercials on RedZone, so that Hanson can use the “commercial-free” catchphrase again, and mean it.
