List of Thanksgiving Classic broadcasters

The following is a list of the television networks and announcers to broadcast the National Football League's annual Thanksgiving Classic series of games. Since 1998, the game with an NFC team as the visitors airs on Fox, as they have the rights to the NFC; CBS airs the game where when the St. Louis Cardinals hosted a game instead). Because of TV network commitments, to make sure that both the AFC-carrying network and the NFC-carrying network got at least one game each, one of these games was between NFC opponents, and one featured AFC-NFC opponents. Thus, the AFC could showcase only one team on Thanksgiving, and the AFC team was always the visiting team.

The two afternoon games are held at Detroit (12:30 p.m. EST) and Dallas (4:15 p.m. EST), respectively. Detroit always hosts the first game because a 12:30 p.m. EST kick-off at Dallas would be 11:30 a.m. local time (CST), and the NFL avoids starting games before noon locally. The two games rotate annually as intra-conference (NFC vs. NFC) and inter-conference (AFC vs. NFC) games. This is largely due to the format of the television contract with CBS and Fox. Since both Detroit and Dallas are NFC teams, in order for CBS to televise one of the games, one game must be against an AFC opponent. Inter-conference games of which the AFC team is away, are televised on CBS. For fairness between both networks and markets, the two games rotate annually between the two networks.

The "early" game kicks off at a special time of 12:30 p.m. EST as opposed to the typical afternoon start time of 1 p.m. This provides an additional 30 minutes to prevent overlapping of the "late" game, and also gives both networks time for a pregame show and some additional time for a halftime concert. In addition, the "early" game's network pre-game show is 30 minutes (12:00-12:30 p.m.) and the "late" game's pre-game show is 45 minutes (3:30-4:15 p.m.)

On December 14, 2011, the NFL, along with Fox, NBC and CBS, announced the league's rights deal with all three networks was extended to the end of the 2022 season. The new rights deal also includes NBC receiving the prime time game of the Thanksgiving tripleheader previously carried by NFL Network.

Thursday night games
Since 2006, three contests have been played on Thanksgiving. In addition to the traditional Detroit and Dallas home afternoon games, a third game is now played in prime time and televised by NFL Network. The addition of the NFL Network game on Thanksgiving has AFC fans hoping that their conference will now have equal exposure, perhaps with an NFC-NFC, AFC-NFC, and an AFC-AFC game each Thanksgiving; in fact, the Kansas City Chiefs (after the Thanksgiving 2006 game) attempted to regain "regular" status with the night game (it was Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt who actively pushed for the night game to be established, and the league appeased him with the request ).

Starting in 2014 with the beginning of the NFL's new network agreement, NBC will begin to air this game in place of NFL Network.

St. Louis Cardinals hosted games
The Dallas Cowboys were replaced by the St. Louis (now Arizona) Cardinals as a host team in and ; Dallas and St. Louis faced each other in Dallas in 1976. Because of the long-established Kirkwood–Webster Groves high school football game that takes place on Thanksgiving in St. Louis, the Cardinals' hosting of the Thanksgiving game was not popular. Dallas returned to hosting the game in 1978 and has hosted ever since.

American Football League games
From 1960 through 1966, one AFL game was played every Thanksgiving. In 1967, 1968 and 1969, in the buffer period before the AFL-NFL merger, each Turkey Day had two AFL games. The team with the best record in AFL Thanksgiving Day games was the New York Titans, who played in the first three, and were 3-0. The Oakland Raiders were second best, with a 3-1 record.

Radio coverage
The NFL on Westwood One holds national radio broadcast rights to all three games. The team's usual Thursday night announcers handle the evening game, with a mix of other Westwood One announcers handling the Cowboys game. The Detroit game, however, uses other announcers not normally employed by Westwood One; Detroit-area broadcasters were used until 2008, but in 2009, Sports USA Radio Network took over the announcing duties for the Lions game.