Why was the NFC Championship Game always the early game from 1988-1997?

[SabresRule]

Nowadays, the AFC and NFC title games, in terms of which game is early and which one starts later, alternate every year.

From 1988 to 1997, the AFC title game on NBC always began early, followed by the NFC title game on CBS (later FOX).

Why was it always this way?

 

[Jimbo]

Probably a contractual issue, those games were normally earlier games.
Now EVERYTHING is done for MONEY, which is why they are now in PRIME TIME, at least one of them anyway.
Wern't they talking about going to something like a 3 and 7 time slots now, this is soley so they will run into Prime Time and start in prime time.

Jimbo

 

[cosmo_kramer]

Nowadays, the AFC and NFC title games, in terms of which game is early and which one starts later, alternate every year.

From 1988 to 1997, the AFC title game on NBC always began early, followed by the NFC title game on CBS (later FOX).

Why was it always this way?

It wasn't.

The NFC was the early game on 1/17/88 at Washington while the AFC played in Denver. On 1/12/97 the early game was at Green Bay.

All of the early games played from 1989 through 1996 were at AFC stadiums. This happened primarily because of the location of the games and the early 12:30 game time. During that stretch every AFC title game was played at an Eastern time zone city except for Denver in 1990 and every NFC title game was played in a non-Eastern time zone location except for Washington in 1992.

BTW - The thread title is wrong..

 

[Mets82]

I always wondered what would of happened if the both home teams for the conference championships were on the West Coast. Would they play one on Saturday and one on Sunday or would they do like they do now, which is play a game at 3 and the other at 6:30 pm.