All three major network evening news programs on Thursday night featured stories on the settlement that either led the show or came second following updates on Syria. "NBC Nightly News" had settlement news as its second story, bringing in Bob Costas via satellite from Boston to comment. "CBS Evening News" led with Syria, but anchor Scott Pelley did mention the NFL story first during the rundown of stories to open the show. Pelley: "The biggest play of the year in pro football has come one week before the start of the season, off the field and out of court." The settlement story came seven minutes into the broadcast, with a two-minute segment that included comments from the net's James Brown. ABC's "World News Tonight" teased the NFL story first under the headline "Big Hit," and led its news stories with the settlement. ABC’s Diane Sawyer: "Tonight, America's biggest game is generating the biggest headline." After a 45-second in-studio intro, ABC aired a roughly two-minute report from Dan Harris that included interviews with players, commentators and plaintiffs' attorney Chris Seeger, as well as footage on football collisions from ESPN's "Sports Science." The show then went back to Sawyer in-studio for a conversation with ESPN's Chris Mortensen. In all, ABC went nearly six minutes into the telecast before turning from the NFL to Syria.
FROM THE LEAGUE NETWORK: NFL Network noted the story on its ticker and did a five-minute update on the air at 12:55pm ET, when news first broke of the settlement. The segment was anchored by Omar Ruiz and featured reporter Albert Breer. The net then aired a series of regular updates leading up to "NFL Total Access" at 7:00pm, which included an interview with Patriots Owner Robert Kraft. NFL.com put the story on its breaking news strip and at about 3:00pm moved it to the first item in the headline stack.
