Jones and Len Dawson) October 10 British Columbia 1 @ Edmonton 30 (Charlie Jones, Merlin Olsen, and Mike Haffner) There were blackouts of the CFL games. The blackouts weren't exactly because of not selling out the stadiums, but for being too close to Canada. For instance NBC's affiliate in Syracuse did not get these games. Their TV listings showed these CFL games on CKWS 11 (CBC Kingston, Ontario), while NBC (WSTM 3) listed “NFL Football New England at Buffalo (if strike settled) or movie” for Sunday, October 3. A game between featuring the Edmonton Eskimos at the Winnipeg Blue Bombers was tentatively scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday October 17, even making newspaper TV listings. At the last moment NBC cancelled the broadcast. The network was worried that the game would run over its allotted time and conflict with Game 5 of the 1982 World Series, which was supposed to begin at 4:30. NBC did not resume CFL broadcasts afterwards. As previously mentioned, the games it showed had mostly been blowouts and the network even ended its October 3, 1982 broadcast "Heidi Game" style before the game ended in order to not delay prime time programming. On January 8, 1983, NBC began their coverage of the NFL playoffs. As a consequence to the strike, which shortened the regular season from a 16-game schedule to only 9 games, a special 16-team playoff format (which was dubbed the "Super Bowl Tournament") was instituted. Geographical divisional standings were ignored and instead, the top eight teams from each conference were seeded 1–8 based on their regular season records. Ultimately, this resulted in the early round playoff games being regionally televised for the first and to date, only time. Don Criqui and John Brodie called the Browns-Raiders game while Bob Costas, Bob Trumpy, and Bob Griese called the Patriots-Dolphins game, both at 4 p.m. Eastern Time. The next day, NBC televised the Jets-Bengals (with Charlie Jones and Len Dawson on the call) and Chargers-Steelers games (with Dick Enberg and Merlin Olsen on the call) at 12:30 p.m. ET. NBC Radio joins the fray On March 6, 1985, NBC Radio and the NFL entered into a two-year agreement granting NBC the radio rights to a 37-game package for the 1985 and 1986 seasons. The package included 27 regular season games and 10 postseason games. Also in 1985, the NFL showed a ratings increase on