Without the NFL, the networks’ retransmission fees and advertising businesses would crater, and there wouldn’t be any network left to save. That effort, a Wall Street Journal report indicated, was spearheaded by one of the NFL’s broadcast partners, Fox, and its nonagenarian chairman emeritus, Rupert Murdoch. By this time, reports indicated the NFL had already engaged one of its active partners, CBS and its parent company Paramount. The lawsuit “would appear to have put any near-term talks between the NFL and CBS on hold,” Crupi writes. The delay has a knock-on effect for other broadcasters, who can now seemingly rest easy until next offseason without sweating over renegotiating their NFL deals.