Chargers final preseason game blacked out on local T.V.

The Chargers reported that their final preseason tune-up versus the Cardinals tomorrow will not be shown live on television in the San Diego area. The game has not been sold out, and we are now within the 72-hour “blackout time period” as mandated by the NFL. The football overlords have decreed that no games, not even meaningless exhibitions, can be telecast, broadcast, streamed or in any way provided to the public if all the seats in the stadium where the game is played are not sold.

Thursday night’s scrimmage with Arizona will be shown at 10 o’clock Thursday night by KFMB-TV, the local CBS affiliate (channel 8 in San Diego) and by KCAL-TV (channel 9 in Orange County and Los Angeles) starting at midnight. At 11:30 p.m., Telemundo will telecast the contest in Spanish.

Adding to the public’s lack of interest in the show is the rare situation where two teams play the final preseason game, then turn around and play each other the next week, in a game that counts. The Chargers will journey to Glendale, Arizona for a game on the first Monday night of the 2014 season.  Both teams are even more likely than usual to rest their starters and show little, if any, of their game plans to each other, or the fans.

Meanwhile, yesterday’s unanimous, 7-0 vote by the San Diego City Council may have been a vote to keep the Chargers in America’s Finest City. The council voted not to challenge a court ruling that had nixed the plan to fund an expansion of the Convention Center with a hotel tax.

This means the Charger’s proposal for a downtown stadium right next to the existing Convention venue is still alive. While this bodes well for the team’s continued life in San Diego, it may have sent the annual Comic-Con north to Anaheim or L.A.