It’s not always black & silver

The New England Patriots and Dallas Cowboys were undefeated when they met in Texas three weeks ago for the big game that most of the country was talking about.

KCBS, however, decided to show the Oakland Raiders-San Diego Chargers game -- a better bet for L.A., it thought.

Not quite.

The matchup between the Patriots and Cowboys was the most-watched NFL regular-season game in 10 years -- and another reminder to fans in Los Angeles that the nation’s second-largest media market with 5.6 million television households belongs to the San Diego Chargers. And sometimes the Raiders too.

“Had it been any team other than the Raiders, L.A. probably would have gotten the New England-Dallas game,” said Rob Correa, a senior vice president for programming at CBS.

Today will be different. KCBS will televise the season’s most anticipated game when the Patriots take on the Indianapolis Colts, the only teams still undefeated. In doing so, the station passed on the game between the struggling Raiders and Houston Texans.

It’s almost never that easy. On any given Sunday, programmers at CBS and Fox often have as many as 14 games to choose from. Nowhere is the process tougher than in L.A., where three key factors are at work:

* Second-tier status. The NFL long ago designated L.A. as a secondary media market for San Diego, where there are only 1 million television households.

And the NFL’s secondary-market rule requires CBS affiliates KCBS and Palm Springs’ KPSP to carry every Chargers away game, from the ocean to the desert, like it or not.

* The ratings game. When network and local programmers have a choice, they lean toward teams with ties to the city. Usually, it’s a safe bet. The Oakland-San Diego game registered a healthy 11.3 rating, the NFL’s second-best local rating in three years. Only one problem -- the Patriots-Cowboys drew 29.1 million viewers nationwide, making it the most-watched regular season Sunday NFL game since Dallas and San Francisco played on Nov. 10, 1996.

* Raider Nation. Al Davis moved his franchise back to Oakland 12 years ago, but the Silver and Black still have a huge contingent in L.A. That made the Raiders-Chargers game a slam dunk as far as KCBS was concerned.

“L.A. clearly is more difficult to program, given that San Diego is nearby, the city has a prior history with the Rams and Raiders, and it’s also home to a lot of transplanted New Yorkers and people from Chicago,” said Neal Pilson, a former CBS sports programming executive.

San Diego may be nearby, but the Chargers being L.A.’s home team doesn’t wash with such fans as Charles Reilly, 58, from Manhattan Beach.

“San Diego is San Diego, not Los Angeles, and not Orange County. Go to the average sports bar here and you’re going to find more fans from Pittsburgh, the 49ers or New England than Chargers fans.”

Yet the NFL has been treating L.A. as secondary ever since the AFL’s Los Angeles Chargers headed south in 1961. And the must-carry rule for away games made programmers scramble when L.A. was home to the Raiders years later.

The rule is designed to create greater visibility for franchises in a regional area, a league spokesman said. State Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles), a longtime proponent of bringing an NFL team back to town, understands that -- to a point.

It “makes sense from the NFL perspective, which is to stoke interest in and capitalize on whatever markets it can,” he said. “But it’s all for the benefit of the existing franchises. They’ve shown they’re perfectly willing to ignore prospective markets, particularly one as promising and handsome as Los Angeles.

“And, after all, the NFL is a club. The club takes care of its members. It doesn’t take care of non-members, and as far as they’re concerned, L.A. is a non-member.”

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Programmers at CBS and Fox draw up maps of the U.S. each week, using splashes of grass green, turquoise and peach (CBS), or red triangles, green squares and Cowboy blue stars (Fox), to track decisions.

An island of white appears when a game fails to sell out and can’t be broadcast locally.

“We’re dealing with the equivalent of as many as seven political parties on Sunday, so there are all kinds of machinations,” said CBS’ Correa. “Nobody ever e-mails to say they got the game they wanted, and people always complain when they don’t get what they want.”

Sometimes the maps are as simple as two colors. Others evoke Jackson Pollock paintings.

This Sunday, the map will be simple: The NFL has been heavily promoting the 1:15 p.m. Colts-Patriots game, and CBS executives have said that most of the country will see it. But KCBS is bound to hear from Raiders fans.

Nielsen data show that in L.A., Chargers games generally drive better ratings than Raiders games, and Raiders games typically are competitive with those featuring other teams.

So it is no surprise that KCBS delivers an NFL broadcast diet top-heavy with Chargers and Raiders fare. Of the 27 games on Channel 2 in 2006, 10 featured teams other than the Chargers and Raiders. So far this season, KCBS has broadcast three Chargers games and three Raiders games and one where they played each other.

Pilson, now a sports media consultant, understands why L.A. programmers focused on California teams rather than the Patriots-Cowboys game.

“I probably would have opted for the local game on the theory that if there’s a difficult choice, the local fans usually are going to be more passionate,” he said. “Unfortunately, on that day, some fans didn’t get to see the highest-rated game of the year.”

Fan reaction was intense.

“The truth is, any knowledgeable fan of the NFL would prefer to watch two unbeaten teams any day of the week,” one irate viewer wrote in a recent e-mail to The Times. As for Raider and Charger fans, “Those . . . fellows can always move to Oakland and San Diego whenever they’re ready,” the fan wrote.

Raiders fans were quick to defend the KCBS decision. “The Cowboys [play terrible] and so do the cheating Patriots,” wrote one fan. “. . . So quit your whinning [sic]. This is L.A., home of the RAIDER NATION!!!!!!!!”

L.A. isn’t the only secondary city. The league splits Orlando between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Erie, Pa., in the shadow of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns, is a Buffalo Bills market. When WSEE in Erie must carry an away Bills game, the station runs a crawl on the screen to alert Steelers fans.

“It’s a public service,” station manager John Christianson said. “We want to let them know, so they don’t make the chili and chicken wings, sit down and get ready to go only to see the Bills on TV.”

Online polling, he added, confirms what station personnel who field angry calls know -- Erie is Steelers country, with the Browns running second and the Bills third. The station forwarded the unscientific polling data to the NFL but to no avail.

And J.P. Kirby, a 24-year-old football fan in Canada, was frustrated enough about the game selection process to create a website (the506.com/nflmaps/) where NFL fans from across North America trade information and gripes about broadcast schedules. The website drew 144,000 hits last month.

There are other factors at work too in the selection process. Certain athletes can boost teams in far-flung markets.

“Vince Young does well in Austin, Eli Manning performs well in Mississippi, and Brett Favre is strong in Biloxi,” said Bill Wanger, senior vice president of research and programming for Fox Sports.

Fox, Channel 11, generally escapes the must-carry rule because Fox has the NFC, and the Chargers are an AFC franchise.

“Typically, we do our best ratings when we have some of our marquee teams -- Green Bay against Chicago and Philadelphia, or Dallas and the Giants,” Wanger said. “Those can be great games for Los Angeles.”

Despite fan grumbling, L.A. programmers are simply chasing stronger ratings, he says.

“We just want to pick the games that will please the most people,” Wanger said.

For KCBS, the potential for angry fans today was eased because the Chargers’ game at Minnesota will kick off at 10 a.m. PST, allowing Channel 2 to air the Colts-Patriots.

“We’d better get that game or I’ll be back at Yankee Doodles,” said Rick Livingood, 54, an avid NFL fan from Simi Valley who went to his favorite sports bar to watch the Patriots beat the Cowboys. “That’s a game that they can’t possibly not give us.”

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greg.johnson@latimes.com