This is an opinion column.

The Finebaum Show ends and rolls straight into the night’s special programming.

It’s 6 p.m. in the Central time zone. We’ll be done by 8 because when the full 2024 SEC football schedule is released, 60 or 90 minutes wouldn’t cut it. The 120-minute special on the SEC Network followed the trend of creating entertainment products out of what used to be an email.

Yet this is the dawn of a new era that extends beyond the addition of Texas and Oklahoma to what was already a gauntlet.

Welcome to the Monopoly Era of SEC television programming.

No longer will CBS throw a wrench in the ESPN empire’s scheduling machine. No more 2:30 p.m. game-of-the-week outside the family and that was subtly made clear this week.

Even before the 7,200-second SEC Network reveal Wednesday night, the Disney tentacles were at work.

You saw a few game dates revealed on ESPN’s broadcast of Monday Night Football.

A few more were announced on the Manning Cast alternate broadcast of MNF over on ESPN2.

Then, the Georgia at Alabama game date was unveiled on the Wednesday edition of Good Morning America on ABC. Even more notable, a kickoff time and network were attached to that unboxing.

In the dark ages of last season, CBS would have had first dibs on this Tuscaloosa showdown between the two most dominant programs in the league over the past decade.

Now that that deal’s expired, the four-letter network could safely announce that Sept. 28 game in Tuscaloosa will air at 6:30 p.m. CT on its three-letter father. No longer a midafternoon shoo-in, Alabama-Georgia will air in primetime on ABC — the broadcast network in the same corporate family as ESPN.

To keep the synergy going, the Missouri-Vanderbilt kick time should be revealed only to the winner of a Disney World scavenger hunt broadcast exclusively on the SEC Network +.

Anyway, there’s some advantage for fans to this new absence of competition in the broadcast realm.

You might actually get to plan your fall trips more than two weeks in advance if there isn’t the roadblock of CBS making its first pick.

In fact, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey on Nov. 30 said they expect to have “right around half” of the league’s complete schedule slotted in specific broadcast windows.

“Working with ESPN, ABC, the SEC Network,” Sankey said in advance of the SEC Championship game, “the opportunity to know the noon eastern time kickoffs throughout the season will allow our campuses and our fans to plan rather than having those six-day and 12-day experiences around that early kickoff.

“We’ll have some flexibility between the midday and the primetime games and some scheduling which is a bit of an hour differential rather than just waiting and wondering about the entire broadcast day. So great question, and really excited about the opportunity with Disney, ABC, ESPN, the SEC Network, and even the ESPN+ digital platform in the future.”

So that’s good news.

And now, a few more thoughts from the actual meat of what was announced on the SEC Network on Wednesday night.

— The Iron Bowl will have a whole new feel without the pastry appetizer. It became tradition to play a nobody the Saturday before the state championship game but the SEC scheduler had other plans.

Alabama, instead of its customary dip in the FCS pool, will head to Norman to play Oklahoma seven days before Auburn’s visit. The Tigers, meanwhile, get a home date with a Texas A&M team they’ve beaten just once in the previous four seasons. Perhaps the Aggies will present a more respectable challenge than New Mexico State next November.

— The quirks of the calendar and the constellations creates one of those seasons with two open weeks for each team. With that comes a race to see who everybody gets a rest before playing who.

Auburn didn’t catch much of a break by getting a break before heading to Missouri on Oct. 19 and before hosting Louisiana-Monroe on Nov. 16. There’s a joke here but I’m taking the high road because it could cut either direction and nobody really wins.

Alabama’s are timed more favorably. After playing at Wisconsin in Week 3, it gets to hit pause the following Saturday before Georgia visits Week 5. The other bye is wedged between an Oct. 26 home date with Missouri and a Nov. 9 trip to LSU.

— Everybody got screwed.

— Part of the deal that comes with the eight-team league schedule is a required Power 4-to-5 opponent. Which of the 16 teams has the most challenging step outside the family?

• Notre Dame at Texas A&M is spicy. Make that interesting.
• LSU vs. USC in Las Vegas sounds like trouble in more than one way.
• Cal at Auburn sounds about as entertaining as it did last year.
• Florida plays both Miami and Florida State to bookend the 12-game march for Billy Napier’s job.
• Georgia-Clemson in Atlanta likely sounded more exciting when they scheduled it.
• Ole Miss plays at Wake Forest.
• Alabama at Wisconsin will be a fun little clash of cultures.
• But it’s Texas at Michigan that takes the prize. Half of this year’s playoff field/a potential rematch of the national title game is a bold scheduling decision for Texas. You could have said the same this year but it was that win at Alabama that got the Longhorns into the semifinal.

— Georgia has more of a challenge on tap without the East Division and its gifts of Vanderbilt, South Carolina and, before this season, Missouri.

Instead, road trips to playoff teams Alabama and Texas along with New Year’s Six bowl-participant Ole Miss will test the Bulldogs more than the pre-December schedule this season.

There’s plenty more to discuss but you don’t need another 120 minutes snatched from your Wednesday.

We have plenty of time to discuss this step into a new era of SEC football between now and Labor Day weekend.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.