Thursday night football on NFLN is pretty recent. At least the full seasons worth of games. The network was doing fine and profitable before it had any games and it wasn't even on most cable providers. It would be fine if it had no games and now is on all providers.
MikeO, I'll assume you are correct and it was profitable before having Thursday night games. But...how much were they charging cable providers for the network prior to having Thurs night games and how much are they charging now??? I would guess that they jacked up the cost after adding Thurs night games so they could fill their ever deepening pockets.