NFL Thursday games

So, last week I was home sick for a couple of days. Thursday evening I thought, "Great, a good evening of TV starting with the football game". Well, I clicked and clicked and scrolled and scrolled, but couldn't find any sign of a game on the cable menu. Come to find out, of course, that the Thursday game is on the NFL channel. What the . . . ?!?! It's not even an option on Time Warner! Someone warned me this is the way it could go . . . all subscription based. I doubt that. Football gets a lot of money from TV revenue which comes from advertising. I can't imagine that same kind of money would be available from a subscription service. Could I be wrong, though? I hope this fails. I know there are a lot of sport fans out there. Particularly football. But I can't believe there are that many that would pay extra to watch other games.