It should come as no great surprise to longtime football fans that the TV station with the highest NFL football ratings is WLUK Green Bay, Wis. LIN Television’s Fox affiliate often pulls better than a 50 rating for its Green Bay Packers telecasts.

Up there in the 69th market, the Packers are much more than a sports franchise. They border on a weird, religious cult, whose boisterous acolytes convey their devotion through such ritual garments as the sacred cheese hat and even the cheese bra.

How do you build on such success? Simple: you deliver even more football in a unique format and target people normally overlooked by traditional sports marketing.

Thus was born Fox 11 Packers Family Night, a joint effort between WLUK and the Packers that turns a Packers’ intra-squad scrimmage into a major community event—live from 50-year-old Lambeau Field.

“Families with kids typically never get a chance to come inside Lambeau Field, because season tickets are sold out years in advance,” says WLUK GM Jay Zollar. “And, even if you could get tickets, cost has become prohibitive for a many families.”

Besides the scrimmage, the evening includes a comical mascot game, live interviews with coaches and players, a Jerseys-Off-Players-Backs giveaway, all capped off by a giant fireworks show—in other words, an entire evening of family entertainment. Even better, the Packers and the station hold ticket prices to an affordable $8 apiece. Within 72 hours, all 60,000 tickets are gone.

The Saturday event is different from the usual football Sunday, Zollar says. “You look up at the stands and instead of rowdy season-ticket holders, you see lots of families with young children. It really is special night.”

And the Packers help keep it that way, by limiting the number of tickets sold in blocks.

Fox 11 Packers Family Night made its debut in 1999 as a stadium-only event and has grown steadily each year, interrupted only by Lambeau Field renovations. But when Lambeau re-opened in 2004, it boasted a Packers Hall of Fame and a restaurant-filled Atrium.

This year’s Family Night on Aug. 4 boasted a cornucopia of sponsored pre-game attractions, including low-cost refreshments plus free admission for 900 relatives of active duty service men and women.

And while they may call this a “controlled scrimmage,” this is no glorified practice session. “The Packers front office takes it very seriously. It’s a full intra-squad game. The coaches use it to evaluate their rookies and make final decisions about the starting lineup,” says Zollar.

The Family Night has been televised on WLUK since 2000, and, almost immediately, other Wisconsin stations wanted in on the action. Now besides Fox 11, Packer fans can tune in on WITI Milwaukee, WMSN Madison, WFXS Wausau and WLAX La Crosse. And, starting two years ago, the event can be seen nationwide on the NFL Network.

Because Family Night falls just outside of July sweeps, there are no official ratings for Green Bay, which is a diary market. But on WITI in Milwaukee, the telecast was the third-rated primetime show for the week ending Aug. 5, 2007, with a 7.7/16. And during the regular season, WLUK always outperforms Milwaukee for Packer football.

Of course, nobody could blame those in the stadium for still thinking they are watching the broadcast. The WLUK news and sports anchors emcee the stadium activities as well as the telecast.

Coordinating the live broadcast with the video on the stadium giant TundraVision monitor is perhaps the greatest technical challenge, says Zollar.

“Sometimes the content is simultaneous and other times it’s completely different. It’s fascinating to see our engineers plan it all out with the Packers organization in just a few one-hour meetings.”

While everyone works off a detailed rundown sheet, the broadcast is not scripted. All the intros are ad libbed live by the WLUK talent, apparently undaunted by the added production pressures.

“We produce six hours of news a day, but this is an exciting change of pace,” says Zollar. “Our crew gets to run cameras on the Lambeau Field sidelines, or run Chyron or roll tape in a major remote truck.”

Despite wide distribution and monster ratings, the show isn’t a huge moneymaker. But you don’t hear Jay Zollar complaining.

“We make a little money on it, and we’re happy there’s a positive cash flow. After all, we pay a very significant license fee to the Packers. We also shoulder all the production expenses like the production truck and satellite time, not to mention full staffing and overtime.”

But like they say in the MasterCard ads: the value of all that community goodwill? Priceless.

“Northeast Wisconsin residents really do perceive this as a Fox 11 event,” says Zollar. “We’ve already got e-mails asking about tickets for next year.”

Market Share by Arthur Greenwald showcases successful local marketing every Monday in TVNEWSDAY. Have you run a sales promotion into the end zone lately? We’d love to cheer you on. Send the details to Arthur at greenwald@tvnewsday.com.