First of all, if we’re focusing on the fanbases of the teams involved in the game, how about the Minnesota fans whose game didn’t start until 9:30 local time and finished after midnight? This game was between a Mountain time zone team and a Central time zone team, why is this being broadcast as late as if this were two west coast teams?
On the broader point, this was a conversation about growing the game. If we assume die hard fans of the teams playing will watch anyways, the question is how do you get neutral/casual fans to tune in as well? I don’t think it’s all that arrogant to say that showing games at times that are convenient for larger portions of the population has the greatest chance to draw the most eyeballs (and I included Central as well as Eastern time zones in that category, for the record), but your mileage may vary.