Presumably the 3pm black out will come back into play. Personally if all games were to be broadcast I think the rest of football would probably be less impacted by 4-5 PL games being aired simultaneously at 3pm on a Saturday than having them in unique slots across the weekend.
Yes, especially when fans are back in the grounds, there's really no need to move Palace vs Burnley to 11am on a Sunday just so it can have its own unique slot and a few thousand people who want to watch every single minute of Premier League football can watch it. All that does is just inconveniences and annoys people who want to attend.
I enjoyed it last Saturday when there were three Saturday 3pm games, as mentioned at the time the most at that time since the weekend before it was suspended. I love loads of matches being played at the same time and hearing goals flying in on Final Score, Five Live and Soccer Saturday, and then a big long Match of the Day which can round up everything. I certainly paid more attention to Palace vs Wolves when it was one of three Saturday 3pm games than if it had been shown on a Sunday morning or Monday teatime, when I might have just checked the score, if I'd remembered if it was on.
From a personal perspective, too, the more matches played at the same time the better, as I have a football-phobic partner and I have just about managed to convince them that Saturday 3pm and whenever Liverpool/Wrexham play is a suitable amount for me to be watching (plus MOTD which I can watch after they've gone to bed, or before they get up the next morning). And I think the same is true for the vast majority of football fans, there is a small number of hardcore fans that can spend the entire weekend watching football but for most people they have a finite amount of time they can spend watching it. And if football starts enveloping even more of the weekend, it becomes a chore and a bit of an imposition.
As I've said before, Saturday 3pm hasn't become the standard kick-off time by accident. For most people it is the perfect time to watch (and play) football, and it should remain the centrepiece of the sport.
What might be interesting is where they stand on the free to air games over the last year and whether they think that a small package of potentially FTA games is worth it. In all honesty with the BBC and ITV having FA Cup deals in place for the years ahead a pricey one game a month type scenario probably isn't worth it.
No, not really. As you suggest, they can already get big audiences with FA Cup and England matches, and they get first choice in those rights, not the sixth choice. The only package that would really be of interest for a FTA broadcaster would be one like the Football League pack the Beeb had in 2009-12, when they had ten first choice matches a season - few enough for them to be special and fit in the schedule, without the obligation to show many more of minimal interest. Even the Amazon package of twenty matches, which would be about the right number, wouldn't work for a FTA broadcaster as most of those matches are on at the same time. And you wouldn't want to add extra live matches onto the highlights package if that whacks the price up substantially, the Beeb would rather have highlights of everything than a few mediocre live games.
Back in the 2004-07 contract, there was grumbings that everything had gone to Sky and that this was anti-competitive and offered no choice for the consumer (ie, get Sky or get nothing), which is why from the next contract they resolved to sell them to more than one broadcaster. So to counter this, Sky said they would sub-licence a package of eight matches to another broadcaster. Everyone assumed ITV would buy them as they'd just lost the Premier League highlights rights, but in the end nobody met the reserve price and so they weren't sold. Testament to the idea that broadcasters don't want just any football, they want the right football.