Although NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” featured new faces in the booth and production truck before the season started, the broadcasts continue to deliver at a high level.
“Sunday Night Football” is on pace to be prime time’s top show for the 12th consecutive year. Through last Sunday’s overtime game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Arizona Cardinals, it is averaging 19.8 million viewers, a 2% increase over last season.
Collinsworth doesn’t do his slide into the frame during the opening segment anymore. That seems to have resonated the most with fans. “I’ve worked with Rob on probably 75% of the NBC events I have done, and I got to work with Drew the past couple of years on games. So there were so many answers to any of those questions you would normally have coming into a new situation,” Tirico said. “The familiarity allowed all of us just to start from a far more advanced place than if we would have come in not knowing each other.”
After meetings and phone calls with teams, there's a production meeting on Saturday morning at the hotel where most of the production team meets with Tirico, Collinsworth and Stark to trade final ideas or hone things they might use during the broadcast. “It’s a broadcast, not a narrowcast. If we can’t make it relatable to fans of other sports or casual fans, we’re not doing our job,” Hyland said.The schedule is the biggest challenge for “Sunday Night Football,” with this season being no exception. Because originally scheduled second-half matchups sometimes fall flat, there have been four times when a game was flexed. Sunday night’s game between the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers replaces the Los Angeles Rams against the Chargers.