NBC aims to make Sunday nights 'Must See TV' for sports

Those of a certain age surely remember “Must See TV,” NBC’s prime-time block of sitcoms and dramas that dominated Thursday nights in the 1990s. “Friends,” “Seinfeld” and “ER” became cultural touchstones and ratings winners for the network.

Today, NBC is looking to own another night of the week. On a TV landscape ruled by live sports, it wants Sunday nights to become appointment viewing, with its NBA and MLB packages joining its longstanding NFL slate this year. And what better way to get the word out than with an NFL playoff game between teams in the country’s second- and third-biggest media markets.

The NFL blessed NBC not just with Rams-Bears, but with the postseason’s largest viewership window, 5:30 p.m. Sunday. In the wild-card round, 49ers-Eagles drew 41.1 million viewers for Fox in that window, making it the most-watched wild-card game since 2022.

“Having a big market like Chicago be engaged is great and good for ratings,” NBC Sports president Rick Cordella said. “And how they play, the fact that they’re the cardiac kids, even if they’re down by a couple touchdowns in the fourth quarter, I don’t think people are going to tune out on Sunday.”

NBC will look to take advantage of that audience to promote its immense schedule. The first “Sunday Night Basketball” game will be Lakers-Knicks on Feb. 1. The network’s Winter Olympics coverage begins with the opening ceremony Feb. 6, and two days later it’ll carry the Super Bowl. NBC will air NBA All-Star Weekend on Feb. 14-15 and the Olympics closing ceremony Feb. 22.

“When we did the NFL deal, we matched up our Winter Olympics with the Super Bowl,” Cordella said. “That’s partly around ad sales and control of the ad market. As opposed to conflicting with each other, let’s try to put it together. It also helps when we’re scheduling that the Super Bowl postgame show leads into the Olympics.”

“Sunday Night Baseball” will join the schedule March 29, three days after NBC airs two games on Opening Day, including the Dodgers’ banner-raising ceremony. NBC will become the first network broadcaster to have sports year-round in prime-time on the same night every week.

“It’s getting people to understand on Sunday night, they get ready for a work week, that they know that NBC, with the three biggest professional leagues in America, is going to have the best matchups, the best athletes, the best storylines, with fantastic production,” Cordella said. “You may not be a local fan, but you know you’re going to get an experience.”

NBC’s early coverage of the NBA has earned rave reviews for appealing to viewers’ nostalgia (i.e. “Roundball Rock”) while raising the bar on production. It makes games feel big, like it does with the NFL, and it plans to take that tack with baseball. Cordella said NBC will announce its MLB broadcast team relatively soon.

“We’re going to have all-star talent,” Cordella said. “This is a big broadcast brand, and we’re going to have the appropriate level of talent around the telecast.”

But the NFL is still king. “Sunday Night Football” is on pace to be the top-ranked prime-time show for a 15th consecutive year. Its average viewership this season was 23.5 million, the highest in the franchise’s 20-year history.

Rams-Bears will give NBC an even bigger audience to which it can promote its Sunday night takeover.