2022 NFL Announcing Changes
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Tirico takes over for Michaels, Collinsworth remains at NBC for SNF.
View: https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1506392255476604929
Mike Tirico Joins NBC’s ‘Sunday Night Football’ in Latest Sports Talent Maneuver
View: https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1506392255476604929
Mike Tirico Joins NBC’s ‘Sunday Night Football’ in Latest Sports Talent Maneuver
That's honestly a huge bummer about Al. I know Collinsworth rubs some here the wrong way, and I admit I've soured on him a little with the rise of PFF, but he and Michaels were still the best pair in NFL broadcasting in my opinion. I'm also not crazy about TNF being streaming, though I suppose that's less bad when everyone is forced to stream it. Tirico is fine, at least.
Fine is a good word. Boring is another. I have nothing bad to say about Tirico’s play-by-play, unlike many other broadcasters, I just find him very dull.
yeah Tirico is the guy you want to not take anything away, but he doesn't add much. However, given that you could get a Steve Levy, that's not all bad. Tirico just keeps things running and leaves space for the commentator.
Disagree. Tirico is a pretty exciting PBP guy. He doesn’t force things, knows his stuff and and brings a ton of energy to big moments. He’ll be very good at this.
Tirico has already filled in for Michaels on SNF for a few games the past two years, so this is no surprise.
He has been the heir apparent for years. This is the opposite of a surprise. Anyone but Tirico would have been the surprise. I think he's awesome, so this is good news.
All the bouncing around this year—Buck and Aikman going to MNF, Michaels going to TNF and Tirico taking over at SNF—would suggest that the NFL believes premium broadcasting talent might be the key to optimizing viewership of the prime time games. But will anyone give a shit if the Thursday and Monday night games remain crap?
Exactly what I’ve been wondering. These all seem like absurd over-pays to me, particularly Buck/Aikman. If the Monday night schedule remains second fiddle to SNF, and fairly blah a lot of weeks, are these two really going to drive better ratings to a significant degree? Maybe I’m an outlier, but I honestly don’t give a shit about who’s announcing an NFL game, if the matchup itself doesn’t interest me. And it must be something of a bitter pill for all of the reporting and broadcasting talent that has been purged out of ESPN over the last few years, supposedly due to their fiscal challenges, to see these kind of insane contracts being lavished on those two.
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I mean, they will. In 2021, of the top 100 shows with the most viewers, TNF had 11 spots and MNF had 8. Not to mention that number gets much better in the all important 18-49 category.
SNF still is a behemoth with 14 games in the top 100 overall.
Buck and Aikman had been roped in to do double-duty regularly over the last few years, covering the Thursday night game and then off to another venue for a Sunday game. Further, there's all the playoff baseball Buck would cover in the same general timeframe. That had to wear on them, so they presented themselves as a package deal and Disney jumped on it. I wonder who Fox will pick as their new lead announcer - Kevin Burkhardt?
This is where I am too. The only time I really notice the broadcasters are when they detract from the game (e.g. Tessitore). Otherwise the only benefit I can see is familiarity/nostalgia. That’s what Keith Jackson and Summerall/Madden brought to their broadcasts. Michaels probably has that now for most. As does Nantz and Romo tried hard. But it really doesn’t make a difference if the games are bad.
It’s probably just as much a show to the NFL that they’re serious about the product. Having Buck or Michaels on a call “feels bigger” than having Levy or whomever else. The NFL likes that and is probably more willing to give better TNF or MNF games.
Jesus. It does not matter. And, yes, people will most certainly give a shit. And the numbers back it up in a ridiculous fashion. The NFL has like 49 of the top 50 broadcasts every single year. The games don't matter. The announcers don't matter. People watch. But the NFL and the networks make so much money on football, they can pay 15 million a year for Joe Buck to call 18 games.
My sense is that TNF and MNF are not the bonanzas for the NFL they should be. The scheduling is an immovable problem -- SNF is a great idea because you can flex the best games, but you just can't do that with games on different days. So it seems like the league is going all in on creating the best presentation for these games that they can in a league without addressing the underlying issue. Maybe, per @johnmd20's point, it doesn't matter because the league makes a ton of money on pretty much anything they show. But this doesn't feel like a long term solution to me no matter how much they protest to the contrary.
Agreed on this point, you'd be hard-pressed to schedule an equitable AND exciting non-Sunday slate. You can't rotate the handful of elite teams among these games and put them in a position of many short weeks throughout the season. The NFL needs to rotate a majority of teams through Monday and Thursday which invariably results in some dud matchups. The best ESPN and Amazon can hope for is they occasionally get the 1st or 2nd best game in a given week, rather than the priority automatically given to SNF and the 4:30 CBS/Fox window as the top 2 games. But over the course of the year Monday and Thursday will have the occasional Jags or Jets involved.
Not directed at you JMD specifically because I listen to him too when he is doing NFL games, but I think with all the deserved talk of Tyreek Hill’s past today, it should also be noted that Mike Tirico has a very dark past with women and was suspended in the early 1990’s for sexually harassing and stalking multiple women while at ESPN — back when nobody really cared about sexually harassing or stalking women. He’s a fucking creep at best.