Not too long ago, NBC was at the bottom of the sports media totem pole. Having lost the NFL in 1998, baseball in 2000 and the NBA in 2002, a network that once aired the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, Olympics and World Series in an 18-month span was left with the most barren sports schedule on television.
From June 12, 2002 to January 14, 2006, NBC did not air a single game from any of the four major sports. The network did have the rights to NASCAR (airing the Daytona 500 in ’02, ’04 and ’06), Wimbledon, golf’s U.S. Open and the Olympics, but more often than not, weekend afternoons were filled with skateboarding, surfing and other sports that hardly anybody watches.
At its lowest point, NBC was left with the Arena Football League as its only legitimate team sport. At that level, even the National Hockey League can inject some life into a dead network. On May 21, 2004, the NHL and NBC signed a television deal that wouldn’t begin until the 2005-06 season (thanks to the disastrous lockout that wiped out the 2004-05 season). Finally with a fairly legitimate team sport, NBC started to make a comeback. In April of 2005, the network signed a television deal with the NFL to start airing Sunday Night Football games — giving a network that once resorted to airing dog shows much needed legitimacy.
Which brings us to today. NBC has the rights to Sunday Night Football games, Super Bowl XLIII, and the Stanley Cup Finals. Otherwise, the lineup is still barren. But NBC is far better off than in 2003, and the NFL deal has given Bob Costas — who at one point was only doing the U.S. Open and the Olympics for NBC — actual airtime for the first time since the NBA left the network. Unfortunately for NBC, this growth will likely stagnate for the next several years. After adding several PGA golf tournaments, it is very unlikely that NBC will grab the rights to NBA games. FOX has already snared Major League Baseball until 2013. NBC will have to be satisfied with being just above water, at least until the middle of the next decade.
