After being used sparingly in his first year with NBC, popular broadcaster Mike Tirico will be calling the Thursday Night Football package in 2017 for NBC.
It took NBC a year to figure it out, but the national broadcasting network is doing it right when it comes to the increasingly popular Thursday Night Football phenomenon sweeping the NFL. While they had two premier lead broadcasters in Al Michaels and Mike Tirico last fall, Tirico was sparingly used while Michaels was overworked.
NBC has now decided that Tirico will be the guy that sits in the booth with Cris Collinsworth during Thursday Night Football, while Michaels and Collinsworth will be the on-air tandem for NBC’s biggest show Sunday Night Football. Tirico on Thursday night is a good thing.
Outside of Week 17, the NFL has made it a point to use Thursday night as another day in the week to showcase games. Usually these games are between division rivals and serve as the required nationally televised game for lackluster franchises.
The players may hate playing on Thursday night, but these games are usually very compelling and competitive. With both NBC and rival CBS being the two networks that are outsourced to do Thursday Night Football, both have had to make adjustments to how they do things.
Having the top team covering both nationally televised games is doable, but extremely taxing on both men in the booth. Guys like Collinsworth can do it because he’s just better at this than most people. However, there is no reason for NBC to overuse Michaels’ pipes to calling Tennessee Titans at Jacksonville Jaguars games on a random Thursday night in October.
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By having Tirico as the main guy in the booth for NBC in Thursday Night Football, this will allow NBC to be at their best during both of their national telecasts. Tirico is still very much in his broadcasting prime. We don’t know how much longer Michaels will do this. Saving the all-timer is paramount for NBC’s success on Sunday Night Football.