Michael Perman of NBC Sports Explains Sports Programming in 30 Minutes!
Our speaker for the Sunrise meeting of Thursday, May 8, 2020 was Michael Perman, VP of Programming, NBC Sports Group (and son of Dick Perman!). Michael gave us a whirlwind tour of the world of high-end sports programming and the effect of COVID-19 on that world. Michael oversees Acquisitions, Program Planning, and Scheduling for both NBC and NBCSN. That work includes such sports luminaries as the NHL, NASCAR, IndyCar, the Tour de France, the Olympics, the PGA Tour, Sunday Night Football, the Super Bowl 2022, and dozens of others. Did you think your own personal and/or business scheduling is complicated? Try Michael’s life!! Michael also told us an amazing story about how NBC Sunday Night Football acquired the rights to sportscaster Al Michaels from ABC by trading NBC’s rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit back to ABC (Disney). It turns out that Walt Disney lost the rights to the precursor to Mickey Mouse (Oswald) years ago and those rights ended up with NBC. So, Al Michaels was traded for a cartoon character! Best or worst trade of all time?
Michael believes that the age of massive sports/media contracts will continue into the foreseeable future. As an example, the newest Major League Baseball contract with Fox/Turner will be a 39% increase over the last contract. In other words, this bubble is not going to pop anytime soon.
NBC Sports makes sports events bigger! NBC can use its massive distribution channels to promote specific events. This promotion strategy is called the “Symphony” at NBC: all of the “properties” promote important movies, sporting events and other upcoming programs. An example is the 2020 Super Bowl, the most watched show in television history, with 114.4 million viewers! NBC was able to use all of its considerable clout to promote the game, and its success was mind boggling. Despite COVID-19, or maybe because of it, Michael’s life has been and will continue to be very busy. His group has had to replace or relocate over 1,800 hours of disrupted sports programming. Michael also mentioned that NBC Sports will broadcast the 2022 Super Bowl and the Olympics in the same month!
Thank you, Michael for this amazing glimpse at the intricacies of sports media and the challenges faced by the media in bringing live sports to us. It turns out that it is even more complicated than we thought! And thanks to Dick for bringing Michael to our meeting!
