Phil Tahtakran has been named head of NBCUniversal federal government affairs. 

He succeeds Mitch Rose, who was named SVP of congressional and federal government affairs for parent Comcast.

Also promoted was Margaret Tobey, who was named SVP for regulatory affairs, reporting to Kim Harris, EVP and general counsel at NBCU.

Tahtakran, who has been with the company since 2010, will continue to be based in D.C., reporting to Rose. He will represent the company in its membership in MPAA, while Tobey will represent NBCU on the National Association of Broadcasters board.

"Phil’s deep knowledge of our issues and his history with NBCUniversal brings an unbeatable mix of skills to the company," said Rose. "His two decades of work in Washington give him the knowledge and experience to take leadership of NBC/Universal’s Federal Government Affairs at this important moment.”

Harris said of Tobey: “Margaret’s promotion is well deserved. She is widely regarded in the industry as a leading expert on broadcast regulatory matters and helped successfully navigate the company’s participation in the broadcast incentive auction."

BET’s 2017 Soul Train Awards danced up more than one million social media interactions last night, according to Nielsen.

The special, hosted by Erykah Badu and featuring performances from Toni Braxton, 112, SWV and Jessie J, drew 1,173 Facebook and Twitter interactions to lead all Sunday television shows according to Nielsen’s Social Content Daily Ratings report. AMC’s The Walking Dead was second with 336,000 interactions, followed by Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Atlanta, E!’s Keeping Up With The Kardashians and Starz’s Outlander.

Sunday’s NFL contests tackled big social media numbers, led by NBC’s coverage of the Green Bay Packers-Pittsburgh Steelers which drew 2.8 million interactions, said Nielsen.

As the National Football League gets set to kick off the 2017 season, analyst Michael Nathanson of MoffettNathanson Research is predicting that ratings will be up in primetime, reversing last year’s surprising declines.

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Nathanson sees NBC’s Sunday Night Football rising 5% in total viewers and ESPN Monday Night Football up 11% based on stronger matchups on their schedules.

Down the road, Nathanson said, there could be a shakeup in NFL rights deals, mainly because the Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN is paying much more -- $1.9 billion per year -- for its Monday Night Football package than Comcast’s NBC pays for Sunday Night Football -- $960 million -- even though the Sunday night generates much higher ratings because it gets better matchups.

The NFL is also giving better matchups to shore up its Thursday Night Football packages on NBC and CBS, diluting MNF, he says. Rights fees for those Thursday games are also cheaper than ESPN’s MNF.

When those deals expire in 2021 and 2022, “Disney would be wise to drop MNF and focus on all their energy and resources on securing the preferable SNF package, which is now nearly $1 billion cheaper and includes three Super Bowls,” Nathanson said. “This would then potentially force NBC into bidding for either the CBS AFC package or the Fox NFC package.”

That bidding would drive up the fees and open the door to new bidders for MNF, including either Turner or a digital player like Facebook, Amazon, Google or Apple.

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The season starts Thursday night (Sept. 7) with the champion New England Patriots taking on the Kansas City Chiefs..

Last season's NFL ratings were down 12% up through Election Day (Nov. 8, 2016). They were down 5% the remainder of the season. Reasons for the declines included increased interest in political news, bad matchups resulting in more blowouts and even quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel in protest during the national anthem.

Despite the ratings drop, ad revenue wasup 3% last year to $.35 billion for the NFL season including the playoffs and Super Bowl, according to research company Standard Media Index.

Nathanson noted that for TV, the NFL represents a big chunk of both ratings and revenue. Last year, NFL game and other football programming — including the Super Bowl -- represented 60% of Fox’s live plus same day P2+ GRPs. It was close to 30% for NBC, ESPN and CBS.

The season, Nathanson said, based on pre-season power rankings of the 25 best matchups, nine are headed for CBS, eight for Fox and seven for NBC. ESPN has only two of the top 25 matchups. CBS also has the largest share of the bottom 25 matchup, he noted.

On Thursday night, the average power ranking of the teams involved has improved. NBC’s schedule shows the biggest improvement. CBS’s power ranking is unchanged and the NFL Networks matchups are weaker than last year.

NBC Sports is renaming its regional sports networks, replacing their Comcast Sports Net and TCN titles with NBC Sports, effective Oct. 2.

For example, CSN Chicago will become NBC Sports Chicago, and TCN Philadelphia will become NBC Sports Philadelphia.

Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit has been pushing the Peacock logo on the regional sports networks since 2012 to make them more clearly associated with NBC Sports.

“We’re excited to complete the brand evolution of our remaining RSNs, which will now include the iconic NBC Sports name on all of our networks,” said David Preschlack, president, NBC Sports Regional Networks and NBC Sports Group Platform and Content Strategy. “This development is a reaffirmation of our continued commitment to provide the best, most compelling local sports coverage to our fans across the country.”

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The brand change is separate from programming changes that have been happening at the networks over the past year. Schedule game broadcasts will not change.

Comcast's West Coast RSNs changed their names in April to NBC Sports Bay Area and NBC Sports California. Other network name changes include CSN Mid-Atlantic becoming NBC Sports Washington, TCN Mid-Atlantic becoming NBC Sports Washington+ and CSN New England becoming NBC Sports Boston.