The 2022 NFL season kicks off Thursday, September 8, with the defending champ Los Angeles Rams playing the Buffalo Bills at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. NBC has the game. The kickoff takes place at 8:20 p.m. ET and coverage begins at 7 p.m. 

Despite it happening on a Thursday, the game bears NBC’s Sunday Night Football branding. Sunday Night Football continues September 11 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers playing the Dallas Cowboys. The Chicago Bears play the Green Bay Packers a week later. 

The Rams beat the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl. 

Every Sunday night game this season streams on Peacock, NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app. 

Al Michaels has done 16 seasons in the booth for Sunday Night Football. Now calling Thursday Night Football games for Prime Video, he shifts to an emeritus role at NBC Sports. 

Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth will work the Sunday night games for NBC, with Melissa Stark handling sideline reporting. 

Coordinating producer Rob Hyland and director Drew Esocoff handle the production for NBC Sports. ■

The Super Bowl is here and so are the ads.

NBC, which aired Super Bowl LVI Sunday, February 13, sold spots for as much as $7 million, averaging, according to Standard Media Index, $4.8 million per ad.

Advertisers brought the star power this year.

From Jim Carrey reprising his role as the Cable Guy to Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd shilling for Lay's, take a look at some of the commercials that aired during the big game.

Locast said that it has surpassed 2.3 million registered users for its nonprofit streaming service that provides local broadcast channels to consumers. 

The service, which operates on voluntary donations of $5 and above from its users, also announced expansion into Madison, Wisconsin, ahead of Saturday’s big NFL playoff matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Los Angeles Rams, which will be broadcast by FOX. 

The expansion opens Locast up to 650,000 additional homes. 

Locast delivers more than 30 local TV channels in the Madison designated market area (DMA), including WISC-TV CBS News 3, WMTV NBC 15, WKOW ABC Ch. 27, WMSN FOX Ch. 47, PBS Wisconsin and PBS Kids as well as CourtTV, AntennaTV, The CW, Bounce, Movies!, LAFF, Mystery, Grit, ION, CometTV, True Crime, Charge! and Azteca America.

Locast is accessible to viewers in 11 counties in the Madison DMA including Columbia, Dane, Grant, Green, Iowa, Juneau, Lafayette, Marquette, Richland, Rock, and Sauk.

Also Read: Locast: Everything You Need to Know About the Streaming Platform Some Are Calling ‘Aereo 2’

Asked about the overall Locast business model, a company rep said only a small portion of registered users are donating at this point. However, donations have been robust enough to allow the service, founded by attorney and consumer advocate David Goodfriend and his Sports Fans Coalition, to keep expanding to its 26th market. 

“I was born and raised in Madison and graduated from Madison West High School and Beloit College,” said Goodfriend, in a statement. “I volunteered at the local NBC and PBS affiliates as a teenager. So launching Locast in my hometown means a lot to me personally.”

Goodfriend has declared Locast’s business model of streaming the broadcast feeds of local stations to consumers legal under the Copyright Act of 1976. He was unavailable Friday to update Next TV on the state of Locast’s ongoing legal battle with the major broadcasters. 

HBO Sports on Aug. 11 will launch the 15th season of its Emmy-winning documentary series Hard Knocks following the training camps of the Los Angeles Chargers and Los Angeles Rams, said network executives.

The five-episode series for the first time will focus on two teams, said the network. “The Hard Knocks franchise continues to excel as the preeminent sports reality series,” Peter Nelson, EVP, HBO Sports said in a statement. “Our partnership with NFL Films, which dates back to 1977, consistently produces groundbreaking television programming. We are grateful to the Chargers and Rams organizations to be able to present the 2020 training camp experience.”

ESPN will telecast classic Monday Night Football games over a five week period beginning March 30, as part of a deal between the network and the NFL.

The games will air Monday nights from March 30 to April 27 and will include the November 2018 Kansas City Chiefs- Los Angeles Rams game -- the highest-scoring game in NFL history -- as well as the New Orleans Saints’ Superdome reopening game after Hurricane Katrina in April 2006. 

An hour of ESPN’s Peyton’s Places interview shows will precede each Monday Night FootballClassics each week at 7 p.m.

These telecasts will also include inventory to support COVID-19 relief-focused organizations, said network officials. 

Non-football fans and pigskin aficionados sick of seeing the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl will have a bevy of other viewing choices before and during Sunday's big game.

In the hours prior to the 6 p.m. start of the Patriots/Los Angeles Rams Super Bowl LIII game on CBS, pet lovers will once again get to choose between watching playful and adoptable adults cats during Hallmark Channel’s 1st Annual Cat Bowl -- which follows the network’s Kitten Bowl VI-- or viewing adorable and adoptable baby canines during Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl XV.

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During the game, viewers can pick up the remote and choose between marathons of such TV shows as The Office (Comedy Central), Planet Earth: Blue Planet (BBC America), Botched (E!), Ridiculousness (MTV), 48 Hours (Investigation Discovery) and The Simpsons (FXX).

The WWE will step into the counterprogramming ring in an effort to draw wrestling fans away from Maroon 5’s Super Bowl halftime performance. The WWE will offer a live, tag-team wrestling performance on its WWE Network subscription streaming service, marking the first time in 20 years the pro wrestling outfit has offered a live match during halftime of a Super Bowl event.

Super Bowl LIII is projected to draw more than 100 million viewers, but there are plenty other viewing choices for the millions of people looking to pass on the big game. 

Last night’s Los Angeles Rams-Kansas City Chiefs Monday Night Football shootout drew an impressive 16.6 million viewers for ESPN, according to Nielsen.

The game, in which the Rams defeated the Chiefs 54-51 in the highest-scoring game in MNF’s 49-year history, was the most watched MNF telecast since the Detroit Lions-Dallas Cowboys game drew 18.6 million viewers in December 2016. 

Further, the game was ESPN’s most watched telecast since this past January’s Georgia-Alabama College Football Playoff National Championship game drew 27 million viewers.

The 16.7 million viewers for the Rams-Chiefs game is up 54% compared to last year’s Atlanta Falcons-Seattle Seahawks game in week 11, which averaged 10.8 million viewers, according to the network.

Overall, ESPN’s Monday Night Football telecasts are up 10% season to date, according to the network. 

Charter Communications is informing customers that it will cease to carry The Sportsman Channel, the hunting and fishing network owned by Stan Kroenke’s Outdoor Sportsman Group, on Oct. 30.

Charter’s action was first reported by TV Answerman.

Charter declined to comment.

Sportsman Channel spokesman Thomas Caraccioli confirmed via an email message that the channel had been dropped by Charter. The other Outdoor Sportsman Group channels were not affected.  

“We were looking for wider distribution and we couldn’t come to terms,” he said in the e-mail message, noting that Charter represented less than 5% of the network's overall carriage.

The Sportsman Channel airs hunting, fishing and outdoor lifestyle shows like Davidson’s Gallery of Guns,MeatEater, Rival Wild, and Sheep Shape. It became part of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment in 2014 after the billionaire sports mogul (he owns the Los Angeles Rams, the Denver Nuggets and the Colorado Avalanche, to name a few) purchased its parent InterMedia Outdoor Holdings, combining it with his Outdoor Channel and World Fishing Network. Outdoor Sportsman Group was formed about a year later.

Kroenke, who also owns British Premier League soccer power Arsenal, has come under fire in the U.K. for launching the My Outdoor TV channel in that country, which some critics have said features trophy hunting of endangered animals.

E! will huddle with several players from the Los Angeles Rams pro football team as part of a new reality series, Hollywood & Football, launching later this year, the network said Wednesday (July 6).

The six-part series will follow six players from the NFL’s Rams – which will play next season in Los Angeles after two decades in St. Louis -- as they and their families adjust to life in Los Angeles, said network officials. Hollywood & Football is a T Group production with Jenny Daly, Rob Lobl and Shauna Thomas serving as executive producers.

“We are excited to take viewers inside the exclusive lifestyles of these top athletes and their families as they navigate a new city, new friendships, new schools and the inevitable Hollywood gossip,” said Jeff Olde, E! executive vice president, programming and development, in a statement. “E! has a track record of success with pop culture programming centered in the world of sports, and this series will capture the off the field perspective of one of football’s most anticipated and high profile events as the Rams return to LA.”