• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, May 13, 2025

Peacock got top billing at the NBCUniversal Upfront, positioning NBCU as streaming-first heading into this spring’s upfront sales season.

Early in the Upfront, the company announced five new scripted shows coming exclusively to Peacock, and ballyhooed the streaming service’s role in live sports, including the NBA on NBC coming next fall.

“The idea of sports and streaming is not new to us,” said Mark Marshall, chairman of NBCUniversal global advertising and partnerships, at the NBCU Upfront at Radio City Monday in New York.

“In fact, Peacock was built on sports, and it will have over 7,500 hours of sports in the next year alone -- more than any of these streamers combined,” he said, referring to AppleTV+, Hulu, Max, Netflix, Paramount+ and Prime Video.

Live events coming to Peacock next season (and also seen on other platforms such as NBC) include “Sunday Night Football,” the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the NBA All-Star Weekend, the Winter Olympics from Milan, Italy, and of course, Super Bowl LX next winter.

The new scripted shows for Peacock featured at the Upfront comprise one comedy and four dramas. 

The comedy, titled “The Paper,” is a one-camera workplace sitcom set in the offices of a fictional newspaper in Toledo, Ohio.

The show is from Greg Daniels, long-time executive producer of the American version of “The Office.” 

“The Paper” is positioned as a “follow-up” to “The Office,” and it even has one of the “Office” cast members, Oscar Nunez, playing a company accountant. It was the same role he played on “The Office.”

The dramas include “All Her Fault,” about a little boy who goes missing, with a cast including Dakota Fanning, Michael Peña and Sarah Snook; and “The Miniature Wife,” starring Elizabeth Banks as a wife who is accidentally shrunk by an invention created by her addle-brained husband.

The other two are “The ’Burbs,” about a couple who move into a cul-de-sac populated by eccentrics, one of whom may be a murderer; and “The Copenhagen Test,” an espionage thriller about an American intelligence officer whose brain has been hacked.

The big news at NBCU’s flagship network, NBC, is the arrival of the NBA next fall, which will remake at least two nights of the week.

Plans call for weekly NBA games to air Tuesday nights starting in October, and Sunday nights starting in February after the NFL season ends. 

NBC’s new deal with the NBA is an 11-year agreement, a span of time similar to the 12 years in which NBC last had the NBA from 1990 to 2002 -- a period of intense NBA action, owing at least in part to Michael Jordan playing in his peak years.

At the Upfront, Jordan himself appeared remotely on video from his home to announce that he is joining NBC Sports as a “special contributor” to the network’s NBA coverage.

On the scripted side, NBCU announced a new fall comedy for NBC from Tina Fey and creative partner Robert Carlock about a former football star who was thrown out of the sport after a gambling scandal.

In the show, titled “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins,” the ex-footballer hires a down-on-his-luck director to make a reality docuseries about him in an attempt to clean up his image.

The show represents a reunion for Fey and her “30 Rock” co-star, Tracy Morgan, who plays the title character. Daniel Radcliffe plays the director. 

The company also announced that Jimmy Fallon’s advertising and marketing reality competition series, “On Brand with Jimmy Fallon,” will also be seen next fall.