MTV’s “Video Music Awards” had been a cable-only staple for four decades until this year, when it also appeared on CBS for the first time.
Last week, regular-season N.B.A. games began taking over NBC’s Tuesday night lineup — a first for the network.
And when the college football season ends, Fox will program its Friday nights with regular-season college basketball games, which used to be the domain of cable television.
The message is clear: Broadcast TV is in love with live shows.
NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox are increasingly filling their airtime with big specials, events and sports — lots of sports. That is because executives at those companies see those shows as the best bulwark against the giant streaming services Netflix and Amazon, which have lured tens of millions of viewers over the past decade.
Those rivals are also investing big in sports and other live specials. Last week, the Netflix co-chief executive Ted Sarandos called live events “urgent viewing” that have “a hugely outsize impact.”
But live events are an even bigger priority for executives who oversee traditional TV. And the reason has almost everything to do with audience, and advertising dollars.
Live TV is a reliably big draw, a one-time-only experience that on-demand programming can’t match. At the same time, the number of people watching cable TV has tumbled while the broadcast networks have been surprisingly resilient. In September, viewers spent more time watching over-the-air networks than the entire universe of cable networks, the first time that has happened in years, according to Nielsen. And far more people have access to the broadcast networks than to a streaming service.
“Broadcast is still the greatest reach vehicle out there,” said George Cheeks, the chairman of CBS.
Or as Matt Strauss, the chairman of the NBCUniversal media group, put it: “There are very few platforms that reach every television household in our country.”
Of course, live programming has been the last big draw for traditional television for some time now, with football games and events like Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Oscars dominating the most-watched lists each year.
But it was not until recently that media executives decided to go all-in. That includes taking some of the events that had run on the cable networks they own — think USA for NBCUniversal, or MTV for Paramount — and putting them on their broadcast channel. Many executives also view those live events as draws to their own streaming services, like Peacock and Paramount+.
How media executives have handled where to put World Cup soccer matches is a telling example.
In 2014, when Disney had the rights, only 10 games were on ABC, while nearly 60 were on ESPN or ESPN2. During the last World Cup, in 2022, Fox increased that total to 35 games on the broadcast network, a bit more than it aired on FS1, its cable network.
For next year’s World Cup, Fox will air 69 live games on the broadcast network — “the most ever in network television history,” the company proudly said last week.
“We’re in a situation now where live sports packages that you probably wouldn’t have considered for broadcast prime 10 or 20 years ago are now totally appropriate for broadcast,” said Mike Mulvihill, Fox’s president of analytics. All of the games will also be available on Fox’s new streaming service, Fox One.
After Fox lost the rights to WWE wrestling on Friday nights last year, executives started to debate what would fill its slot. Years ago, executives would have surely given it scripted or reality shows. But not anymore.
“It was surprisingly easy to get the company on board with the idea that we could do college football and do college basketball there,” Mr. Mulvihill said, both of which now fill Fox’s Friday nights through March.
There’s perhaps no starker example of a network’s commitment to live than NBC. The network’s entire prime-time lineup on Sundays and Tuesdays will now reserved for sporting events through the spring. After NBCUniversal completes a deal with Major League Baseball, as is expected in the coming weeks, the network will air sports in prime time almost every Sunday for the entire year.
“We’ve always seen live programming as the center of gravity,” said Mr. Strauss of the NBCUniversal. “It’s always been the core strength of not only our company, but how people generally like to engage and watch television.”
The industry, Mr. Strauss said, had reached a different conclusion only five years ago. Then, the thinking went that broadcast networks were dead, viewers were drifting to on-demand viewing and streaming companies would satisfy that craving alone.
“We are tapping into a very inherent behavior that I think streaming companies forgot about, which is community, which is around social experience, which is around this notion of ‘I want to be able to talk about what I’m watching with somebody,’” he said.
It’s not just limited to sporting events, either. After the success of the three-hour prime-time special celebrating the 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live,” which broadcast in February, the company is planning a 100th anniversary special for NBC itself next year, which is expected to be live.
Mr. Strauss said the company would also have a series of major events in February, including the Super Bowl, the 2026 Winter Olympics and the N.B.A. All-Star game.
At ABC, the network is already preparing for a string of live events in early 2027: the Super Bowl, the Grammys and then the Academy Awards.
“We already have plans underway for the massive companywide efforts around all three,” said Craig Erwich, the president of the Disney television group.
In 2023, when thousands of writers and actors took to picket lines and Hollywood was effectively shut down, ABC brought “Monday Night Football” back to its regular schedule after years on ESPN, and it has stayed there ever since. (ESPN also airs the games.)
In 2022, the network moved “Dancing With the Stars,” which runs live on the East Coast, to Disney+. But because of the strikes, the network returned the long-running reality series back to ABC’s airwaves, where it remains. (It still streams live on Disney+ as well.) Ratings have gone up, and the show has become a sensation on TikTok.
Indeed, ratings for the Oscars increased this year partly because Disney executives also put the event on Hulu, the company’s streaming service. The vast majority of the 19.7 million who watched the Oscars did so on ABC, but roughly two million streamed it directly off Hulu.
“The audience grew because these platforms are all additive to each other,” Mr. Erwich said. “They don’t subtract from each other, and they also help create a bigger event.”
In 1997, a top NBC executive, Don Ohlmeyer, said he hoped the World Series that was airing on his network would end in a four-game sweep. That way the network could return to its hugely popular “Must See TV” scripted series.
“The faster it’s over with, the better it is,” Mr. Ohlmeyer said at the time.
That is no longer the prevailing thinking.
“I wish the World Series was 15 games long,” said Mr. Mulvihill, the Fox executive. “People sometimes talk about shortening the baseball season. I wish we had more of it.”
John Koblin covers the television industry for The Times.
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