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When the Kansas City Chiefs were featured on the Week 3 edition of Sunday Night Football, fullback Carson Steele was between the lines for his first career start in the NFL. This career milestone, however, also happened to coincide with the wedding ceremony for his sister that members of his family were attending.
Upon discovering this unique confluence of lifetime achievements, NBC Sports sideline reporter Melissa Stark immediately reached out to Steele’s parents to request that they send an image of the group watching the game from afar. The attempt to obtain this footage was successful, and it was later spotlighted on the broadcast as Steele rushed for 154 yards and contributed to the 22-17 victory over the Atlanta Falcons.
Stark, a veteran reporter and journalist, prides herself on journalistic integrity in uncovering and disseminating nuanced stories throughout the broadcast. In this instance, her decision to take action and ultimately enhance the presentation through her outreach ended up paying dividends. Clips of Steele’s family and friends watching the game on a large display quickly circulated social media platforms, drawing complimentary plaudits and attention from football fans around the world. Moreover, the game ended up averaging 25.1 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, rendering it the most-watched Week 3 edition of Sunday Night Football in franchise history.
“We do our typical production meetings every week and then I make my own calls outside of that, so I bring my own stories to the table,” Stark said, “and then what we’ve really – because we’re just so on the same page and we’ve been working together – our sideline team has really, really tried to emphasize in-game observations.”
Contextualizing particular occurrences can eliminate potential ambiguity or speculation, providing a more accurate depiction of situations that are unfolding. Effectively compiling these reports in real time is not only derived by means of real-time observations, but also from comprehensive preparation, research and questioning.
Stark has built immense credibility throughout her career in the sports media business and excelled in a variety of roles, but she is a relatively new addition to the Sunday Night Football broadcast team. Michele Tafoya ended her 11-season run as the sideline reporter for the broadcast property following the NBCUniversal presentation of Super Bowl LVI in February 2022. One month later, play-by-play announcer Al Michaels agreed to a deal calling games for Amazon’s Prime Video on Thursday Night Football, although he still would remain in an emeritus role with NBC Sports.
Whereas new play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico had previously filled in on games alongside Cris Collinsworth, Stark had not worked on the property. Despite occasionally sideline reporting for NFL Network’s slate of international games, it had been two decades since she regularly occupied this type of role. Nonetheless, she arrived with an understanding of the expectations and still aims to improve on a weekly basis, opting to approach every game as a miniature version of the Super Bowl.
“I’ve been in the business for 25 years, there’s no resting on your laurels,” Stark said. “You never want to get comfortable because you can always get better. There’s really no egos – it’s everybody just diving in each week and trying to raise the bar – and I love that because we can all grow and we can all learn and we can all be better, and so that’s what we try to do.”
Early in the week, Stark watches the games of the teams she will be covering for the next broadcast while also analyzing storylines and narratives to determine with whom she wants to speak. Furthermore, she takes part in a sideline meeting to review the last telecast and considers how to make improvements. Stark and her colleagues will customarily watch practice on Friday morning and spend three days on the ground to ensure they are ready to take the air.
“There’s an energy and adrenaline to it that you just cannot find anywhere else and just constantly new information and stories,” Stark said. “Being in school, I loved studying for an exam, and I feel like each week, we’re covering different teams, different players, different storylines, and I absolutely just throw myself into that and live and breathe it for that next week, and then you move on to the next.”
Stark and her colleagues are on the precipice of calling three games in eight days, including a Thanksgiving Day matchup between the Miami Dolphins and the Green Bay Packers. While she is grateful for the assignments, she grasps the inherent difficulty of this stretch. Attaining a work-life balance, especially around the holidays, is a cumbersome task that involves a surfeit of travel and requires shrewd focus and stamina. At the same time, she has to sacrifice being away from her family amid a holiday centered around camaraderie and togetherness.
“[E]specially as a mom who is thinking about Christmas and preparing for the holidays and all that stuff, I always say this week definitely is a really tough one,” Stark elucidated, “and then it’s kind of tough to recover from it just because travel is getting harder around the holidays and it’s getting colder and all that stuff, but it’s an incredible job, but this is definitely the hardest week, without a doubt, that we have for sure.”
Yet Stark recognizes the peerless honor of broadcasting on Thanksgiving Day, especially having previously worked with John Madden on the ABC Sports edition of Monday Night Football. Madden’s impact and legacy are realized throughout the game broadcast, which typically culminates with members of the winning team feasting on holiday delicacies. The curiosity and tenacity Stark brings to the eight-day span, including two traditional Sunday night matchups bookending the holiday, helps her execute her responsibilities with aplomb.
“[There is] nothing like doing a game on Thanksgiving, especially because John Madden and I were so close and he was such a big supporter of mine, and now that everything about the Thanksgiving games now is all about Madden,” Stark said. “They’re donating $10,000 to the high school program of the MVP’s choice from the game and the turducken and it’s super fun.”
Stark established herself in the Washington area reporting for Home Team Sports, a local programming network co-owned by Viacom and the FOX Corporation. Shortly thereafter, she was hired by ESPN and hosted Scholastic Sports America, a weekly show examining high school and collegiate sports. Stark refined her craft traveling the country routinely conducting interviews with athletes, some of whom were uncomfortable on camera, but she yearned to assuage those apprehensions and extrapolate their genuine viewpoints.
“We are in the business of storytelling, and if you can find that nugget – that sort of golden nugget; that piece of information about somebody’s ‘Why?’ or what drives them – ultimately I think that’s kind of what makes the world go round, and it’s what makes someone unique and someone special,” Stark said, “so I think that helped me sort of hone my storytelling skills.”
In the ensuing years, Stark began covering a variety of sports for ESPN and contributing to shows such as Outside the Lines and SportsCenter. Upon moving to ABC Sports in 2000 as the sideline reporter for Monday Night Football, she regarded it as an incredible opportunity that was simultaneously overwhelming. Stark recalled that fewer women were working in television at the time and faced people who did not take her seriously.
“I always say that I wish I knew then what I know now, and what is that?,” Stark averred. “That’s through hard work and through making all the connections and really knowing the information and getting the stories, that you belong. You do belong, as long as you are doing that work, and I really learned what a strong work ethic it does take and how important it is to have those connections, but obviously those take time to develop.”
A few years after working for NBC Today and on MSNBC breaking news coverage, Stark joined NFL Network where she hosted shows and reported from the NFL Draft. Her stint with the league-owned entity recently concluded on NFL 360, its newsmagazine program. A consistent link between all of her experiences underscores storytelling, serving as an objective resource situated on the field level.
Under new rules approved by the league, both teams must make a head coach or coordinator available for an in-game interview either during end-of-quarter breaks or at halftime. Stark stays in contact with a sideline producer situated in the broadcast truck while also listening to Tirico and Collinsworth to hear what points on which the commentary is focused. When the conversation occurs, she aims for brevity in her questioning to garner compendious answers and accumulate fundamental insights.
“The coach is trying to get into the locker room or he’s trying to get back, coming out of the half, he’s trying to get back to the start of the third quarter, so I don’t like long questions,” Stark said. “We like to keep our questions kind of short and succinct, and there’s a sense of urgency at that time because the coach doesn’t have a lot of time.”
Once the game concludes, the broadcast affords consumers the chance to hear from standout players on the field before they participate in postgame media availability. Stark has spoken with stars such as Patrick Mahomes, Brock Purdy and Jordan Love to chronicle their perspectives of the final outcome. Arriving at the stadium with the ability to properly frame situations, she asks penetrating questions that facilitate authenticity within their responses.
“I try not to ask generic, cookie-cutter questions,” Stark said. “I try to always think outside the box or utilize something they told me earlier in the week really to personalize them so that you dig a little deeper.”
Even though Super Bowl LX is more than a year away, Stark and her colleagues are looking forward to presenting the championship matchup, emanating from Santa Clara, Calif., on NBCUniversal broadcast television and streaming platforms. The game will complete the third season of a 10-year media rights deal between Comcast and the NFL that is reportedly worth $2 billion annually. Aside from the fact that one of her daughters recently committed to nearby Stanford University for track and field and that she will be able to visit, Stark is excited to call the matchup for the first time since 2003 but remains focused on the season at hand.
“This team has been together for so long – this group – and ultimately we’re completely building for that,” Stark said. “When we were just out there for a San Francisco game, [we] already did some survey sites of hotels and Levi’s Stadium and stuff like that, but I’m not necessarily thinking; I mean, I can’t start preparing for the Super Bowl right now.”
The professionalism, verve and avidity that Stark brings to her assignments is evident to many viewers, and she has oftentimes been identified as a paragon by her contemporaries, catalyzing them to pursue careers in sports media. As she has continued her journey through the business, more women are being promoted to leadership roles and making their voices heard in decision-making forums shaping the future of innovation and consumption. Stark is one of the luminaries who has inspired aspiring professionals to earn a seat at the table and shatter proverbial glass ceilings.
“It’s incredible to have that kind of respect and to know that other younger girls or women know that this is a possibility,” Stark said. “….If the future generation of women can take something from what I’m doing or my job and say, ‘I can do this too,’ that’s awesome.”
As the NFL season eclipses its halfway point, Stark is determined to continue being a discerning storyteller that enhances the parlance of the Sunday Night Football presentation. The NBC Sports broadcast has been the No. 1 show in prime-time television across key metrics for the last 13 consecutive years, showcasing the stories and stars to an expansive national audience. As the franchise prepares for one of its busiest stretches of the season, Stark is embarking on an extended road trip where she will travel eastbound from Los Angeles to Green Bay to Buffalo. Throughout this interconference expedition, she is getting set to document the action and contribute towards a perdurable final product.
“There’s nothing redundant about it; there’s nothing boring about it,” Stark said. “It constantly keeps you on your toes, and I absolutely love the group that we work with. You have to because we spend so much time together, so we have so much fun. We laugh [and] go out to dinners, so there’s a fun aspect to that as well and a team camaraderie.”
Derek Futterman is an associate editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, email Derek@BarrettMedia.com or find him on X @derekfutterman.
