NBC Sunday Night Football.html



NBC Sunday Night Football
Format	Sports
Starring	John Madden Al Michaels Andrea Kremer Bob Costas Keith Olbermann Cris Collinsworth Dan Patrick Tiki Barber Jerome Bettis
Country of origin	USA
Production
Running time	180 minutes+ until the conclusion of the game
Broadcast
Original channel	NBC
Picture format	480i (SDTV), 1080i (HDTV)
Original run	August 6, 2006 – present
External links
Official website

NBC Sunday Night Football is a weekly television broadcast of Sunday evening National Football League games on NBC that began airing on Sunday, August 6, 2006 with the pre-season opening Hall of Fame Game. Al Michaels serves as the play-by-play announcer, with John Madden providing color commentary, Andrea Kremer serving as the sole sideline reporter, and Cris Collinsworth serves as the alternate color commentator to John Madden. Fred Gaudelli and Drew Esocoff, the lead producer and director respectively, carry over their duties from ABC's telecasts of Monday Night Football.

ESPN, which aired Sunday games from the 1987 through 2005 NFL seasons, took over Monday Night Football from sister network ABC; starting in 2006.

Studio show

For more details on this topic, see Football Night in America.

The studio show Football Night in America, featuring Bob Costas, Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick, Cris Collinsworth, Tiki Barber, Jerome Bettis, and Peter King precedes the broadcast each week, featuring a recap of the other Sunday NFL contests. Kremer, Madden, and Michaels also contribute to the studio show from the game site.

Contract

NBC's contract also includes the season-opening Thursday night NFL Kickoff Game and two Saturday games in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. The network will also air two Super Bowl games during the six years of the deal, following the 2008 (Super Bowl XLIII) and 2011 (Super Bowl XLVI) seasons, and two Pro Bowl games the week following their Super Bowl telecasts as part of a new contractual policy in which the network with the Super Bowl will air the Pro Bowl.

In addition, NBC is the current home of the annual Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, which begins the NFL's preseason each August. However, the 2007 game aired on the NFL Network because the league had planned to stage the China Bowl just a few days later, to be televised by NBC as a tie-in to its coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics in that country. The China Bowl has since been postponed until 2009. Normally, there are two other pre-season telecasts on NBC; however, because of the Beijing Olympics, only two were shown in 2008. The second, on August 28 shortly after the closing ceremonies, started at an early time of 7 p.m. ET so as not to interfere with Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

During Wild Card Saturday, Tom Hammond (play-by-play), Cris Collinsworth (color commentator), and Bob Neumeier (sideline reporter) call the afternoon game for NBC, with the regular SNF crew handling the evening game. In addition, due to John Madden's fear of flight, Cris Collinsworth substituted for Madden on October 19, 2008 for the game featuring the Seattle Seahawks at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This was due to Madden not wanting to make back-to-back-to-back cross-country trips on his bus. Collinsworth will also commentate the Pro Bowl in Honolulu, Hawaii for Madden following Super Bowls XLIII and XLVI. Madden has stated he would only travel to Hawaii if he had to commentate a Super Bowl there (likely on an NBC charter flight or on General Electric's larger corporate jet; it is mentioned in his book One Size Doesn't Fit All, that his fear was based on commercial flights and not charter or private planes; he never had a problem flying on charter flights when coaching the Oakland Raiders, as was mentioned in the said book).

Scheduling

For more details on each game's results and statistics, see NBC Sunday Night Football results (2006-present).

Opening game

The first regular-season game to be shown by NBC under this contract, Miami at Pittsburgh, aired September 7, 2006, followed by the first Sunday-night game—Indianapolis at the New York Giants—on September 10, 2006. The actual first game of the run—the 2006 Pro Football Hall of Fame Game between Oakland and Philadelphia—was televised on August 6, 2006.

Flexible scheduling

NBC Sunday Night Football is the beneficiary of the league's new flexible-scheduling system. For the final seven weeks of the season (seven of the final eight weeks during the 2006 season because of Christmas weekend), the NFL has the flexibility in selecting games to air on Sunday night. During the 2006 season, no game was initially scheduled for NBC in the affected weeks—instead, the schedule slot for the NBC game was left blank, with one Sunday afternoon game being moved to the primetime slot (the schedule for the affected weeks simply read 'one of these games will move to 8:15 Eastern'). CBS and FOX could each protect four of its games during Weeks 10-15 and also each protect one of its games for Week 17; however, these two networks had to decide which games to protect in early October 2006, after Week 4 of the NFL season.

2006

In the 2006 season, there was no game played on the first Sunday night which overlapped with the World Series (October 22 in the 2006 season), along with Christmas Eve night; NBC broadcast that week's game (Eagles at Cowboys) on Christmas afternoon instead. However, the broadcast of Football Night in America continued at its regular time on both occasions each Sunday, with a half-hour version of the program airing before the Christmas game and the two "Wild Card Saturday" games.

2007

In 2007, there was no game broadcast on NBC for Sunday, October 28 due to Game 4 of the 2007 World Series, although Football Night in America aired at its usual time that week. Also, a tentative full-season schedule was unveiled, including games in the last seven weeks of the season. Those games could be replaced under flexible scheduling if the need arose. Three of the games in the last seven weeks were eventually replaced with more compelling matches. This resulted in the unprecedented situation--twice--of having a team playing consecutive Sunday nights. New England had consecutive Sunday nighters: the November 18 New England at Buffalo game was moved to prime time and was followed on November 25 by the already-scheduled Philadelphia at New England game. Likewise, the Washington Redskins played a scheduled game at the New York Giants on December 16, and their December 23 game in Minnesota was moved to prime time. The same rules under which CBS and FOX protect games for their own packages still apply.

2008

The 2008 schedule, released April 15, continued the current practice of a scheduled game possibly being moved in favor of a more compelling one during Weeks 11 through 16 (November 16 through December 21), but leaves the slot open on the final Sunday, December 28. The NFL Kickoff Game between the Washington Redskins and defending Super Bowl champion New York Giants that was played on September 4 started at 7:00 p.m. instead of the normal 8:30 p.m. time in order to avoid conflict with the nomination speech that John McCain gave at the Republican National Convention that night; the game ended at 10:01pm EDT, averting any conflict. As in previous years, one Sunday night (October 26) featured no game broadcast due to Game 4 of the World Series, although Football Night in America aired as usual that week. As happened in 2007, a team played on consecutive Sunday nights due to a game being moved into the Sunday night time slot. The originally scheduled Giants-at-Dallas game on December 14 was followed by a flexed December 21 home game for the Giants (against Carolina). During this season, the schedule was flexed a total of three times on December 7th, December 21st, and the open slot on December 28th.

2008 schedule

Regular season

• † Flex option was not used¹²³⁴
• The game originally scheduled for December 7 was New England vs. Seattle.

Postseason

Similarity to ABC

Eighty percent of NBC's Sunday Night Football crew comes from ABC/ESPN, including Fred Gaudelli and Drew Esocoff (producer and director, respectively), as ESPN moved most of its Sunday Night production crew to Monday Night Football. Michaels, Madden and Kremer also come to NBC directly from ABC/ESPN, and Football Night in America's Sterling Sharpe was a member of ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown in recent years (calling several Sunday night games for the network in 2005).⁵ NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol on using ABC/ESPN talent:

Also, NBC has the starters introduce themselves, much as ABC did in the last few years of its run, and the short postgame show (so affiliates can get to their late newscasts) follows a similar format to ABC's.

Michaels and Madden ended each telecast in the 2007 and 2008 NFL seasons by selecting an MVP for that night's game to receive the Horse Trailer award (with a photo of each recipient being affixed to the side of a production truck, also known as a "horse trailer"). This concept originated on ABC's MNF, although in the 2006 season, it was altered to the Rock Star of the Game, with the player's photo mounted on a rooftop display at NBC's headquarters, the GE Building (aka "30 Rock") in New York.

Theme music

Academy Award winner John Williams composed the instrumental theme music⁶ for Sunday Night Football. Singer Pink sang the theme song for the broadcast⁷in 2006, a reworking of the Joan Jett song "I Hate Myself For Loving You" retitled "Waiting All Day For Sunday Night".⁸⁹ Several alternative versions were used throughout the season, substituting different lyrics when appropriate, e.g. "Waiting All Year For Opening Night."

On the selection of Pink, NFL on NBC producer Fred Gaudelli had this to say:

Country singer Faith Hill replaced Pink as the singer of the opening theme in the 2007 season; the theme still resembled the Joan Jett song.¹⁰

Show opening

The song is at the centerpiece of the opening montage, which has changed in the following ways over the years. Williams' music has always played in the background over the official welcome after the opening is completed and the teams take the field.

2006

For the first season, Pink appeared to sing from the top of a skyscraper as a helicopter zoomed down on a city skyline and the field, the results of computer-generated imagery. A television monitor, which resembles NBC's monitor at Times Square, showed game preview footage and opening credits.

2007

Faith Hill, who replaced Pink, sang on a stage while some of the key players in the game and announcers Michaels and Madden arrived in limousines and walk on a red carpet as they head to a simulated theater. The marquee outside the theater showed the logo of Sprint, which paid a product placement fee, and one of the "bystanders" recorded the red carpet scene on a Sprint camera phone. Access Hollywood co-hosts Shaun Robinson and Tony Potts also appeared in the opening. Also, some of the lyrics were changed slightly and the musical arrangement tilts toward country more than rock, to reflect the change in singers.

2008

The latest opening, which debuted on September 7, takes place in a stadium. Hill performs surrounded by video screens with simulated game action, and the song ends with a computer-generated fireworks display. Once again, a Sprint camera phone is used, this time by a fan. Among the spectators are NFL stars Ray Lewis and Antonio Gates. Again, there were some lyrics changes, among them was the substitution of the lyrics "last one standing better turn out the lights."¹¹

Graphics

NBC's Sunday Night Football graphics, logos and scoreboard were designed by Troika Design Group, along with the city skyline graphics used in the introductions to both Football Night in America and the game itself.¹² NBC's game telecasts use the same type of bottomline scoreboard that Monday Night Football used in the 2005 NFL season (and was subsequently used by ABC Sports until its demise in August 2006). The bottomline was also used on NBC's own coverage of Notre Dame football and the annual Bayou Classic game, and the package's look and font has also transitioned to other NBC Sports broadcasts such as the network's NHL coverage (which uses the SNF graphics package, but with a top-line scoreboard). Most other sports broadcasts on NBC have switched to either the SNF-style graphics, or a similar style with elements from the new graphics but with different styles in places.

USA Network, a "sister" cable network, also uses the graphics for their sports coverage, such as the U.S. Open tennis tournament.

References

See also

• Flexible scheduling
• NFL on NBC
• Monday Night Football
• ESPN Sunday Night Football
• TNT Sunday Night Football
• Sunday Night Football (radio)

External links

• NBC Sunday Night Football – official website
• New NBC talking heads have history across NFL telecasts
• NBC a much happier NFL TV Partner -- Sports Business News October 27, 2006
• NBC Sunday Night Football theme song by Pink