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NBC Sunday Night Football
Genre	Sports
Starring	Al Michaels John Madden Andrea Kremer Bob Costas Cris Collinsworth Jerome Bettis Sterling Sharpe Tiki Barber
Country of origin	USA
Production
Running time	180 minutes+ until the conclusion of the game
Broadcast
Original channel	NBC (2006–)
Original run	August 6, 2006 –
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 as the color commentator, and Andrea Kremer serving as the sole sideline reporter. 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, which aired a doubleheader broadcast on September 11, 2006.

Contents 1 Studio show 2 Additional games 3 Scheduling 4 Similarity to ABC 5 Theme Music 6 Graphics 7 References 8 See also 9 External links

The studio show Football Night in America, featuring Bob Costas, Cris Collinsworth, Sterling Sharpe, Jerome Bettis, and Peter King precedes the broadcast each week, featuring a recap of the other Sunday NFL contests. Starting with the 2007 NFL season, NBC News Today reporter Tiki Barber will contribute to Sunday Night Football presumably from the Football Night in America studio. Kremer, Madden, and Michaels also contribute to the studio show from the game site.

NBC's contract also includes the opening Thursday-night NFL Kickoff Game and two opening games of 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 and 2011 seasons, and two Pro Bowl games the week following their Super Bowl telecasts as part of a new contractual policy where the network with the Super Bowl will air the Pro Bowl. In addition, NBC becomes the home of the aforementioned annual Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, which begins the NFL's preseason, although the 2007 edition will be carried by a different network (NFL Network) in exchange for the rights to air the China Bowl game, also in the 2007 pre-season. Because of the cancellation of the proposed China Bowl, that situation may change.

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.

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, stating that fans will be able to vote for what game they would like to see on the Sunday primetime slot. During those affected weeks, no game is initially scheduled for NBC—instead, the schedule slot for the NBC game is listed as "To be announced", and one Sunday afternoon game will be moved to the primetime slot. The NFL did earmark specific games for Sunday Night Football in Weeks 10-15 and 17 when the official schedule came out in April 2006.^[1] 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.^[1]

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 where NBC broadcast that week's game 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. Starting in 2007, with the new World Series scheduling, the situation may change, as the only Sunday game in that Series will be a potential Game 5. That is part of the compensation of an additional game in Week One. The schedule for 2007's Christmas week (with Christmas falling on a Tuesday) is yet to be determined by the NFL.

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).^[2] NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol on using ABC/ESPN talent:

“

I was not interested in the quote, unquote vanity of starting anew. . . There's not a lot of room for experimentation.[2]

”

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.

See also: 2006 NBC Sunday Night Football schedule

Academy Award winner John Williams composed the instrumental theme music^[3] for Sunday Night Football. Singer Pink sings the theme song for the broadcast^[4], a reworking of the Joan Jett song "I Hate Myself For Loving You" retitled "Waiting All Day For Sunday Night".^[5][6] On opening night of the 2006 season, a special version of the song with alternate lyrics was played with the lyrics: "I've been waiting all year for opening night."

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

“

A football fan knows the anticipation of waiting all day for the big game. When you hear this song on Sunday nights you'll know the big game is about to kick off. ... We chose Pink as the signature voice because she is a tremendous talent with a crossover appeal that makes her relevant to all segments of our audience.[5]

”

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.^[7] 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 Notre Dame college football and annual coverage of the 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, Poker After Dark (which airs in the late overnight hours Monday-Saturday), figure skating specials, and video reports on NBCSports.com. All NBC Sports presentations now use the package, with the network's golf coverage using it beginning in early February 2007 with their coverage of the FBR Open.

• NFL on NBC

Preceded by ESPN

National Football League broadcaster on Sunday night 2006 - Present

Succeeded by Incumbent

• 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