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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 Cris Collinsworth providing color commentary, 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. John Madden was the color commentator for the first three years of the program, but retired before the 2009 season.

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

NFL on NBC
NBC broadcast the very first televised NFL game in 1939 and the NFL Championship from 1955 to 1962. In 1965, they became the home of the AFL, and continued to broadcast AFC games after the merger in 1970. Between 1970 and 1993, the Big Three continued to split the NFL package, with CBS broadcasting NFC games and ABC broadcasting Monday Night Football.

But in 1993, CBS was vastly outbid for the NFC rights by the then-upstart FOX. In 1998, a still-hurting CBS outbid NBC for the AFC rights. NBC made an attempt to bid for Monday Night Football, but was deterred by the high costs and slipping ratings.

Sunday Night Football
Sunday Night Football had its origins in the advent of cable television. In 1987, the NFL moved one game each week to Sunday night, splitting the package between TNT and ESPN. When the contracts were renegotiated in 1998, ESPN gained the package for the entire season.

Studio show
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 indefinitely. 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) 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 was commentator for the Pro Bowl in Honolulu, Hawaii for Madden following Super Bowl XLIII, and (in his new capacity as Michaels' new broadcast partner) will presumably do so again after Super Bowl 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).

Preseason
NBC usually opens the NFL preseason by broadcasting the annual Pro Football Hall of Fame Game. The sole exception was in 2007, when the game was moved to the NFL Network in anticipation of NBC showing the later-canceled China Bowl. NBC also broadcasts one additional preseason game, except in 2008 due to their coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Regular Season
During the first week of the season, NBC broadcasts two games – the NFL Kickoff Game on Thursday night, and an additional game on Sunday night.

Part of the contract between NBC and the NFL was the creation of a flexible-scheduling system for the final seven weeks of the season. The Sunday night games scheduled in those weeks are subject to change, and may be switched with a Sunday afternoon game. CBS and FOX, the broadcasters on Sunday afternoon, can protect a fixed number of games during this period, and the final decision on swaps rests with the NFL. Games on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday cannot be moved. In 2006, NBC did not schedule Sunday night games for the final half of the season, but now schedules games in all weeks except Week 17, the final week of the season.

The flexible-schedule policy has lead to several teams having games on consecutive Sunday nights beginning in 2007, something which had never occurred when the games were pre-scheduled.

The sole week during the regular season on which NBC does not broadcast a game is the week coinciding with the World Series, though Football Night in America is still aired.

In 2006, Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday. NBC did not show a Sunday night game, but instead showed a game on Christmas afternoon.

Postseason
As a cap to their coverage of most seasons, NBC broadcasts the two Saturday game of the Wild Card round in the NFL Playoffs. Since two games are broadcast, Michaels, Collinsworth, and Kremer are used for the second game (in primetime), while a different commentary crew will call the first.

Every three years, however, NBC will also broadcast the Super Bowl and the Pro Bowl. In 2009, the regular crew of Michaels, Madden, and Kremer were joined by Alex Flanagan for Super Bowl XLIII. The Pro Bowl was called by Michaels, Collinsworth, Kremer, and Tiki Barber. NBC will next broadcast the two games in 2012.

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). 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.

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 music for Sunday Night Football. Singer Pink sang the theme song for the broadcast in 2006, a reworking of the Joan Jett song "I Hate Myself For Loving You" retitled "Waiting All Day For Sunday Night". 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: ''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.

Country singer Faith Hill replaced Pink as the singer of the opening theme in the 2007 and 2008 seasons; the theme still resembled the Joan Jett song.

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."

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. 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 graphics package is also used for Notre Dame football and the annual Bayou Classic game. 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), or a similar style with elements and styles influenced from the new graphics.

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