NFL on NBC
The NFL on NBC is the branding used for broadcasts of National Football League (NFL) games that are produced by NBC Sports, and televised on the NBC television network and the Peacock streaming service in the United States.
NFL on NBC
NBC NFL
United States
English
64
Various NFL stadiums (game telecasts)
NBC Sports Headquarters (Stamford, Connecticut (studio segments, pre-game and post-game shows)
210 minutes or until game ends
October 22, 1939 –
January 25, 1998
August 6, 2006 –
present
NBC had sporadically carried NFL games as early as 1939, including the championship and Pro Bowl through the 1950s and early 1960s. Beginning in 1965, NBC signed an agreement to carry the American Football League (AFL)'s telecasts, which carried over with the American Football Conference (AFC) when the AFL merged with the NFL. NBC would continuously carry the AFL/AFC's Sunday afternoon games from 1965 through the 1997 season, after which NBC lost the AFC contract to CBS.
NBC's current flagship NFL program, NBC Sunday Night Football, began airing on NBC in 2006.[1] Alongside Sunday Night Football, NBC airs the annual preseason Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, the NFL Kickoff Game, the primetime game on Thanksgiving Day, and one regular season game on Peacock. During the NFL Playoffs, NBC airs two Wild Card Playoff games, one Divisional Round Playoff game, and the Super Bowl in rotation with Fox, CBS and ESPN/ABC. In 2024, NBC aired a third Wild Card Playoff game on Peacock. From 2016 to 2017, NBC added a five-game Thursday Night Football package to its offerings supplementing the NFL Kickoff and Thanksgiving Day Thursday night games that were already part of NBC's coverage. Game coverage is usually preceded by the pregame show Football Night in America.
History[edit]
Beginnings through the 1950s[edit]
NBC's coverage of the National Football League (which has aired under numerous program titles and formats) actually goes back to the beginnings of the network's relationship with the league in 1939, when its New York City flagship station, then known as W2XBS (now WNBC) aired the first televised professional football game[2] between the Philadelphia Eagles and the now-defunct Brooklyn Dodgers football team. Even before this, in 1934, NBC Radio's Blue Network had carried the Detroit Lions' inaugural Thanksgiving game nationwide.
By 1955, NBC became the television home to the NFL Championship Game, the precursor to the Super Bowl, paying US$100,000 to the league for the rights. The network had taken over the broadcast rights from the DuMont Television Network, which had struggled to give the league a national audience (NBC's coverage of proto-Canadian Football League games from the year prior was more widely available at the time) and was on the brink of failure; the NFL's associations with NBC (as well as with CBS) proved to be a boost to the league's popularity. For the 1957 NFL Championship Game, Van Patrick and Ken Coleman split a half of the play-by-play duties and Red Grange, normally on play-by-play for Chicago Bears games on CBS, assumed the color commentator role for this game. The 1958 NFL Championship Game, played at Yankee Stadium, between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants went into sudden death overtime. This game, since known as the "Greatest Game Ever Played", was seen by many throughout the country and is credited with increasing the popularity of professional football in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Chris Schenkel called the first half while Chuck Thompson called the second half and overtime.
NBC televised the NFL Championship Game until 1963. The contract for the title game was separate than the regular season contracts held by CBS, which started televising NFL games in 1956. Prior to 1962, each team had its own individual television contract. (This was in contrast to the American Football League as well as established practice in college football, both of which forced all of their members to participate in a collective television contract. As the legality of such a collective contract was still in question at the time, and would eventually be declared illegal in 1984, the NFL did not pursue such a contract until Congress explicitly allowed for the NFL to do so, with conditions, in the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961.) NBC held individual team contracts with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Colts in 1959, 1960 and 1961. While the games were blacked out in Pittsburgh and Baltimore, they were broadcast on other NBC stations. In some cases, the game broadcast was seen on CBS in the visiting team's home region. NBC covered eleven games in 1960 and 13 games in 1961 in a "Game of the Week" format. NBC would take one week off due to its coverage of the World Series. During this era, NBC broadcast pre-recorded and edited hour-long broadcasts of NFL games in the off-season under the title Best of Pro Football.
During this period, NBC also held the rights to the Pro Bowl (which was also under a separate contract from the NFL's regular season games and the NFL Championship Game) via the Los Angeles newspapers' charities. NBC televised the Pro Bowl following the 1951 and 1952 seasons and again from the 1957 to 1964 seasons. The 1957 game was offered to NBC, then CBS. Both declined to carry the game. ABC was then offered to televise and accepted, but could not gain enough clearance of affiliates in time to make it a profitable venture. Thus they also dropped out and the game was not televised.
1960s[edit]
At the start of the 1960s, 10 of the NFL's 13 NFL teams (including the brand new Dallas Cowboys) were aligned with CBS, two joined forces with NBC (the aforementioned Colts and the Steelers) and one (the Cleveland Browns) rejoined its partner, the syndicated Sports Network. NBC during this time period, employed Lindsey Nelson and Frankie Albert as their top broadcasting crew.
In Week 1 of the 1960 season, the Washington-Baltimore game was also seen on NBC affiliates in St. Louis, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Dallas-Ft. Worth and Detroit. For the following week, NBC's affiliates in Philadelphia, Dallas-Ft. Worth and Washington also carried Chicago-Baltimore game. There was no telecast in Week 3 as NBC was televising Game 4 of the Pirates-Yankees World Series. Week 4 saw NBC's Green Bay and Milwaukee affiliates joining in on the Los Angeles-Baltimore game. For Week 5, NBC's New York affiliate also carried the Pittsburgh-Washington game. In Week 6, NBC's Philadelphia affiliate was a part of NBC's telecast of the Green Bay Packers-Steelers game. For the following week, Chicago's NBC station picked up NBC's Green Bay-Baltimore telecast. The San Francisco Bay Area also tuned into NBC's coverage of Baltimore-Chicago in Week 8. Meanwhile, Channel 2 in Baltimore provide their own coverage locally of the Colts-Bears game, with Chuck Thompson and Bailey Goss on the call. In Week 9, WBAL in Baltimore also carried the Cleveland-Pittsburgh game. On Cleveland's own syndicated network, the game was called by Ken Coleman and Jimmy Dudley. On Thanksgiving Day, 1960, NBC's Green Bay, Milwaukee, Detroit and Los Angeles affiliates joined in on their San Francisco-Baltimore telecast. In Week 11, NBC's Pittsburgh's station was also part of the coverage of the Detroit-Baltimore game. For the following week, NBC's St. Louis, San Francisco and Green Bay stations carried the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh game. In Week 13, NBC's Green Bay, Milwaukee, Los Angeles and Dallas/Ft. Worth affiliates all joined in for NBC's Pittsburgh-St. Louis telecast.
On April 5, 1961, NBC was awarded a two-year contract (1961–62) for the radio and television rights to the NFL Championship Game,[3] paying US$615,000 annually for the rights ($300,000 of which was to go directly into the NFL Player Benefit Plan). On May 23, 1963, NBC was awarded exclusive network broadcast rights for the 1963 NFL Championship Game for $926,000. For the 1960 NFL Championship Game, there was an early kickoff due to NFL officials preparing for potential of sudden death overtime. Franklin Field had no lights and sunset would normally occur around 4:35 p.m. at this time of year in Philadelphia.
NBC continued to televise 13 Sundays involving either the Colts and Steelers (the odd week was when NBC had the World Series) in 1961. This time, Lindsay Nelson was joined by Chuck Thompson on commentary. In Week 1, NBC's Los Angeles-Baltimore telecast was seen nationally except in NFL markets and the CBS Los Angeles network region (which featured Bob Kelley and Gil Stratton on commentary). The exception to this would be if teams did not play on Sunday, then the NBC affiliate could carry their games in those markets as well. So if the Colts or Steelers (in this case the Steelers) were not on NBC and they were on the road, then an ad hoc regional network would be permitted to carry the game, either using its own crew or picking up the CBS feed and crew. In Week 2, NBC's affiliates in Chicago and Los Angeles also plugged into NBC's telecast of the Detroit-Baltimore game. In Week 3, the Baltimore-Green Bay game was televised locally to Baltimore on WBAL 11. Apparently if Baltimore viewers wanted to see the World Series, they would have had to choose between WRC 4 in Washington or WGAL 8 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As previously mentioned, there was no NFL telecast on NBC due to coverage of Game 4 of the World Series. In Week 11, NBC's Green Bay, Milwaukee and Detroit affiliates were added to their St. Louis-Pittsburgh telecast. For Week 13, the telecast of the Pittsburgh-Washington game included Channel 4 in Los Angeles and Channel 11 in Baltimore. NBC's Week 14 telecast of the Pittsburgh-St. Louis included channel 4 in the Bay Area and channel 11 in Baltimore.
At the end of the 1964 season, NBC would carry the Pro Bowl one last time as the game was still the property of the Los Angeles Newspaper Charities. CBS not only won the deal to carry the NFL Championship Game starting in 1964 (which had been at NBC since 1955), but it would also begin televising the Pro Bowl after the 1965 season as the NFL took control of the all-star tilt. NBC's 1965 Pro Bowl telecast was aired in color and featured Ken Coleman and Gordy Soltau on the call.