The NFL on NBC pregame show
The NBC television network's in-studio pre-game coverage for their National Football League game telecasts has been presented under various titles and formats throughout NBC's NFL coverage history.
History[edit]
GrandStand (1975–1976) [edit]
NBC's first official NFL pre-game show was GrandStand,[1][2] a program that doubled as a competing sports anthology series to ABC's Wide World of Sports during the off-season (GrandStand also served as the pre-game show for NBC's Major League Baseball Game of the Week during the 1976 season). GrandStand premiered in 1975[3] with hosts Jack Buck and Bryant Gumbel (who joined Buck sometime later in the season). Prior to 1975, NBC aired the political talk show Meet the Press in the NFL pre-game show's timeslot (12:30 p.m. Eastern) against The NFL Today, the pre-game show of CBS since 1967.
In 1976, Jack Buck left GrandStand in order to return to the booth as a play-by-play announcer, remaining with NBC. He was replaced as co-host by Lee Leonard.
Leonard (who would later become a co-host of ESPN's SportsCenter) left the program in 1977, and was replaced by Mike Adamle and Regina Haskins[4] as Gumbel's co-hosts. For the post-game show, GrandStand kept the Sperry NFL Report, although later incarnations of the post-game would be retitled the Budweiser NFL Report.
NFL (1977–1986)[edit]
In 1977, NBC dropped the GrandStand moniker in favor of NFL, which the title being paired with a year number that corresponded to the then-current NFL season (such as NFL '77 and NFL '78).[5] Beginning with NFL '80, NBC would pioneer the use of in-game highlight packages[6] ("Let's go to New York for an NFL '80 update") NBC would use this particular method of titling their pregame show until the 1987 season.
Bryant Gumbel hosted the NFL on NBC pregame show through the 1981 season, when he left NBC Sports to become co-anchor of NBC's morning program Today. In his final two seasons on The NFL on NBC, Gumbel served as the sole host for the pre-game show. Gumbel was subsequently replaced by Len Berman,[7] who was joined by Adamle, Pete Axthelm (who left following the 1985 season) and Ahmad Rashad.
For Berman's second season (and what turned out to be his final full season) as host, Bill Macatee (who left following the 1984 season) and Dave Marash (who left following the 1983 season) replaced Adamle and Rashad. Rashad would return to the pre-game show in 1984 and continue onward through the 1988 season.
In October 1984, NBC was also covering the World Series between the Detroit Tigers and San Diego Padres. Even though Game 5 was on a Sunday afternoon (Game 5 was at 4:30 p.m. ET), Bob Costas (who anchored NBC's World Series coverage with Len Berman) was still in New York City to host NFL '84. At the end of the pre-game show, Costas left the New York studio to travel to Detroit to cover that night's baseball game at Tiger Stadium. In the meantime, Macatee filled-in for Costas, providing updates and halftime highlights. Costas later interviewed the Tigers in their locker room that night.
In 1985, NBC moved its Sunday pre-game show to 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time no matter what time that market got a game. CBS followed suit in 1986. Previously, NBC and CBS would air their pre-game shows at 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time for markets that were only receiving games with 2:00 or 4:00 p.m. Eastern start times.
From the mid-to-late 1980s, NBC would to open its NFL pre-game show with a feature called "Great Games, Great Moments," which rebroadcast an original clip (from an NBC telecast, as opposed to NFL Films) of a play from a classic NFL game originally televised on the network. The instrumental music that NBC used for the "Great Games, Great Moments" clip was "Constant Energy"[8] by Craig Palmer. During the 1986 season, NBC experimented with using a studio audience for its NFL '86 telecasts; this would be dropped after that season. Paul Maguire served as an analyst from 1986 to 1987, alongside Costas and Rashad.[9]