NBC's Football Night in America (1 Viewer)

With the loss of NFL Primetime I found myself forced to watch this. I have to say that I enjoyed the show, first of all Sterling Sharpe, Chris Collinswoth and Bob Costas seem to have good chemistry and pull of the comraderie like Best Damn pretty good. I thought the Bus had a good debut in the studio as well. The set itself was very nice as it was quite sedated but with a huge replay screen and lots of other monitors showing statistics but not overly gaudy like most ESPN sets. To top it off, NBC seems to have good usage contracts with the other networks as almost every replay was in hi-def and no game was stats only so we got to see highlights from every game played. The theme music for the show was a great orchestal score and it even seemed like a lot of commercials were in hi-def as well. While I will miss NFL Primetime I do have to say that NBC's prior experience at broadcasting the NFL really came through and I think most sportsfans will like this show.


What are you guys impressions?

Very nice HD production - the sets, replays and screen graphics all were first rate. Someone with experience with HD worked this pre-game show which featured all HD and 5.1 sound. Nice start.

I flipped to it briefly after the televised games had actually ended and was disappointed to see that they weren't doing full recaps of key plays throughout the games and were only highlighting the things that I had already seen during cutaways. I didn't feel like listening to any of their commentators, so I'll just fall back to watching "NFL Primetime" on Mondays and "Inside the NFL" later in the week. Or I might check out the edited replays of some of the games on the NFL Network.

And is Sunday Night NFL going to use that stupid Pink intro song every week? It's nearly impossible not to sing the original lyrics in my head when it's on, and those lyrics don't really match the mood that I think they are trying to achieve.

Brad

The production qualities of the game itself have been top notch. I remember when people were complaining after the HOF game but come, that stadium isn't designed to host TV games so that really wasn't a fair evaluation.

It's a huge improvement over that crappy Hank Williams intro from the old MNF.

As far as FNinA, I just couldn't figure out why they were all sitting so damn far apart? Cris and Bob sort of in the middle, then with Sterling and Jerome waaaaaaayyyy off to the left and right. Very odd choice by the producer/director.

Really liked it. I'll be interested to see a ratings comparison between Sunday/Monday night games now that MNF is on ESPN. It felt like Sunday is the Main Event now.

Speaking of the stat screens during game recaps, I can't even watch the NFL network. Has anyone spent enough time watching it that they can tell me why I should tune in? The recap show was awful, stat screen with someone talking... Great. That doesn't even touch on that none of their shows ever seem to be in HD.

Doug

I didn't get a chance to watch the pregame show, but I just wish John Madden would go away. At least, he doesn't play around with the replay system, like he did when he was with FOX.

I like the fact that the games start earlier than MNF. Having to get up at 4:30 am for work made for lack of sleep when the games didn't start until 9 pm. Now I can actually stay up until the 3rd quater.

First off, the title, "Football Night in America" is emblematic of the problems with this show. Compared to the concise "NFL Primetime", we get a title that sounds like a boring college thesis.

Whereas NFLPT was fast moving and featured wall to wall clips, FNIA dragged along with precious little in the way of clips, instead relying on slow banter between the hosts to interest the audience. Newsflash -- slow and leisurely banter is not interesting. Besides, Tom Jackson has more football analytical skills in his little finger than Bettis (too green) and Sharpe (know-nothing blowhard) combined. Which makes the clips just a newsdesk rehash without the insidery analysis Jackson brought to NFLPT.

I'll forgive the numerous techincal and graphical glitches because, hey -- they were popping their cherry. But Costas talking about "the Peyton brothers"? Didn't even correct himself.

The real problem is that NFLPT has genius editing, building up suspense and bringing out the drama in the game. Each clip is a part of an overall story. FNIA just shows you some highlights. "Here a clip of a nice catch" without any context.

They have to pick this thing up. If I were grading on a curve and gave NFLPT an A, FNIA deserves a C-. On second thought, I'd give it a D. This has fallen off my "Can't miss" radar.

Slightly off-topic, but does everyone think the PQ of the actual games on NBC have been poor? The closeups are okay, but the wide shots (which is probably more than half of the game) seem extremely grainy. Even worse than a CBS HD football broadcast. Has anyone else noticed this or is just me?