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NFL & NBC ANNOUNCE TWO-YEAR CONTRACT EXTENSION
NEW YORK - August 19, 2009 - The National Football League and NBC Sports today announced a two-year extension of their broadcast partnership under which NBC will remain the home of "Sunday Night Football" for the 2012 and 2013 seasons. NFL clubs approved the extension at a league meeting today in Chicago.
The original six-year deal between NBC Sports and the NFL, which includes innovative flexible scheduling, started with the 2006 season and runs through the 2011 season. As with the original agreement, NBC will broadcast 16 regular season "Sunday Night Football" games, each season's "NFL Opening Kickoff" Thursday night primetime game, both Wild Card Saturday games and preseason games in primetime. The NFL will continue to provide flexible game scheduling over the final seven weeks of the regular season to ensure quality matchups and games with playoff implications.
"Sunday Night Football" is preceded each week at 7 p.m. ET by "Football Night in America," which provides comprehensive highlights and analysis of the day's events in the NFL, along with a preview of that night's "Sunday Night Football" contest.
NBC & THE NFL: NBC's long history with the NFL dates back 70 years to 1939 when NBC became the first network to televise an NFL game - Philadelphia Eagles vs. Brooklyn Dodgers from Ebbets Field to the approximately 1,000 sets then in New York. NBC first broadcast the NFL Championship Game in 1955. In 1964, NBC signed a five-year contract to televise the AFL. NBC was awarded the AFC package in 1970, an association that would continue through the 1997-98 season. NBC televised the first Super Bowl in 1967, the historic New York Jets' upset of the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III in 1969, and this past February broadcast Super Bowl XLIII, the most-watched program in television history.
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