NFL PRIMETIME

"NFL Primetime" is a
sports television program that has aired on ESPN since 1987. The show is presented similarly to ESPN's own SportsCenter, featuring scores, highlights, and analysis of every game of
the week in the NFL. Until
the 2006 season, Primetime aired every Sunday night during the NFL season
and it preceded ESPN's coverage of Sunday Night Football (it even aired when ESPN did not have
a Sunday Night game, especially from 1990-97 when TNT had Sunday night games
the first half of the season). The show was hosted by Chris Berman,
with analysis from Tom Jackson. Berman and Jackson recapped
Sunday afternoon's NFL games with highlights, statistics, and commentary. Pete Axthelm was a regular from 1987 until his death in 1991.
Through the show's history, other co-hosts included John Saunders, Robin Roberts, Bill Pidto,
and Stuart Scott.
Pidto was often the target of good-natured ribbing by Berman, since Pidto often
did recaps of games featuring losing teams. Roberts also seemed to be assigned
to recap almost every game the Tampa Bay Buccaneers played between 1990 and
1992, when the Bucs were fielding some of the worst teams in NFL history. The
position of co-host was dropped prior to the start of the 1998 season.

Rather
than provide the usual package of scoring highlights, NFL Primetime presented extended highlights which
also showed less dramatic plays. This provided context for the greater depth of
analysis of each game. A staple of the
show was the various FirstCom Music instrumental pieces that played in the
background during the highlights, while Berman and Jackson recapped each game.
This often gave the games, even in highlight form, a more epic feel overall.
This feature continues during highlights on The
Blitz.

For the
most part, highlights from the show would feature FirstCom Music scores over
the highlights. Some songs were even played on a consistent basis for certain
teams. The Buffalo Bills, for example, often had their game played out
(regardless of outcome) to a dramatic piece featuring triumphant passages of
brass instruments. The Oakland Raiders, meanwhile, were often represented by an
ominous-sounding piece that featured extensive use of horns and keyboards. On
rare occasions, however, the standard FirstCom Music themes would be replaced
by other music themes. For the Raiders-Steelers matchup in 2000, which marked
their last meeting at Three Rivers Stadium as well as the stadium's second to
last game, the music was replaced by classic NFL Films themes by Sam Spence including "A Golden Boy
Again," "March to the Trenches," and "Raiders' Theme,"
while Berman confused then-current Raiders and Steelers with legendary ones. After the NFL returned in Week 2 of the 2001
season for the first games after 9/11, the first game highlights for the
Giants-Chiefs matchup was presented with a more subdued FirstCom theme that was
not regularly used by the program.