The ''NFL on TNT'' was the name for the series of

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

(NFL) broadcasts produced by

Turner Sports Warner Bros. Discovery Sports (WBD Sports) is the division of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) that is responsible for sports broadcasts on its parent company's various channels in the United States, including TBS, TNT, AT&T SportsNet, and TruTV. ...

for

Turner Network Television TNT (originally an abbreviation for Turner Network Television) is an American basic cable television channel owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks unit of Warner Bros. Discovery that launched on October 3, 1988. TNT's original purpose ...

(TNT). TNT aired NFL games on Sunday nights from 1990 until 1997 and served as one of the league’s two cable television partners during that time with

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...

History

Sunday night games (1990–1997)

TNT’s contract with the NFL coincided with the expansion of the league’s Sunday night scheduling to encompass the entire season, as opposed to the occasional matchups the league scheduled beginning in 1987. The contract in force at the time split the Sunday night telecasts between TNT and ESPN, who had originally had the rights to the Sunday night slate of games when they were limited to late season matchups. TNT carried Sunday night games for the first half of the NFL season, with ESPN taking over afterwards. TNT would also air any Thursday night NFL matchups that were scheduled during the first half of the season, with ESPN taking any in the second half. As has always been the case for cable NFL broadcasts, TNT did not have exclusive rights to the broadcasts. As such, any game airing on TNT was

simulcast Simulcast (a portmanteau of simultaneous broadcast) is the broadcasting of programmes/programs or events across more than one resolution, bitrate or medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at exactly the same time (that is, simulta ...

on regular over-the-air television stations in each participating team's local market so that households without cable television could still see the telecasts. ESPN anchor

Chris Berman Christopher James Berman (born May 10, 1955), nicknamed "Boomer", is an American sportscaster. He has been an anchor for ''SportsCenter'' on ESPN since 1979, joining a month after its initial launch, and hosted the network's '' Sunday NFL Count ...

referred to TNT's football programming by its original "Nitro" brand, even after TNT abandoned that moniker. (This is not to be confused with the professional wrestling show called ''

WCW Monday Nitro ''WCW Monday Nitro'', also known as ''WCW Nitro'' or simply ''Nitro'', is an American professional wrestling television program that was produced by World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and broadcast weekly every Monday night on TNT in the Unite ...

''.) It does not appear that TNT's coverage ever used the title ''Sunday Night Football'', and indeed ESPN filed for a

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from othe ...

on that title in 1996 (the trademark was later assigned to the NFL, allowing for its eventual use by

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

). The last game was aired on October 26,

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...

. Fittingly, one of the teams involved was the Atlanta Falcons, based in the home city of Turner Broadcasting -

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

(they played at their division rivals, the

Carolina Panthers The Carolina Panthers are a professional American football team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Panthers compete in the National Football League (NFL), as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. ...

, located up

Interstate 85 Interstate 85 (I-85) is a major Interstate Highway in the Southeastern United States. Its southern terminus is at an interchange with I-65 in Montgomery, Alabama; its northern terminus is an interchange with I-95 in Petersburg, Virginia, ...

Charlotte, North Carolina Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...

). Unlike the Braves,

Hawks Hawks are birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. They are widely distributed and are found on all continents except Antarctica. * The subfamily Accipitrinae includes goshawks, sparrowhawks, sharp-shinned hawks and others. This subfamily ...

and

Thrashers The Atlanta Thrashers were a professional ice hockey team based in Atlanta. Atlanta was granted a franchise in the National Hockey League (NHL) on June 25, 1997, and became the League's 28th franchise when it began play in the 1999–2000 seaso ...

, however, Turner never owned the Falcons at any point in time (due to NFL ownership rules).

Schedules

Studio shows

The network had a one-hour studio pregame show, titled ''The Stadium Show'', from 1990 to

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson ...

. In

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The Great Hanshin earthquake str ...

, this was reduced to a half-hour and retitled ''Pro Football Tonight'', running through 1997. Fred Hickman was one of the studio hosts during this time, and

Mark May Mark Eric May (born November 2, 1959) is a former American college and professional football player who was a guard in the National Football League (NFL) for 13 seasons during the 1980s and 1990s. May played college football for the University ...

(now of ESPN) was one of the studio analysts before moving to the booth for the final season.

Fantasy Football legacy

The Sunday night TNT halftime show was the first major network NFL broadcast to utilize a player statistics "crawl" at the bottom of the screen. With Fantasy Football in its early stages of popularity, and the internet not being readily available to the general public, this was the only way for most fans to get updated Sunday player stats without waiting until the 11:00 PM or midnight sports highlight shows on

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

and

. However, in the second half of the NFL season when ESPN would broadcast Sunday night games, Fantasy Football fans would be disappointed since ESPN did not provide the same detailed crawl during their halftime show.

''Super Bowl Television''

In addition to the Sunday night games, TNT also presented an annual special, ''Super Bowl Television''. The program, which aired on Friday and Saturday night, mixed a preview of that season's game with entertainment segments. Ernie Johnson hosted the show from the Super Bowl host city.

The end of TNT's coverage

TNT lost their rights to the NFL following the

season after ESPN chose to bid on the entire regular season package beginning in

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...

. In the wake of the loss of NFL rights, TNT began negotiations with NBC Sports to start a new football league; TNT eventually backed out of the proposal. (NBC's proposed league eventually became the XFL.) TNT would not air professional football again until signing on as a broadcast partner with the Alliance of American Football in

2019 File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...

Personalities

In the booth

Play-by-play

Skip Caray Harry Christopher "Skip" Caray Jr. (August 12, 1939 – August 3, 2008) was an American sportscaster, best known for his long career as a radio and television play-by-play announcer for the Atlanta Braves of Major League Baseball. He was the so ...

(1990–1991) *

Gary Bender Gary Nedrow Bender (born September 1, 1940) is a retired American sportscaster and 2008 inductee into the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame. He officially retired, April 13, 2011, from Fox Sports Arizona after 18 years calling the NBA's Phoenix Su ...

(1992–1994) *

Verne Lundquist Merton Laverne Lundquist Jr. (born July 17, 1940) is an American sportscaster. Biography Early life and career Lundquist was born in Duluth, Minnesota. He graduated from Austin High School in Austin, Texas, before attending Texas Lutheran U ...

(1995–1997)

Color commentary

Pat Haden Patrick Capper Haden (born January 23, 1953) is the former athletic director at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles from August 2010 to June 2016. He played quarterback for the USC Trojans before playing professionally in ...

(1990–1997) *

(1997)

Sideline reporters

Craig Sager Craig Graham Sager (June 29, 1951 – December 15, 2016) was an American sports reporter who covered an array of sports for CNN and its sister stations TBS and TNT, from 1981 until the year he died. Sager worked as a sideline reporter pacing ...

(1990–1997) * Bryan Burwell (1997)

Studio

Hosts

* Fred Hickman (

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicist ...

– 1992) * Bob Neal (

1993 File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peacefu ...

–

) * Vince Cellini (

–

)

Analysts

Larry King Larry King (born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger; November 19, 1933 – January 23, 2021) was an American television and radio host, whose awards included 2 Peabodys, an Emmy and 10 Cable ACE Awards. Over his career, he hosted over 50,000 interviews. ...

(

) * Kevin Kiley (

–

) * Lawrence Taylor (

) *

(

– 1996) *

Warren Moon Harold Warren Moon (born November 18, 1956) is an American former football quarterback who played professionally for 23 seasons. He spent the majority of his career with the Houston Oilers of the National Football League (NFL) and the Edmonton ...

(

) *

Randall Cunningham Randall Wade Cunningham Sr. (born March 27, 1963) is a former American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 16 seasons. He spent the majority of his career with the Philadelphia Eagles and is also known for ...

( 1996) * Keith Jackson (

) * Sean Jones (

)

References

External links

1997 NFL on TNT Schedule

CNN/SI story regarding B.Smith fainting incident (bottom of page)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nfl On Tnt 1990 American television series debuts Sunday Night Football Night Football 1997 American television series endings Turner Sports