NBC Sunday Night Football (abbreviated as SNF) is an American weekly television broadcast of National Football League (NFL) games on NBC and Peacock in the United States. It began airing on August 6, 2006, with the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, which opened that year's preseason. NBC took over the rights to the Sunday prime time game telecasts from ESPN, which carried the broadcasts from 1987 to 2005. At the same time, ESPN began broadcasting Monday Night Football when it was dropped from sister network ABC. Previously, NBC had aired American Football League (AFL), and later American Football Conference (AFC), games from 1965 until 1997, when CBS took over those rights. During the 2011–12 season, Sunday Night Football became the first sports program to hold the position as Nielsen's most-watched program on U.S. network television during the year, beating American Idol, which held that honor for eight consecutive seasons beginning in 2004; Sunday Night Football repeated this feat three years running, beginning with the 2013–14 season. As of 2022, Mike Tirico serves as the play-by-play announcer for most broadcasts while Al Michaels does so for special events, Cris Collinsworth serves as color commentator, and Melissa Stark serves as the sideline reporter, with Terry McAulay serving as the rules expert. Upon NBC's assumption of the Sunday prime time game rights, Michaels, John Madden, Fred Gaudelli, and Drew Esocoff, who served as the respective play-by-play announcer, color commentator, lead producer, and director, joined SNF in the same positions they held during the latter portion of the ABC era of Monday Night Football. Madden retired prior to the 2009 season, and was succeeded in that role by Collinsworth. Tirico succeeded Michaels following Super Bowl LVI in 2021. Since 2014, sister cable channel Universo has carried Spanish-language simulcasts of select games, after years of aborted attempts to simulcast the games on Telemundo. As with the NFL's other television partners, NBC provides Spanish-language audio feed of the game broadcasts via second audio program (SAP), formerly noted as being "provided by Telemundo" before the rebranding of that entity's sports division to Telemundo Deportes. With the former mun2's relaunch on February 1, 2015, Universo began to carry the full season with the start of the 2015 season and simulcast Super Bowl XLIX, the channel carrying Spanish-language simulcasts of NFL games and NBC Sports properties. Telemundo would later carry Spanish language broadcasts of select games, beginning in