History of the National Football League on television
NBC was the first major television network to cover an NFL game, when on October 22, 1939, it broadcast a game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Brooklyn Dodgers; the network was still only in its infancy, with only two affiliates, the modern day WRGB (now a CBS affiliate) in Schenectady and W2XBS in New York City. Portions of that game still survive via films, but the film is not footage from the telecast (recordings of television broadcasts did not begin until 1948). The use of a sideline camera, the sole camera used in the 1939 broadcast, would become the standard for all future NFL broadcasts until 2017; the angle is particularly suited for estimating yardage, compared to more mobile camera angles that began to appear in the 21st century.
Fox NFL Sunday
"Fox NFL Sunday" debuted on September 4, 1994, when Fox inaugurated its NFL game broadcasts through the network's recently acquired broadcast rights to the National Football Conference; it was originally hosted by James Brown, Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long and Jimmy Johnson (both Brown and Bradshaw had joined the network from CBS to help helm Fox's NFL coverage). The program was notable in being the first hour-long NFL pregame show on a broadcast television network; network pregame programs that existed beforehand, such as CBS' "The NFL Today" or NBC's "NFL Live!", aired as 30-minute broadcasts. Fox's show also adopted a looser, more irreverent approach than its predecessors in order to also appeal to the network's younger-skewing audiences.