PETER KING JOINS NBC's 'FOOTBALL NIGHT IN AMERICA'

NEW YORK -- April 27, 2006 -- Peter King, one of the country's foremost NFL reporters, joins NBC's "Football Night in America" studio show as a reporter, it was announced today by David Neal, Executive Producer, NBC Sports.

"Peter is simply one of the best reporters to ever cover the National Football League," said Neal. "He has a unique ability to uncover stories and information, but most importantly, he is able to fit a breaking story or new information into a larger, meaningful context. His information will be invaluable to us as we tell the stories and provide the first reactions to the issues of each Sunday in the NFL."

King said: "It's really exciting for me to be able to work on the show everyone in America will be watching. In our business, Dick Ebersol is one of those people everyone wants to work for at some point in their lives, and I'm lucky to have this chance."

King joins the most honored NFL broadcast team ever assembled. Al Michaels, whom the AP called "TV's best play-by-play announcer," will call "NBC Sunday Night Football" games alongside Madden, the most honored analyst in television history with 14 Emmy Awards, and sideline and feature reporter Andrea Kremer, whom the Los Angeles Times has called "the best TV interviewer in the business of covering the NFL." Bob Costas, a 17-time Emmy Award winner, will host NBC's "Football Night in America" studio show alongside co-host Cris Collinsworth, the most honored studio analyst in history with five Emmy Awards, and analyst Jerome Bettis, one of the most popular players in recent NFL history.

King joined Sports Illustrated as a staff writer in 1989 after spending nearly a decade as a newspaper journalist. Now a senior writer at the magazine, he is SI's primary NFL expert and is one of the country's premier pro football writers. King has written SI's "Inside the NFL" for 17 years and is also a key contributor to SI.com, which includes "Monday Morning Quarterback,' his popular column that has become a must-read in football circles. He also serves as managing editor and a reporter for HBO's Emmy Award-winning "Inside the NFL."

King has won several awards throughout his distinguished career, including two Associated Press Sports Editors awards for excellence in sports journalism. In 2005, he was appointed by the governor of New Jersey to a fact-finding task force in an attempt to end steroid and human growth hormones in high school athletics.

After graduating from Ohio University in 1979, where he earned a B.A. in journalism, King covered college athletics and professional football for the Cincinnati Enquirer for five years. Following that stint, he covered pro football for Newsday (N.Y.), from 1985 to 1989. He joined HBO's "Inside the NFL" show in 2002 as managing editor, and the show won its first-ever Emmy for Outstanding Studio Show after his arrival, in 2003 and 2005.

King has written five books including, Inside the Helmet: A Player's-Eye View of Pro Football, which discusses the inner lives and jobs of some of the NFL's biggest names; and Football: A History of the Professional Game, which profiles the teams, players and events of the NFL's first 75 years.

He has also served as a halftime analyst for ABC's Monday Night Football in 1994 and 1995 and was the primary NFL commentator for CNN's NFL Preview and CNN/SI, the now-defunct 24-hour sports news and information network.

King lives in Upper Montclair, N.J., with his wife Ann. They have two daughters, Laura, a resident of Los Angeles and graduate of Tufts University, and Mary Beth, a sophomore at Colgate University.

"FOOTBALL NIGHT IN AMERICA" & "NBC SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL"

NBC's "Football Night in America" primetime studio show and the premier primetime game of the week, "NBC Sunday Night Football" will be broadcast in high definition.

NBC's NFL agreement continues through the 2011 season and calls for 16 regular season Sunday night games, each season's "NFL Kickoff" Thursday night primetime game, two postseason Wild Card games and three preseason games in primetime, in addition to Super Bowl XLIII in 2009 in Tampa and XLVI in 2012 and Pro Bowls in the same years.

Under the new NFL agreement, the NFL provides NBC flexible game scheduling over seven of the final eight weeks of the regular season for "NBC Sunday Night Football." Flexible scheduling, offered for the first time by the NFL, ensures marquee matchups when many teams' playoff chances are at stake.