Approaching age 82, Prime Video play-by-play voice Al Michaels offered a pragmatic view of his broadcasting future in an interview with Dan Patrick Wednesday.
Asked on “The Dan Patrick Show” how he will know when he is no longer going to call NFL games, Michaels said Wednesday that he will either know himself or his bosses will tell him. “The folks at Amazon and Prime have been fantastic — fantastic — to me,” Michaels said. “If they come to me and say it’s time to move on, I’m going ‘fine, you guys have been fantastic. You’ve been great.'”
He continued, “I’ve done the NFL for 41 years, which is half my life. Love it. But you know what? At a certain time, it’s time. And if they feel it’s time, great. And if I feel it’s time, I’ll know it. And I’ll say, you know what? Thanks for the memories.”
Michaels has been the voice of “Thursday Night Football” since it moved to Prime Video in 2022 and is now in his fifth season calling the series. He joined Prime Video after a 16-year tenure as the voice of NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” and his career-defining, 20-year run as the voice of ABC’s “Monday Night Football” from 1986-2005.
As is common for announcers of advancing age, Michaels has faced greater criticism of his work in recent seasons. When Michaels joined Prime in 2022, he was supposed to continue calling occasional games for NBC in an emeritus role, but was not brought back in that position after a widely-panned call of a Chargers-Jaguars NFL Wild Card Game in 2023. But the criticism has not affected his standing within Prime, which after an initial three-year contract has since asked Michaels to return in the two subsequent seasons.
Prime reached a contract extension with Michaels’ “TNF” partner Kirk Herbstreit earlier this month, according to Andrew Marchand of The Athletic, but the deal reportedly gives the streamer flexibility to move on if a preferred option becomes available. With Michaels on one-year deals and Herbstreit’s status conditional, Prime Video could just as easily completely overhaul its “TNF” booth next season as bring it back unchanged.
“Thursday Night Football” has seen both its audience and game inventory improve over five seasons on Prime Video. The streamer has added an annual game on the day after Thanksgiving and a Wild Card playoff game. This past season, it carried arguably the highest-profile game on Wild Card Weekend, a Packers-Bears contest that averaged more than 30 million viewers — the largest to watch Michaels call a game since Super Bowl 56 in 2022.
Michaels made headlines in his early days on “TNF” for seeming underwhelmed by the quality of games, prompting Patrick to jokingly congratulate him Wednesday for his role in the league improving the schedule. “The league understood that we needed a better schedule to make streaming what they want it to be,” Michaels responded. “There’s no secret here, they want streaming to be as successful as it can possibly be. That’s where we’re going. That’s where we’re headed. The league has 85-90 percent of the games on over-the-air television, there’s only a small amount of games that are on streaming. Will it increase through the years? I suppose it will, because that’s the way the business is right now. But the league understood we needed a better schedule.”
