FMIA Guest: Kirk Herbstreit And Al Michaels On NFL’s New Frontier For Thursday Night Football On Amazon

Editor’s note: With Peter King on vacation, Football Morning In America guest columns will run till his return on July 18.

This week’s column features a conversation with Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit, the new Thursday Night Football team for NFL games on Amazon Prime Video. After the Q&A, 10 Things I Think I Think written by Michaels and Herbstreit.

The conversation has been edited for brevity’s sake. It can be heard in full on The Peter King Podcast when the pod returns in July.

King: Al, as somebody who’s been in this business as long as you have been, working in so many places, what’s it like to know that you’re part of the first streaming venture in NFL media history, working for a company that in its other business sells more stuff than any place in the western world?

Michaels: Well, I’ve been working on my truck driving skills so that I can be a full-time guy for Amazon. Peter, the last 15, 20 years in this country, who could’ve guessed that any of this would’ve happened? I certainly could not have. But here we are. People tell me I’m kinda like the king of the new frontier. I’m a Davy Crockett in a sense. I don’t know where this thing is gonna go in the ultimate but it’s kind of exciting to be at the forefront of something that is different and something that a lot of people feel is the future of sports television.

King: All I know is my daughters, in their thirties, haven’t had cable TV for some time. All they do is stream. It seems like this is the future. Al, as you know, the NFL is nutty about ratings. They could take a short term hit [in ratings] but after a while, this’ll be the future.

Michaels: In a way, that’s true, Peter. They’re also splitting the baby. They’re not going completely over to