About 18 million or so folks tuned in to NBC's Sunday Night Football Game last night, the Minnesota Vikings versus the Arizona Cardinals. That's a really good number, but it wasn't the boffo bonanza NBC had in mind when they used the NFL flex schedule option to choose Bret Favre over Tom Brady.

When I wrote about the flex schedule last week, a lot of reader comments said that NBC decision made perfect sense because the Vikings-Card game would be a bigger draw than the Patriots-Dolphins.

Well, guess what happened? The Favre game turned out to be a bust. The Cardinals, led by Kurt Warner, shredded the Vikings and won handily 30-17. It wasn't close and the ratings diminished from the second half on.

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If there's one night of television that NBC has a handle on, it's Sunday. At least during football season. Football Night In America works, and you know the old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." That said, NBC has renewed its NFL deal for two more years. The new deal – the extension – secures that NBC will be broadcasting NFL games through 2013, so there will be plenty of games for all those analysts to yap about.

NBC has nearly enough guys to field a team on the pre-game show: Bob Costas, Dan Patrick, Keith Olbermann, Tony Dungy, Tiki Barber, Rodney Harrison ... with Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth calling the games. Will we notice that John Madden is gone? Probably not, especially if the games are good.

John Madden is done. NBC announced today that Madden, perhaps the most famous broadcaster in football history apart from Howard Cosell, is retiring from the booth after covering the NFL for 30 years, winning 16 Emmys and the admiration of football friends everywhere.

Madden addressed listeners this morning on KCBS in San Francisco about the decision, which was obviously not easy for him. "I decided to retire," he said. "Heck I can't even say it. It's tough, not because I'm not sure it's the right time. I really feel strongly this is the right time. I'm just going to miss everything about it because I enjoyed it so much."

Football is in Madden's blood. He's a Hall of Fame coach, winning the Super Bowl with the Raiders in 1977, a college stand-out offensive tackle from California Polytechnic State University, and his Madden NFL is a perennial best-selling video game on multiple platforms. He joined ABC's Monday Night Football crew in 2002, and spent the past three years on NBC's Sunday Night Football.

Two-and-a-half years ago, I asked the (admittedly) dumb question, "Could Frank Caliendo take John Madden's place?" At the time, my contention was that Caliendo's loopy Madden impression was no longer that far off reality, and that Madden had become such a caricature of himself that Frank could have stepped in and no one would have known the difference.

If NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol had a sense of daring, he could have tried that experiment this Sunday night, as Madden is going to sit out NBC's broadcast of the Buccaneers-Seahawks game in Tampa. The week off was Ebersol's idea; last night's game was in San Diego, making a cross-country trek for Madden and his famous Cruiser (he doesn't fly) right before a week off, as NBC defers to the World Series.

'Republican National Convention'
(10PM, ABC, CBS, NBC)
Now that both major party presidential contenders and their potential veeps are set ... it's on like Donkey Kong, as Peyton Manning says in that Oreo commercial we love.

But first, John McCain has to make it official tonight, as he accepts the Republican party bid for himself and his Tina Fey-lookalike running mate Sarah Palin.

McCain's speech wraps up the RNC in St. Paul, meaning both Team Obama/Biden and Team McCain/Palin can now focus all their energies on the two-month race to the White House. May the best men -- or co-ed team -- win.

Keith Olbermann has a new gig.

Or should I say "another gig," as he'll still be host of MSNBC's Countdown. But he's going to add a co-hosting position on NBC's Football Night In America, the pre-game show that airs at 7pm on Sunday nights before the NFL game that NBC telecasts.

Olbermann has a long history in TV sports, having hosted ESPN's SportsCenter with Dan Patrick years ago (he was one of the models for the characters on Sports Night) and his own show on FOX Sports Network that was good but didn't last too long. This will be his first job in network sports in several years, other than what he does on Dan Patrick's radio show. Olbermann will join Bob Costas, Cris Collinsworth, Jerome Bettis, and Tiki Barber, who started on NBC this morning.

[via TV Newser]

No Sunday Night Football this week on NBC due to the World Series (Go Tigers! Stupid Yankees!). So, in its place the network will be airing a mini Heroes marathon.

The marathon will begin after Football Night in America. The three episodes that will be airing are "Don't Look Back", "One Giant Leap" and "Collision". The pilot episode, "Genesis", will not air that night. On Monday Heroes will air in its normal time slot with a new episode.

Heroes has been one of the bright spots in a schedule featuring expensive dramas with poor ratings. Earlier this month the show was picked up for the entire season. I'm guessing that this marathon is to give viewers unfamiliar with the show a chance to see what it has.

ABC won the Sunday ratings battle last night, with Desperate Housewives the number one show. NBC was second, thanks to Sunday Night Football, while CBS was third, FOX fourth, and The CW fifth. Everybody Hates Chris was down from it's debut last year (though better than Reba did on The WB in the same time slot last season). In fact, all of The CW's shows were down.

One thing that irks me: the 15 minute overtime period for the football game on CBS around 7pm (which delayed the start of 60 Minutes) was the second highest rated show of the night. They actually count the 15 minute overtime period of a football game as a separate show? Why not do it by the entire game itself? They also do this with Monday Night RAW. Both hours of the two hour show will be in the top 10 cable shows for the week, counted separately. How do they judge this? Why isn't 24's or Grey's Anatomy second half hour counted as a separate show too? Bah.

I guess I could just devote my evenings to MyNetworkTV's telenovas but that would be too easy. From the NFL, to New Caprica, Star's Hollow, the Sunset strip, Rockefeller Plaza, and west Baltimore, here's where I expect to park my butt this fall season:

Sunday
5:15 pm (West Coast) Sunday Night Football (NBC). John Madden.

10 pm The Wire (HBO). The best ... blah blah blah, etc. (Actually, I'll most likely catch these earlier in the week On Demand.)