We went into the 7:00 p.m. EDT hour with an open mind, even though we were pre-disposed to embracing ESPN’s new-old Primetime show and finding more reasons not to like Football Night in America.

So we pulled both networks up on the split screen and hopped back and forth until we decided that we have a preference.

It was/is Football Night.

The difference is that NBC has extended highlights, and ESPN didn’t have many — if any.

The content on ESPN was solid, but we can get analysis and other stuff in plenty of places, and at plenty of times.  At 7:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday, we want one thing.

Highlights.   

The lack of the same on ESPN wasn’t the result of some production decision gone awry in Bristol; when NBC bought the Sunday night games, NBC also bought the right to do an exclusive Sunday evening highlight show.

We also liked the reunion of Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick, the former ESPN anchors who seamlessly handed the highlights packages back and forth with enthusiasm and humor, most of which was appropriate.  (Olbermann was poking a bit too much fun at Tom Brady’s blown ACL for our liking, and he impishly snuck in a couple of homages to his Countdown shtick.)

Our primary advice to NBC?  The show needs to show more highlights.

The thing that made Primetime so good was the fact that Chris Berman would narrate extensive, thorough clips of the game in an oft-breathless voice that made us think that each recorded play was happening in real time.  For folks whose can’t follow nine games at once even if they have the hardware in the house to do so, the evening highlights show is the only chance to get a semi-meaningful look at what happened in each game; we want something more than the highlights that will be played over and over again on SportsCenter the next day.

The problem remains that Football Night is cluttered up with stuff we don’t need or want, such as Cris Collinsworth, Jerome Bettis, and Tiki Barber periodically yukking it up.

Still, despite some flaws, it’ll be the preferred destination.

Hopefully, ESPN’s effort to draw eyeballs away from NBC will prompt the peacock network to continue to try to come up with ways to improve the effort.

The best place to start is more highlights.