NBC's Football Night in America, the show before the Sunday night game, will have a major change this season. Host Bob Costas is moving out of the New York studio and going on location to the game of the week. In a conference call with national media, NBC Sports & Olympics chairman Dick Ebersol said the plan is to allow game announcers Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth to join Costas in a discussion that will include "big news of the week, the news of the day, and if there are other major developments in the world of sports -- I stress major -- they'll get into that.''

With the show coming almost entirely from the studio in the past, some of the focus on the Sunday night game was lost. That should change with Costas on location.

"I think it's obvious that when you're at the scene of an event, you get a whole different feel,'' Costas said. "You get to be part of the atmosphere. You're talking about a specific event. And it isn't just any game; it is always one of the biggest and very often the obvious biggest marquee game of that particular Sunday.''

The rest of the show, which will include Dan Patrick, Keith Olbermann, Peter King and new additions Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison, still will come from the New York studio and include highlights from earlier games. Ebersol said highlights and news of the day will be a large focus of the show. The goal, it seems, is a better mix of covering what has happened and getting fans ready for what is about to happen.

"I think it's going to do tremendous things for the studio,'' Collinsworth said of Costas going on location. "We’ll handle a lot of the preliminary news of the day at the game site. It will allow the studio to really focus in on what happened that day in the games, because certainly that is enough of a challenge. I really like the changes. I think this is going to make the entire broadcast from 7 p.m. until midnight streamlined and efficient and a lot of fun to be a part of.''