After a successful four-year run in Washington, NBC's other owned-and-operated stations—at the time in New York City, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Chicago—added the program to their Sunday late-night schedules, and it was retitled as The George Michael Sports Machine.

Unlike newer sports-related programming, Sports Machine did not usually present commentary or criticism and focused almost purely on the highlights,[5] and, often toward the end of the show, an in-depth story about a particular athlete.

By the later years of Sports Machine, however, the rise of numerous specialty cable sports channels (notably ESPNews) and the expansion of Sunday evening local newscasts to either air an extended sportscast (an extra in common parlance) or a separate program to recap Sunday football and baseball action caused many stations to either drop the program or air it later in the night—issues made even worse in 2006, when NBC acquired the rights to Sunday Night Football, which in turn pushed late local news on most of the Sports Machine's affiliates even later.

After introducing each of the highlights, Michael would press a button which "activated" the "sports machine"—a large computer with several monitors attached to a videotape reel-to-reel—to play the clips.

Michael and the producers chose the computer motif mainly because high technology was fast coming into the American consciousness at the time of the show's debut.

Michael reasoned that he would not want his contract renewed at the expense of WRC-TV's sports staff, which was slated to be reduced under NBC Universal's network-wide, cost-reduction initiative.

Shortly after the end of the Sports Machine, Czarniak became a permanent part of TNT's NASCAR broadcasts as a pit reporter in addition to her duties at WRC.