Fox will formally announce Wednesday that it will allow its Los Angeles-based NFL studio analysts —Terry Bradshaw, Jimmy Johnson, Howie Long and Michael Strahan— to chime in on live NFL game coverage as if they were alongside the regular Fox announcers in stadium TV booths.

Calling games without being at games is hardly unprecedented. Announcers often call international sports action off TV monitors rather than traveling to overseas events. And announcers at stadiums often largely focus on what they see off their own TV monitors to make sure they talk about what viewers are seeing — and avoid what they aren't. And sometimes studio types — such as Cris Collinsworth when he was a studio analyst at NBC— have had audio cameos on game coverage.

But the idea of regularly using a sort of virtual three-man booth, where studio-bound analysts watching TV are mixed in with various on-site voices, will be a new wrinkle for NFL TV coverage.

Fox Sports President Eric Shanks suggests there's more involved than just improving the studio crew's productivity: "This is definitely not meant to be an interview segment dropped into a game. It's meant to get a different analyst's perspective."

Initially, Fox will schedule at least one drop-in each week — "although ideally, you'd like to be able to take any of the guys into games at any time," Shanks says — and will start Sunday with Johnson focusing on the San Francisco 49ers-Seattle Seahawks game and joining the broadcast in the second half. How long Johnson will stay with the regular game broadcast, Shanks says, "is going to be a feel thing."

The big idea, Shanks says, is for studio analysts to be able to disagree on-air with the regular game analysts or point out something the game-callers are missing. And it will come as Fox had already announced it would tinker with standard game coverage by having ex-NFL officiating supervisor Mike Pereira dropping into game broadcasts when needed to explain rules.

So while Fox game announcers won't literally have anybody looking over their shoulders, it will probably feel like it.