"Are you ready for some football? ESPN?"
Starting in 2006 Monday Night Football, an American institution as revered as getting really drunk on Marathon Monday, will be moving to cable. The first prime time football telecast has been on ABC for the past 35 years, but will now be moving laterally within parent company Disney to ESPN.
The move contractually allowed NBC back into the football picture for the first time since 1997. They will be carrying the Sunday night games at a price of $600 million per season as well as the 2009 and 2012 Super Bowls. As a result ABC will now be the only major network with no football coverage, but they will have the Deperate Housewives re-runs to keep them warm all winter long.
Ideally these changes won't really mean much. Local stations will be allowed to air the Monday night games on free affiliates when the local team is playing so that at least the fans in the immediate area will be able to catch their teams even without cable.
One positive change for most fans is the earlier start times, kickoff of the Sunday night game will now be at 8:15 and the Monday game will be at 8:40 following an in stadium Monday Night Countdown from 7:30. One of the biggest criticisms of MNF has been its post 9:00 kickoff, which has the games ending at midnight or later given the substantial commercial interruption.
The major issue here for me is the announcers. Al Michaels is the best in the business and his voice is synonymous with MNF to my generation as Howard Cossell's voice is to the prior generation. If Disney is thinking with their big heads they will keep Michaels, dump John "I have Steve McNair's cock permanently lodged against my esophogus" Madden, and bring 2/3 of the ESPN Sunday Night team (i.e. NOT Theisman) in as his color guys. That won't happen however, it will either be Madden and Michaels, or Mike Patrick, Theisman, and that other guy.
No official announcement has been made about the broadcasters.
Commercial rights may be the only aspect adversely affected by this move. People are still going to have parties, bars are still going to do MNF promotions with annoyingly dumb Miller Lite girls NOT giving me free footballs. It will just all be on cable, which means fewer people will get to watch, which means advertisers will not want to pony up as many millions for a 20 second spot as they would on a major free network. Don't get me wrong, the ratings for this are still going to be huge, and long run this will help MNF, but immediately the numbers are going to look smaller than the ABC numbers because your casual fan without cable isn't going to rearrange his life and subscribe to Comcast at $50 a month just to see MNF when he gets free Sunday and Sunday night games.
Without a doubt the greatest accomplishment of this deal is the clause which allows late season games to be shuffled around to give the Sunday night telecasts the best games. So, if all of a sudden the week 15 Dolphins v. Browns matchup has playoff implications it could get moved from Sunday afternoon at 1:00 to nationwide coverage at 8:15, which basically means we won't be stuck watching the Dolphins and Browns play ever. An odd twist on this is that the NFL is saying, at least officially, that their marquee game of the week is the Sunday night game and that the Monday night game is their second priority. This is strange because the NFL already has Sundays by the proverbial jewels, why would they waste their top game when people are already watching? Maybe they are thinking that people, after watching football all day, need an intriguing game to keep their attention, and that the institution of MNF makes up for the status or meaning of the game.
Paul Tagliabue said Monday that he also hoped to nationally syndicate some Thursday and Saturday night games as well. Those games are ideally slated for NBC as well but according to ESPN.com they may end up on NFL Network, which would no doubt be a complete disaster for the commish and this experiment. I haven't seen the NFL Network since I stopped working a bar with a satellite dish, and I can't name a single person who has it at their house.
Whatever they do, ESPN better bring along Hank Williams (see above) to get me ready for some football...
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