“In its glory days, the show made television come alive.” Even as the glory was slipping away, the show was still must-see TV. “ Monday Night Football delivered a weekly burst of spontaneous, unpredictable entertainment that stood out amid the droning blandness of prime time,” wrote Marc Gunther and Bill Carter in their great book Monday Night Mayhem. Howard Cosell’s halftime highlights were so iconic that ESPN’s Chris Berman built a following for his halftime highlights just by imitating Cosell. Monday Night Football signed on in September 1970 and featured colorful loudmouth Howard Cosell and lovable drunk Don Meredith in the booth alongside Frank Gifford, making for a trio that was alternately entertaining and infuriating. If you grew up in the Seventies or even the Eighties, those three words meant something special. The NFL created a new showcase for ESPN called Sunday Night Football.īut the Worldwide Leader wanted to lead, so it forked over hundreds of millions of dollars more for the rights to the most storied franchise in sports - Monday Night Football. ESPN acquired Major League Baseball games and NBA games and college bowl games. Back then, the “Worldwide Leader in Sports” was in the midst of its campaign for total domination of the sports audience so that Disney could charge top dollar to cable operators.
#Monday night football hosts tv
I remember what a sad moment it was in 2005 when the NFL announced that Monday Night Football, one of the greatest TV shows of my childhood, would be leaving ABC for the confines of ESPN. Namely, the death of cable, or at least the death of ESPN as a premium cable brand. Primetime football makes for good filler. But like so many other things happening in “these unprecedented times” (another nonsense phrase), COVID is merely accelerating a trend that was underway before the pandemic. ABC, like every broadcast network, is scrambling to plug scheduling holes created by the impact of COVID on TV show production. 7 were also broadcast on ABC.Įxecutives at Disney - which owns both ABC and ESPN - are doing this for purely practical reasons. Earlier this season, Monday night games on Sept.
#Monday night football hosts free
The venerable NFL showcase Monday Night Football is airing on free television for the third time in this year that is, as they say, “like no other.” (What a meaningless phrase - have we ever had a year that was exactly like some earlier year?) Monday’s matchup between the Buffalo Bills and New England Patriots will simulcast on both ABC and its usual home on cable’s ESPN. Something strange has been going on this football season, and even if you are not a football watcher there is reason to know about it.
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