Is this the last year for Monday night football ?

Monday Night Football will move to ESPN next season. NBC will take over the Sunday night games from ESPN.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63538-2005Apr18.html

 

Monday Night Football has obviously gone away from its original concept that primetime NFL would work if it were entertaining by the broadcasters, and not just objective announcing that sticks to football/sports and stays with the Disney-like motto, "Say something good about somebody or say nothing at all about them."

It's not really unique any more, as no game commentaries are entertaining, but all telecasts now depend on graphics and zooming in on sideline conflicts, for examples, to be more than sports. It seems national networks are fading and eventually all networks/channels are going to be specialized, not just for sports, classic movies, and news, but maybe even for comedy, drama, talk shows, et al, eventually. No one should be surprised that MNF is leaving ABC, because really they are just going to the sports channel of ABC as one of these steps.

 

Monday Night Football on ESPN won't be worth watching if it's the trio of Mike Patrick, Joe Theisman, and... uh... and..., the other guy I can't stand to listen to. I tried to watch the Sunday night Bungles-Jags game and it was so painful. I'd rather stick a fork in my ear than listen to those guys.

 

In many cases, it's possible to watch the game and listen to it on the radio.

MNF has consistently drawn high ratings. I found it hard to believe NBC gave up that plum for SNF which draws high ratings only when it's a "big" game between last year's contenders, or, later in the season, this year's contenders. Then, I remembered:

1.) Hey, it's NBC, the network of such blockbusters as "Joey" and "Inconceivable".(Not even Angie Harmon could make a hot dog outta a dog...and they don't got enuff scents to drop "Joey".) Next, we'll be seeing they traded "Lawn Odor" to the Food Network for "The Barefoot Contessa".

2. ESPN isn't afraid to venture into new territory. I believe they scored an 8-point TD by scoring MNF. And if they got to, they'll have Chris Berman as commentator, with his colorful assortmant of nicks for players.

Now, if only they'd bring us more Aussie Footie...

 

First, NBC didn't have MNF. It wasn't a trade. NBC has been away from the NFL for about 10 years now when Fox and CBS won the Sunday bids. NBC is probably just trying to cash in on a big money producer (NFL).

As fro ESPN scoring big, it also isn't that big of a deal because ABC and ESPN are both owned by disney. So any money made is really just coming in from source B instead of source A.

I'm dissapointed because we can't afford ESPN right now (and I'm not sure it would be a good idea for me to have extra channels when I should be studying) so we're going to miss all of the MNF games.