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Monday Night Football: Difference between revisions
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''Monday Night Football'' is a [[Long Runner|long-running]] weekly broadcast of NFL ([[American Football]]) games. Debuting in 1970 on [[ABC]], the program was conceived as both an answer to Major League Baseball's ''Game of the Week'' (and the NHL's ''[[Hockey Night in Canada]]'') and a showcase for the best teams in the NFL, as the league traditionally uses the coveted ''Monday Night'' slot to spotlight matches between high caliber teams.
There were some Monday night games on [[CBS]] in the late 1960s as a sort of test run of the concept, but they were not played every week. Those games are not considered part of the series as such.
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Sadly, things changed when in 2005 when [[Walt Disney|Disney]] (who by that time owned both ABC and ESPN) decided that declining ratings (exacerbated by the popularity of pro wrestling's ''[[WCW]] Monday Nitro'' and ''[[WWE|WWF]] [[WWE Raw|Monday Night Raw]]'') and escalating TV contracts no longer made the series profitable enough for ABC to keep. A large part of the problem was that competitive balance had become a problem for the schedule makers as the top teams from the previous season might no longer be so the next season. This resulted in late-season match-ups that were clunkers because one or the other of the teams were no longer a playoff contender, making the Monday night game less appealing to a mass audience. ABC also ended up with a [[Friday Night Death Slot|death slot]] before the game after ''[[MacGyver]]'' was canceled as no show could recapture the perfect chemistry of Richard Dean Anderson's iconic character leading into ''MNF'', and as many local affiliates figured that out and pre-empted whatever was before the game with a local football show, was stuck airing ''20/20 Downtown'' to complete viewer apathy.
ABC, among other entities, tried to get the NFL to agree to a concept that would eventually become known as "flex scheduling," which would be invoked when needed to replace a poor match-up with a better one. The idea was deemed impractical because of the logistics involved in moving a Sunday afternoon game to Monday night.
As part of that year's reshuffling of the NFL TV contracts, Disney decided to bid on the MNF contract but put the games on ESPN. With subscription fees in addition to regular adversiting income, ESPN could bid more for the contract than ABC and still maintain profitability. The move of the top rated, icon show to cable angered many fans but NBC bid on the now-vacant Sunday night package. The Sunday night game was now considered the marquee game of the week and flex scheduling was put into place for this package as it's much easier to move a game 3 1/2 to 6 1/2 hours later in the day than a day-and-a-half later. Likewise, ''MNF'' ended up taking the games that were on the old Sunday night contract. Disney decided not to bid on the Sunday night package due to the then-dominance of ''[[Desperate Housewives]]'' on Sunday nights at the time, though once that show ends it looks like it may have been an error in judgment as every network is strong on that evening, while NBC easily wins the evening. (On the other hand, ABC's Monday Night lineup of ''[[Dancing With the Stars]]'' and ''[[Castle]]'' has done extremely well for itself, even against ''MNF'', while NBC is now stuck with a post-Super Bowl lineup on Sunday nights which generally trails the other networks.)
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* ESPN and ESPN2 (2006-present, as well as a couple of one-off '90s games)
* [[NBC]] (first game of Christmas 2006 doubleheader)
* [[
=== Monday Night Football contains examples of the following tropes: ===
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