"Monday Night Football," the second-longest-running program on prime- time broadcast television, will leave ABC for ESPN at the start of the 2006 season in an eight-year deal worth a reported $1.1 billion a year.
"Certainly this is a milestone in the history of sports TV," George Bodenheimer, the president of both ESPN and ABC Sports, said in a conference call.
The NFL's Sunday night games will also migrate, going from ESPN to NBC, a network that has been without NFL football since 1997. The six-year contract will also get the network the rights to Super Bowls in 2009 and 2012.
ESPN and ABC are both part of the Walt Disney Co. The Hearst Corp., which owns The Chronicle, owns 20 percent of ESPN.
The 2005 season will mark Monday Night Football's 36th and final season on ABC, which began the Monday night franchise in 1970. Only the 37 seasons that "60 Minutes" has been on CBS tops the football showcase's run.
"The best thing to remember is that a great deal with the NFL is as good a deal as you can get in all of television," NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol said. In the past decade, NBC, which once had the NFL, major-league baseball and the National Basketball Association, had stopped carrying those sports, saying, in essence, that they weren't worth the rights fees.
Sources told the Associated Press that NBC will pay the NFL $600 million per season to carry the Sunday night games, approximately what ESPN has been paying for the Sunday night franchise in an eight-year deal that ends after the 2005 season.
Meanwhile, sources told the Associated Press that ESPN will pay $1.1 billion a year through its contract, basically double what ABC has paid the league in the current eight-year pact. ESPN is better able than ABC to absorb those fees because it can generate ad revenue throughout its properties (including ESPN Radio, ESPN.com and ESPN the Magazine) and it gets subscriber fees from cable and satellite companies. ABC, which relies solely on ad revenue, reportedly has been losing $150 million per year with its Monday night package.
NBC's Sunday night coverage will begin with a one-hour pregame show at 4 p.m. Pacific time. The games will start at 5:15 p.m., 15 minutes earlier than they have on ESPN. ABC's Monday night telecasts have begun at 6 p.m. Pacific time, with kickoff 5 to 10 minutes later. When ESPN gets the games, the telecasts will begin at 5:30 p.m., with kickoff at 5:40.
Who will be in the announcing booth for ESPN come 2006 remains undetermined. Play-by-play man Al Michaels and analyst John Madden have called Monday night games the past three seasons. ESPN's longtime Sunday night crew consists of play-by-play man Mike Patrick and analysts Paul Maguire and Joe Theismann.
"In 2006, make no mistake about it, the best commentary team available will be on the air," said Mark Shapiro, ESPN executive vice president. He said the 2006 team could be either of the current ABC or ESPN crews, could be a mixture of the two or could include announcers who aren't part of ABC's or ESPN's NFL broadcasting teams.
Both Bodenheimer and Shapiro said they will wait for some time before deciding on the Monday night broadcast team.
Attempts to reach Madden, the Raiders' head coach from 1969 to 1978, were unsuccessful.
One major question is why would the NFL agree to move its signature game each week from broadcast television to cable?
That's the way much of sports television is going these days. Several first-round baseball playoff games are on ESPN. The NBA's conference finals are on TNT and ESPN.
"This is the next logical, evolutionary step for 'Monday Night Football,' " Shapiro said. "... It makes sense to put it where sports fans go first, and that's ESPN. ... People don't see it as cable; they see it as ESPN."
Moreover, Sunday night is the most-watched night in television. "In the current media environment," NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said in a statement, "Sunday is now the better night for our prime-time broadcast package."
"Desperate Housewives" has given ABC an anchor program for Sunday night, and though Disney had until Oct. 31 to complete its deals with the NFL, Disney apparently was unwilling or unable to reach a Sunday night agreement with the NFL. Disney relinquished its rights Friday morning. NBC then worked out its contract with the league.
NBC will get the league's opening game on a Thursday night, and the network also gets the benefit of "flexible scheduling" for the final seven weeks of the season. The NFL will try to avoid having matchups between also- ran teams in its prime-time telecasts; apparently the league figures it is easier on fans and schedule-makers to move the time of, say, a Sunday afternoon game to the evening, than it would be to move a Sunday game to Monday.
Like the current format for Sunday night games on ESPN, over-the-air affiliates in the markets of the teams playing on ESPN's Monday night games will simulcast ESPN's coverage. For the Bay Area, that likely means KGO (Channel 7) or KTVU (Channel 2) will have Monday night telecasts if the 49ers or Raiders are playing.
<HR>The NFL on TV
The new lineup, beginning in the 2006 season:
-- ESPN -- Monday night games.
-- NBC -- Sunday night games.
-- Fox -- All other NFC games, including interconference games where the NFC team is the visitor. -- CBS -- All other AFC games, including interconference games where the AFC team is the visitor.
SF Gate.com
