Disney Moves "Monday Night Football" to ESPN from ABC

When the NFL announced that it would show football games on Monday nights back in 1970, some thought it was a silly idea. Football was a week-end thing. Now, fully grown football fans can't remember when ABC didn't have a football game on Monday night. After this coming season, they may have to get used to the idea. The Walt Disney Company, which owns both ABC and cable sports channel ESPN, has decided that its contract with the NFL for Monday games will go to the cable network.

George Bodenheimer, who is president of both ESPN and ABC Sports, said, "From the Disney perspective, it was a smart move for ABC by moving out of football and having ESPN move into Monday nights." ESPN already carries games on Sunday night, for which it posts a profit by holding costs down. It does so by getting the cable companies that carry ESPN to pay for the content. And it is this profitability that sparked the changes.

ABC has been losing money for Disney for years. While is has a couple of hits on its hands ("Lost" and "Desperate Housewives"), it has been unable to turn a football profits on Monday nights. Sources say that the $550 million that the network paid this year for rights to the games brought about a loss of $150 million despite ranking ninth among prime time viewing for the 2004-05 season. Getting out of football means finding new programming for Mondays. And while it may not get the same ratings, the new shows won't have the high costs to air. And ESPN, which will pay the NFL about $1.1 billion, has all those cable companies to help with the much larger bill.

Meanwhile, the NFL has made sure that local markets still get the games on free TV. That means that in a game between Cincinnati and Detroit, fans in Ohio and Michigan could see the game on their local stations on Monday nights. The rest of the non-cable/satellite country is out of luck. Football fans in Oregon, Kentucky and Mississippi won't get a Monday night game without a converter box on top of their set. This is a gift to sports bars across the country, but for the quarter the third of the nation that doesn't have cable or satellite, it's a bad deal. However, the NFL has seen fit to deny the nation's second largest city, LA, a franchise for years, so one suspects a lack of concern in that area.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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