The new broadcast agreement is out and there’s big changes in store. The most shocking aspect to me is that Monday Night Football is leaving network TV. this seems like a bad idea to me. I’m guessing that Madden and Michaels will be coming with, so no changes there, and for most of us with Cable/Satelite TV it’s no big deal, but there’s a certain status to being on the network.
They’ve been saying that about 70% of households have cable TV, and about another 15% on top of that have satelite leaving only a net loss of 15% coverage.
While that loss isn’t unrecoverable, does it seem wise to lose that? Ratings have been down some, I blame the idiotic scheduling and constant airplay of the media darling teams not any waning of interest. The logic seems to indicate that ABC (Disney) feels that they are sacrificing too much by carrying the NFL on a weeknight instead of showing reality TV and sitcoms. By moving it to the sister network on cable they are effectively doubling their oppotunity for viewership. Makes sense, but still MNF’s rating are going to drop in the end. The new 8:40 PM EST kickoff will help east coast viewership though, and pretty solid east/west compromise.
What might even have bigger ramifications is the move of Sunday Night Football to NBC. This is the opposite of the MNF issue, the networks are gaining football. The arguement here seems to be that the Sunday package is actually more valuable than the Monday one. Is the thought process (and ratings history?) that there’s more viewers to be had on a Monday than a Sunday for regular programming? Ergo, a network can afford to sacrifice a Sunday night but not a Monday night?
I’ve always felt that the Sunday Night game suffered a bit from football burnout. Most hardcore fans have already soaked up about 6 hours of football before the Sunday game even comes on. If it’s not a marquee matchup or it’s a blowout early, people tune it out. Thats less the case with MNF. If this is true I’d have to say that NBC is making a pretty big gamble. lets hope it doesn’t end up hurting NFL coverage and broadcasting.
Possibly the most positive occurance here is this…brace yourselves…No more McGuire, Patrick and Theisman! Can you hardly believe it?
Whats everyone’s thoughts?
Well, not really – ESPN’s paying nearly twice as much for MNF as NBC is paying for Sunday.
But the really big news is that NBC’s going to be able to schedule to good games in the second half of the season. One of the reasons for MNF’s ratings problems recently is that, because schedules are set in advance, after about Week 6 it all tends to be boring games between two teams who were good last year but aren’t this year. Or one of them is good and the other sucks. Either way, no one watches excpet hometowners. The NBC deal supposedly will allow NBC to reschedule games on Sunday to avoid this.
Where are you seeing this? The articles I’ve read, all from ESPN sources admittedly, have not reported the price for the MNF package. Based on the press release all indicators are that the NBC deal is the sweeter of the two, prefered scheduling, flexible game choice and the blessing from Tags. I’m wondering if the quote you saw which valed the ESPN/Disney corp deal included Playoff/Super Bowl/Pro Bowl packages as well.
ESPN is paying twice for ALL of its NFL rights. That includes MNF, NFL Primetime, NFL Draft coverage, NFL Films stuff. Using NFL logos on its various channels.
Still a lot of money, but not overly so. NBC is paying about $50 million a year more than ABC is now paying for MNF, and ABC is saying they are losing money hand over fist (like $100 million a year).
The interesting part is what does this mean for shows like Arrested Development (which I HOPE will be around in 2006)? Will they move because the key demographic will probably watch the big network football game?
ESPN Sunday Night Football has been mostly overlooked because they didn’t really have that great teams a lot of the time. With NBC’s preferred scheduling, that will definetly make the Sunday Night game stronger.
Why’d it have to go to NBC? NBC’s sports coverage uniformly sucks, and I don’t expect football to be an exception. Anyone else remember how bad it was before CBS got the NFL back?
Don’t worry too much about the 15% of the audience that will be lost. With rare exceptions, people who don’t have cable or satellite are a pretty undesirable demographic for advertisers. So Disney won’t care much whether ABC or ESPN gets the coveted male football viewer.
NBC gets an earlier start, which means at least a few of the games will actually end while it’s still Sunday night.
Do fans of Fox’s Sunday night lineup even watch football?
Sunday historically has a larger potential viewing audience than any othert night in the week.
YES!! An emphatic YES! All of my football fan friends will watch FOX’s Sunday Night stuff and switch to the game on ESPN during the commericals for the first hour.