Should ABC Cancel Monday Night Football?

Cafe Society
1

First of all…WOOHOO! Football season starts today!

Ok. Now that I have that out of my system, I was wondering if ABC Should cancel Monday Night Football and begin a “spinoff” of THURSDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL?

MNF has lost a lot of its appeal with Direct TV and the ESPN Sunday Night Game.

Ratings have declined and interest is waning a bit (some of this has to do with cable providing more choices. ALL of network tv is on the decline).

But some have bandied about the idea of the Monday to Thursday switch.

It would make the ABC game the BEGINNING of the football week as opposed to the end.

Parity in the NFL has made it impossible to schedule dynamic matchups a season in advance. When the schedule came out, a Miami vs. Green Bay game may have sounded like a blast. But with Ricky retiring to Amsterdam, a major injury to Brett Favre would make this game a turd bowl.

After five days of no NFL, would viewers be more excited to watch even if it was Detroit versus Arizona?

Thursday would be a logical solution, but it has its problems.

First amongst them is that Thursday is not Monday. Many fans have never known Mondays between September and December without the NFL. So there is a culutral concern.

Second, MNF would face stiffer competition on Thursday.

Other networks counter program on Mondays. No one would lay down on Thursday. ABC would face CSI, the Apprentice, and ER.

Thursday is the #2 day for total viewers, but would there be enough for three giants?

Would the move be cost effective? Would they gain more by moving to Thursday?

I’d be more likely to TV the Apprentice to watch the kickoff to the week’s football.

Heck, they could even have a pre-game show at 8/7 central.

I’d prefer Thursday to Monday.

Thoughts?

2

It’ll never happen. Players **hate ** playing on Thursday. There’s always complaints about losing days of rest/practice when teams travel to Detriot and Dallas on Thanksgiving.

3

I love this idea. Programming on Thursday tends to skew female anyway. TNF would do great up against whatever sitcoms NBC throws against it. PLus, I am always tired on Monday and I don’t think I’ve seen the end of a MNF game in a long time. I’d prefer the 8pm Eastern kickoff unless a west coast team was involved.

Of course, this would compete against the increasingly popular college games on Thursday night. Since ESPN and ABC are the same company, it won’t happen.

4

I’d like it.

Mondays, if I stay up till Midnight, I’m shot for 2 days.

I can pull a midnight shift on thursday, get up at 6:00 on Friday, and not sweat the sleep loss at all.

I wouldn’t say it would never happen. MNF football ratings have been dropping (a little better last year).

Also, to address what others said, sure there’s tons of big network programming on Thursdays right now, but there’s no reason NBC would just keep butting heads. Why wouldn’t they move “Must See TV” to Mondays? VERY highly rated shows come on Monday (Raymond, e.g.).

As for college footbal thursdays – this might be the bigger problem. But usually, it’s not a huge game, and now, they have college foots on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and at times this season, even Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m not joking. basically, there’s a glut of college foots. I don’t think they would be that worried about losing those 5-6 ratings if it meant getting MNF (TNF) back up into the 15s where it used to be. And where it was LAST year for the Thursday night game.

5

It would take some major concessions before the Players Association would agree to having teams play on Sunday and then on Thursday.

6

Well, it would sure increase office production on Tuesdays. Fridays are a mail-it-in day anyway, so less Tuesday hangovers = more productivity.

Or move the games up an hour.

7

I dunno. I watch half of the game on Monday because, to be frank, I don’t feel like being beat the next morning. That wouldn’t change for me if they moved it to Thursday. There’s a game on tonight. I’ll watch half of it. For me, it isn’t the Monday part, it is the Night part.

8

I agree with Khadaji: the chief turnoff of MNF is the “N,” not the “M.” When I lived in California, Monday Night Football was great–it started at 6, around the time I’d start making dinner, and would be over at the latest at 9:30, which left plenty of time to go out for a swift drink before getting home early enough not to feel half-asleep the next morning. Back here on the East Coast, I rarely get to see the end of a game without damaging effects to my Tuesday productivity.

I’d suggest canning the whole idea of a Thursday night or Monday night game anyway, but, if I had my choice, I’d go with Thursday night, or, at a pinch, a Monday night game that started at 8 ET/5 PT. Left-coasters are used to getting to the game late anyway–they’d manage. :stuck_out_tongue:

9

I can dig it, Khadaji, though with me I would stay up on Thursday knowing I’ll be able to rest the next day (meaning Saturday). And like Casey1505 said, Fridays tend to be a “phone it in” day at work anyway, or at least a lot more often than Tuesdays.

10

Football? You mean, where you sit in your living room and watch a bunch of other guys play a game? It’s just a fad. It’ll never catch on.

11

Not really a hijack, since it was mentioned in the op, but can someone explain this concept to me? What good does this do for the league in general?

12

Augh! As much as the idea of Thursday Night Football intrigues me, this would jack up my whole entire TV schedule and I would end up needing about 9 TiVo’s. Do you have any idea what this one-off Thursday night game is doing to me as it is? My friggin’ head would explode if I had to juggle like this every week.

Also … why do you think this?

We happen to subscribe to the NFL Sunday Ticket through DirecTV. We still don’t get the Sunday night game or the Monday night game (or any “special” night games, like tonight’s game, or the Thanksgiving Day games), and blackout restrictions apply to the other games. Although we are getting more football overall, we’ll still watch MNF, because we can’t get that game otherwise.

13

Well first off, the schedules aren’t really set a year in advance, they’re set some time after the Super Bowl. But what they do is take an intriguing matchup each week and assign it to Monday night, hoping that it would generate a large viewership. But things happen after the schedule is set (Ricky off the Amsterdam to smoke his weight in pot) that make those previously-good matchups real stinkers that no one is going to watch on Monday night.

14

Right, that part I got, but what is Parity in regards to the NFL?

15

There are very few sure things in the NFL now: Eddie George is slow, Rich Gannon is old, and Kurt Warner’s wife is scary. You can’t count on particular teams being dominant, and you can’t count on particular teams being crappy. As such, what looks like a good match-up now could turn out to be crap, due to the parity in the NFL. 10 years ago things were a little more certain.

16

I’m voting no on this one. Maybe it’s because I’m a younger guy, but I like the night game (even thought the matchups are a washout sometimes). I thought I heard a year or two ago that the NFL wanted to see if they could schedule two Monday night games and then air one, in the hopes of getting a better game. Don’t know what came of that. Between tradition and the college football on Thursday, I like Monday night better for football. It keeps the NFL week going a little longer. Games on Sunday and a game on Thursday would be choppy.

17

I simply meant people are so overloading on football that by the time Monday rolls around, they might be burntout.

But if it were the start of the week, they’d have had time to recharge your desire to see pro football.

Before cable and satellite made football available almost every night (college and pro), you basically were guaranteed 3 games before MNF (usually two at the same time and one solo on Sunday).

Now you get at least 4 (even without the Ticket).

Add this to all the hilight shows and NFL talk shows available on cable and you have room for burnout.

18

Will you marry me?

19

Ummm… I think you are forgetting that even if MNF ratings are in a downward trend, they are still excellent ratings overall (at least the last time I saw them discussed).

20

Right. Because the NFLPA has shown any ability to stand up to the owners on any subject. If the NFL wants it, the players will bend over and take it.