"Turn Out the Lights" - The end of Monday Night Football on ABC

http://www.boston.com/sports/football/articles/2005/12/26/turn_out_the_lights/

Turn out the lights

The party's over for 'Monday Night Football' on ABC after a 36-year run as the show that became a part of pop culture moves to ESPN in 2006

By Bob Hohler, Globe Staff | December 26, 2005

A casket bearing the bombastic pundit who revolutionized television sports broadcasting and helped alter American pop culture with his provocative role on ABC's ''Monday Night Football" rests in a New York cemetery beneath a headstone etched with a passage from the poem, ''Ode to a Nightingale."

''My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense," reads Howard Cosell's epitaph.

Cosell recited the line during a ''Monday Night Football" game 25 years ago as he broke the news of John Lennon's murder and helped the nation confront its grief.

Sometime late tonight, ABC's ''Monday Night Football" also shall pass. After 36 seasons as one of the brightest stars in the galaxy of sports broadcasting -- a reign rich in innovation, inanity, and indelible memories -- the second-longest-running program in prime-time history will expire moments after the scoreboard clock at Giants Stadium runs out on a game between the Patriots and New York Jets.

Cause of death: Sagging ratings, financial losses, and a drowsy numbness that has seeped into the broadcast since Cosell's heyday in the announcer's booth with Frank Gifford and ''Dandy" Don Meredith. The program, eclipsed in prime-time longevity only by CBS's ''60 Minutes," is scheduled to begin a new incarnation next year before a smaller audience on ESPN.

''It was an event that defined a country's culture," said former Patriot Russ Francis, whose fame the Monday night broadcast wildly enhanced. ''Wherever I go in the world -- Morocco, Korea, Germany -- when people find out I played American football, they say, 'Monday Night Football.' It will be sad to see it go."

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This will further reduce its ratings, finally killing it off.

I don't think the ESPN Sunday Night Football is all that great either. So I am having trouble visualizing how ESPN can make MNF better.

Why couldn't this have been a 4 year contract to see if this thing would actually fly on cable?

I bet MNF will be back on one of the majors before that 8 years is out?

Monday Night Football was an absolute godsend, when I was in junior high I could watch (and care about) just about any game on Monday Night. In fact it was often better than watching your own team--because the frustration factor wasn't so high!

Now with the avalanche of sports available on an almost round the clock basis MNF just doesn't stand out as much as it once did. Plus it seems to me that there are an awful lot more dud games.

RIP MNF

I won't miss Al Michaels at all, however.

I've never heard a man so consistently stupid

That players play better on grass because they get more oxygen than they do on artificial turf?

One of my favorite Madden-isms.

game, and in the end, if the other team scores more points than you do, they win!

Too much fat on the brain for little Johnny. MNF has been an afterthought for me for years now. It hasn't fit into my viewing at all. I'd see college football on Saturday, NFL on Sundays. By the time Monday night comes around I'm busy with the work week.

Just don't ask him about Brazilians

FOOTBALL!




FOOTBALL!!!!!

I'm just saying!

times out of ten anymore.

:puke:

Never passes an opportunity to tag something bad as "Clintonesque." I don't watch MNF as much because of him.

At least Madden was being stupid about football. Michaels was just being plain stupid. HE killed MNF.

I LIKE John Madden!!!

He won't fly, and likes Turducdken.

My kind of guy.

Redstone

and be replaced with the new.

Change is the only constant in the universe.

Now, if they got Stephen Hawking, Bob Newhart, and Noam Chomsky to do the show - I'd watch it.

I would record and rewatch it every week.

And what the hell, let's add Twyla Tharp to the mix as well. It's time for a woman to be on the show, and what better addition to the roles than an intelligent professional avante-garde choregrapher?

Maybe the advice of a choreographer would rub off on some of the worst teams. They could closely study her moves and actually learn how to apply them to a decent game!

First, they pick the games way too early in the season. There should have been some contingency plan that the best games of the week be moved to Monday night (if feasible). I love my Eagles but trust me, no one wanted to watch them by midseason. Seeing the Seahawks blow them off 42-0 was just ugh.

Second, we work on Tuesday mornings. As someone who did want to watch the Eagles even after mid-season, I can say I never watched any of their MNF games because it was just too fricking late. We have 4 different timezones, why not setup MNF so there would be an East Coast and a West Coast Game. Both games would start at 8pm (One EST and the other PST) and the other coast could watch that second game if they switched over to ESPN. Staying up til 1am for a game isn't anything that many of us can do and hence I quit watching MNF ages ago.

was that they lost the highlights. To me, that was MNF, the halftime show. Of course, that was before highlights were all over ESPN, but unless one of the networks NBC or CBS had a double-header, we had not seen very much from the other games, especially the later ones. I used to stay up late just to watch the half-time show, and truly, I think Howard's narration added to it, he made the games dramatic. MNF seems kinda lame without it, but probably highlights got too expensive with ESPN competition.

The highlights were a huge appeal. Now with that idiot Berman and ESPN you see them all a thousand times before Monday even gets here.

announcers from ESPN. I personally like Joe Theismann but it's annoying to try to watch the show and have to listen to him, Patrick and Maguire try to outdo each other. With the help of seemingly constant commercial breaks and the additional annoyance of Suzi Kolber on the sidelines, the fourth pea from the same pod, they have cured me of my addiction to Sunday night football.

Those three clowns on Sunday Night ESPN are by far the most annoying broadcast team on TV or radio. The petty bickering and one-upsmanship completely obscure what little enjoyment might be gleaned from the game.

Of course, to me the NFL has become considerably boring over the years. Can't quite say why, except to note that somehow it's less exciting. I derive more enjoyment from watching a couple of second tier college teams than I do a battle of division leaders in the NFL.

Go figure.

lost them a lot of longtime viewers and many, like myself, never came back after he left. I have no idea in hell what the ABC brass might have thought that a dickhead like Miller could have added to a primetime football telecast. I used to watch regularly until they added that shit-for-brains and since that time only occasionally. Having him on there seems to have inspired Michaels to bring his political views out of the closet and I just can't bear to watch. I'm glad it's gone if they had to keep it that way.

Remember ABC Monday Night Baseball? No, didn't think so.

at College. Me-the only Joe Willie fan in the room...did I take a beating!:banghead: :spank:

;)

;)

and the Olympics it all went downhill from there...so Football is the last nail in their coffin.

Well..they still have Sunday with Stephanopoulis...that should hold them for awhile. How much payola do you think they get to have him and his shill panel? The USA Disinformation Machine has a huge budget and Karen Huge probably doles out substantially to the Neworks who toe her huge size 12 shoes....

I think it's sad about ABC...really...with the Football but it's the death to all traditions these days. We gotta learn to live with it. Most folks won't really give a shit, when it comes down to it...will they?

I remember fondly the excitement of going to a Monday Night Football game growing up in Miami. When I was little I remember getting home from school and being told to take a nap because my dad was taking my brother and I to the Dolphins night game at the Orange Bowl and being too excited to get a bit of sleep. Then going to the game... talk about excitement. It helped that it was the 70s and the team was the Dolphins, but the Monday night games were the best.

I guess they'll continue on ESPN, but I don't think they'll have the same buzz.

Even I got bored...:boring:

31-21

And Vinny Testsverde and Doug Flutie played in both games.

Because I get out of work at 7pm PST. That's really annoying.

I disliked Al Michaels because of his pro-GOPologist views, but Madden was cool.

Only 97 days until April 2, 2006, when the king of all sports, baseball, starts again.