Clock Runs Out on ABC’s ‘Monday Night Football’
By HAL BOCK
From its inception, ABC’s “Monday Night Football” was a risky experiment that defied American sports tradition. From Howard Cosell’s pontification to Don Meredith’s down-home songs to Dennis Miller’s arcane analogies, it dominated TV viewing in homes and bars across the nation.
The broadcast was a hodgepodge of personalities and indelible images, defining moments and follies, eye-popping on-the-field performances and the kind of impromptu silliness that only sheer boredom can create.
In short, it was exactly what ABC Sports boss Roone Arledge hoped it would be.
It was theater.
Television sports reaches the end of one era and the beginning of another Monday night when ABC signs off on its prime-time weeknight coverage of the NFL for the final time and hands off to sister network ESPN.
The 555th Monday night game on the network is itself of little consequence: The dismal New York Jets play the New England Patriots, who already are playoff bound but have no chance to improve their position.
The series switches networks next season, when ESPN begins paying $1.1 billion per year for Monday night rights in an eight-year deal.
It doesn’t say whether John Madden will follow it to ESPN. Al Michaels will (yay!). The bitch about this is that if you don’t have cable or dish television, you are SOL.
Turn out the lights, the party’s over…Long live Cosell!