Monday Night Football

Monday Night Football scheduling[edit]

From 1970 to 1997, ABC's Monday Night Football coverage began at 9 p.m. Eastern Time, with game kickoff typically occurring at seven minutes past the hour. Coverage was moved one hour earlier to 8 p.m. Eastern Time in 1998, with a pre-game show titled Monday Night Blast, hosted by Chris Berman from the ESPN Zone restaurant in Baltimore preceding the start of the game at 8:20 p.m. This was done mainly to address ABC's inability to find a suitable 8 p.m. lead-in program for MNF since MacGyver ended its run in 1992 (not even two other series from MacGyver's production company Paramount Television – The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and The Marshal – saw success, despite the former's ties to Paramount's Indiana Jones film series), and to allow stations to start their late local newscasts nearer to their regular times. Poor ratings caused this experiment to be dropped after one season, with MNF once again moving to 9 p.m. in 1999, though in many NFL markets, the 8 p.m. (Eastern Time) hour from 1999 to 2006 was replaced by affiliates with locally produced and programmed sports discussion and coaches shows, with ABC programming in that hour moved to late night or weekend slots; by the end of the ABC run, the 8 p.m. time-slot was filled with either news magazines and short-lived reality television programs which failed to make any ratings headways due to affiliate pre-emptions.


From 1970 to 1995, Fisher Broadcasting's ABC affiliates in Seattle (KOMO-TV) and Portland (KATU) aired MNF games on a one-hour tape delay starting at 7 p.m. Pacific Time (games normally started in the Pacific Time Zone at 6 p.m., corresponding to 9 p.m. Eastern) in order to accommodate local newscasts (unless the Seattle Seahawks were playing, in which case the game was shown live). The practice, long opposed by viewers and ABC, ended in 1996. KOMO then tried to accommodate having to air its local newscasts earlier than its local station competitors by marketing it as KOMO 4 News Primetime, touting it as a way to watch the news at a more convenient time than during evening rush hour. Additionally, this practice was done in Hawaii, where Honolulu ABC affiliate KITV delayed the game until 7 p.m. Hawaii-Aleutian Time. Thus, the game, which was broadcast live on local radio starting at 3 or 4 p.m., was almost over before it aired on television. In the case of Guam, KTGM, the ABC affiliate in that U.S. territory, aired MNF live on Tuesdays at 11 am-2:30 pm as Guam is a day ahead of the United States due to being located on the other side of International Date Line.


The demand to broadcast Monday Night Football games live across the United States over ABC was difficult to reconcile with other prime-time programming, which is usually set to begin at a certain local time regardless of time zone. On the East Coast, with MNF beginning at 9 p.m. Eastern Time, there was an hour of primetime in which to schedule regular programming. However, on the West Coast, the games lasted from 6 to 9:30 p.m. Pacific Time (or in the case of Seattle and Portland from 1970 to 1995, 7 to 10:30 p.m.), leaving little or no time for additional network programming on Monday. As a result, network programs scheduled for prime time on the East Coast were broadcast at various hours on the West Coast. Most affiliates pushed the network shows to immediately after the game; however, Los Angeles owned-and-operated station KABC-TV postponed them until 10 p.m. from at least the mid-1990s until 2005 to show trivia contests and other sports shows produced locally (the longest-tenured such show was Monday Night Live, hosted by sports anchor Todd Donoho). Meanwhile, KOMO, one of the stations that tape delayed MNF in most cases, broadcast new episodes of the sitcom Coach on Saturday afternoons (usually reserved, coincidentally enough, for college football telecasts; much of the series took place on a fictional college campus). Except for Seattle and Portland from 1970 to 1995, ABC World News Tonight was routinely preempted on most West Coast affiliates, though the ABC network-owned stations (e.g. Los Angeles) aired the program earlier in the afternoon.


Since ESPN took over the coverage in 2006, games normally had a kickoff time of 8:30 p.m. Eastern, which was later changed to 8:15 p.m. Eastern in 2018. However, when ESPN aired a doubleheader during the first week of the season until 2021, the games respectively started at 7 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. Eastern.


When ESPN took over MNF in 2006, the NFL mandated that games needed to be simulcast on a local station in each team's home market. Although they were officially determined via a syndication-like process, in most cases these local stations were ABC affiliates. This became a problem when ABC aired Dancing with the Stars on Monday nights. Whenever an ABC affiliate pre-empted the show to air the NFL, these stations would then broadcast Dancing with the Stars on tape delay immediately after their late-evening local newscasts, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and Nightline. This resulted in the program's telephone and Internet voting coordinators keeping a late-night voting window open for the market(s) where Dancing with the Stars was pre-empted.


In some cases, the Dancing with the Stars was moved to a sister station of the ABC affiliate to air live instead (for example, until 2011 in the Minneapolis–St. Paul market, when NBC affiliate KARE took over as the local broadcaster of MNF games if the Minnesota Vikings were playing a game being simulcast on local ABC affiliate KSTP-TV, sister independent station KSTC-TV aired DWTS live). In 2016, for the opening week Monday night game (the second in a doubleheader) between the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers, the ABC-owned stations in both markets (KABC-TV and KGO-TV) would broadcast World News Tonight and DWTS in their live Eastern Time Zone slots, thus airing at 3:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. PT respectively (the WNT simulcast was later made permanent on both stations every weekday for ratings purposes).


In 2022, when ABC began airing select exclusive MNF telecasts, Dancing with the Stars was moved to Disney+ for at least that season.^[10] ABC then scheduled Bachelor in Paradise and other programming on Monday nights instead, which were then preempted nationally during those weeks when the network aired its exclusive MNF games.^[83] In May 2023, ABC announced that Dancing with the Stars would be moved back to ABC on Monday nights, and would thus again cause the same local market conflict during those weeks when MNF is nationally only on ESPN, in August, as a result of the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes, ABC announced that its Monday and Tuesday schedules were getting revised, with Dancing With the Stars scheduled to air on Tuesdays, once again, therefore resolving the conflict for this season.^[84][85][86] Eventually, because of the strikes, ABC picked up the entire season of MNF, in addition to their four exclusive games, to fill their Monday schedule in the fall. This wound up being the first full season of MNF to air on ABC in any capacity since 2005.