monday night nfl

Monday Night Football (MNF) is a live television broadcast of the National Football League. Originally airing on the ABC network from 1970 to 2005, Monday Night Football was the second longest running prime time show on American broadcast network television (after CBS' 60 Minutes) and one of the highest-rated, particularly among male viewers. ABC aired a total of 555 Monday night games.
Monday Night Football moved to the ESPN cable network in 2006, ending a 36-year run on ABC. ABC and ESPN are both owned by The Walt Disney Company.
Monday Night Football can also be seen in Canada on TSN and RIS, in most of Europe on NASN, on Five and Sky Sports in the UK and in some regions of the world outside the U.S. on ESPN International. A Spanish language version airs on ESPN Deportes in the U.S. and on ESPN International in Latin America.
Monday Night Football has enjoyed success throughout its 36-year run. The weekly game is popular not only with fans, but with players, as it guarantees a full national telecast of the game and puts both teams in the spotlight. Teams are selected for MNF games based partially on their success during the previous season, rewarding the best teams and biggest stars. Teams with large national fan bases such as the Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers, New England Patriots, Oakland Raiders, and Pittsburgh Steelers, among others, usually appear on MNF as well regardless of their previous season's record. Teams can make a maximum of three Monday night appearances per season.
Since 2003, to avoid any scheduling unfairness where a team may have five days between games and others six (or seven) before the first playoff game, there is no Monday night game during the final week of the regular season. From 2003 until 2005, one game was played on Thursday and another Monday under the Monday Night Football banner. Starting in 2006 when the series moved to cable, two games are played on the opening Monday night to capitalize on fan interest during "Kickoff Weekend". The necessity of advance scheduling sometimes results in late-season contests between lesser teams, and teams which do better than expected may not get to play on MNF until the next year.
(Cable games are protected from the NFL's flexible scheduling rule adopted for the 2006-07 season. The new rule applies only to CBS, FOX, and NBC Sunday games.)
Franchises with the most Monday night appearances include the Green Bay Packers, Dallas Cowboys, Washington Redskins, Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders, Chicago Bears, Denver Broncos, and Miami Dolphins. The most common Monday Night Football pairings are Denver vs. Oakland and Dallas vs. Washington, with each matchup having been televised 14 times; both are division games between bitter rivals and draw substantial interest from fans of other teams as well. Atlanta vs. New Orleans, also a division game, has been on the Monday night schedule for three years in a row.
During the early 1960s, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle envisioned the possibility of playing at least one game weekly during prime time for a greater TV audience. An early bid in 1964 to play on Friday nights was soundly defeated, with critics charging that such telecasts would damage the attendance at high school games. Undaunted, Rozelle decided to experiment with the concept of playing on Monday night, scheduling the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions for a game on September 28, 1964. While the game was not televised, it drew a sellout crowd of 59,203 to Tiger Stadium, the largest crowd ever to watch a professional football game in Detroit up to that point.
Two years later, Rozelle would build on this success as the NFL began a four-year experiment of playing on Monday night, scheduling one game in prime time on CBS during the 1966 and 1967 seasons, and two contests during each of the next two years. NBC followed suit in 1968 and 1969 with games involving AFL teams.
During subsequent negotiations on a television contract that would begin in 1970, Rozelle concentrated on signing a weekly Monday night deal with one of the three major networks. After sensing reluctance from both NBC and CBS in disturbing their regular programming schedules, Rozelle spoke with ABC.
Despite the network's status as the lowest-rated network, ABC was also reluctant to enter the risky venture. Only after Rozelle used the threat of signing with the independent Hughes Sports Network, an entity bankrolled by reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, did ABC sign a contract for the scheduled games. Speculation was that had Rozelle signed with Hughes, many ABC affiliates would have pre-empted the network's Monday lineup in favor of the games, severely damaging potential ratings.