Football is, by a pretty wide margin, the most popular sport in America. It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that Disney wants to get its Monday Night Football broadcasts in front of as many sets of eyes as possible, which is why Variety is now reporting that the company intends to simulcast six Monday Night Football games on both ABC and ESPN.
These six new games are in addition to eight regular and post-season games that were already expected to air on the network. The new games will air on ABC on October 14 and 21; November 4, 18 and 25; and December 23. The new games are set to jettison Celebrity Wheel of Fortune and other Monday night programming from ABC, and are almost guaranteed to get better ratings than those other shows would have.
Disney and the NFL made a similar deal last season to simulcast games on ABC, but at the time, that action was taken in large part because the writer’s and actors’ strikes had left the network without scripted content to air in those time slots. It seems that the two mega-entertainment corporations came to a similar agreement this season, even though there were no strikes to cause a shortage.
According to Variety the questions of ratings and audience were a key reason Disney decided to make the scheduling change, as they continue to grapple with the reality that fewer and fewer people are watching linear television. Monday Night Football might be a temporary fix, but that problem of declining ratings will remain for both ABC and ESPN for years to come.
