Monday Night Football - Air Times

Air Times

• From 1970 to 1997, ABC's Monday Night Football coverage began at 9 p.m. EST/EDT, with game kickoff typically coming seven minutes after the hour. In 1998, coverage was moved forward to 8 p.m. ET, with a pre-game show titled Monday Night Blast and 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 the 1992 ending of MacGyver (not even two other series from Paramount Television – The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and The Marshal – which produced MacGyver, 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 8pm ET hour from 1999 until 2006 was replaced by affiliates with locally-produced sports discussion and coaches shows programmed locally, with ABC programming in that hour moved to late night or weekend slots; by the end of the ABC run, the 8pm timeslot was filled with either newsmagazines and short-lived reality television programs which failed to make any ratings headways due to affiliate pre-emptions.
• From 1970 to 1995, ABC affiliates in Seattle (KOMO) and Portland (KATU) aired MNF games on a one-hour tape delay starting at 7 p.m. PST\PDT (games normally started 9 p.m. EST\EDT-6 p.m. PST\PDT) in order to accommodate local newscasts (unless the Seattle Seahawks were playing, in which case the game would be shown live). The practice, long opposed by viewers and ABC, was ended in 1996. The Seattle ABC affiliate then tried to accommodate having to show their news earlier than the other TV stations in the city by marketing it as "KOMO 4 News Primetime," touting it as a way to watch the news at a more convenient time than evening rush hour.
• Additionally, this practice was done in Hawaii, where ABC affiliate KITV/Honolulu delayed the game until 6 p.m. HST, meaning either 11 p.m. or midnight eastern depending on which side of the daylight saving time date the game was played. 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 a.m., which is due to Guam's being a day ahead of the United States.
• On ABC, the demand to broadcast Monday Night Football games live across the United States 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 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, there was an hour of primetime in which to schedule regular programming. However, on the West Coast, the games lasted from 6:00–9:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (or in the case of Seattle and Portland 1970 to 1995, 7:00–10:30 p.m.), leaving little or no time for additional network programming on Monday. Thus, network shows 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, KABC in Los Angeles 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 Todd Donoho). Meanwhile, KOMO, one of the stations that tape-delayed MNF in most cases, broadcast new episodes of the series Coach on Saturday afternoons (usually reserved, coincidentally enough, for college football telecasts; much of the series took place on a fictional college campus).
• Since ESPN took over the coverage in 2006, games normally have a kickoff time of 8:30 p.m. ET. However, when ESPN airs a doubleheader in the first week of the season, the games start at 7 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. ET.
• There have been issues with local stations in the ESPN era where home market stations airing the ESPN simulcast are in most cases ABC affiliates and have to pre-empt Dancing with the Stars due to airing coverage of the game; this both forces the affiliate to air that program immediately after the local news, and the program's telephone and Internet voting coordinators to keep a late-night voting window open for the market or markets where Dancing with the Stars was pre-empted. In some cases the program is moved to an affiliate's sister station to air live instead. (For example, until 2011, when NBC affiliate KARE took over local airing duties, if the Minnesota Vikings were playing a MNF game simulcast on ABC affiliate KSTP, sister independent station KSTC aired DWTS live.)