In the big-time television world, where the networks schedule competing cocktail-hour news broadcasts so they can all sell commercials for heartburn, incontinence, constipation, false teeth and athletes? feet to a grateful audience of hard-of-hearing geriatrics, it?s been a breathless saga. Can Katie Couric actually manage to read TelePrompTer headlines as a soprano as well as Brian Williams does as a tenor? Will the venerable Charles Gibson connect with his graybeard confreres?
Everybody down at the American Legion Hall is absolutely agog with this drama.
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But, listen up, folks: In pro football, a far greater TV upheaval is upon us.
After 36 years, ABC has given up “Monday Night Football,” dropping the program that actually changed America?s nocturnal habits. Instead, ABC has ceded Monday night to its cable partner, ESPN, while NBC has opted back into the NFL with a Sunday night game.
But here?s the hurdle facing the peacock. “Monday Night Football” showed the only game played that day in all the Republic. It was a must-see chance for gamblers to recoup their losses after the Sabbath pigskin monsoon. Now, NBC actually expects football fans to breathlessly tune in to a third straight game on the same day. Might it be for even NFL nuts that at a certain point coals-to-Newcastle kicks in?
But NBC is desperate. It?s in fourth place in the network league, and since Johnny Carson hung it up, the NFL is the single mostreliable act on the tube. NBC is just betting on meat-and-potatoes, too, deploying John Madden and Al Michaels in the booth, alone. Both are old reliables. But when night shades fall after a day?s marathon of audibles, routes, blitzes, looks, touches, picks and receptions, will fine old wine in new bottles be satisfying enough to keep sex-starved eyeballs away from “Desperate Housewives”?
ESPN thinks otherwise. To broaden its Monday night audience, as its third-man theme, it?s featuring the wry observations of Tony Kornheiser. Kornheiser has been hilarious as a sports columnist and talk-show interlocutor, but it?s more difficult when you have to compete with an actual game, numbing statistics, the point spread, instant replay, tedious analysis, jiggling cheerleaders and idiot sideline reporters. Already, after his preseason debut, Kornheiser blew his bald top when his first reviews were unflattering. Only Howard Cosell has ever succeeded as a third banana.
Of course, if you?re looking for neither classic coverage on NBC nor yuks with your yardage on ESPN, the NFL itself has its own network now, with games to begin in November on, yes, Thursday nights. Bryant Gumbel is manning the NFL Network mike, and just to show that he?s no house toady, he?s already publicly labeled the NFL owners “obscenely” rich, dismissed the players? union as a dog on a leash and called the games too long, the commercials too many. I think that?s known as firing a shot across the bow of your employer. We are not pleased, saith the NFL.
Ah well, it?s comforting to know that the NFL provides more options for football bores than Katie, Brian and Charlie do for the dear folks actually interested in the passing news of the real world.
Frank Deford?s column also appears as commentary Wednesdays on National Public Radio?s Morning Edition. Deford is a Baltimore native and an award-winning author who has written 14 books. He can be reached at [email protected].
