Ok, I've watched three separate presentations by ESPN of Monday Night Football, the show that brought pro football to the weekdays with legends like Howard Cosell, Don Meredith, Al Michaels andJohn Madden. Even during one sided games, the game was still the focus of the conversation.
I remember the first season the Tampa Bay Buccanees played on Monday night. They were losing big and the stands were empty. One fellow, near the end zone was laying across a couple of seats. The camera did a long zoom down to the fan, while Meredith talked about the fans leaving. When the camera got right up to the fan, he flipped his middle finger up. The camera quickly cut to the booth where Meredith and company were laughing so hard they were falling out of their chairs. Don grabbed the microphone and spluttered "That means we're number one, folks!"
And yet, with all that, the play-by-play comment returned almost immediately to the action on the field.
In the ESPN incarnation, it's more like watching football with the sound off and an AM Sports Talk radio show on. Comment on the game stops and the people in the booth talk about other players and other games. When a comment is tossed in, it's rushed as if the game is interrupting what they really want to be doing. "And that's Seattle's Hackett brought down by a 49er at the twenty but what I wanted to say about Denver and the..." blah blah blah.
By contrast, Al Michaels and John Madden provide a reminder of the old MNF days on Sunday nights, a significantly more interesting presentation for that and other production elements as well.
If this keeps up I'm willing to bet the viewership declines steadily until it's cancelled.
Sidenote: Network Produces! For our sake, take all the graphic designers out to the desert and leave them. When the animations and special little presentations of the score take longer to display than the stats are available to read, something's wrong. That seems to be an "we do it because we can" illness infecting all but the college games on all the networks.
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