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Monday Night Football

Mon­day Night Foot­ball Tele­vi­sion Genius at its Best

Mon­day Night Foot­ball was the enter­pris­ing genius of Mr. Roone Arledge, and it was the trail­blazer for all sport­ing tele­vised endeav­ors to follow.

The Cham­pi­onship Game of 1958 brought pro­fes­sional foot­ball into the liv­ing rooms of Amer­i­can fam­i­lies for the first time. The fact that it was one of the most scin­til­lat­ing games in the his­tory of pro­fes­sional sports fur­ther cat­a­pulted pro­fes­sional football’s pop­u­lar­ity. In 1966, the feud­ing NFL-AFL leagues effected a peace treaty, and one league was formed. In Jan­u­ary of 1969, the NY Jets’ Joe Willie Namath made good on a promise; and the upstart AFL rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the Jets, defeated the heav­ily favored Indi­anapo­lis Colts. These three events set the stage for one of the most dar­ing risks in tele­vi­sion his­tory, the inau­gural Mon­day Night Foot­ball game in Sep­tem­ber of 1970.

Dur­ing this era, Mon­day was a slow tele­vi­sion watch­ing night and the rat­ings were up for grabs. ABC’s Sports Direc­tor, Roone Arledge, used his sales­man­ship to com­bine Frank Gif­ford (orig­i­nally it was Keith Jack­son), Don Mered­ith and the bom­bas­tic Howard Cosell to give the game a focus. Cleve­land defeated the Jets on the Mon­day Night Foot­ball debut, but soon the game on the field was a dis­tant sec­ond to the game in the booth. Howard was every­where, on the “Odd Cou­ple,” host­ing his own vari­ety show, on talk shows and late night enter­tain­ment shows on a reg­u­lar basis. He put a face on Mon­day Night Foot­ball, and the phe­nom­e­non struck it rich in the rat­ings and at the bank. Mon­day Night Foot­ball was the trail­blazer for the net­work cov­er­age of pro­fes­sional foot­ball today, as games are played just about every day of the week. Mon­day Night Foot­ball was tele­vi­sion genius at its best!

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