Monday Night Football

Monday Night Football is moving to ESPN while Sunday night football is moving to NBC. ABC will not have any NFL broadcasts. NBC needs a ratings boost, especially on Sundays where a bunch of housewives have been doing rather well in the ratings.

An interesting twist is NBC’s deal that gives it a flexible schedule:

NBC will devote its entire Sunday night prime-time lineup to the NFL. The Sunday night games will start at 8:15 p.m. ET and include flexible scheduling for the final seven weeks of the season, details of which will be developed by the league.

That issue has become more pressing since parity caused by the salary cap has resulted in teams moving up and down the standings annually, leaving bad teams that were strong the previous season in prime time and good teams that were bad the past season off of it.

There’s a lot of risk in the preset schedule. People want to see teams in contention.Who knows, for instance, how good the Steelers and the Bucs will be?