Big Picture
Renée Zellweger: Fashion Fun Plus, Nicole Kidman hangs out with her family and Bradley Cooper is a grizzly guy. The latest pics!
MORE PHOTOS +Most Commented
- TV's Top Couples Tournament: Vote in the Final Round! (2036)
- TV's Top Couples Tournament: This Round Is Closed, Please Stand By (972)
- TV's Top Couples Tournament: This Round Is Closed, Please Stand By (685)
- Afternoon Mail! Are Gleeks Having More Sex Than Vamps? (586)
- Whitney Houston Dead at 48 (394)
- Beyoncé and Jay-Z Share First Photos of Baby Blue Ivy! (389)
- TV's Top Couple Tournament: And the Winner Is... (388)
- Morning Mail! Is Lea Michele Ready to Walk Like an Egyptian? (286)
- Twilight Director Talks Kristen Stewart and Ex Michael Angarano: "They Were Such a Great Couple" (261)
- Life After Breaking Dawn?! Maybe, Says Studio Head! (226)
Top 10 Stories
- Chris Brown Tweets to Haters After Grammy Win
- Whitney Houston Tribute: Watch LeAnn Rimes' Emotional Performance of "I Will Always Love You"
- Oprah Twitter Scandal! Winfrey Apologizes After Soliciting Nielsen Viewers to Watch OWN
- Glee Scoop: There's a New Love Triangle Going Down!
- The Voice vs. American Idol: This Is War
- Chris Brown's Grammy Lovefest Slammed by Miranda Lambert, Jack Osbourne, Eric Stonestreet, More
- Janet Jackson Remembers Whitney Houston's "Sweet Soul," Gives Advice to Bobbi Kristina on Coping With Death
- Triplets? Twins? Jennifer Aniston Addresses Pregnancy Rumors, Gets Serenaded by Steven Tyler
- Whitney Houston's Body Arrives at Funeral Home as Burial Plans Formally Announced
- Bruce Jenner Talks Kim Kardashian's Marriage: "The Next Guy's Got to Go Through Me"
Fashion Police
Angelina: Going Grey! Plus, Christina Hendricks, Vanessa Hudgens, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Michelle Williams and Kristen Wiig. Rate the highs and lows!
MORE PHOTOS +
Our Partners
ESPN Scores "Monday Night"
The deal is eye-popping enough to make Nicollette Sheridan drop her towel again.
The vaunted Monday Night Football franchise will move from ABC to ESPN in 2006, it was announced Monday. The eight-year deal is worth a reported $8.8 billion.
At the same time, the National Football League cut a reported $3.6 billion pact with NBC to move its Sunday night football package there beginning in 2006. That deal will run six years and bring the struggling Peacock Super Bowls in 2009 and 2012.
This past season, MNF averaged 16.4 million viewers, and outraged thousands when Sheridan, portraying her Desperate Housewives self, dropped a towel in a filmed bit for a November telecast.
Though stunts such as the Sheridan locker-room cameo helped make MNF water-cooler TV--as did broadcast-booth personalities such as Howard Cosell and "Dandy" Don Meredith--ABC reportedly had cooled on its cost-effectiveness.
The shift of MNF to ESPN was spun as an all-in-the-family move by new Disney president Robert Iger--and rightly so. Both ABC and ESPN are operated under the auspices of the Magic Kingdom.
NBC's pickup of Sunday night football, meanwhile, was spun as nothing short of a "extraordinarily exciting" event.
"This is a very proud moment for us," NBC Universal chairman and CEO Bob Wright said in press conference. "We're just very happy to be back, back in the NFL."
NBC last broadcast an NFL game in 1998. It lost its slate of games to CBS, which previously had lost its pigskin rights to Fox. In keeping with this game of musical footballs, NBC will inherit its package from ESPN, which will be occupied with MNF.
In its new ESPN home, MNF's kickoff will moved up from the 9 p.m. ET hour to the 8 p.m. hour--8:40 p.m., to be precise.
NBC's Sunday night games, meanwhile, will eat up the network's entire four-hour prime-time slate. A pregame show will air from 7-8 p.m. ET, followed by the game at about 8:15 p.m. ET.
"Sunday is the most-watched night in television, so when the NFL proposed its first-ever Sunday prime-time broadcast package, all of us wanted to find a way to make it work," NBC Universal Television Group president Jeff Zucker said in a statement.
Sunday night has been owned by ABC this season--from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition to Desperate Housewives to newcomer Grey's Anatomy. NBC, meanwhile, has limped along with the likes of cancellation candidate American Dreams and a downward-trending Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Other NBC Sunday night shows that would have to find new homes--provided they're still around in 2006--are Crossing Jordan, The Contender and Dateline NBC.
ABC, meanwhile, will get back two prime-time hours on Monday night.
MNF debuted on ABC in 1970, on its way to iconic pop-culture status. It currently is broadcast TV's second-longest running prime-time show after CBS' 60 Minutes. By the time it leaves ABC after the 2005 season, the franchise will have spent 36 seasons there.
0 Comments
Now loading...