Best thing that could happen to those who love to watch football, and can't or won't pay the ever increasing, ridiculous cable/satellite prices.

The last 2 years have been miserable with ESPN giving their lapdog ABC/Disney a bone every so often on Sat night and then keeping all the gravy games to themselves while ABC threw on a nascar race or something else that was equally miserable to a football fan.

Fox isn't locked into SEC games the way ESPN is and has the option of PAC-12 and Big-12 games every bit as much fun as any SEC game. And the opener of course, who else but USC fresh out of their suspension, and at a number one ranking, which I bet they wish they were not.

Don't get me wrong, the SEC is great football, but so are most of the other major conferences even if they don't get voted into the title game.

Here's hoping that Fox Sat night college football kicks ESPN's butt, which they rightfully deserve for snubbing tradition and taking Monday Night Football off ABC, an American classic.

I saw that very first Monday night game as a kid in the 60s with the then St Louis Cardinals giving fits to the monstrous Green Bay Packers in a great physical match that was won only in the last quarter. The Cardinals set the tone for MNF in that 1st game, which was that even the lowest underdog would rise to the occassion on Monday night, and you never knew what to expect exceot a good game.

I never did get why Monday Night Football was moved from ABC to ESPN (both are owned by Disney.)

I guess when NBC got the rights to the Sunday Night game, ESPN didn't want to be left without a prime time game?

No, that's not it because ESPN and ABC both owned by same corporation. Here's the real reason:

Left on ABC, plenty of people see the game either cable, satellite or over-air broadcast. The corporation gets no fees for over-air viewers and the same commercial payments. The cable companies squawk about wanting more subscribers and want to renegotiate their fees at a lower price unless they get more.

Putting MNF on ESPN and off ABC causes thousands of football viewers to add cable to their homes. The game is to squeeze out as many $ as possible from TV viewers to see for pay what they used to see for free. The corporate purcahses of over-air network companies by those who also hold cable broadcast companies eventually leads to less good programing over-air and more of it moved to cable.

All of this is done with payola and graft, because it is really not in the best interests of the public to have one corporation basically owning so many broadcast outlets that they become an oligarchy, since it is really against antitrust laws, but if nobody in the justice department forces the issue, then they just do it.

And our US Justice Department has been too busy under the last two administrations doing this:

1. Taking away ordinary citizens' rights under the misnamed Patriot Act, leading to the mistreatment of Grandma at the airport and such things.

2. Selling guns to criminals, to either push gun control laws or a misguided sting operation or just out of stupidity, then stonewalling the investigation in the great tradition of Watergate.

But before that, they did such great things as:

1. Cause the death of all the members of a cult locked up in a compound due to fears created by innuendo and gossip without any solid proof of immediate danger.

2. Yank a little kid out of his US home at gunpoint to send him elsewhere so he can live in a society that offers little in the way of a future, telling us that the kid wanted to go. Yeah, I wanted to dive off a 100 ft bridge when I was a kid too. (doing the Elvis Fun in Acapulco thing)

That doesn't quite make much sense, since Sunday Night Football was already on cable (ESPN to be exact), while MNF was on ABC. If you really wanted more people on cable, then it wouldn't have made any sense to move one game from cable to broadcast while another game from broadcast to cable since there's not must lost or gained.

Not to mention that every MNF game will be shown on Broadcast TV in the markets where the teams that are playing that Monday night (same goes for Thursday night football games when those moved to the NFL network.) That's something that wasn't even given when the teams were playing on Sunday night on ESPN! If you didn't have cable and your teams were playing Sunday night in those days, you didn't get to watch your team!

Thus, if you ask me, the advantage is given to those WITHOUT cable in this move!

It does make sense if you look at who is involved and doing what, and see that they were really separate actions not contingent upon one another. And remember that ESPN and ABC are both owned by the same corporation.

The SNF game was lost by ESPN due to NBC being willing to pay more for it, not by some sort of trade. When an over-air broadcast network that is not co-owned with a separate sports cable broadcast network, ie, NBC, gets such a deal, it is great for them and everyone else because they are shown on both over-air and cable. There is no "loser" in that case. It was not a deal to make up for MNF going to cable, and would have happened regardless.

Because ESPN wanted a way to be able to offer their cable network affiliates a boon that's not available over-air, they moved MNF to ESPN. The whole reason the games are on over-air in the team's town was a request from the NFL to do that when the game sells out, plus to satiate the home town market. So that one was overall a loss for over-air receivers.

Then ESPN decided to do the same thing with college games, gradually shifting more of them to the cable channels they run and giving less of them to ABC on Sat night, another loss for over-air markets. And now, though maybe too late, digital over-air broadcasts are every bit as high quality as any cable or satellite signal. So the addition of Sat night college football by Fox is a welcome addition to the football fan as it will be available both over-air and cable, and nice to see as competition to ESPN since they snubbed the over-air market when they really did not have to.

But if the government had gotten off its fat butt and instituted the phase-in of digital broadcasting in the early 80s when the technology was ready to go, instead of continuously putting it off, the situation today would be quite different with great numbers of quality over-air channels, rather than what now is a matter of too little and maybe too late.

But you're still missing the point that while ESPN had the Sunday night game, local broadcast affiliates never got that game.

Now non-cable subscribers get that game, and if the MNF game is in their market, they get that game as well.

So non-cable subscribers actually have more football than before.

And to be totally honest, if you're a DIEHARD FOOTBALL FAN, you wouldn't have cable or be satisfied with over-the-air. You'd have satellite with their NFL package that gets you EVERY FOOTBALL GAME in the country!

I'm not a die hard fan, but I do like the game and I didn't likethe way ESPN handled both MNF and the Sat night college game. It all has top do with Disney putting the ESPN cable affiliates over the ABC affiliates rather than thinking about public viewing.

I'm not missing your point, but the problem with it is that you see an unchanged situation as a negative when it isn't. The fact that MNF is on in a team town over-air when the game sells out is not a positive for the whole nation. You can't really say that, because 1 person got a benefit, it therefore equates as a benefit to a million others, so I don't include that as a positive nationwide.

Let me see if I can explain my point another way, which uses positive, negative and null changes.

SNF gets picked up by NBC, 1 positive for over-air and no change for cable (NBC is also on cable)

MNF goes to ESPN, 1 negative for overair and again no change for cable (ABC being also on cable)

So now things are even pretty much to what they were before.

Sat night college ball schedule on ABC is cut by 50%, ands ESPN places the better contests on cable only, a negative for over-air and no change for cable again.

So at this point overall over-air receivers nationally are worse off.

Then Fox picks up Sat night college games that boost over-air viewers and again no change for cable. so that helps to even things out a bit.

Still, Disney via ESPN puts many of the better games on cable rather than ABC, even though if those games were on ABC, the viewership would be higher and they could raise commercial rates. These moves by Disney have to do with placating their cable affiliates who want to push viewership towards cable and away from over-air, rather than considering overall viewership. This is because Disney has more to lose with upset cable affiliates since they operate more cable channels than over-air networks. This is the problem with one corporation having ownership of all several channels and/or networks.

The viewing public is a minor consideration in these decisions, when the whole point of initial FCC regulations was to promote the benefit of broadcasting to the public in general. That ideal has been gradually chipped at over the past several decades to the benefit of corporations owning or controlling too many interests in the same market and creating trusts that try to stifle competitive broadcast outlets, and overall this is a detrimental effect. That is the point I was making and that is a valid point.

Cable users get both because they're paying for it! They should get more (especially with the prices they're gouging for these days.) You know the old adage "You get what you pay for."

Non-cable users lost a prime time game, but gained a prime time game. No net loss, no net gain. And it isn't just one person gaining when the local affiliates carry the MNF games, that's two markets of usually millions of people.

But if you don't like ESPN/Disney/ABC and how they spread their programming, your only recourse is to not watch the channels. They paid for the rights, so they can move the programming to where they want it.

I do like Fox and their sports division though. They picked up the UFC, so they now have UFC cards on the Fox broadcast channel, but also on FX and FuelTV.

I understand your point, but just relax a second. One in a million is a fair comparison to two markets out of the whole nation. EG, Pittsburgh plays San Diego, their over air markets together are probably something close to 3 million in a nation of over 300 million. Some markets would be more and others less. My point is that one cannot consider a two market broadcast as being a national event.

Cable viewers don't get extra viewing just because they are paying for it, they also get extra viewing because their affiliates negotiate for that exclusivity. The affiliates put pressure on cable networks to move the better programming to cable from over-air whenever possible. Disney/ESPN succumbed to that pressure, and much of it has to do with Disney having ownership of too many cable broadcast outlets and this tends to stifle available programming to the greatest number of people. Had Diney only owned ESPN and ABC, they would have likely instead told their cable affiliates that the games would stay on ABC because that's where they'd get the most viewers. The events around football and ESPN are but a small example of a much larger phenomenon.

It seems you might be too young to remember the early days of over-air broadcasting and the advent of cable, or maybe not, but it's quite an interesting bit of history. At one time cable TV was basically in outlying areas that could not get TV signals due to obstruction or distance. A local business or cooperative was formed to build an antenna that could pick up the signals and the amplifiers needed to carry the signals through the community. The payment for the service was for operating the equipment. The commercials that everyone had to watch, unless they went to the bathroom then, were what paid for the programming

Cable TV today has morphed into a conglomerate where one pays for not merely the equipment, but also the programming and then also has to watch the commercials. It's not at all what the FCC initially intended TV broadcasting to be about. It is gradually getting to the point where it is similar to the days of the motion picture studios also owning the theater outlets and withholding product in order to increase ticket prices and limit competition. Eventually this was broken up under anti-trust laws. Those same laws are in place but have not been used in ages due to payoffs and graft, and Justice Department disinterest as well.

If those laws were enforced, then over-air cbannels would be able to pay a fee to broadcast such cable channels as CNN, Fox News, Discovery and so on. The entrenched interests that are keeping this from happening are the same ones that delayed the introduction of digital broadcasting for 20 year while they dug in and gradually chipped away at the market while keeping over-air channels at bay through monopolistic exclusivity agreements and thwarting technology.

Digital over-air broadcasting had the technology to completely turn around the over-air industry and it was put on the shelf for 20 years because the government had control over it's implementation. This effectively gave a 20 yr head start to cable and satellite interests.

It's all good and well to say such things as, if you don't like it don't buy it, which is what makes free markets work. But there is no real free market when one interest is unfairly tethered to the benefit of another interest competing for the same market, and when one interest holds so much control of market outlets that it can in effect monopolize the product to the detriment of the public.

And before I get accused of a socialist philosophy, a truly free market is the antithesis of socialism, and that market can only exist when anti-trust laws are enforced and all businesses have the ability to promote themselves in the market without artificial hinderences, for it is the natural tendency of businesses to create monopolies and avoid competition. Disney via ESPN was exhibiting this behavior and that is why I am glad to see Fox bring Sat night college football to ALL broadcast markets.