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A booth worthy of a Monday Night perch
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MIAMI – ABC’s saggy, stagnant Monday Night Football package got impressively streamlined last week got better fast, in one thorough sweep.
Hiring John Madden will make a difference. How could it not? He is the biggest-name football announcer out there. People love him. He has the credibility, as a former ultra-successful NFL coach, to draw serious fans. And he has the personality to attract the casual fans needed to improve ratings.
Le Batard states the obvious in suggesting fans seldom tune in (or turn off) a game primarily because of who is or isn’t announcing it. Certainly a great matchup with poor announcers always will get a higher rating than a lousy matchup with scintillating commentary.
The Super Bowl would draw a huge number if the announcers were Charlton Heston and Cher.
It is the game, first, sure. But any TV executive or survey of fans will tell you that who the announcers are does matter.
To suggest otherwise is to suggest the ratings for the CBS Evening News would be just as high if Dan Rather were replaced by Carrot Top, since people tune in for the news, not who’s reading it, right?
Madden is a star in his own right. He has a wildly popular video game named after him, guaranteeing that a young demographic surely knows his name. His annual All-Madden team is considered by players as an honor second only to the Pro Bowl, spawning several imitators.
Pairing Madden in a two-man booth with state-of-the-art play-by-play guy Al Michaels gives MNF, quite simply, the best duo it could possibly have. “Dream team” is the designation being applied.
Gone from the booth is controversial comedian Dennis Miller.
Gone from the booth is dullard Dan Fouts.
Gone from the sideline is spectacularly incompetent Eric Dickerson.
This is a clear net gain for ABC.
Losing Fouts and Dickerson made sense in every way.
Dropping Miller – unfortunately – was smart, too.
I enjoyed Miller, personally. I thought he added a tasty slice of wry to the show. I wish they’d kept him. But I also recognize that the two-year Miller experiment generated more critics than fans.
Replacing the sardonic comic with Madden absolutely will win back some of those fans.
Everything has changed since Monday games were events in the `70s. Sports ratings are down across the board. MNF remains the undisputed king of sports ratings, though, and this week’s changes solidify that perch.
Miller was the antithesis of what fans expected or, apparently, wanted.
Madden is precisely what they expect and want: An announcer whose stature is every bit as big as the Monday stage.
Greg Cote, Knight Ridder Newspapers