ABC prepares for last call of 'Monday Night Football'

Klaus · #1 12-26-2005, 01:15 PM

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Meredith
to help turn out the lights for ABC's 'MNF' finale 



Where have
you gone, Dandy Don Meredith? TV's original good old boy sportscaster
has been missing in action since leaving the booth of ABC's Monday Night
Football in 1984. Now Meredith is coming out of retirement to help give
36-year-old MNF a Viking funeral during ABC's final telecast of the
series Monday.

Meredith, 67, was one of the original trio, along with Keith
Jackson and the late Howard Cosell, who called the first MNF
game in 1970. His chemistry with Cosell and Frank Gifford, who replaced Jackson a year later, helped turn MNF into a pop culture sensation and TV
institution. 

During Monday's telecast of the New England Patriots-New
York Jets game, Meredith will appear with Gifford and current play-by-play man Al
Michaels in a taped, two-minute opening segment. Then Meredith will close
the show with another rendition of The Party's Over, the song he used to
belt out in the booth during blowout games, to Cosell's irritation.

The former Dallas Cowboys quarterback spent 13 seasons
(1970 to '74; 1977 to '84) in the MNF booth. But he has kept a low
profile since.

His longtime pal Gifford talked him into returning to the
limelight, according to George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN and ABC
Sports, who will shepherd the move of MNF to ESPN in 2006.

"It shows you the weight this property has,"
says Bodenheimer, although ABC had to send a crew to Meredith's home in Santa Fe to tape his parts for the finale because Meredith had family commitments.
(Gifford's part was taped in Los Angeles.)

Fred Gaudelli, producer of MNF the last five
seasons, says Meredith "closed that chapter on his life." But Dandy
Don is as outspoken as ever, according to Gaudelli. "He said, 'Freddy, if I
was doing a game where a team was losing 35-0 ... and a running back started
dancing after making a 3-yard gain, I'd say get your a— back to the huddle and
hug an offensive lineman.' "

Meredith declined through an ABC spokesman to be
interviewed.

ABC's final MNF game also will feature:

• Famous faces who popped into the MNF booth such
as Ronald Reagan and John Lennon.

• A salute to ABC's Roone Arledge and former NFL
commissioner Pete Rozelle.

• Clips from the greatest games, including the Miami
Dolphins' defeat of the Chicago Bears in 1985, the highest-rated MNF
telecast ever with a 29.6 rating.

MNF is the second longest-running program in prime
time behind CBS' 60 Minutes. While still a top-10 show, its ratings continue
to slide. Monday's telecast of the Baltimore Ravens' 48-3 rout of the Green Bay
Packers generated an 8.2 rating, the lowest this season and the second-lowest
ever. (Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. St. Louis Rams last season posted the lowest, a
7.7.) This season, MNF is averaging an overall 10.9 rating, down 1% from
an 11.0 last season.

It remains to be seen whether the finale, a matchup of the
playoff-bound Patriots vs. the eliminated Jets, will attract enough viewers to
send MNF off on a ratings high note. Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis
Colts are this season's ratings darlings, drawing the two biggest numbers (a
14.8 for their game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Nov. 28 and a 14.3 for
their game against New England on Nov. 7).

In a bitter pill for ABC, rival NBC was able to land the
kind of late-season flexible scheduling for its Sunday night NFL package next
season that the network had sought to avoid turkeys such as Monday's contest
between two losing teams. 

As Willie Nelson sings in The Party's Over: "Turn
out the lights, the party's over, they say all good things must end. Call it
tonight, the party's over. And tomorrow starts the same old thing again."

Dying inside: The networks did a great job of
catching the agony and ecstasy of NFL coaches as the last few days, as they
alternately screamed, stormed and sulked their way through games.

ABC had a great close-up Monday night of Green Bay coach
Mike Sherman's 1,000-yard stare as his team absorbed its worst beating since
losing 61-7 to the Bears in 1980. "His team is not putting up much of a
fight," said ABC's John Madden.



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