Monday Night Madness – Heffernan’s Spray

Round 7 saw the AFL tinker with a timeslot they have played around with for a few years – Monday Night Football. It’s a huge hit in the US where NFL have worked it for 38 years, and more recently the AFL’s major competitor – the NRL – have made Monday nights a regular fixture in their programming. So the precedent is there for it to work – will it?

Well one thing’s for sure – it ain’t gonna work if the games aren’t shown LIVE!

The major reason Monday Night Football works in the US is because it’s an event. Hell – it’s even considered a tv series over there:

ESPN’s third season of Monday Night Football was the most-watched series on cable television in 2008.

Memo to Channel 7 and the AFL – an NFL-style intro does not make Monday Night Football. Especially when it’s a depressingly bad, cheesy rip-off of the American version. But what will make people switch on is…

Showing the game LIVE TO THE FANS!

Does anyone in charge seriously think that showing a delayed telecast of the game is the way to take Monday night by the throat and rip it out of Rugby League’s clutches? All that’s going to happen is:

• More people will go listen to the radio – especially the fans of the two sides, or those with a more-than-responsibly sized bet riding on the outcome,
• Some people will not bother at all – guest columnist Kain “Pokey” Moore was a prime example, something along the lines of ‘why am I going to waste my time watching two shit sides when it’s not even live!’ … maybe his accuracy is in question but I’m sure he’s not the only one out there that wasn’t prepared to wait up to watch two sides he doesn’t like,
• Anyone stuck in a ring-a-ding-dinger in Dream Team is going to be pissed they can’t check the scores because the site is going to be a good quarter and a half at least in front of the action, and finally
• Everyone’s just going to have that bitter taste in their mouth that the AFL/Channel 7 doesn’t realise that we are in 2009 and we want LIVE SPORT.

We live in the age of instant gratification. Delayed telecasts mean no Facebook, no Twitter and limited MSN Messenger because you never know when some prick is going to ruin the night even more by leaking the score or just giving it away with their ridiculous ‘wooooo saints 7-0 cop that pies’ status update.

Cutting that out means locking yourself away from all but only your closest mates, destroying any gametime banter or camaraderie that would be a KEY ingredient in any chance of making Monday Night Football as big as it is in the States!

So while Monday Night football remains a staple in the US, bringing people together to watch their favourite sport in a weekly event, the AFL and Channel 7 will persist in using an embarrassing introduction to hide the fact that they are making it hard for anyone at home to watch the game or develop any sort of tradition that will raise the profile and ratings of their Monday night experiment.

Anyone would think they don’t want people watching.