‘Monday Night Football’ to Begin an Hour Earlier

The NFL’s new $17.6-billion, eight-year television contract is a windfall for the league, but what about the fans?

It’s not all good news.

For one thing, Monday night games will begin at 5 p.m. Pacific time, ABC confirmed Wednesday. Actually more like 5:10 because there will be a short pregame show.

For many people on the West Coast, that means getting home in time for the kickoff will be difficult.

Also, all games will have three more 30-second commercial spots than before. The number allowed has been increased from 56 to 59. Sunday afternoon games will begin 15 minutes later, at 1:15.

Meanwhile, one day after it became official that NBC had lost pro football, Dick Ebersol, the president of the sports division, went on the offensive.

He said agreeing to the NFL’s terms was “irresponsible and reckless,” while calling the $1.75-billion, four-year deal his network made with the NBA and the $4 billion it spent to lock up all of the Olympics through 2008 “sound business decisions.”

The Disney entry of ABC and ESPN agreed to pay the NFL $9.2 billion over the next eight years, Fox $4.4 billion and CBS $4 billion.

Ebersol said each carrier figures to lose $150 million to $175 million a year on the NFL.

Said Steve Bornstein, chairman of ESPN and president of ABC Sports: “If we were not successful, we would be saying the same things.”

Chase Carey, chairman of Fox Television, said, “The guy who loses is going to take that angle. We know the value of our package. It is more favorable than the deal we just came out of.”

It was suggested to Bornstein and Bob Iger, president of ABC, Inc., during a conference call with reporters, that for the $9.2 billion they will spend on NFL rights over the next eight years they could have simply bought all the franchises.

They could only laugh about that one.

Westinghouse bought an entire network, CBS, for only $5.4 billion in 1995. Disney agreed to pay $19 billion for the Cap Cities empire, and that included ABC, ESPN, other cable networks and newspapers.

Iger did say ABC and ESPN would not have gone any higher than they did.

Ebersol, meanwhile, said NBC was prepared to pay $340 million a year for the AFC package, figuring $300 million as the break-even point. “We could handle a $40-million loss because of the promotional value of the package,” he said.

CBS got the package with a bid of $500 million a year.

Ebersol said NBC bid $500 million for Monday nights, $50 million less than ABC’s winning bid.

Ebersol said he knew on Jan. 6, a week before the deals were completed, that NBC was out of the NFL business.

“We were not going to get caught up in the ego of winning,” Ebersol said. “I don’t believe anyone can come close to making money. We have 6,400 employees at NBC. We are not going to put their livelihoods and their jobs on the line.”

However, by losing pro football, some NBC employees will lose their jobs.

Football analysts such as Phil Simms, Paul Maguire, Cris Collinsworth, Joe Gibbs, Sam Wyche, Randy Cross and Bob Trumpy “will be free to go to Fox, Disney or CBS,” Ebersol said.

As for multisport play-by-play announcers such as Dick Enberg and Tom Hammond, efforts will be made to keep them, Ebersol said.

Ed Hookstratten, Enberg’s agent, predicted his client will stay at NBC.

“They have enough inventory to keep Dick--Notre Dame football, NBA, Wimbledon and the French Open, the Olympics, golf--all things he enjoys doing,” Hookstratten said.

He also said he was sure NBC will honor Enberg’s contract.

But Greg Gumbel figures to go back to CBS. Ebersol almost conceded that.

“Greg’s situation is a little different,” he said. “His contract is up this summer and he becomes a free agent. He has always had a wonderful relationship with CBS.”

Ebersol said that possibly only two or three people on the production side would have to look elsewhere for a job.

David Hill, president of Fox Sports, said he already has had talks with Simms.

Fox announced that Terry Bradshaw has signed a new five-year contract.

As for rumors of John Madden going to ABC, Hill called it pure speculation.

“No one even knows if there has been a death in the family,” he barked after repeated questions about Madden and what Fox would do if he were to leave.

As for filling NBC’s Sunday afternoon void without football, Ebersol said the plan for this fall will simply be to offer affiliates movies, giving NBC another year to work on something more permanent, possibly news programming.

“NBC’s dominance means we don’t have to compete in every time period,” he said.

Ebersol said the loss of the NFL will not affect NBC’s NBA schedule, that the network will continue to begin its NBA schedule with a doubleheader on Christmas Day and then begin regular coverage in mid-January.

With ESPN now doing a full schedule of NFL games on Sunday nights, Bornstein said baseball games that conflict will be moved to ESPN2.

* RANDY HARVEY: Television networks don’t seem to care that there’s no NFL team in L.A. C2

* BUSINESS: The debate continues over whether the NFL TV contract makes financial sense. D1