title: Nivetha Thomas

text: Thomas first release in 2019 was an action thriller "118" opposite Nandamuri Kalyan Ram which opened to positive reviews and critics extremely praised Thomas's outstanding performance in a brief yet impressive role. Later, she starred in the black comedy film "Brochevarevarura" opposite Sree Vishnu was opened to positive reviews and got widespread acclaim for her portrayal of "mitra" an underperformer student in academics who aspires to become a classical dancer, Later the film was a hit at box office.


title: Nivetha Thomas

text: In 2020 Thomas starred in Rajinikanth's "Darbar" in which she plays his daughter. She also starred Indraganti-directed action thriller "V" later that year. In 2021, Thomas is featured in "Vakeel Saab", the Telugu remake of Hindi film Pink, starring Pawan Kalyan.


title: Nivetha Thomas

text: As of July 2021, Thomas is shooting for the Sudheer Varma-directed "Saakini Daakini", the Telugu remake of the Korean film "Midnight Runners," along with Regina Cassandra.


title: Marianne

text: Marianne () has been the national personification of the French Republic since the French Revolution, as a personification of liberty, equality, fraternity and reason, as well as a portrayal of the Goddess of Liberty.


title: Marianne

text: Marianne is displayed in many places in France and holds a place of honour in town halls and law courts. She is depicted in the "Triumph of the Republic", a bronze sculpture overlooking the Place de la Nation in Paris, as well as represented with another Parisian statue on the Place de la République. Her profile stands out on the official government logo of the country, appears on French euro coins and on French postage stamps. She was also featured on the former franc currency and is officially used on most government documents.


title: Marianne

text: Marianne is a significant republican symbol; her French monarchist equivalent is often Joan of Arc. As a national icon Marianne represents opposition to monarchy and the championship of freedom and democracy against all forms of oppression. Other national symbols of Republican France include the tricolor flag, the national motto "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité", the national anthem "La Marseillaise", the coat of arms, and the official Great Seal of France. Marianne also wore a Cockade and a red Phrygian cap symbolising Liberty.


title: Marianne

text: Since classical times it was common to represent ideas and abstract entities by gods, goddesses, and allegorical personifications. During the French Revolution of 1789, many allegorical personifications of 'Liberty' and 'Reason' appeared. These two figures finally merged into one: a female figure, shown either sitting or standing and accompanied by various attributes, including the cockade of France and the Phrygian cap. This woman typically symbolised Liberty, Reason, the Nation, the Homeland and the civic virtues of the Republic. In September 1792, the National Convention decided by decree that the new seal of the state would represent a standing woman holding a spear with a Phrygian cap held aloft on top of it.


title: Marianne

text: Historian Maurice Agulhon, who in several well-known works set out on a detailed investigation to discover the origins of Marianne, suggests that it is the traditions and mentality of the French that led to the use of a woman to represent the Republic. A feminine allegory was also a manner to symbolise the breaking with the old monarchy headed by kings and promote modern republican ideology. Even before the French Revolution, the Kingdom of France was embodied in masculine figures, as depicted in certain ceilings of Palace of Versailles. Furthermore, France and the Republic themselves are, in French, feminine nouns ("la France", "la République"), as are the French nouns for liberty () and reason ().


title: Marianne

text: The use of this emblem was initially unofficial and very diverse. A female allegory of Liberty and of the Republic makes an appearance in Eugène Delacroix's painting "Liberty Leading the People", painted in July 1830 in honour of the Three Glorious Days (or July Revolution of 1830).


title: Marianne

text: Although the image of Marianne did not garner significant attention until 1792, the origins of this "goddess of Liberty" date back to 1775, when Jean-Michel Moreau painted her as a young woman dressed in Roman style clothing with a Phrygian cap atop a pike held in one hand that years later would become a national symbol across France. Marianne made her first major appearance in the French spotlight on a medal in July 1789, celebrating the storming of the Bastille and other early events of the Revolution. From this time until September 1792, the image of Marianne was overshadowed by other figures such as Mercury and Minerva. It was not until September 1792 when the new Republic sought a new image to represent the State that her popularity began to expand. Marianne, the female allegory of Liberty, was chosen to represent the new regime of the French Republic, while remaining to symbolise liberty at the same time.


title: Marianne

text: The imagery of Marianne chosen as the seal of the First French Republic depicted her standing, young and determined. It was symbolic of the First Republic itself, a newly created state that had much to prove. Marianne is clad in a classical gown. In her right hand, she wields the pike of revolution with the Phrygian cap resting on it, which represents the liberation of France. Marianne is shown leaning on a fasces, a symbol of authority. Although she is standing and holding a pike, this depiction of Marianne is "not exactly aggressive", representing the ideology of the moderate-liberal Girondins in the National Convention as they tried to move away from the "frantic violence of the revolutionary days".


title: Marianne

text: Although the initial figure of Marianne from 1792 stood in a relatively conservative pose, the revolutionaries were quick to abandon that figure when it no longer suited them. By 1793, the conservative figure of Marianne had been replaced by a more violent image; that of a woman, bare-breasted and fierce of visage, often leading men into battle. The reason behind this switch stems from the shifting priorities of the Republic. Although the Marianne symbol was initially neutral in tone, the shift to radical action was in response to the beginning of the Terror, which called for militant revolutionary action against foreigners and counter-revolutionaries. As part of the tactics the administration employed, the more radical Marianne was intended to rouse the French people to action. Even this change, however, was seen to be insufficiently radical by the republicans. After the arrest of the Girondin deputies in October 1793, the Convention sought to "recast the Republic in a more radical mold", eventually using the symbol of Hercules to represent the Republic. The use of increasingly radical images to symbolise the Republic was in direct parallel to the beginning of the violence that came to be known as the Reign of Terror.


title: Marianne

text: After the Reign of Terror, there was a need for another change in the imagery, to showcase the more civil and non-violent nature of the Directory. In the Official Vignette of the Executive Directory, 1798, Marianne made a return, still depicted wearing the Phrygian cap, but now surrounded by different symbols. In contrast to the Marianne of 1792, this Marianne "holds no pike or lance", and leans "languorously" on the tablet of the Constitution of Year III. Instead of looking straight at the observer, she casts her gaze towards the side, thus appearing less confrontational. Similar imagery was used in the poster of the Republic's new calendar.


title: Marianne

text: The symbol of Marianne continued to evolve in response to the needs of the State long after the Directory was dissolved in 1799 following the coup spearheaded by Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès and Napoleon Bonaparte. Whereas Mercury and Minerva and other symbolic figures diminished in prominence over the course of French history, Marianne endured because of her abstraction and impersonality. The "malleability" of what she symbolised allowed French political figures to continually manipulate her image to their specific purposes at any given time.


title: Marianne

text: On 17 March 1848, the Ministry of the Interior of the newly founded Second Republic launched a contest to symbolise the Republic on paintings, sculptures, medals, money and seals, as no official representations of it existed. After the fall of the monarchy, the Provisional Government had declared: "The image of liberty should replace everywhere the images of corruption and shame, which have been broken in three days by the magnanimous French people." For the first time, the allegory of Marianne condensed into itself Liberty, the Republic and the Revolution.


title: Marianne

text: Two "Mariannes" were authorised. One is fighting and victorious, recalling the Greek goddess Athena: she has a bare breast, the Phrygian cap and a red corsage, and has an arm lifted in a gesture of rebellion. The other is more conservative: she is rather quiet, wearing clothes in a style of Antiquity, with sun rays around her head—a transfer of the royal symbol to the Republic—and is accompanied by many symbols (wheat, a plough and the fasces of the Roman lictors). These two, rival Mariannes represent two ideas of the Republic, a bourgeois representation and a democratic and social representation – the June Days Uprising hadn't yet occurred.


title: Marianne

text: Town halls voluntarily chose to have representations of Marianne, often turning her back to the church. Marianne made her first appearance on a French postage stamp in 1849.


title: Marianne

text: During the Second Empire (1852–1870), this depiction became clandestine and served as a symbol of protest against the regime. The common use of the name "Marianne" for the depiction of "Liberty" started around 1848/1851, becoming generalised throughout France around 1875.


title: Marianne

text: The usage began to be more official during the Third Republic (1870–1940). Much of the popularity of Marianne was due to the fact that she symbolized French republicanism while at the same time being neutral enough to make her into a symbol that appealed to most people. The legacy of the French Revolution tended to divide people in France as different people in France had different revolutionary heroes and villains, and unlike the United States, the French had no cult of "the Founding Fathers" whose memory was venerated by all. For this reason, the French state tended to promote abstract symbols like Marianne as an unifying national symbol instead of using personalities from history as a national symbol in the manner which the United States used George Washington and Venezuela used Simon Bolivar as national symbols in the 19th century. As a symbol of the Revolution and of the republic, Marianne was sufficiently inoffensive enough to appeal to most people without causing any controversy. Marianne's femininity made her appear less threatening as a symbol of the republic than a male figure would have been.


title: Marianne

text: After a turbulent first decade in the 1870s, by the 1880s the republic was accepted by most people in France and as such, the French state did not need history to justify itself, using Marianne as the unifying symbol of the republic. The only historical event that was regularly honored in France was Bastille Day, as the storming of the Bastille in 1789 was the revolutionary occurrence that appealed to most of the French, and the rest of the events of the revolution were not officially honored in order to keep the memory of the revolution as harmonious as possible. It was the strategy of the republican leaders to use symbols and the memory of history in such a way to create as wide a national consensus as possible in favor of the republic, which was why Marianne became such a prominent symbol of the republic. By contrast, the newly unified German "Reich" had too many historical traditions to draw upon, reflecting the histories of the various German states, none of which could appeal to everybody, leading to a situation where the British historian Eric Hobsbawm noted: "Like many another liberated 'people', 'Germany' was more easily defined by what it was against than in any other way." Hobsbawm argued for this reason, that unlike Marianne who was a symbol of the republic and freedom in general, her German counterpart, Deutscher Michel "...seems to have been essentially an anti-foreign image".


title: Marianne

text: The Hôtel de Ville in Paris (city hall) displayed a statue of "Marianne" wearing a Phrygian cap in 1880, and was quickly followed by the other French cities. In Paris, where the Radicals had a strong presence, a contest was launched for the statue of Place de la République. It was won by the Morice brothers (with Léopold Morice producing the sculpture and the architect François-Charles Morice designing the pedestal), in 1879, with an academical Marianne, with an arm lifted towards the sky and a Phrygian cap, but with her breasts covered. Aimé-Jules Dalou lost the contest against the Morice brothers, but the City of Paris decided to build his monument on the Place de la Nation, inaugurated for the centenary of the French Revolution, in 1889, with a plaster version covered in bronze. Dalou's Marianne had the lictor's fasces, the Phrygian cap, a bare breast, and was accompanied by a Blacksmith representing Work, and allegories of Freedom, Justice, Education and Peace: all that the Republic was supposed to bring to its citizens. The final bronze monument was inaugurated in 1899, in the turmoil of the Dreyfus Affair, with Waldeck-Rousseau, a Radical, in power. The ceremony was accompanied by a huge demonstration of workers, with red flags. The government's officials, wearing black redingotes, quit the ceremony. Marianne had been reappropriated by the workers, but as the representative of the Social and Democratic Republic ("la République démocratique et sociale", or simply "La Sociale").


title: Marianne

text: From the signing of the "Entente Cordiale" between France and Britain in April 1904, Marianne and John Bull personalised the agreement in a number of paintings and cartoons, most famously the Punch cartoon by John Bernard Partridge. In the struggles between ideological parties around the turn of the twentieth century, Marianne was often denigrated by right-wing presses as a prostitute. In Imperial Germany, Marianne was usually portrayed in a manner that was very vulgar, usually suggesting that she was a prostitute or at any rate widely promiscuous while at the same time being a hysterically jealous and insane woman who however always cowered in fear at the sight of a German soldier. The German state in the Imperial period promoted a very xenophobic militarism, which portrayed the "Reich" as forever in danger from foreigners and in need of an authoritarian government. The core of Prussian-German militarism was a cult of "machismo" that equated militarism with masculinity, and Marianne was used in Germany to portray France as a "weak" and "feminine" nation in contrast to "strong" and "masculine" Germany. The purpose of Marianne in German propaganda was always to promote contempt for France and with it, a warning about what Germans should not be.


title: Marianne

text: The American historian Michael Nolan wrote in the "hyper-masculine world of Wilhelmine Germany" with its exaltation of militarism and masculine power, the very fact that Marianne was the symbol of the republic was used to argue that French men were effeminate and weak. In this regard, it is significant in German cartoons and posters, Marianne usually faced off against a male figure representing Germany, who was either a typical German soldier or Kaiser Wilhelm II himself and Marianne only very rarely took on Germania. In French cartoons and posters, it was Marianne who took on Wilhelm II, whose bombastic pomposity lent itself well for ridicule, and she almost never took on Deutscher Michel, leading Nolan to comment that French cartoonists missed a great chance for satire since even in Germany itself, Deutscher Michel is portrayed as rather "dim-witted". On occasion, Marianne was portrayed slightly more favorably in Germany as in a cartoon from May 1914 in the magazine "Kladderadatsch" where Deutscher Michel is working in his garden with a seductive and voluptuous Marianne on one side and a brutish "muzhik" (Russian peasant) on the other; the message of the cartoon was that France should not be allied to Russia, and would be better off allied to Germany, since Deutscher Michel with his well tended garden is clearly a better potential husband than the vodka drinking "muzhik" whose garden is a disorderly disaster.


title: Marianne

text: Marianne differed from Uncle Sam, John Bull, and Deutscher Michel in that Marianne was not just a symbol of France, but of the republic as well. For those on the French right, who still hankered for the House of Bourbon like "Action Française", Marianne was always rejected for her republican associations, and the preferred symbol of France was Joan of Arc. As Joan of Arc was devoutly Catholic, committed to serving King Charles VII, and fought for France against England, she perfectly symbolized the values of Catholicism, royalism, militarism and nationalism that were so dear for French monarchists. Joan was apparently asexual, and her chaste and virginal image stood in marked contrast to Marianne, whom "Action Française" depicted as a prostitute or as a "slut" to symbolize the "degeneracy" of the republic. The contrast between the asexual Joan vs. the unabashedly sexualized Marianne who was often depicted bare-breasted could not have been greater. Finally, because of Joan's status as one of France' best loved heroines, it was difficult for republicans to attack Joan without seeming unpatriotic. However, the royalist attempt to have Joan of Arc replace Marianne as the symbol of France failed, in large part because most of the French people accepted the republic, and Marianne unlike Joan was the symbol of the republic. In the middle of the 19th century, Marianne was usually portrayed in France as a young woman, but by late 19th century, Marianne was more commonly presented as a middle aged, maternal woman, reflecting the fact that the republic was dominated by a centre-right coalition of older male politicians, who disliked the image of a militant young female revolutionary. After British and German newspapers began to mock the middle-aged Marianne as a symbol of supposed French decline, around 1900 the younger Marianne came back into vogue to symbolize that the republic was not in decline.


title: Marianne

text: In World War I, in German propaganda, Marianne was always depicted as dominating Russia, represented variously as a bear, a thuggish-looking Cossack or by the Emperor Nicholas II, with Marianne being drawn as an angry and emasculating wife. By contrast, John Bull was always depicted in German cartoons as dominating both Marianne and Russia, reflecting the German perception that Britain was the most dangerous of all the "Reich"'s enemies. When John Bull was depicted in the company of Marianne in German cartoons, she was always the submissive one.


title: Marianne

text: Few Mariannes were depicted in the First World War memorials, but some living models of Marianne appeared in 1936, during the Popular Front as they had during the Second Republic (then stigmatized by the right-wing press as "unashamed prostitutes"). During World War II, Marianne represented Liberty against the Nazi invaders, and the Republic against the Vichy regime (see Paul Collin's representation). During Vichy, 120 of the 427 monuments of Marianne were melted, while the Milice took out its statues in town halls in 1943. Under Vichy, Marianne was banned and Joan of Arc became the official symbol of France. In French schools and government offices, the busts of Marianne were replaced with busts of Marshal Pétain. As Marianne was the symbol of the republic and everything it stood for, under Vichy Marianne was demonized as the most "offensive" symbol of the republic. There was a strong misogyny to Vichy's attacks on Marianne under Vichy's ideology there were two sorts of women; the "virgin and the whore" with Joan being cast as the former and Marianne as the latter.


title: Marianne

text: Marianne's presence became less important after World War II, although General Charles de Gaulle made a large use of it, in particular on stamps or for the referendums. The most recent subversive and revolutionary appearance of Marianne was during May '68. The liberal and conservative president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing replaced Marianne by "La Poste" on stamps, changed the rhythm of the "Marseillaise" and suppressed the commemoration of 8 May 1945.


title: Marianne

text: During the bicentenary of the Revolution, in 1989, Marianne hardly made any public appearance. The Socialist President François Mitterrand aimed to make the celebrations a consensual event, gathering all citizens, recalling more the Republic than the Revolution. The American opera singer Jessye Norman took Marianne's place, singing "La Marseillaise" as part of an elaborate pageant orchestrated by avant-garde designer Jean-Paul Goude. The Republic, after harsh internal fighting throughout the 19th century and even the 20th century (6 February 1934 crisis, Vichy, etc.), had become consensual; the vast majority of French citizens were now republicans, leading to a lesser importance of a cult of Marianne.


title: Marianne

text: At the time of the French Revolution, as the most common of people were fighting for their rights, it seemed fitting to name the Republic after the most common of French women's names: Marie (Mary) and Anne. The account made of their exploits by the Revolutionaries often contained a reference to a certain Marianne (or Marie-Anne) wearing a Phrygian cap. This pretty girl of legend inspired the revolutionaries, and looked after those wounded in the many battles across the country.


title: Marianne

text: A recent discovery establishes that the first written mention of the name of Marianne to designate the Republic appeared in October 1792 in Puylaurens in the Tarn "département" near Toulouse. At that time people used to sing a song in the Provençal dialect of Occitan by the poet Guillaume Lavabre: ""La garisou de Marianno"" (French: ""La guérison de Marianne""; "Marianne's recovery (from illness)"). At the time Marie-Anne was a very popular first name; according to Agulhon, it "was chosen to designate a régime that also saw itself as popular."


title: Marianne

text: Some believe that the name came from the name of the Spanish Jesuit Juan de Mariana, the 16th century Monarchomach, a theoretician of tyrannicide. Others think it was the image of the wife of the politician Jean Reubell: according to an old 1797 story, Barras, one of the members of the "Directoire", during an evening spent at Reubell's, asked his hostess for her name—"Marie-Anne," she replied—"Perfect," Barras exclaimed, "It is a short and simple name, which befits the Republic just as much as it does yourself, Madame."


title: Marianne

text: The description by artist Honoré Daumier in 1848, as a mother nursing two children, Romulus and Remus, or by sculptor François Rude, during the July Monarchy, as a warrior voicing the "Marseillaise" on the Arc de Triomphe, are uncertain.


title: Marianne

text: The name of Marianne also appears to be connected with several republican secret societies. During the Second Empire, one of them, whose members had sworn to overthrow the monarchy, had taken her name.


title: Marianne

text: In any case, she has become a symbol in France: considered as a personification of the Republic, she was often used on republican iconography – and sometimes caricatured and reviled by those against the republic, especially royalists and monarchists.


title: Marianne

text: The official busts of Marianne initially had anonymous features, appearing as women of the people. From 1969, however, they began to take on the features of famous women, starting with the actress Brigitte Bardot. She was followed by Mireille Mathieu (1978), Catherine Deneuve (1985), Inès de La Fressange (1989), Laetitia Casta (2000) and Évelyne Thomas (2003).


title: Marianne

text: Laetitia Casta was named the symbolic representation of France's Republic in October 1999 in a vote open for the first time to the country's more than 36,000 mayors. She won from a shortlist of five candidates, scoring 36% among the 15,000 that voted. The other candidates were Estelle Hallyday, Patricia Kaas, Daniela Lumbroso, Lætitia Milot and Nathalie Simon.


title: Marianne

text: In July 2013, a new stamp featuring the Marianne was debuted by President François Hollande, allegedly designed by the team of Olivier Ciappa and David Kawena. Ciappa claimed that Inna Shevchenko, a high-profile member of the Ukrainian protest group FEMEN who had recently been granted political asylum in France, was a main inspiration for the new Marianne. However, Kawena and his attorney later claimed that Ciappa was falsely representing himself as having had any level of creative input on the artwork. Kawena further stated that Shevchenko, or any other figure that Ciappa claimed to be an inspiration, was in no way the model for the work, and has sued Ciappa for violation of copyright on the Marianne artwork. Ciappa later refuted the claims that Kawena was ignored, and also revealed his legal name ("David Kawena" being a pseudonym taken from the "Lilo & Stitch" films) in a retaliatory press release; Xavier Héraud, a writer for Yagg (a French LGBT news site), noted that in a 2013 Huffington Post piece by Ciappa he never refers to Kawena and claims authorship of the images within the post. Yagg later reported on a response to their posting from Ciappa where he said that he was not in editorial control of the Huffington Post piece and did not intend to have the phrasing be "My Marianne" as accused by Kawena in his suit; Yagg later contacted Huffington Post who informed them that they sent a draft for Ciappa to look at prior to publishing, which is the current version of the article.


title: Marianne

text: Blue-white-red, Marianne, "Liberté-Égalité-Fraternité", the Republic: these national symbols represent France, as a state and its values. Since September 1999, they have been combined in a new "identifier" created by the Plural Left government of Lionel Jospin under the aegis of the French Government Information Service (SIG) and the public relations officials in the principal ministries. As a federating identifier of the government departments, it appears on a wide range of material—brochures, internal and external publications, publicity campaigns, letter headings, business cards, etc.—emanating from the government, starting with the various ministries (which are able to continue using their own logo in combination with this) and the "préfectures" and "départements".


title: Marianne

text: Marianne has featured prominently in the Islamic scarf controversy in France as a symbol of a certain idea of Frenchness and femininity. The American historian Joan Wallach Scott wrote in 2016 that it is no accident that Marianne is often depicted as bare-breasted regardless of where she is or what she is doing, as this reflects the French ideal of a woman, which has been used as an argument for why Islamic dress for women is not French. Scott wrote the topless Marianne has become "...the embodiment of emancipated French women in contrast to the veiled woman said to be subordinated by Islam".


title: Marianne

text: Later in 2016, the French Premier Manuel Valls stated in a speech that the burkini swimsuit was an "enslavement" of women and that Marianne was usually topless which "The Economist" noted: "The implication seemed to be that women in burkinis are un-French, while true French women go topless." In a speech on 29 August 2016, Valls said: "Marianne has a naked breast because she is feeding the people! She is not veiled, because she is free! That is the republic!". Angelique Chisafis of "The Guardian" newspaper reported: "The inference that bare breasts were a symbol of France while the Muslim headscarf was problematic sparked scorn from politicians and derision from historians and feminists". The French president François Hollande sparked much debate in France with his controversial statement "The veiled woman will be the Marianne of tomorrow".


title: Marianne

text: The Marianne is one of the elements of the official emblem of the 2024 Summer Olympics and the 2024 Summer Paralympics in Paris, combined with the gold medal and the Olympic and Paralympic flame, which is the first time in history with the same emblem.


title: Monday Night Football

text: ESPN Monday Night Football (abbreviated as MNF and also known as ESPN Monday Night Football on ABC for simulcasts) is an American live television broadcast of weekly National Football League (NFL) games currently airing on ESPN, ABC (select games), ESPN2 ("Manningcast" alternate broadcast) and ESPN+ in the United States.


title: Monday Night Football

text: From to , it aired on ABC before moving exclusively to ESPN, which remains the main channel for the broadcast. In it returned to ABC, in select simulcasts with ESPN, and beginning in will also feature select exclusive telecasts. "Monday Night Football" was, along with "Hallmark Hall of Fame" and the Walt Disney anthology television series, one of the longest-running prime time programs ever on commercial network television, and one of the highest-rated, particularly among male viewers. "MNF" is preceded on ESPN by "Monday Night Countdown".


title: Monday Night Football

text: "Monday Night Football" is also broadcast in Canada on TSN and RDS, and in most of Europe. On September 7, 2013, the NFL announced that British Eurosport would show "Monday Night Football" games live in the United Kingdom for the 2013 and 2014 seasons. The telecasts are also seen in most of Australia on ESPN Australia, in Portugal on SportTV 3 and SportTV HD and on TV 2 Sport in Denmark, and in some other regions of the world outside the U.S. on ESPN International. A Spanish-language version airs on ESPN Deportes in the U.S. and on ESPN International in Latin America, while a Portuguese version airs on ESPN Brasil. Per an NFL broadcasting policy intended to allow those who do not subscribe to cable or satellite television to see games televised by a pay television network, the games are also made available on over-the-air television stations in each participating team's local market.


title: Monday Night Football

text: In 2011, ESPN extended its MNF contract for an additional eight seasons, giving it rights to the broadcasts until 2021. The new deal, valued around 15 billion, also gives ESPN rights to expanded highlights, international, and streaming rights. A new deal signed in 2021 sees ESPN retain these rights through 2033. Also included with the new deal are the rights to two Super Bowls in 2027 and 2031, the introduction of flexible scheduling, and two additional doubleheaders during the season, with one Sunday morning game on ESPN+.


title: Monday Night Football

text: To avoid any scheduling unfairness where, just before the first playoff game, a team may have five days off and others six, and also to allow the league to have games with mutual playoff implications played at the same time, all games during the final week of the regular season are played on Sunday. As such, there is no Monday night game that week. From 2003 to 2005, one game was played on Thursday and another Monday under the "Monday Night Football" banner. Starting in 2006, when the series moved to cable, two games are played on the opening Monday night to capitalize on fan interest during "NFL Kickoff Weekend".


title: Monday Night Football

text: Monday night games early in the season are often highly anticipated since records are new, teams usually are showcasing fresh talent and potential, and storylines coming into the season are often played out as fans try to see if these hyped teams are up to form. Since no one knows during the first month of the season if a team is indeed good, or will rebound from a difficult start, interest is usually high for the first few weeks of the "MNF" season.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Since the "MNF" schedule is set in April and cannot be changed, the league and network cannot guarantee a late season matchup will have any significance or be highly anticipated. Teams thought to be postseason contenders during the off-season could be out of playoff contention by the middle of the season; a prime example occurred in 1999, when the San Francisco 49ers and Atlanta Falcons both entered the season's final "MNF" game with 4–11 records. It had seemed like a good pre-season matchup since the Falcons had played in the previous season's Super Bowl and the 49ers coming into the 1999 season had posted 16 consecutive 10-win seasons. It is also possible for a team like the 1999 St. Louis Rams not to be scheduled for a Monday night game because of its dismal record the year before, and many other NFL teams (such as the 2004 San Diego Chargers and the 2008 Miami Dolphins, both with zero primetime games) have had huge unforeseen turnarounds that result in lack of "MNF" attention (these teams generally receive multiple "MNF" spots the year after their breakout success, which is great for viewers if those teams continue to play well, and not so great if they return to mediocrity or worse). However, the forecasting abilities of the NFL's scheduling officials have exhibited uncanny proficiency. Moreover, the gradual expansion of the postseason from four teams per 13-team conference in 1970 to seven per 16-team conference as of has ensured fewer teams are out of playoff contention late in the season. Most "MNF" games occurring later in the season feature at least one team that is headed to the playoffs, must win (or at least tie) the "MNF" game to clinch a playoff spot and/or must win (or tie) the game to avoid elimination from postseason contention.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The problem of having a national spotlight game which during the season's most critical weeks late in the year probably would not show the most important game of the week was long known by the league and network. As a result of this, the NFL wished to move the "Game of the Week" idea to Sunday nights as to make flex scheduling possible. This was a move which would ultimately mean the end of "Monday Night Football" on ABC until 2020, when the network began simulcasting a small number of games each season. While the league had long stated that it had no interest in expanding flexible scheduling to include "Monday Night Football", the current broadcasting contract signed in 2021 does allow for it beginning in the 2023 season.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The franchise with the most Monday night appearances is the Dallas Cowboys. The Pittsburgh Steelers got the all-time lead in most wins on November 28, 2022. They had 52 wins.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The most common "Monday Night Football" pairings are Broncos vs. Raiders (20 times as of ) and Commanders vs. Cowboys (17 match-ups as of ).


title: Monday Night Football

text: The defunct Candlestick Park in San Francisco currently holds the record for hosting the most "Monday Night Football" games, including its 36th and final Monday night game on December 23, 2013. Among the active stadiums following the conclusion of the 2017 season, Miami Gardens, Florida's Hard Rock Stadium has hosted the most games with 36.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Eight new NFL stadiums have made their regular season debuts on "Monday Night Football". Most recently, Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada, hosted its first NFL game on September 21, 2020, when the Las Vegas Raiders defeated the New Orleans Saints 34–24 on "Monday Night Football".


title: Monday Night Football

text: Beginning with the 2020 season, select "Monday Night Football" games have been simulcast on ABC under the branding ESPN Monday Night Football on ABC. In the 2020 season, three games were simulcast. In the 2021 season, three "Monday Night Football" games and the new Week 18 Saturday doubleheader were simulcast. After ESPN renewed its "Monday Night Football" contract, it was revealed that these simulcasts would expand starting with the 2022 season. To accommodate the expanded simulcasts, ABC announced that "Dancing with the Stars" would move to Disney+ beginning with its 31st season.


title: Monday Night Football

text: "Monday Night Football" has continued to provide as much entertainment as sports throughout its run. In addition to the extra cameras, the program has also pioneered technological broadcast innovations, such as the use of enhanced slow motion replays and computerized graphics.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Celebrity guests – such as former Vice President Spiro Agnew, singers Plácido Domingo and former Beatle John Lennon, President Bill Clinton, and even Kermit the Frog – were often featured during the game to "liven up" the broadcast. The December 9, contest featured a rare instance of two celebrities entering the booth, with Lennon being interviewed by Howard Cosell and California governor Ronald Reagan speaking with Frank Gifford, with Reagan explaining the rules of American football (off-camera) to Lennon as the game went along. However, the late 1990s and early 2000s saw an even more increased reliance on the entertainment factor. Some halftime shows, featuring popular music stars, were broadcast in their entirety rather than being ignored in favor of analysis of the game by the commentators, as in previous seasons.


title: Monday Night Football

text: On December 8, 1980, one of the most memorable moments of "MNF" occurred when Cosell announced in a news flash that John Lennon had been shot and killed in New York City. "Monday Night Football" was the first national broadcast to announce his death.


title: Monday Night Football

text: An ABC advertisement for "MNF" featuring Nicollette Sheridan of "Desperate Housewives" dropping her towel in front of Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens created some controversy, including at least 1,997 complaints being sent to the FCC and outrage from FCC chairman Michael Powell.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The Walt Disney Company, owner of ABC and the majority owner of ESPN, has used "Monday Night Football" to promote its other properties, releasing a trailer for the 2015 film "" during one broadcast and incorporating The Muppets into another.


title: Monday Night Football

text: For its 2006 debut on ESPN, Williams Jr. re-recorded the "MNF" opening theme with an all-star jam band that included among others Brian Setzer, Little Richard, Questlove, Joe Perry, Clarence Clemons, Rick Nielsen, Bootsy Collins, Charlie Daniels, and Steven Van Zandt. The 2006 telecast generally began with a cinematic tease produced by Rico Labbe, Michael Sciallis, and Jason Jobes. It was during one of these teases that Barack Obama spoofed his announcement for the 2008 Presidential candidacy in favor of his hometown Chicago Bears in their game against the St. Louis Rams.


title: Monday Night Football

text: That year, the tease was followed by the show open produced by Los Angeles-based The Syndicate called "Transformation". It features computer-generated imagery showing a city being transformed into a football stadium and passers-by on the street turning into players, coaches, fans, and officials set to an updated orchestral treatment of the "Heavy Action" theme song. The sequence began every week with a different celebrity walking down the street, picking up a glowing football helmet with the ESPN logo on the side and saying, "I'm ready for some football! Are you?", thus beginning the transformation process. Celebrities for 2006 included Arnold Schwarzenegger, Matthew Fox, Hugh Hefner, Paris Hilton, Spike Lee, Ashton Kutcher, Samuel L. Jackson, Ludacris, Jack Black, Kiefer Sutherland, James Belushi, Ben Stiller, Tyra Banks, Carmen Electra, and Eva Longoria.


title: Monday Night Football

text: In addition, celebrities returned in full force to the booth, though this proved to be the major criticism of ESPN's first "MNF" season. On the opening weekend, Arnold Schwarzenegger, another celebrity-turned-California governor, was in the booth at McAfee Coliseum in Oakland, California; before that, Jamie Foxx appeared at FedExField in suburban Washington, D.C. Following them, celebrity appearances included NBA basketball superstar Dwyane Wade, Basketball Hall of Fame player Charles Barkley, NASCAR Cup Series driver Jeff Gordon, comedian Jimmy Kimmel (whose opening words to Joe Theismann were "how's the leg?"), actor Sylvester Stallone, film director Spike Lee, hip hop artist Jay-Z, and "MNF" theme singer Hank Williams Jr.


title: Monday Night Football

text: ESPN scaled back to only one opening tease for the 2007 season. Williams Jr. and the all-star band returned, only this time they played in a "juke joint" set on a country road. The lead singer arrives in a GMC Yukon truck (GMC paid for product placement) with the license plate "BOCEPHUS", which is Williams' nickname. The Syndicate's computer-generated tease was dropped and replaced by short pre-taped films focusing on a team or player in the game. Some of them have featured actor Jamie Foxx.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The guest visits continued: Barkley returned to the booth on September 17 in Philadelphia. Other guests throughout the season included Kimmel (another returnee), Drew Carey, Miley Cyrus, Russell Crowe and Terry Bradshaw. In addition, Gordon was a halftime guest on the game just before the season-ending Ford 400 and was joined by teammate Jimmie Johnson.


title: Monday Night Football

text: At the end of each game, Williams returned to say, "See you in (city that is the site of the next week's game)." Both the open and close contain helmets of the participating teams, organized in the style of a concert poster.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Despite the de-emphasis on entertainment on the overall telecast, ESPN did bring back Hank Williams Jr. for his 20th season as part of the opening. This time, the opening sequence was set in a private residence. At the end of the song, Williams Jr. touched a foot pump, which supposedly contained the helmets of that night's participating teams. The helmets were launched from the home toward the stadium at which the game was held. Through computer-generated imagery, the helmets "land" at midfield during a live shot, and then explode. The "exploding helmets" gimmick was also used at various times in the 1980s and 1990s during the pre-game tease. Williams Jr. then appeared again at the end of the game to promote the next week's matchup.


title: Monday Night Football

text: ESPN also continued to promote upcoming albums through its use in bumper music. On September 29 (Baltimore Ravens at Pittsburgh Steelers), ESPN used "Another Way to Die", a duet between Alicia Keys and Jack White of the White Stripes – the song was part of the soundtrack for the 2008 film "Quantum of Solace", then the latest in the James Bond series.


title: Monday Night Football

text: "MNF" celebrated its 600th game broadcast on October 20, 2008 in a game which the New England Patriots defeated the Denver Broncos, 41–7.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The 39th season of "MNF" ended on December 22, 2008, when the Chicago Bears beat the Green Bay Packers, 20–17, in overtime at home at Soldier Field in Chicago.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The title sequence for the 40th season of "MNF" featured Hank Williams Jr. seen on the steps of a building (presumably a museum), surrounded by dancers, football fans, and statues/busts – which, along with everyone else in the scene, begin to move and dance – patterned after those at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The transition to Williams Jr. is a book, with the chapter number (in Roman numerals, sequentially with each week) and a tag line about the game to be played that night.


title: Monday Night Football

text: At the end of the song, Williams Jr. plugged in the cords, thereby launching animated "helmets" into space, from the building toward the stadium at which the game was held (with the exception of October 5, 2009, when the helmets zoomed towards Brett Favre instead), passing the International Space Station. As with the previous season (as mentioned above), the helmets "land" at midfield during a live shot and then crashed into each other. Williams Jr. appeared again at the end of the telecast to promote the following week's matchup. After that, the picture was freezeframed and the shot zoomed out to the book, which showed the freezeframed picture as part of a page. As this happened, the NFL end-of-game bumper music was played and the book closed, revealing a golden NFL logo on the back cover and signifying the end of the "chapter", or game. The scene was filmed in the summer of 2009 at The Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Before Williams Jr. appears, Frank Gifford gave a short vignette about a memorable moment in the history of "MNF" featuring one or both of the teams playing that night's game.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Tony Kornheiser did not return to the booth after 3 seasons and was replaced by former Oakland Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Jon Gruden.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The 40th season of "MNF" ended on December 28, 2009 with the Minnesota Vikings–Chicago Bears game in Chicago, in which the Bears won in overtime, 36–30. The telecast ended with a vignette that featured Gifford taking a look back at highlights from the previous four decades – and the 40th season – of "MNF", after which the book closed, signifying the end of the season. The 40th season had the highest season viewership for "MNF" since ESPN acquired the rights to the broadcast.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The opening for the 2010 season was identical to that used in 2009, except for the final scenes. This time, Williams Jr. turns a wheel filled with paint, with CGI colors blasting into the air, revealing the helmets containing logos of the participating teams – which stay on top of the building. In one other minor difference, the chapter numbers in the "book" were changed from Roman to Arabic numerals. Gifford provided new vignettes and the Parthenon scenes were repeated from the year before. The 2010 season marked Williams' 22nd as part of the telecast's open.


title: Monday Night Football

text: In an unusual coincidence, both games which had the New York Jets as a home team at New Meadowlands Stadium (now MetLife Stadium) were delayed because of heavy rain and lightning in the area. In the first instance, the September 13 game against the Baltimore Ravens, it was delayed 25 minutes; the second delay, prior to the October 11 contest against the Minnesota Vikings, lasted for 40 minutes. Prior to the September 13 game, the last ESPN telecast to encounter weather problems was on October 4, 1998 (a Sunday night) when lightning halted a game between the Seattle Seahawks and Kansas City Chiefs during the second quarter. The first delay forced ESPN to use ESPN2 for a game telecast, this time for the Chiefs' home opener against the San Diego Chargers. As in 2007, the broadcast was shifted to ESPN once the first game was over.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The game between the Jets and the Vikings was both Brett Favre's first game in East Rutherford since his only season there in 2008 and marked Randy Moss's return to the Vikings. Moss played only four games for Minnesota until he was waived on November 2.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The opening sequence for the 2011 season was set in a closed-studio setting, with Hank Williams Jr. (in his 23rd year) performing with a band with members such as Jimi K Bones from KIX and Blondie, The House Jacks, and Jenny Morrison (bass guitar), Chris King (trumpet), Clay Lucovich (trombone), and Florizel Dennis (baritone saxophone) from Orlando, Florida ska band Tef London, in front of a live audience with large video screens in the background. The end of the opening sequence featured the team logos of that night's participants transitioning into the new "ESPN Monday Night Football" logo before going to a live shot. On October 3, 2011, ESPN pulled the theme song after Williams appeared on the Fox News Channel program, "Fox & Friends", where he compared a golf outing involving Barack Obama, John Boehner, Joe Biden and John Kasich to "Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu." On October 6, 2011, it was announced that Williams would no longer be singing the theme song, and that "All My Rowdy Friends" would no longer be used as its theme, as Williams still owns the song. A statement from ESPN said that the network has "decided to part ways with Hank Williams Jr. We appreciate his contributions over the past years. The success of "MNF" has always been about the games and that will continue." Williams commented on the matter: "After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made my decision... By pulling my opening October 3, [ESPN] stepped on the toes of the First Amendment Freedom of Speech, so therefore me, my song, and "All My Rowdy Friends" are out of here. It's been a great run." "MNF" did not have an opening sequence at all from Week 4 through the end of that season.


title: Monday Night Football

text: With Suzy Kolber reassigned to the new studio show "NFL32", and Michele Tafoya having left ESPN for "NBC Sunday Night Football", the sideline reporter position rotated between various reporters for the season.


title: Monday Night Football

text: For the second year in a row, and the third time overall, the beginning of the 10:15 p.m. Eastern Time game (Oakland Raiders at Denver Broncos) was shown on ESPN2 as the game that began at 7:00 pm. Eastern Time (New England Patriots at Miami Dolphins) ran past the scheduled time period.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Lisa Salters was named the permanent solo sideline reporter for the 2012 season. In addition, color commentator Ron Jaworski did not return to the booth after 5 seasons. As a result, Jon Gruden became the solo color commentator, with "MNF" going back to a two-man booth for the first time since its final season on ABC (2005). "MNF"s opening graphic sequence, which showed the helmet logos of the game's two participating NFL teams and then the program's logo, was seen before the "Monday Night Football Launch" segment.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The opening animation sequence begins with an image of a 2014 GMC Sierra (GMC paid for product placement) and then goes into a timeline of historical events that occurred during the "Monday Night Football" era, including some highlights of "MNF" games from the previous 43 seasons up to 2012. At the end of the sequence, helmets featuring logos of that night's two participating teams are shown, followed by the various "Monday Night Football" logos used since the program's debut in 1970. The 80-second opening animation sequence, which also featured Pac-Man, Darth Vader and President Ronald Reagan, was created by actor/filmmaker Peter Berg.


title: Monday Night Football

text: A revision of the opening sequence was used for the 2014 season. Among the few changes, GMC's product placement promoted the automaker's line of Denali vehicles, while the sequence itself included some additional highlights of "MNF" games from the previous 44 seasons up to 2013.


title: Monday Night Football

text: A 3D opening animation sequence is used for the 2015 season (46th season overall and tenth on ESPN). GMC's product placement once again promoted the automaker's line of Denali vehicles, including the Yukon Denali that is seen at the beginning. Also among the many changes is the highlights of "MNF" games – this time, they are set inside a computer-generated stadium using 3D imagery – from the previous 45 seasons up to 2014.


title: Monday Night Football

text: This was Mike Tirico's final season as the play-by-play announcer for "MNF", as he would join NBC Sports in June 2016.


title: Monday Night Football

text: After three years of using the timeline-themed open, "MNF" debuted a new 75-second, Hollywood-themed open on September 12, 2016, featuring ESPN's new "MNF" broadcast team – Sean McDonough (play-by-play), Jon Gruden (color) and Lisa Salters (sideline reporter) – and more than 20 active NFL stars and Pro Football Hall of Famers walking along a red carpet entrance lined by cheering fans and photographers taking pictures. It began with a shot of a downtown stadium surrounded by skyscrapers, with a 2017 GMC Acadia (product placement again provided by GMC) displaying the location for that week's "MNF" game on its navigation system. The Acadia then headed to a glitzy red carpet at the stadium's entrance, where McDonough, Gruden and Salters exit the car, followed on the carpet by a flood of NFL players representing the past and present of "MNF". Players then posed for pictures and wave to the crowd as they reach the stadium entrance. Josh Norman (Redskins), Larry Fitzgerald (Cardinals) and Rob Gronkowski (Patriots) were among the current players being represented in the open, with Franco Harris (Steelers), Jerry Rice (49ers), Barry Sanders (Lions) and Bruce Smith (Bills) among the past players being represented.


title: Monday Night Football

text: For the Spanish-language version of the Hollywood-themed open, it featured ESPN's Spanish-language "MNF" broadcast team – Álvaro Martín (play-by-play), Raúl Allegre (color) and John Sutcliffe (sideline reporter) as well as the current Hispanic NFL players and the team of the Latin American version of "NFL Live" led by Ciro Procuna.


title: Monday Night Football

text: "MNF" returned to two teases for the first time since its first season on ESPN (2006). The Hollywood-themed open was repeated from the previous season, this time with the 2018 GMC Terrain being used as the automaker's product placement.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Also, Hank Williams Jr. returned to "MNF" on September 11, 2017 with an all-new version of the iconic opening theme song, "All My Rowdy Friends Are Here on Monday Night" (used from 1989 to Week 3 of the 2011 season) and it appeared just before that night's New Orleans Saints-Minnesota Vikings game. The new version, which is seen just before the kickoff of each game, is a collaboration of Williams Jr., country duo Florida Georgia Line, and R&B singer Jason Derulo.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The second game of the Week 1 "MNF" doubleheader between the Los Angeles Chargers and the Denver Broncos saw Beth Mowins become the first woman to call a nationally televised NFL game.


title: Monday Night Football

text: 2018 brought in a shakeup of the booth. Jon Gruden left "MNF" after 9 seasons and returned to coaching with the Oakland Raiders and was replaced by Jason Witten, formerly a tight end for the Dallas Cowboys. Sean McDonough and Joe Tessitore traded places, with McDonough taking Tessitore's place in the college booth, and Tessitore taking McDonough's place in the "MNF" booth. In addition, Booger McFarland, who has been a college football analyst for the network since 2014, joined the "MNF" team as field analyst and consultant. Finally, rules analyst Gerald Austin left "MNF" to work as an adviser to Gruden and the Raiders and was replaced by recently retired referee Jeff Triplette. Lisa Salters remained the sideline reporter.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Also, ESPN once again scaled back to only one opening tease for the 2018 season, as the Hollywood-themed open was dropped after two seasons. "All My Rowdy Friends Are Here on Monday Night" featuring country music legend Hank Williams Jr., country music duo Florida-Georgia Line and R&B singer Jason Derulo returned from the previous season and is once again seen just before the opening kickoff. Due to the Thousand Oaks shooting, and the then-ongoing Northern California wildfires, the opening intro was not shown during the November 12 broadcast between Pro Bowl wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. and the New York Giants and Super Bowl-winning cornerback Richard Sherman and the San Francisco 49ers and also, the historic Kansas City Chiefs-Los Angeles Rams game the following week (November 19). In the case of the latter, it was originally scheduled to be played at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, but was moved to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (the Rams' home stadium at the time, which itself last hosted a "Monday Night Football" game in 1985) due to the poor field conditions at the former. The game would be the highest scoring game in "MNF" history, with the Rams defeating the Chiefs by a score of 54–51.


title: Monday Night Football

text: In addition, ESPN also added musical performances during the halftime segment, branded as the "Genesis Halftime Show" as part of a sponsorship deal. These performances typically aired at the end of the commercial-free halftime segments and, with the expectation of the Chiefs-Rams game in which there was a live performance, were typically prerecorded in various locations, usually around the city where that week's "MNF" game took place.


title: Monday Night Football

text: ESPN underwent another broadcast booth shakeup, as Jason Witten left to return to the Dallas Cowboys, and rules analyst Jeff Triplette left after one season. Triplette was replaced with John Parry, who retired after Super Bowl LIII. Witten was not replaced, therefore making the 2019 broadcast team consist of Joe Tessitore (play-by-play), Booger McFarland (color commentator) and Lisa Salters (sideline reporter).


title: Monday Night Football

text: The network also brought back Hank Williams Jr. to perform "All My Rowdy Friends Are Here on Monday Night", which for the first time since 2011, he performed solo, as Florida Georgia Line and Jason Derulo all departed after two seasons. The intro to "Monday Night Football" also celebrated the 50th season of the program with NFL Legends and Hall of Famers or current NFL players (Texans' J. J. Watt for the Playoffs) saying "Are you ready for some football?" before Williams Jr. begins playing.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The "Genesis Halftime Show" returned for another season and continued to feature prerecorded musical performances; however they were later dropped on October 28 due to poor reception from viewers and was replaced with additional game analysis although Genesis continued to sponsor the halftime show for the remainder of the season.


title: Monday Night Football

text: After poor reviews and major criticism, the 2020 season saw another major revamp to ESPN's booth, with Steve Levy, Brian Griese, and Louis Riddick, who called one of ESPN’s opening week doubleheader games the year before, replacing Joe Tessitore and Booger McFarland. McFarland, however, would switch places with Riddick, taking over in the studio. ESPN/ABC's lead college football commentary team of Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit, and Maria Taylor called the first game of the Week 1 doubleheader (as Fowler and Taylor were already in the New York area handling the US Open (Fowler) and the NBA Playoffs (Taylor) respectively). Fowler and Herbstreit were considered as the new MNF booth, if the 2020 college football season were to be canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To formally celebrate the 50th anniversary of "Monday Night Football", the Las Vegas Raiders' Week 2 home opener (their first after relocating from Oakland) was simulcast by ABC. The game also featured a special Monday Night Megacast, hosted by Rece Davis and Herbstreit. This alternate broadcast aired on ESPN2, the first time it had aired an NFL game in its entirety. The Hank Williams Jr. "MNF" theme was once again dropped, being replaced by a cover of Little Richard's "Rip It Up" by Virginia-based band Butcher Brown.


title: Monday Night Football

text: As the game was postponed to October 12 due to a player testing positive for COVID-19, the Week 5 game between the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots was reassigned to ESPN as the first half of a rare in-season "MNF" doubleheader, with the game scheduled for a 5:00 p.m. ET kickoff. Fowler and Herbstreit were slated to return and call the game. This time, they would have been joined by Laura Rutledge, host of "NFL Live" and "SEC Nation" on SEC Network. However, the game was ultimately postponed to the following Sunday as a Week 6 game due to further positive tests. Rutledge would eventually fill in for Lisa Salters during the Week 16 "MNF" game in Foxborough, as Salters had been following ESPN's COVID-19 protocols.


title: Monday Night Football

text: ESPN announced on November 30 that two December Monday night games, both involving the Buffalo Bills, would be simulcast on ABC. Also announced on November 30 was the debut of the NFL Playoff Megacast, which featured alternate feeds of the Baltimore Ravens-Tennessee Titans matchup on ESPN2, ESPN+, and Freeform.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The December 21 matchup between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals featured the Muppets and was themed as "Muppet Night Football." In the opening broadcast of the game, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy served as announcers from the booth while Fozzie Bear reported from the sidelines. After their appearance in the opening broadcast, the Muppets soon re-appeared with Rowlf the Dog, Scooter, Gonzo, Animal, Beaker, the Swedish Chef and others singing a football-themed rendition "Carol of the Bells". As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the segments involving the Muppets were shot with puppeteers in front of a green screen at home.


title: Monday Night Football

text: For the first time since 2005, there was no season-opening doubleheader as the opening game of "Monday Night Football"s 52nd season consisted only of the Baltimore Ravens-Las Vegas Raiders matchup, which was aired on ESPN and simulcast on ABC, ESPN2, and ESPN+, as part of the network’s Megacast series. Also, Butcher Brown's cover of Little Richard's "Rip it Up" returned for the second consecutive year as the intro theme for "MNF".


title: Monday Night Football

text: Like last season, two late-season games, both being NFC rivalries, were simulcast on ABC, as well as ESPN+. ABC and ESPN+ also simulcast the first ever Week 18 Saturday Doubleheader, a new addition to ESPN’s schedule, which was part of the NFL expanding their regular season from 16 to 17 games, and to accommodate ESPN’s new NFL media rights deal, which includes the Saturday Doubleheader, a Sunday International game for ESPN+ subscribers, more games on ABC, a Divisional playoff game, and Super Bowls LXI and LXV on ABC, along with rights for ESPN+ to simulcast every ESPN/ABC game, accommodate select games with alternate broadcasts, and flex scheduling beginning in 2023.


title: Monday Night Football

text: On July 19, ESPN announced an agreement with Omaha Productions, the production company of Peyton Manning, to produce alternate telecasts of "Monday Night Football" with Manning, his brother Eli, and guest celebrities for ten games each season on ESPN2 and ESPN+, from 2021 through 2023. The Manningcast would also be a part of ESPN’s first ever Monday Night Super Wild Card Megacast, which had alternate broadcasts of the game on ESPN2 and ESPN+, to accommodate the main broadcast on ESPN, ABC, and ESPN+. The success of the Manningcast’s first season would lead to ESPN adding an extra year to their deal with Omaha Productions in the offseason.


title: Monday Night Football

text: This season, ESPN will be working under a new bridge deal to transition themselves into the next television contract. The 2022 season will see ESPN+ add a Sunday International game, an exclusive "MNF" game on ABC, and the continuation of the Week 18 Saturday Doubleheader. ESPN made a colossal change to the "MNF" booth, the fourth change since 2015, when the network hired Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, who were Fox's lead commentary team for the past 20 seasons, as the new announcers for "MNF", replacing Levy, Griese (who eventually left ESPN to become the new quarterbacks coach of the San Francisco 49ers), and Riddick. Levy and Riddick will continue to call doubleheaders as the #2 team, with Dan Orlovsky replacing Griese and Laura Rutledge serving as that team's sideline reporter.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Butcher Brown's cover of "Rip it Up" did not return as the intro theme for MNF. Instead, a remix of "Heavy Action" was used, produced by EDM producer and DJ Marshmello.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Hank Williams Jr. reworked his country music hit "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight" to be included in the telecast's introduction as "All My Rowdy Friends Are Here on Monday Night" (the original introduction music was an organ-based piece called "Score", written by Charles Fox and recorded by Bob's Band). In addition, Edd Kalehoff modernized the classic "Heavy Action" theme in 1989.


title: Monday Night Football

text: For ABC's last "MNF" game in 2005, Williams Jr.'s rendition of "Turn Out the Lights, The Party's Over", closed the broadcast.


title: Monday Night Football

text: In 2018, ESPN brought back the classic "Heavy Action" theme as the main theme song for "Monday Night Football".


title: Monday Night Football

text: In 2020, ESPN replaced Hank Williams Jr.'s "MNF" theme with a cover of Little Richard's "Rip It Up" by Virginia-based band Butcher Brown for the 2020 and 2021 seasons. For the 2021–22 season, the theme sometimes played in reverse.


title: Monday Night Football

text: In 2022, ESPN added the remixed version of "Heavy Action" as the intro theme for "MNF" as a replacement for Butcher Brown's "Rip It Up"; the aforementioned original version of "Heavy Action" is still being used as the main theme.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Prior to 1997, "Monday Night Football" had a limited graphics package. A CGI-based intro began being used in 1984, with on-screen graphics still limited to basic text. In 1988, the entire graphics package was updated significantly to be more in line with the rest of ABC Sports' presentations. That year, it introduced the "clashing helmets" intro, with on-screen graphics consisting of italicized text underlined in red. It was updated in 1994, the year the network hosted Super Bowl XXIX, with a more box-like design. A permanent score bug would not be introduced until 1997.


title: Monday Night Football

text: "Monday Night Football" began using a score bug in 1997, the second network to do so after Fox introduced the first regular on-screen scoring bug when it began airing NFL games in 1994. Prior to this, the graphics package was limited, but followed a basic "ketchup and mustard" color scheme of red and yellow. The first scorebug included team names, scores, time remaining, and displayed which quarter the game was in. This design was used through the 1998 season.


title: Monday Night Football

text: ABC hosted Super Bowl XXXIV for 1999, and updated its graphics package to more closely resemble those of sister cable network ESPN. ABC began using extended abbreviations for team names (for example, "TENN", "VIKES", "PACK", and "FINS" instead of "TEN", "MIN", "GB", and "MIA"), as four-letter and five-letter abbreviations were used on ESPN coverage. The result was a larger scorebug with a more conventional font. It was slightly modified in 2000 to have a border that was more in line with the red and yellow color scheme.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The graphics for "Monday Night Football" were changed in the 2002 season, the year the network hosted Super Bowl XXXVII. The scorebug was a solid color, with a more rounded shape, and a horizontally compressed font. ESPN's graphics were no longer similar to those of ABC's (with ESPN instead using a gray and black design with rounded corners). In 2005, the broadcast's final year on ABC, "Monday Night Football" began using a horizontal bar on the bottom of the screen rather than a scorebug, with all information being contained on a single line.


title: Monday Night Football

text: After "MNF" moved to ESPN in 2006 (around the same time that ABC Sports rebranded as ESPN on ABC), ESPN adopted new red and black graphics with heavier use of 3D elements and animations. These graphics would be subsequently implemented as a standard appearance for most major ESPN properties (including college football, the NBA, Major League Baseball, and NASCAR among others). For "MNF", a "pod" scoreboard at the bottom-center of the screen was used.


title: Monday Night Football

text: For the 2008 season, a new graphics scheme was introduced, in which a scorebar and all lower thirds were confined to a dedicated "dashboard" area spanning across the bottom the screen. Lower third graphics replaced the scorebar when in use. For 2009, an updated metallic silver design was introduced, dropping the "dashboard". The scheme would, again, be adopted by other major ESPN properties. In the 2011 season, "MNF" introduced a dedicated graphics package with a red and black metallic design and larger scoreboard, as well as a redesigned "MNF" shield logo.


title: Monday Night Football

text: For the 2015 season, ESPN introduced another overhaul of its "MNF" graphics, with a new scoreboard spanning the bottom of the screen, capable of being faded away when plays are in progress. This design persisted through 2018, although with amendments in its final season (including a different, italicized font for the scoreboard and downs indicator, and the downs indicator now resembling an arrow, and alternating sides of the screen with the ESPN logo depending on the direction of play).


title: Monday Night Football

text: In 2019, ESPN introduced a new graphics scheme its NFL programming (modeled upon branding used for the NFL Draft since 2018), incorporating refreshed logos, and a color scheme featuring black, white, and a lime color referred to internally as "venom". The "MNF" scoreboard retained a similar layout to before, but with new fonts and only showing team logos.


title: Monday Night Football

text: During the first game of ESPN's opening doubleheader, the network faced criticism from viewers for coloring the downage indicator on its scoreboard in the aforementioned "venom" color, which could be confused for a graphic indicating a penalty (typically colored in yellow to match the penalty flag; the flag graphic used a black rectangle with a venom-colored border and text). In response to the criticism, ESPN producers modified the graphic over halftime, changing the indicator to use a white, light-on-dark color scheme instead. "Chicago Tribune" media writer Phil Rosenthal described the briefly-used graphic as a "fluorescent-highlighter fever dream", and felt that "the quickness with which ESPN abandoned this unnecessary bit of flash probably speaks more to how misguided this latest supposed 'innovation' was than any increased sensitivity to the twitterati." Despite the previous incident, ESPN faced similar criticism in January 2021 during the College Football Playoff semi-finals, where it used a gold-textured downs indicator.


title: Monday Night Football

text: From to , ABC's "Monday Night Football" coverage began at 9 pm. Eastern Time, with game kickoff typically occurring at seven minutes past the hour. Coverage was moved one hour earlier to 8 pm. Eastern Time in , with a pre-game show titled "Monday Night Blast", hosted by Chris Berman from the ESPN Zone restaurant in Baltimore preceding the start of the game at 8:20 pm. This was done mainly to address ABC's inability to find a suitable 8 p.m. lead-in program for "MNF" since "MacGyver" ended its run in 1992 (not even two other series from "MacGyver"s production company Paramount Television – "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" and "The Marshal" – saw success, despite the former's ties to Paramount's "Indiana Jones" film series), and to allow stations to start their late local newscasts nearer to their regular times. Poor ratings caused this experiment to be dropped after one season, with "MNF" once again moving to 9 p.m. in , though in many NFL markets, the 8 p.m. (Eastern Time) hour from 1999 to 2006 was replaced by affiliates with locally produced and programmed sports discussion and coaches shows, with ABC programming in that hour moved to late night or weekend slots; by the end of the ABC run, the 8 p.m. time-slot was filled with either news magazines and short-lived reality television programs which failed to make any ratings headways due to affiliate pre-emptions.


title: Monday Night Football

text: From to , Fisher Broadcasting's ABC affiliates in Seattle (KOMO-TV) and Portland (KATU) aired "MNF" games on a one-hour tape delay starting at 7 p.m. Pacific Time (games normally started in the Pacific Time Zone at 6 p.m., corresponding to 9 p.m. Eastern) in order to accommodate local newscasts (unless the Seattle Seahawks were playing, in which case the game was shown live). The practice, long opposed by viewers and ABC, ended in . KOMO then tried to accommodate having to air its local newscasts earlier than its local station competitors by marketing it as "KOMO 4 News Primetime", touting it as a way to watch the news at a more convenient time than during evening rush hour. Additionally, this practice was done in Hawaii, where Honolulu ABC affiliate KITV delayed the game until 7 p.m. Hawaii-Aleutian Time. Thus, the game, which was broadcast live on local radio starting at 3 or 4 p.m., was almost over before it aired on television. In the case of Guam, KTGM, the ABC affiliate in that U.S. territory, aired "MNF" live on Tuesdays at 11 a.m., as Guam is a day ahead of the United States due to being located on the other side of International Date Line.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The demand to broadcast "Monday Night Football" games live across the United States over ABC was difficult to reconcile with other prime time programming, which is usually set to begin at a certain local time regardless of time zone. On the East Coast, with "MNF" beginning at 9 p.m. Eastern Time, there was an hour of primetime in which to schedule regular programming. However, on the West Coast, the games lasted from 6 to 9:30 p.m. Pacific Time (or in the case of Seattle and Portland from 1970 to 1995, 7 to 10:30 p.m.), leaving little or no time for additional network programming on Monday. As a result, network programs scheduled for prime time on the East Coast were broadcast at various hours on the West Coast. Most affiliates pushed the network shows to immediately after the game; however, Los Angeles owned-and-operated station KABC-TV postponed them until 10 p.m. from at least the mid-1990s until 2005 to show trivia contests and other sports shows produced locally (the longest-tenured such show was "Monday Night Live", hosted by sports anchor Todd Donoho). Meanwhile, KOMO, one of the stations that tape delayed "MNF" in most cases, broadcast new episodes of the sitcom "Coach" on Saturday afternoons (usually reserved, coincidentally enough, for college football telecasts; much of the series took place on a fictional college campus). Except for Seattle and Portland from 1970 to 1995, "ABC World News Tonight" was routinely preempted on most West Coast affiliates, though the ABC network-owned stations (e.g. Los Angeles) aired the program earlier in the afternoon.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Since ESPN took over the coverage in 2006, games normally had a kickoff time of 8:30 p.m. Eastern, which was later changed to 8:15 p.m. Eastern in 2018. However, when ESPN aired a doubleheader during the first week of the season until 2021, the games respectively started at 7 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. Eastern.


title: Monday Night Football

text: There have been issues with local stations in the ESPN era, where stations in each team's home market that air the ESPN simulcast are in most cases ABC affiliates, which pre-empt "Dancing with the Stars" to air the NFL. This both forces the affiliate to air that program immediately after late-evening local newscasts, "Jimmy Kimmel Live!", and "Nightline" and has resulted in the program's telephone and Internet voting coordinators keeping a late-night voting window open for the market or markets where "Dancing with the Stars" was pre-empted.


title: Monday Night Football

text: In some cases, the program is moved to a sister station of the ABC affiliate to air live instead (for example, until 2011 in the Minneapolis–St. Paul market, when NBC affiliate KARE took over as the local broadcaster of "MNF" games, if the Minnesota Vikings were playing a game being simulcast on local ABC affiliate KSTP-TV, sister independent station KSTC-TV aired "DWTS" live). In 2016, for the opening week Monday night game (the second in a doubleheader) between the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers, the ABC-owned stations in both markets (KABC-TV and KGO-TV) would broadcast "World News Tonight" and "DWTS" in their live Eastern Time Zone slots, thus airing at 3:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. PT respectively (the "WNT" simulcast was later made permanent on both stations every weekday for ratings purposes).


title: Monday Night Football

text: In 2022, "Dancing with the Stars" moved to Disney+, which would therefore resolve the preemption issue.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Since , a Spanish-language telecast is also broadcast on ESPN Deportes, the Spanish version of ESPN and on ESPN Latin America, featuring NBA and NFL play-by-play announcer Álvaro Martín, Super Bowl winner Raul Allegre as color commentator and John Sutcliffe as the field reporter. This is the same crew of La NFL Dominical, the Spanish version of ESPN Sunday Night Football, until . The announcers of the second game of the 2006 doubleheader were Eduardo Varela (play-by-play), Robert Abramowitz (color) and Georgina Ruiz Sandoval (field reporter). Preceding the game NFL Esta Noche ("NFL Tonight"), the 30-minute pre-game show, can be seen on both networks.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The four booth announcers called the 2007 season opening games from ESPN's Bristol, Connecticut headquarters while watching games on monitors. None of them traveled to the game sites and there were no sideline reporters in the early weeks. Sutcliffe would later report from the game sites. Allegre did not work the season finale between the Broncos and Chargers; he was replaced by Abramovitz.


title: Monday Night Football

text: In 2008, Martin and Allegre only travelled to the Cowboys-Eagles game, during the NFL's celebrations of Hispanic Heritage Month.


title: Monday Night Football

text: As part of ESPN's agreement to simulcast their Wild Card game on ABC, Martin and Allegre's Spanish-language commentary is carried over the SAP channel on ABC, equivalent to the rest of the NFL's over-the-air broadcast partners.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Since Super Bowl 50, ESPN has entered into sub-licensing agreements with CBS to air dedicated Spanish-language telecasts of the Super Bowl on ESPN Deportes, using the "Monday Night Football" commentary team and with surrounding coverage in the language. Fox and NBC have used their Fox Deportes and Universo cable networks to air similar broadcasts for their Super Bowl games, but CBS did not own a mainstream Spanish-language cable channel of its own at the time. This arrangement has continued with subsequent Super Bowl games aired by CBS, including Super Bowl LIII and LV.


title: Monday Night Football

text: In 2017 and 2018, ESPN2 simulcast ESPN Deportes' telecast, "NFL Esta Noche", and the ESPN Latin America "SportsCenter" after the game, during the first nine weeks of the season (prior to the start of its Monday-night college basketball broadcasts). ESPN2 had previously scheduled lesser-viewed filler programming during the period. In the 2020-21 playoffs, ESPN Deportes also aired an AFC Divisional Playoff game and the AFC Championship Game.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Since the 1990s, ESPN Latin America has a Portuguese language feed targeted to their viewers in Brazil. Ivan Zimmermann (play-by-play), André José Adler (play-by-play), Roberto Figueroa (color), and Marco Alfaro (color), among others, were the announcers broadcasting from ESPN's headquarters. Since , the structure of the Brazilian feed has been merged with ESPN Brasil and the broadcasting is done from São Paulo. The current announcers are Fernando Nardini (play-by-play) and Paulo Antunes (color). Ari Aguiar (play-by-play) and Antony Curti (color) occasionally fill in.


title: Monday Night Football

text: "Monday Night Football" has also been carried on national radio networks over the years. The Mutual Broadcasting System aired the games initially, with Van Patrick (–), Lindsey Nelson (–) and Al Wester announcing. CBS Radio took over the rights in with Jack Buck and Hank Stram commentating. After a two-year stint (–) with Don Criqui and Bob Trumpy calling the games on NBC Radio, Buck and Stram resumed with CBS Radio in . In , Howard David and Matt Millen replaced Buck and Stram. Marv Albert and Boomer Esiason were the "MNF" radio voices from to , with Kevin Harlan replacing Albert in . Kurt Warner joined the crew in for games when Esiason was unavailable, taking over full-time in .


title: Monday Night Football

text: In the 1990s, CBS Radio purchased a controlling stake in Westwood One, which in turn had bought out both the NBC and Mutual networks. As of 2008, Westwood One was no longer controlled by CBS, but the network retained its NFL broadcast rights. In , Westwood One was purchased by Dial Global. Then in , Dial Global, including Westwood One, was acquired by Cumulus Media.


title: Monday Night Football

text: As with other regular-season NFL games, Monday night games are also broadcast locally by the featured teams' own radio networks and announcers.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The highest-rated "Monday Night Football" telecast on ABC was the Miami Dolphins' victory over the previously undefeated Chicago Bears on December 2, , which drew a national Nielsen rating of 29.6 and a share of 46. ABC's lowest-rated "MNF" game was the St. Louis Rams' defeat of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on October 18, , which drew a 7.7 rating.


title: Monday Night Football

text: During the 1995–1996 television season, "Monday Night Football" averaged a 17.1 household rating. Its main competitor, "Murphy Brown" on CBS, averaged a 12.3 rating.


title: Monday Night Football

text: The highest-rated "MNF" game on ESPN, and the highest-rated program in U.S. cable television history at that time, was the Minnesota Vikings' defeat of the Green Bay Packers 30–23 on October 5, , with a rating of 15.3. The game featured the much-hyped matchup of Vikings quarterback Brett Favre facing his longtime former Green Bay team. In a press release, ESPN noted that the telecast "was watched by more than 16.8 million people. The previous record was more than 13.6 million viewers for 2008's Monday night game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys. This was subsequently beaten by ESPN's coverage of the 2011 BCS National Championship Game. ESPN also stated that the game drew the highest rating in the network's 30-year history. The 15.3 rating beat the 14.4 for a Bears-Vikings game on Dec. 6, 1987, during ESPN's first season of televising NFL games". ESPN's lowest-rated "MNF" game to date was the New York Giants' defeat of the Atlanta Falcons on October 15, 2007, which drew a 5.7 rating.


title: Monday Night Football

text: ESPN's third season of "MNF" was the most-watched program on cable television in , setting an all-time cable viewership record for the third straight year and drawing that year's three largest cable household audiences and 13 of the top 15. In three seasons on ESPN, "MNF" has registered seven of the top 10 all-time largest household audiences in cable history, led by the Eagles-Cowboys telecast on September 15, 2008, which attracted cable's largest household audience ever (an average of 12,953,000 homes). ESPN's 17 "MNF" telecasts in 2008 averaged an 8.9 rating, representing an average of 8,679,000 households (11,962,000 viewers), increases of 3%, 5% and 7%, respectively, vs. 2007 (8.6; 8,277,000 and 11,230,000).


title: Monday Night Football

text: When ABC first acquired the rights to air "MNF" in 1970, it did not include any playoff games. The network was eventually allowed into the rotation of airing the Super Bowl, starting with Super Bowl XIX in January 1985. When the league expanded the playoffs from a 10-team to a 12-team tournament in 1990, ABC was then given the rights to air the first two Wild Card Playoff games. Originally, ABC's college football crews would call the first Wild Card Game.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Following The Walt Disney Company's purchase of both ESPN and ABC, the two network's sports departments merged in 1997. Beginning with the 1997 season, the "ESPN Sunday Night Football" crew called the first game, with the ABC "MNF" crew calling the second game. ESPN provided wraparound studio programming, with part of the pre and postgame airing on ABC, and ESPN's Ron Jaworski often appeared from the studio for extra analysis during the first game. This arrangement lasted from 1997 through 2005, except for 2002 when ESPN/ABC's college football crew did the early game. Super Bowls on ABC in this period were treated as ESPN events.


title: Monday Night Football

text: After "MNF" was awarded to ESPN and "Sunday Night Football" was acquired by NBC in 2006, the Wild Card doubleheader that had aired on ABC, as well as a share of the rotating rights to the Super Bowl, was also given to NBC.


title: Monday Night Football

text: On April 22, 2014, the NFL announced that it had exercised an option in ESPN's recent contract extension for "Monday Night Football" rights to air a first-round Wild Card playoff game on the channel after the conclusion of the 2014 season. This was the first time that an NFL playoff game was ever broadcast exclusively on cable television in the United States, in lieu of any of the league's broadcast network partners. The "MNF" broadcast team of Mike Tirico, Jon Gruden and sideline reporter Lisa Salters called the game, the first of the 2014–15 NFL playoffs. The NFC South Champion Carolina Panthers defeated the Arizona Cardinals 27–16. As with all "MNF" games, the matchup was simulcast on local affiliates WJZY (a Fox affiliate) in Charlotte and KASW (a CW affiliate) in Phoenix. This was because of the NFL's rule that requires local affiliates to allow viewers over-the-air access to the game.


title: Monday Night Football

text: However, the cable-only playoff game experiment would only last one season, as on May 11, 2015, it was announced that ABC would simulcast ESPN's Wild Card playoff game for the 2015 season. This was the first NFL game broadcast nationally on ABC since "MNF" left the network at the end of the 2005 season. The game, announced by the broadcast team of Tirico, Gruden and Salters, was the first of the 2015–16 NFL playoffs. The Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Houston Texans 30–0. The ESPN/ABC simulcast has continued ever since.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Additionally, ESPN Deportes picked up the rights to air Super Bowl 50 in Spanish, as CBS, who aired the game in English, does not have a Spanish language sports network. They would later pick up rights to air every Super Bowl in years CBS airs the game starting with Super Bowl LIII, as well as additional CBS playoff games starting with the 2021 playoffs.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Also, starting with Super Bowl LIII, ESPN International has produced an English-language broadcast of the Super Bowl for ESPN Australia (as an alternative to the main world feed produced by NFL Network and the domestic U.S. feed), using the domestic broadcasters' camera feeds and the "Monday Night Football" commentary team. It also features additional pre-game coverage, augmenting ESPN's U.S. NFL studio programming. The video is also used by the Super Bowl telecast for ESPN Brasil, dubbed with Portuguese commentary.


title: Monday Night Football

text: During the Ravens-Titans Wild Card game during the 2021 playoffs, not only did ESPN and ABC simulcast the game, but other ESPN and Disney-owned networks helped to broadcast the game for the first ever NFL Playoff Megacast. ESPN2, ESPN+, and Freeform all pitched in alternate feeds of the game. This was the first NFL Playoff game to get a Megacast treatment. The announcement of the Playoff Megacast went along with the announcement of ABC simulcasting two late-season MNF games that aired on ESPN (both games involving the Buffalo Bills).


title: Monday Night Football

text: With the new NFL TV contracts that begin during the 2023 season, ESPN's playoff coverage expands to include a game in the Divisional Round, to go along with the Wild Card Game. Both games will air on ESPN and ABC. The new contracts also see ABC re-enter the Super Bowl rotation, beginning with Super Bowl LXI in 2027.


title: Monday Night Football

text: Beginning with the 2022 playoffs, ESPN will begin a new 5-year deal that will see the ESPN networks and ABC Megacast the brand new "Monday Night Wild Card Game", as part of the NFL expanding Super Wild Card Weekend from two days to three days. ESPN and ABC will simulcast the main feed, with ESPN2, ESPN+, and other ESPN and Disney networks providing alternative options. The game features a matchup between a No. 4 and No. 5 seed in order to ensure that the winner knows who their next opponent will be prior to kickoff. This allows the NFL to put out the divisional round schedule upon the completion of the other five wild card games with the winner of the Monday game playing the following Sunday.


title: Monday Night Football

text: From 2003 to 2005, Monday Night Football (then on ABC) aired a Thursday Night NFL Kickoff game in week 1 of the regular season.


title: Monday Night Football

text: As part of ESPN's new Monday Night Football contract signed prior to the 2022 NFL season, ESPN, simulcast on ABC and ESPN+, airs a Saturday NFL doubleheader in the final week of the regular season.


title: Monday Night Football

text: As part of their 2011 rights agreement, ESPN was given the exclusive rights to the Pro Bowl from 2015 through 2022. In 2018, the game was simulcast on ABC. Starting with the 2024 game, the Pro Bowl will air on ABC alone. This will be the first time since 2003 that ABC aired the game by itself.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Lab-grown diamond (LGD; also called laboratory-grown, laboratory-created, man-made, artisan-created, artificial, synthetic, or cultured diamond) is diamond that is produced in a controlled technological process (in contrast to naturally formed diamond, which is created through geological processes and obtained by mining). Unlike diamond simulants (imitations of diamond made of superficially-similar non-diamond materials), synthetic diamonds are composed of the same material as naturally formed diamonds – pure carbon crystallized in an isotropic 3D form – and share identical chemical and physical properties.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Numerous claims of diamond synthesis were reported between 1879 and 1928; most of these attempts were carefully analyzed but none was confirmed. In the 1940s, systematic research of diamond creation began in the United States, Sweden and the Soviet Union, which culminated in the first reproducible synthesis in 1953. Further research activity yielded the discoveries of HPHT diamond and CVD diamond, named for their production method (high-pressure high-temperature and chemical vapor deposition, respectively). These two processes still dominate synthetic diamond production. A third method in which nanometer-sized diamond grains are created in a detonation of carbon-containing explosives, known as detonation synthesis, entered the market in the late 1990s. A fourth method, treating graphite with high-power ultrasound, has been demonstrated in the laboratory, but currently has no commercial application.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: The properties of man-made diamond depend on the manufacturing process. Some synthetic diamonds have properties such as hardness, thermal conductivity and electron mobility that are superior to those of most naturally formed diamonds. Synthetic diamond is widely used in abrasives, in cutting and polishing tools and in heat sinks. Electronic applications of synthetic diamond are being developed, including high-power switches at power stations, high-frequency field-effect transistors and light-emitting diodes. Synthetic diamond detectors of ultraviolet (UV) light or high-energy particles are used at high-energy research facilities and are available commercially. Due to its unique combination of thermal and chemical stability, low thermal expansion and high optical transparency in a wide spectral range, synthetic diamond is becoming the most popular material for optical windows in high-power lasers and gyrotrons. It is estimated that 98% of industrial-grade diamond demand is supplied with synthetic diamonds.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Both CVD and HPHT diamonds can be cut into gems and various colors can be produced: clear white, yellow, brown, blue, green and orange. The advent of synthetic gems on the market created major concerns in the diamond trading business, as a result of which special spectroscopic devices and techniques have been developed to distinguish synthetic and natural diamonds.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: After the 1797 discovery that diamond was pure carbon, many attempts were made to convert various cheap forms of carbon into diamond. The earliest successes were reported by James Ballantyne Hannay in 1879 and by Ferdinand Frédéric Henri Moissan in 1893. Their method involved heating charcoal at up to with iron inside a carbon crucible in a furnace. Whereas Hannay used a flame-heated tube, Moissan applied his newly developed electric arc furnace, in which an electric arc was struck between carbon rods inside blocks of lime. The molten iron was then rapidly cooled by immersion in water. The contraction generated by the cooling supposedly produced the high pressure required to transform graphite into diamond. Moissan published his work in a series of articles in the 1890s.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Many other scientists tried to replicate his experiments. Sir William Crookes claimed success in 1909. Otto Ruff claimed in 1917 to have produced diamonds up to in diameter, but later retracted his statement. In 1926, Dr. J. Willard Hershey of McPherson College replicated Moissan's and Ruff's experiments, producing a synthetic diamond; that specimen is on display at the McPherson Museum in Kansas. Despite the claims of Moissan, Ruff, and Hershey, other experimenters were unable to reproduce their synthesis.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: The most definitive replication attempts were performed by Sir Charles Algernon Parsons. A prominent scientist and engineer known for his invention of the steam turbine, he spent about 40 years (1882–1922) and a considerable part of his fortune trying to reproduce the experiments of Moissan and Hannay, but also adapted processes of his own. Parsons was known for his painstakingly accurate approach and methodical record keeping; all his resulting samples were preserved for further analysis by an independent party. He wrote a number of articles—some of the earliest on HPHT diamond—in which he claimed to have produced small diamonds. However, in 1928, he authorized Dr. C. H. Desch to publish an article in which he stated his belief that no synthetic diamonds (including those of Moissan and others) had been produced up to that date. He suggested that most diamonds that had been produced up to that point were likely synthetic spinel.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: The first known (but initially not reported) diamond synthesis was achieved on February 16, 1953 in Stockholm by ASEA (Allmänna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget), Sweden's major electrical equipment manufacturing company. Starting in 1942, ASEA employed a team of five scientists and engineers as part of a top-secret diamond-making project code-named QUINTUS. The team used a bulky split-sphere apparatus designed by Baltzar von Platen and Anders Kämpe. Pressure was maintained within the device at an estimated and a temperature of for an hour. A few small diamonds were produced, but not of gem quality or size.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Due to questions on the patent process and the reasonable belief that no other serious diamond synthesis research occurred globally, the board of ASEA opted against publicity and patent applications. Thus the announcement of the ASEA results occurred shortly after the GE press conference of February 15, 1955.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: In 1941, an agreement was made between the General Electric (GE), Norton and Carborundum companies to further develop diamond synthesis. They were able to heat carbon to about under a pressure of for a few seconds. Soon thereafter, the Second World War interrupted the project. It was resumed in 1951 at the Schenectady Laboratories of GE, and a high-pressure diamond group was formed with Francis P. Bundy and H. M. Strong. Tracy Hall and others joined the project later.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: The Schenectady group improved on the anvils designed by Percy Bridgman, who received a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in 1946. Bundy and Strong made the first improvements, then more were made by Hall. The GE team used tungsten carbide anvils within a hydraulic press to squeeze the carbonaceous sample held in a catlinite container, the finished grit being squeezed out of the container into a gasket. The team recorded diamond synthesis on one occasion, but the experiment could not be reproduced because of uncertain synthesis conditions, and the diamond was later shown to have been a natural diamond used as a seed.