Monday Night Baseball

Monday Night Baseball was a weekly broadcast of a selected Major League Baseball game. The contract for Monday Night Baseball was originally held by NBC from 1966 to 1975. In 1976, ABC picked up the coverage. They broadcast games until 1988, when they moved the series to Thursday nights. In the late 1970s, the show was seen as a complement to the Fall's Monday Night Football, which was becoming a national cultural touchstone, and rivaled its popularity. However, its popularity waned in later years, as the football approach - promoting every mid-season game as a clash of titans with postseason implications - did not really work for baseball.

Monday Night Baseball on ABC was the first broadcast to use three commentators on the game, a play-by-play announcer - Al Michaels - and two color commentators; the most famous, although not necessarily the best of those, was Howard Cosell. Many noted broadcasters, including five Ford Frick Award winners, called the weekly games on NBC and ABC.