What Is Up With Those ‘Monday Night Football’ Doubleheaders?

ABC-ESPN will feature four ‘side-by-side’ doubleheaders in 2023.

Mike North, VP of broadcast planning for the NFL joined this week’s SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast to discuss the 2023 schedule that was released last week.

One of the more notable scheduling differences for the upcoming season is that ABC-ESPN will have four doubleheaders on Monday Night Football. These aren’t traditional doubleheaders, though. The games will overlap. North referred to them as side-by-side games. In Weeks 2 and 3, one game will start at 7:15 p.m. ET and the other at 8:15 p.m. ET. In Week 14, both games will start at 8:15 p.m. ET. The doubleheader in Week 18 is still TBD.

North talked on the podcast about why the NFL decided to go with “side-by-side” games instead of a traditional, straight doubleheader. He also addressed whether the overlap games are permanent.

“Trying something new,” North said about the staggered start times. “Last year was the first time we’ve had the side-by-side on ESPN and ABC. 

“We have the overlap this year. We shrunk the overlap a little bit. We’ll try it one way in Weeks 2 and 3 just to get everybody kind of used to it early in the season, and when we get to Week 14, everybody knows Monday Night Football starts at 8:15 Eastern. Turn on the TV and, ‘Oh, right, we got two games.’ It’s not that different than on a Sunday afternoon where you got seven or eight games going on at once. You can flip back and forth. I’m sure they’ll do a lot of live look-ins. 

“I imagine next year with our three side-by-side Monday nights we’ll try something different again. Maybe go back to like we used to do, 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern, play them back-to-back. You could have three hours of football with everybody watching one or two games. You could have six hours of football and spread it out. You could overlap them. Let’s see who goes first. Maybe a little East-West. We’re still tinkering and working with ESPN and the research team trying to thread that needle, figure out the right way to do those.”

You can listen to the full interview with North on Apple, Spotify and Google.

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You can also watch SI Media With Jimmy Traina on YouTube.