The NFL and ABC/ESPN decided to experiment with a pair of simultaneous Monday Night Football games. Although the league and the networks got lucky regarding the competitiveness of the games, ABC and ESPN need to get smarter when it comes to their proper presentation.
The two-box device, used periodically to give viewers a look at both games, is completely unnecessary. Anyone who wants to watch both games at once can do it, either by using the excellent multiview option YouTube TV or by putting two screens next to each other. No one who wanted to watch both games at once needed ABC and ESPN to televise both games on the same channel.
The execution of the two-box plan also became unfortunate. For YouTube TV customers like me, the action in the second game from the two-box look was ahead of the broadcast of that game. As a result, there were spoilers.
Most notably, the Titans-Dolphins game went to two screens for the end of Packers-Giants. And the Packers-Giants game in the single screen trailed the action in the ESPN/ABC two-box.
As a result, I (and surely many others) saw from my peripheral vision that Giants kicker Randy Bullock had made the game-winning field goal before the play even started on my screen that was pumping out audio and video of that game.
This is a problem that ESPN and ABC need to fix, before broadcasting two prime-time games at once. And the NFL should tell them to do it.
It’s a simple directive. No split screens. Or, if you insist on a split-screen presentation, put it on a different ESPN channel.
The NFL wouldn’t be stepping out of character to issue such a mandate. Every April, the league reminds its broadcast partners to instruct their reporters not to report on draft picks before the Commissioner announces them. (Every April, I comply not because the NFL wants it, but because the audience does.)
When it comes to two games being played at once, the audience doesn’t want split-screen spoilers. The NFL shouldn’t, either. The NFL should tell ESPN and ABC that, if they can’t or won’t televise a second-screen version of the other game that matches or trails the main broadcast, it shouldn’t be done at all.
