NFL admits – NFL VP of broadcast planning Mike North has conceded that the Monday Night Football doubleheaders are “a thing of the past,” saying fans didn’t appreciate the format and it didn’t make good use of NFL broadcasting assets.
For years, the NFL treated Monday Night Football doubleheaders like a bold experiment—two games on the same night, more eyeballs, more momentum. But behind the sleek scheduling logic, the league has now made an unusual admission: it simply didn’t land.
On The Schrager Hour podcast, NFL V.P. of broadcast planning Mike North was direct about the decision to walk away from the format. “Yes, the Monday night doubleheaders are a thing of the past,” North said, via Sam Neumann of Awful Announcing. “I don’t know why that didn’t work. Quite honestly, I thought it was fine. I thought it was good for us.”.
North’s explanation was blunt in its simplicity. A Monday night game, he argued, was often not the game fans would have picked anyway. “That Monday night game, if it wasn’t your game on Monday, it would’ve been Sunday at [1:00 p.m. ET], among eight, nine, or 10 other games. You probably weren’t going to watch it anyway.”.
From there, the league’s pitch to fans met an uncomfortable reality of modern viewing. North said the placement mattered: “Having it on Monday, a national broadcast . . . it just didn’t work. The fans didn’t appreciate it, and it probably wasn’t a good use of an NFL asset.”
The frustration among viewers wasn’t abstract. A 2024 Twitter poll produced an overwhelming 66.9 percent saying they didn’t appreciate the doubleheaders.
The scheduling problems were just as clear as the sentiment. Even when fans did give it a shot, the format routinely demanded a very late night. The second game could begin as late as 10:00 p.m. ET and run past 1:00 a.m. ET.
Overlapping also failed to solve the core issue. It wasn’t only a matter of trying to fit more football into the same window—ESPN’s approach to the production setup also prevented what fans would likely call a clean split. The broadcast lacked “a true firewall between the two games. ” and the result was messy for viewers: one game often had a live look-in for the other. with a feed that ran ahead of the broadcast of the second game.
There was logic behind the idea, though. North pointed to the difficulty of tracking multiple early Sunday afternoon contests, saying that “peeling one away allows more games to be actively consumed.” But standalone games only feel like standalone events when they truly stand alone.
So the NFL’s likely direction is to treat the nights as separate instead of stacked. Rather than staging two games on Monday night. the format under discussion is to move the other game to Tuesday night or Wednesday night. The shift already has visible landmarks in the league’s current thinking. including the first-ever Wednesday night opener and the first-ever Blackout Wednesday game.
For all the NFL’s power, it isn’t always easy for outside criticism to land. Scrutiny often struggles to coalesce when the league’s reach runs deep through the media ecosystem. North’s comments acknowledge a rare moment where criticism found traction anyway—enough that the league adjusted course.
Whether this ends the impulse to overstuff major nights remains to be seen. But for now, the message is unequivocal: the Monday Night Football doubleheaders are finished, and the league is willing to say it out loud.
NFL Monday Night Football doubleheaders Mike North broadcast planning ESPN Schrager Hour Wednesday night opener Blackout Wednesday