Acme Packing Company
This coming week, the Green Bay Packers and Philadelphia Eagles will meet on Monday Night Football at Lambeau Field. Once the pinnacle of pro football broadcasts, Monday Night Football has taken a back seat to the Sunday night broadcast, but it still offers a national broadcast footprint on ESPN and ABC that affords all fans across the USA an opportunity to watch the game.
Of course, there is no need for an article on Acme Packing Company this week addressing a TV broadcast map as a result of the prime time broadcast. However, there is one potential broadcast issue that could affect many Packers fans on Monday.
This week’s broadcast is marred by business issues between the Disney family of networks (which own ESPN and ABC) and a major streaming provider, Youtube TV. Currently, the two sides are at a contract impasse, and as a result Youtube TV is not currently broadcasting either ESPN or ABC to their subscribers. Recent updates indicate that the two sides are still far apart on a deal, so fans who get their television service through Youtube TV should prepare for alternate arrangements in order to watch Monday’s game.
There is good news on that front, however, and all fans should be able to watch Packers-Eagles with minimal additional cost.
A helpful option that the NFL has implemented in recent years is the ability to live-stream all locally and nationally broadcast games through the official NFL app with an NFL+ subscription. This includes all Thursday, Sunday, and Monday night games, plus games shown on NFL Network (such as Sunday morning games played in Europe). This also includes contests that are shown on an individual’s local CBS and FOX affiliates on Sunday afternoons.
This option allows fans who do not have any cable or streaming television service at all to get a large number of games on their mobile devices or to stream to televisions via casting or through smart TV boxes like Roku, Google TV, or others.
The basic NFL+ subscription runs $6.99 per month. A premium subscription, which also includes NFL Red Zone and full game replays after games are complete, is a little more than double that at $14.99 per month.
The other option this week is a bit of a throwback, but one that is still plenty effective. Because Disney has decided to simulcast Monday Night Football games on both ESPN and ABC, fans living within range of a local ABC station can bring in the game via over-the-air broadcast.
In short: the easiest option is to hook up a modern antenna to your television set.
Yes, there are admittedly some limitations here; depending on your TV’s location within your home, picking up your local ABC channel’s signal could be a challenge. Additionally, some modern television sets are displays only without an internal channel tuner, and therefore they have no antenna hookups. Still, for most TV sets, this is a simple and effective...
