00:00 On Monday night, the Jets and the Bills were ESPN's most watched Monday night football game ever.
00:06 It averaged a record 22.6 million viewers across ABC, ESPN, and of course the alternate Manning cast on ESPN2.
00:17 Rick, what does that mean for football to start this year off?
00:21 We thought the 19 for Sunday night was astronomical.
00:24 Excuse me, the Thursday night Chiefs-Bills-Lions start.
00:29 This is much bigger.
00:30 What this tells us is that football, alive and well, basically that's the Monday night that you ought to figure out what your barometer is for the next season.
00:40 You start promoting, and it looks really good.
00:42 And now we get some of the collateral stuff.
00:45 We get the prime deal.
00:46 We get some of these others.
00:48 Remember the Friday morning, afternoon shopping game between the Rogers-less Jets and the Dolphins in November?
00:57 That's going to be new.
00:58 That's going to be high.
00:59 This season, my prediction right now, after looking very carefully at the numbers, is about a 6-7 increase over last year,
01:09 assuming the races are good and assuming the games are good.
01:12 And with flex, you know they're going to be good.
