Pro Bowl moved
to prime timeThe NFL All-Star game
at Aloha Stadium will
go from ABC to ESPN
Walt Disney Co. is pulling the NFL's Pro Bowl off of its ABC network and showing it during East Coast prime time on its ESPN cable channel.
The NFL's All-Star game, which is played the week after the Super Bowl, will be broadcast at 7:30 p.m. New York time on Feb. 8, the first time it will be shown during the evening.
The move comes after viewership of the game on ABC fell from 12 percent of U.S. households with televisions in 1995 to 7 percent this year. ESPN also televised the game, which is played in Honolulu, from 1988 to '94.
"ESPN and ABC Sports present the best year-round platform of everything NFL and will work together to promote the game," ESPN and ABC Sports President George Bodenheimer said in a statement.
ESPN's Sunday Night Football team -- Mike Patrick, Paul Maguire, Joe Theismann and Suzy Kolber -- will work the telecast.
ESPN, which shows 18 regular-season games on Sunday nights, is beginning the sixth year of an eight-year, $4.8 billion agreement with the NFL. ABC is entering the sixth year of a $4.4 billion, eight-year agreement with the NFL that expires after the 2005 season.
