In a game of football musical chairs, ABC's Monday Night Football has gone to sister-station ESPN and, with ABC sticking by Desperate Housewives on Sunday nights, NBC has taken Sunday Night Football from ESPN.

ABC, which has been losing money on its Monday Night Football program for some time, decided to let the rights go to ESPN after football organizers NFL wanted to raise costs. In a separate move, NBC gained the rights to Sunday Night Football. NFL apparently wanted to keep in partnership with ABC, even if just for the Sunday games, but according to vice president of ESPN Mark Shapiro this was not an option. "It would truly be foolish to mess with a hit like Desperate Housewives," he told The Mercury News "Shows like that don't grow on trees."

ABC's move is the latest sign from the network that it doesn't want to mess with its successful Sunday night schedule. Recently it decided not to put Boston Legal back on Sundays due to the success of the new Desperate Housewives lead-out show Grey's Anatomy. In freeing up its Monday schedule it now has room to expand its drama offerings, and properly establish shows on Monday that previously would have had to share the schedule with football. "It's tough for ABC to say goodbye to a landmark institution like this," president of ESPN and ABC Sports George Bodenheimer said, "but with the progress we're making on our entertainment programming, we're not looking back. ... It's not the end of an era; it's the beginning of a new era."

ESPN, which will pay $1.1bn a year for Monday Night Football is celebrating the flexibility it can offer the games as a dedicated sports network. "What you get with ESPN, you can't get with any other network," said Shapiro. "For us it will begin Sunday night with NFL PrimeTime. The following day, from Cold Pizza to SportsCenter to Monday Night Countdown, we'll bring full arms to bear. We will be on site, on campus, swarming the game. It will truly be an event."

NBC is also pleased after its acquisition of Sunday Night Football. It now has a chance to challenge Desperate Housewives in the ratings battle, without affecting any of its other nights of programming. "We acquired a Top 10 show without negatively impacting our Monday through Saturday dominance in late night," president of NBC Universal Television Group Jeff Zucker told the South Florida Sun Sentinel, "and we did it with four hours in prime, as opposed to the traditional two hours on Monday nights."

ABC will be giving up Monday Night Football after 36 years, and will now be the only network without a sporting event in the main TV season. But for a network that was faltering just a year ago, with the massive success of shows like Desperate Housewives, Lost, Grey's Anatomy and Boston Legal it will no doubt want to capitalize on the good buzz surrounding its drama offerings. This could mean that it will try to commission more new pilots to fill the gap that it will be freeing up in its schedule.

Desperate Housewives has been such a hit for the network that it's even being credited for helping shows airing the following morning. ABC's Good Morning America is proving a serious threat to NBC's Today show, according to Yahoo! News. Some viewers could be turning their TVs off after Desperate Housewives on Sunday nights, and then the TV is still tuned into ABC when turned on Monday morning. Apparently after Desperate Housewives topped 25m viewers with "Children Will Listen", the next morning Good Morning America managed to beat NBC's Today.

You can find the original articles about the football moves at The Mercury News and South Florida Sun Sentinel. The Yahoo! article on morning television can be found here.

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