Pro Bowl moves from ABC to ESPN

Bloomberg News Service

The National Football League's Pro Bowl will move from ABC-TV to ESPN cable, the networks' owner, Walt Disney Co., announced yesterday.

The NFL's All-Star game, which is played the week after the Super Bowl at Aloha Stadium, will be broadcast at 2:30 p.m. Hawai'i time on Feb. 8, the first time it will be shown during the evening on the Mainland.

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 from 1988-94.

"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.