Next fall, when the television schedules are printed with the Sunday newspapers, there will be something missing in Monday's 9 p.m. Eastern slot designated for ABC. For the last 36 years, "Monday Night Football" has been a fixture in television programming for the youngest of the three major networks. 

  Gone but not forgotten.

Courtesy Columbia University

Through its reign, it has outlasted successful sitcoms, dramas and even soap operas, while changing the face of sports broadcasting and becoming a part of American pop culture.  A recent Domino's commercial featured a man singing the opening theme song for "Monday Night Football" into a telephone, signifying that it was time to watch football and order some pizza. There were no words, just the identifiable chords from a piece of music that had become inextricably linked with one of the longest running shows on television. 

But "Monday Night Football" on ABC is now just a memory. Next year, it will be broadcast on ESPN, a cable network that is viewed by a smaller percentage of the population than ABC. Roone Arledge's creation will join the likes of all the other games that are broadcast on a channel exclusively dedicated to sports. Maybe it was meant to be this way.

In many ways, "Monday Night Football" had lost its significance a long time ago. Howard Cosell, Don Meredith and Frank Gifford made it into a national phenomenon before cable and satellite television existed. They became as well-known or even more famous than the NFL players beating each other up in the games they were broadcasting. The program had become an event and provided fodder for water cooler talk on Tuesdays. But when its most dynamic announcing team disbanded, ABC was left with a void that Dan Dierdorf, Dan Fouts or comedian Dennis Miller could never fill.

Other networks, meanwhile, were employing the same techniques to televise their sporting events that ABC invented while broadcasting "Monday Night Football." The program had lost its character, but also was having trouble holding onto an audience that had watched "Monday Night Football" from the very beginning. As the games seemed to drag on into the wee hours of the morning in the Eastern time zone, ABC was losing its older generation of viewers who had become accustomed to watching network television in their youth. 

Still, the games were the reason people tuned in week after week. They saw the Miami Dolphins upset the Chicago Bears in 1985 and Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theisman's career end with a horrifying compound fracture. Oakland Raiders running back Bo Jackson also turned in a memorable performance against the Seattle Seahawks in primetime that still appears on highlight reels to this day.

Back then, "Monday Night Football" was still an American institution. It isn't anymore. That's why when the average couch potato is flipping the channels at home at the beginning of the work week next fall, he won't be all that upset to find that football is no longer on ABC. Instead, he will just turn on his digital cable and tune to ESPN to watch yet another game without giving it much thought.