Super Bowl To Get Unique Treatment

ABC’s “Monday Night Football” crew is letting everyone know its style is perfectly suited to broadcasting the Super Bowl.

For more than two decades - from such characters as Don Meredith and Howard Cosell up to the present-day trio of Al Michaels, Frank Gifford and Dan Dierdorf - ABC’s style of prime-time football production has been loose, at times bordering on irreverent, with a heavy accent on entertainment.

When Super Bowl XXIX begins on Jan. 29, the Monday night crew will try to give you more of the same, with a “Super” slant.

“Because we do ‘Monday Night Football,’ we deliver to an audience that takes in women and peripheral male sports fans, unlike your Sunday afternoon games,” said producer Ken Wolfe. “We have to be informative, as with any football telecast. As far as entertainment is concerned, I think our Monday night telecasts already balance entertainment with information. This is a bowl that’s tailor-made for our production.”

Under the hand of director Craig Janoff, the team will add cameras to shoot from nearly every conceivable angle, as well as tape machines that will quickly replay anything from tight isolation shots to nostalgic looks at Super Bowls past.

Everything else, insists Wolfe, falls in line with what the guys in the booth do every Monday night during football season.

“Craig and I approach every Monday night like a mini-Super Bowl,” Wolfe said.