Eagles

ESPN Changed Their Monday Night Football Graphic in the Middle of the Game

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Sep 10th, 2019 · 9:42 AM EDT

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If you watched the Monday Night Football double header, you saw some popping new graphics on your TV screen.

ESPN rolled out a lower third chyron with the typical team logos and scores, featuring a separate graphic that showed the current personnel formation on the field. This is a new wrinkle for the season, the little line that appeared above the score and said something like this:

“one TE, one RB, three WRs, #10 DeAndre Hopkins, etc etc”

Interesting idea, though I’m not sure the typical viewer cares about that, do they? No clue.

Another new quirk was a bright yellow or neon greenish down and distance marker on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, which really stood out during the broadcast and looked like this, via DubDotDUBBY:

Problem here is that fans thought they were getting a penalty flag on every play. There was head-scratching and bewilderment. ESPN was showing an inversely colored yellow-on-black look when a flag was actually thrown on the field, which looked like:

The flag graphic is less yellow than the normal down-and-distance graphic. Incredible. pic.twitter.com/Q5aipeycPS

— Riley McAtee (@RileyMcAtee) September 9, 2019

Confusion! Confusion all around!

But to ESPN’s credit, they changed the damn thing at halftime of the Texans/Saints game. They didn’t wait at all; they saw the complaints on social media and came back in the 3rd quarter with a black and white version of the graphic, which blended much better with the lower third:

Our ESPN production team is aware of the feedback on the #MNF down and distance graphic. We have called an audible and adjusted for the 2nd half of #HOUvsNO and for the #DENvsOAK game to follow. New look pictured here. pic.twitter.com/SWLKKuW87w

— bill hofheimer (@bhofheimer_espn) September 10, 2019

There you have it.

This, my friends, is the power of Twitter complaining.