Monday Night Football will have someone new calling the shots next season.
The Athletic reported Monday that ESPN has hired Fox Sports’ Artie Kempner to serve as the new director of MNF. ESPN’s president of content, Burke Magnus, told The Athletic the move is being made with an eye toward the network’s broadcast of Super Bowl LXI in February 2027.
Kempner, who’s been with Fox for more than 30 years, has directed two Super Bowls.
“There are only 12 people on earth who have directed Super Bowls, and he’s one of them,” Magnus said.
Kempner replaces Derek Mobley, who directed MNF the past two seasons. According to John Ourand, Mobley will remain with ESPN, likely as a college football director.
Magnus was brutally honest in assessing ESPN’s coverage compared to other networks.
“I feel like we are not in the same conversation with Fox and CBS relative to our overall game presentation,” Magnus said.
While Buck and Aikman are the faces everyone associates with Monday Night Football. there’s an army of people involved in producing each game. Six production trucks and more than 125 production staff travel to each week’s game.
Kempner will be helped in his new role by the fact he’s worked with Buck and Aikman when they were at Fox. Magnus told Ourand that people speculating that Buck and Aikman pulled strings to bring Kempner aboard belong in the “Tinfoil Hat Club.”
But Magnus is convinced Kempner can improve ESPN’s broadcast, with Super Bowl LXI less than two years away.
“We want to put our best foot forward in every conceivable way in what, with no exaggeration, could be the biggest moment in the history of ESPN by the time Feb. 14, 2027 rolls around,” Magnus said. “Here is a guy who can elevate our game presentation.”
