The U to air Bears-Seahawks Monday Night Football game
ABC not carrying as DWTS moves up one night
Back in December 2020, this space called for the NFL to stop carrying Chicago Bears games as the league scheduled the team’s poor play for years, with embarrassment after embarrassment after embarrassment.
Flash forward to October 2026, and the team’s resurgence under QB Caleb Williams and improved play from the team has the NFL world talking – and now the Bears have become must-see TV as they have three straight appearances in primetime. The Bears are currently 5-2 and are one and a half games behind the undefeated Minnesota Vikings in the NFC North.
After a hard-nosed win against the New England Patriots on Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football, the Bears will be in primetime again on Monday Night Football November 2, where they will play the Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks on the road. While the game is airing on ESPN, it will not air on ABC, which generally carries most MNF games because Dancing With The Stars is being shifted from its usual Tuesday night time slot to Monday (where it aired for years until 2022, when an ill-fated move to Disney + took place) as election coverage takes over on November 3. ABC and ESPN are owned by The Walt Disney Co.
Thus, Weigel Broadcasting independent The U (WCIU) will air the game in the Chicago market at 7 p.m CT, and Fox-owned KCPQ will air the game in Seattle at 5 p.m PT. Unlike other leagues where national games can air exclusively on cable or streaming, those platforms must arrange for a local TV station to carry the game in each team’s home market.
WCIU has carried ESPN telecasts of Bears games before; WGN-TV did carry one contest in November 2010 where they played the Dallas Cowboys.
ABC 7 (WLS-TV) is producing pregame show Monday Night Monsters for The U, airing at 6:30 p.m. This marks the first collaboration between the two stations since 2019 when ABC 7, which then held the rights to 25 Cubs games a year, was forced to move a late-season home game against the Cincinnati Reds to The U due to the season finale of Bachelor In Paradise. ABC 7 also produced a local 7 p.m. newscast for WCIU from 2015 to 2019, when it became a CW affiliate (since relocated to WGN-TV.)
With the Bears’ success the last two seasons, the ratings have followed. According to Nielsen, the Patriots-Bears game on TNF delivered a package of 19.86 million viewers for Amazon, up 25 percent from last year’s comparative game and was the second-highest rated game ever for the streamer, and the most-watched Week 7 game ever. The 19.86 tally is notable, since the Bears’ last Super Bowl victory was in 1986.
An omen?
Fox-owned WFLD pulled in a 21.8 local rating, easily winning the evening by far, peaking at 23.4 at 9:15 p.m. Fox 32 and other Fox-owned stations have the local rights for their home-market teams on TNF.
This is the second consecutive primetime Bears game; the team will have a third primetime one on Nov. 8 when they play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on NBC’s Sunday Night Football from Solider Field. The Bears’ next streaming game is on Christmas Day, when they play the archrival Green Bay Packers on Netflix with a noon start, also at Soldier Field. It’s unknown what local TV outlet will carry the game, but an announcement is expected soon.