The NFL returned to ABC on Monday with its Hall of Fame game, a precursor to the final season of the league's "Monday Night Football" franchise on broadcast TV before it shifts next year to ABC's cable cousin, ESPN. Reliable national estimates for ABC's live game coverage wasn't immediately available, but preliminary estimates from Nielsen Media Research indicate that the game did improve slightly on last year's Hall of Fame contest, which went up against NBC's summer Olympics coverage. ABC was expected to narrowly top CBS for the nightly bragging rights in the adults 18-49 demo while the eye network appeared to have a comfortable edge in total viewers with an average of 9.7 million.

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