ESPN’s Week 1 Monday Night Football ratings release omits ManningCast numbers

Every network has a P.R. staff charged with making the glass seem perpetually half full. Even when it's mostly empty.Usually, they find a way to spin any negative into a perceived positive. Even when they have to twist themselves into more knots than a pretzel playing Twister.Sometimes, there's no way to positively spin a negative number. In that case, the solution could be to ignore it.That's what ESPN might have decided to do with the Week 1 ManningCast number.For the first time since the Peyton and Eli show debuted three years ago as an alternate MNF broadcast, ESPN did not include the specific ESPN2 audience in the press release announcing the total number.The total number was strong, to quite strong. The Jets-49ers game averaged 20.5 million viewers, even with ESPN and (in many markets) ABC not available on DirecTV. It is, as the ESPN P.R. staff says, the second most-watched Week 1 game in the ESPN era of Monday Night Football. (It helps to have the game on ABC, too.)We've asked ESPN P.R. about the ManningCast number. The show previously had flirted with dipping below one million viewers. Our guess is that it finally has.On one hand, the DirecTV situation becomes a perfect...