NBA To Retool Basketball Channel
- by Paul Gough , November 5, 2002
NBA TV is a 24-hour-a-day year-round digital network available in about 15 million satellite and digital cable households nationwide. Out of its New Jersey studios, NBA TV offers a live highlight desk in the evenings with cut-ins to games in progress and a late night/early morning highlights show similar to ESPN’s Sportscenter that focuses exclusively on basketball. The rest of the day has replays of classic games and other magazine-type shows.
What it hasn’t had – live NBA games – will be added sometime early next year, says Ed Desser, the NBA’s president of new media and strategic initiatives. The details, including the scheduled start date, haven’t been released yet. Desser says that will be forthcoming, as soon as all the details have been worked out. But, he says, the coverage will extend to games on the NBA’s women’s professional basketball league, the WNBA.
Desser says the NBA TV coverage came out of the league’s recent deal with Walt Disney Co. and AOL Time Warner for coverage of games on ABC, ESPN and TNT. The NBA also offers a LeaguePass premium channel that costs about $179 for the whole season and gives the play-by-play for as many as 12 games a night.
“The idea was that between the kind of coverage that a basic, all sports, general entertainment network could do, ESPN and TNT, and the kind of saturation coverage of a LeaguePass, there was room for something in between. That’s what NBA TV is all about,” he says.
There’s no particular reason why the network won’t begin games until next year from the NBA, whose season started last week. But Desser says it’s taken that long for the basketball league to get all its ducks in a row plus finish sponsorship agreements and make sure everything’s going well with the new broadcast deal.
“The fact is, we just had a whole lot on our plates, all at once,” Desser says.
NBA TV isn’t yet Nielsen-rated, although Desser expects that to happen some day. He also says the network, which is supported by advertising in what is a traditional (or slightly less) load of commercials. The advertisers include typical NBA sponsors and some others who are interested in the traditional 18- to 49-year-old male demographic of the NBA coverage and the women and families who are attracted to the WNBA. But he also opens the door for a day when advertising won’t be the only game in town on NBA TV.
“We’re not expecting this to be a basic cable network. There is no shortage of those. We expect this to be a digital network that is supported in other ways as opposed to advertising. … With the relaunch, I think you’ll be able to see some differences,” he says.
For planners and buyers, NBA TV is positioned differently than the other basketball venues.
“It provides a lot of flexibility and enhancement. It’s not intended to replace the mass vehicles that ESPN, ABC, TNT represents or our local telecasts. It’s intended to be supplement … It’s a way to reach the very rabid fans and those [advertisers] who are looking for new ways of consuming our product. We keep trying to come up with new ways of doing it, reinventing the viewing experiences,” he says.
Last week, the NBA kicked off a new six-year programming deal with TNT, ABC and ESPN. TNT got an exclusive with Thursday nights. ABC and ESPN will have three days, Sundays on ABC plus Wednesday and Friday nights on ESPN. TNT’s 19th season kicked off Oct. 29, ESPN’s premiere season started Oct. 30 and ABC coverage will begin with two games on Christmas Day.
NBA TV also inked a deal last week with the DISH Network to extend LeaguePass and NBA TV to 7 million more new homes.
