You were expecting to see Ernie and Charles setting up a prime-time basketball game on TNT at 8 p.m. ET last night. But you got an unexpected surprise: Hotel Transylvania 2.
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Boo!
Turner Sports is making a change and partnering with Inside the NBA for their Thursday night NBA doubleheader. TNT's feature sports broadcast will continue to air on Tuesday nights through 2021 in order to avoid being compared against Thursday Night Football. Marc Stein, NBA Insider, said so.
Since the mid 2000s, the NFL broadcasts games on Thursday nights. However, the games were first broadcast on NFL Network only at the end of the season. For those of you who can recall the early days of HD cable, packages that included NFL Network were very expensive.
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The NFL is now all in on Thursday night football. Most of the games will be broadcast on Fox and Amazon Prime. This will allow them to have exclusive rights for Thursday Night Football starting with the 2022 season. This has created a challenge for the NBA on TNT, which was once the premier sports broadcaster on Thursday nights.
The NFL is the only league that can compete with the great studio shows and games. Week 7 featured a boring Thursday Night football matchup between Teddy Bridgewater and the Denver Broncos' dink-and-dunk Denver Broncos and Case Keenum, their backup quarterback. The Browns win, 17-14, averaged 12.99 millions viewers. Opposition, Luka Doncic, the Dallas Mavericks' fastest-rising star, and Trae Young (the Atlanta Hawks' guard) played each other against the NFL game. They averaged just under one million viewers.
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For the remainder of 2021, the NBA's featured broadcast would be moved to Tuesday. However, this Tuesday saw the Philadelphia 76ers vs. the New York Knicks face off against Game 1 in the World Series. The average viewership for the early-season basketball game was 1.42 million, while 10.8 million watched the opening game of Major League Baseball's championship. This is the lowest average viewership in World Series history. It was also the first game that was not played at a neutral site.
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The NFL is clearly the Coca-Cola and McDonalds of its market. There are 32 teams that play less than 20 regular-season games each season. With all the content available on TV, there is no way for anyone to match the NFL game-to-game.
Why fight it?
TNT's NBA coverage has been a tradition for many decades. People who watch the NBA regularly or just occasionally get the urge to watch it, expect to see two games on Thursdays from mid-late Oct to late April. It's not necessary to alter the viewing habits of millions.
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The NBA has the best product in its history, despite being 75 years old. The NBA has a great product that features players from around the globe, including Canada.
It's not wrong that Los Angeles Lakers vs. Boston Celtics, on a Thursday night of November, can't compete with New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles simultaneously. The Lakers and Celtics will play more nationally televised matches than the Giants or Eagles, while still making money on local games.
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Turner Sports has acquired rights to the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, MLB and NHL because of its high quality product. The NBA is a cultural icon. How many times have Charles Barkley hosted Saturday Night Live. How many times Terry Bradshaw hosted Saturday Night Live?
It makes sense that the NBA and Turner should try to get as many viewers during NFL season. However, it is still a shame that a program like Inside the NBA, which is as well-known as a NBC Must-See TV show from the 1990s, must temporarily leave the time slot that it has held for decades. 10 million people will be watching Bridgewater and Keenum pass for less that 200 yards.
