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NBA on NBC

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The NBA on NBC is a former TV show that televised National Basketball Association games on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and was produced by NBC Sports. In the 1990-1991 season, NBC succeeded CBS Sports as the official American TV broadcaster of the NBA.

Background

The program started on November 9, 1989 when the NBA and NBC reached an agreement on a four-year, $600 million contract. On April 28, 1993, NBC extended their exclusive broadcast rights to the NBA with a four-year, $750 million contract.

The catchy, popular, dramatic, and melodic theme music, Roundball Rock was composed by New Ager John Tesh. The song is today often used by NBA TV for their live, game coverage. During the closing credits for NBC's coverage of the NBA Finals, they would regularly play the motivational rock song Winning It All, by The Outfield [1].

NBA Network Television Contracts

Seasons Contracts Amount
1990-91 to 1993-94 $601 million/4 years
1994-95 to 1997-98 $892 million/4 years
1998-99 to 2001-02 $1.616 billion/4 years

Number of Games Televised

Season Games
2001-02 69
2000-01 69
1999-2000 71
1998-99 58
1997-98 54
1996-97 54
1995-96 54
1994-95 54
1993-94 55
1992-93 55
1991-92 52
1990-91 46

Notes

NBC's coverage of the NBA began on Christmas Day each season, with the exception of their inaugural season (which featured a November game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the San Antonio Spurs and their final season (which included two early season games featuring the return of Michael Jordan with the Washington Wizards.

Announcers

1991-1997

NBC's first broadcast team was made up of Marv Albert and Mike Fratello. Other broadcasters at the time included Dick Enberg and Steve Jones. Bob Costas had hosting duties for the pregame show, NBA Showtime. In 1992, basketball legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson became a top game analyst (alongside the likes of Enberg, Albert and Fratello) for The NBA on NBC. Johnson's performance was heavily criticized. Among the complaints were his apparently poor diction skills, knack for "stating the obvious", and overall lackluster chemistry with his broadcasting partners. Johnson would ultimately be slowly phased out of The NBA on NBC after helping commentate the 1993 NBA Finals. In 1994, Mike Fratello left the booth and was replaced with Matt Guokas. Albert and Guokas broadcast the 1994 NBA Finals and were joined for the 1995 finals by Bill Walton. Albert, Guokas and Walton, while not working regular season games together (Walton usually worked games with Steve 'Snapper' Jones and Dick Enberg or Greg Gumbel), broadcast the next two finals (1996 and 1997) together in a three-man booth.

1998-2000

1997 was the last time Marv Albert would call the NBA Finals for NBC during the decade. A sex scandal forced NBC to fire Albert before the start of the 1997-1998 season. To replace Albert, NBC tapped studio host Bob Costas for play-by-play. Matt Guokas did not return to his post as main color commentator, and was replaced by NBA legend Isiah Thomas. Costas was replaced on the pregame show by Hannah Storm. Midway through the season, Costas and Thomas were joined by recently fired Detroit Pistons coach Doug Collins. Collins, considered one of the best color commentators in the business, served to take some weight of Thomas, who was considered very uncomfortable in the role of lead analyst. The three worked the big games that season and the next, including the legendary 1998 NBA Finals (which set an all-time ratings record for the NBA) and the badly-rated 1999 NBA Finals. For the 2000-2001 season Thomas was moved to the studio, while Costas and Collins made up the lead team. Also that season, Marv Albert was brought back, making a triumphant return which included calling that year's lead Christmas Day game.

2001-2001

The 2000-2001 season brought to an end Bob Costas' direct role with the NBA on NBC. Costas deferred to Marv Albert, allowing Albert to once again be the lead broadcaster for the NBA, and stayed on only to deliver interviews and special features. On the studio front, Hannah Storm left her spot as a studio host due to maternity leave and was replaced with Ahmad Rashad, while Isiah Thomas left NBC to become coach of the Indiana Pacers. Albert joined Doug Collins as the number one broadcast team, and the two broadcast the 2001 NBA Finals, which had the highest ratings since 1998. After the season, Collins was hired away from NBC by the Washington Wizards, which forced the network to move the long-time secondary color duo of Steve Jones and Bill Walton to the lead broadcast team with Albert.

2001-2002

The 2001-2002 season featured several anomalies, as NBC started their coverage on the first Saturday of the season, the first time they'd done that since 1991. The reason for this was NBA legend Michael Jordan's return to playing, this time for the Washington Wizards. NBC covered an early December game featuring Jordan's Wizards as well, which marked the first time an over-the-air network aired more than one pre-Christmas NBA game since CBS in the 1980's. Also, the return of Hannah Storm from maternity leave meant that she and Ahmad Rashad would alternate studio hosting duties for most of the season. That year, NBC's studio team consisted of Storm or Rashad with former Philadelphia 76ers owner Pat Croce, the returning Mike Fratello and charismatic former player Jayson Williams. The tandem stayed together through the 2002 NBA All Star Game. During the week between the All Star game and NBC's next scheduled telecast, Williams was arrested after shooting his limo driver. He was promptly dropped from NBC, which also did not return Croce or Fratello to studio coverage. Instead, the network brought in Tom Tolbert who had only recently been added to the network as a third-string analyst paired with Mike Breen. Tolbert stayed on as the lone studio analyst through the end of the season, and won acclaim by several in the media, including USA Today's Rudy Martzke. The season would also turn out to be NBC's last with the NBA. The league, in January 2002 announced a six-year agreement with The Walt Disney Company and AOL-Time Warner, which gave over-the-air broadcast rights to ABC. That year, NBC's playoff ratings were much higher than previous years, including a record-high ratings for the 2002 Western Conference Finals. Unfortunately, those high ratings did not translate to the Finals, which scored their lowest ratings in over two decades.

NBA on NBC Broadcasters

List of NBA Finals broadcasters

2000s

Year Network Play-by-Play Man Color Commentator(s)
2002[2] NBC Marv Albert Bill Walton and Steve Jones
2001[3] NBC Marv Albert Doug Collins
2000[4] NBC Bob Costas Doug Collins

1990s

Year Network Play-by-Play Man Color Commentator(s)
1999[5] NBC Bob Costas Doug Collins
1998[6] NBC Bob Costas Doug Collins and Isiah Thomas
1997[7] NBC Marv Albert Matt Guokas and Bill Walton
1996[8] NBC Marv Albert Matt Guokas and Bill Walton
1995[9] NBC Marv Albert Matt Guokas and Bill Walton
1994[10] NBC Marv Albert Matt Guokas
1993[11] NBC Marv Albert Mike Fratello and Magic Johnson
1992[12] NBC Marv Albert Mike Fratello and Magic Johnson
1991[13] NBC Marv Albert Mike Fratello

Voice Over Artists

Jim Fagan is still today NBC Sports' announcer. He is the one who announced things like "This is The NBA on NBC." and "Welcome to NetZero at the Half." during the Roundball Rock, and was the main voice-over announcer on the Madison Square Garden Network, the New York regional television channel, between 2002 and 2005.

One of the voice-overs for commercials of The NBA on NBC was Mitch Phillips, whose voice also appears on TV commercials of Wyeth's Caltrate and of Toyota's Toyotathon promotion, and on other car commercials.

Ratings

In Game 1 of the 1996 NBA Finals between the Chicago Bulls and Seattle SuperSonics, the Bulls' 107-90 win at home in the United Center earned a 16.8 rating and a 31 share on NBC. In addition, Game 1 was viewed in a then record 16,111,200 homes. On June 16, 1996, Game 6 of the NBA Finals (where the Bulls clinched their fourth NBA Championship in six years) drew an 18.8 rating and a 35 share. With the game pulling in an estimated 60 million viewers, this became the most-watched NBA game ever on television. The six games of the 1996 NBA Finals averaged a 16.7 rating which ranks second all-time behind the 1993 NBA Finals. The six games of the 1993 NBA Finals between the Bulls and Phoenix Suns averaged a 17.9 rating.

Criticisms

Several NBA observers accused NBC and the NBA of fixing games for or being too obsessed with certain teams. While these accusations were inaccurate, NBC benefited from having 11 of the 12 Finals it televised involve the popular Chicago Bulls or the large-market Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks. Many believed that some NBA on NBC broadcasters, namely Ahmad Rashad and Jim Gray, "kissed up" to certain players or teams. Rashad was frequently ridiculed for his not too secret close friendship with superstar Michael Jordan. To put things in the proper perspective, some observers felt that Rashad came across on camera as more or less shameless Jordan cheerleader and/or would be gravy train rider than a credible journalist. Rashad would soon receive the tag "Little Mike" (a play off from the famous advertising campaign featuring Penny Hardaway and a Chris Rock voiced puppet) from radio personality Jim Rome.

The network was also criticized for never including a constant corner screen score/time bug during their run of televising NBA (and other sports) games, even though all other networks used them on every other sports broadcast.

Regular segments

The pregame program with Ahmad Rashad, Hannah Storm, or Bob Costas was known as NBA Showtime. The video game NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC, by Midway (MWY) from San Diego, was named after this pregame show. The halftime show was sponsored by Prudential Financial (Prudential Halftime Show) and NetZero (NetZero at the Half) among others. The NBA on NBC also had a segment during the live games called Miller Genuine Moments, which briefly looked back on a particular historically significant and/or dramatic moment in NBA history.

The end of The NBA on NBC

When NBC Sports' contract with the NBA expired in 2002, the corresponding rights were passed to The NBA on ABC, a program which came back to TV after 28 years, on Christmas Day 2002, with a doubleheader. NBC made a four-year, $1.3 billion bid in the spring of 2002 to renew its NBA coverage, but the league instead made six-year deals worth $4.6 billion with ESPN, ABC, and TNT. It should be noted that in the last four years of the final contract, NBC lost $300 million. NBC only offered $325 million a year compared to ESPN's $400 million. ESPN gets $1.70 a month from its 86 million cable subscribers, an income source NBC does not possess.

Whereas NBC normally televised 33 regular games a year, ABC on the other hand, would televise only 15 regular season games a year. According to Commissioner David Stern, the reduced number of network telecasts was at the NBA's own request since the NBA believed that they would get a higher audience for a single game (in contrast to NBC's tripleheaders). NBC Sports replaced the Sunday afternoon single games and doubleheaders of The NBA on NBC with games of The AFL on NBC in February 2003.

Memorable moments

  • The Shot
    • One of the most replayed plays from The NBA on NBC is from the 1998 NBA Finals Game 6 at the Delta Center. Michael Jordan stole the basketball from Karl Malone's dribble and handled the ball all the way to the other half of the court. Utah Jazz shooting guard Bryon Russell took a bad step (although many hold the Jordan actually pushed off of Russell) while covering Jordan and slipped. Jordan made the lead-changing, game-winning two-point field goal with 5.2 seconds in the fourth period and with Karl Malone watching the ball float over his head.

See also

References

  1. ESPN.com - NBA - PLAYOFFS2002 - The day Tesh's music might die
  2. jordan_m_2pt_061498c. AVI video from NBA.com: Bryon Russell slips and allows Jordan to make the game-winning two-point field goal in the dwining seconds of the 1998 NBA Finals. Bob Costas: "Jordan. Open. Chicago with the lead!"
  3. nba-low.mov QuickTime MOV video: voice-over Mitch Phillips on commercial spots for The NBA on NBC.
  4. NBCSports.com
  5. NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC
  6. NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC - Game Revolution Review Page
  7. NBA finalizes TV deals: Goodbye NBC
  8. Inquiry into Sports Programming Migration
  9. NBA on NBC - Short cut.
  10. TV Theme - NBC, NBA 02.wav
  11. TV Theme - NBC, NBA.wav
  12. InsideHoops - NBA TV Contracts
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