NBA TV

Last updated

NBA TV
NBA TV.svg
CountryUnited States
Broadcast areaNationwide
Headquarters Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Programming
Language(s)English
Picture format 1080i HDTV
(downscaled to letterboxed 480i for the SDTV feed)
Ownership
Owner National Basketball Association
(operated by TNT Sports)
Sister channels MLB Network
Motor Trend
History
LaunchedNovember 2, 1999;24 years ago (1999-11-02)
Former namesNBA.com TV (1999–2003)
Links
Website NBAtv
Availability

NBA TV is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Basketball Association (NBA) and operated by Warner Bros. Discovery through TNT Sports. Dedicated to basketball, the network features exhibition, regular season and playoff game broadcasts from the NBA and related professional basketball leagues, as well as NBA-related content including analysis programs, specials and documentaries. The network is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The network also serves as the national broadcaster of the NBA G League and WNBA games. NBA TV is the oldest subscription network in North America to be owned or controlled by a professional sports league, having launched on November 2, 1999.

Contents

History

The network launched on 2 November 1999 [1] as nba.com TV; the channel, which was renamed to the second and current name on 11 February 2003, originally operated from studio facilities housed at NBA Entertainment in Secaucus, New Jersey. The network signed a multi-year carriage agreement with three of the U.S.'s five largest cable providers, Cox Communications, Cablevision and Time Warner Cable, on June 28, 2003; this expanded the network's reach to 45 million pay television households in the U.S., in addition to distribution in 30 countries worldwide. After Time Warner shut down the sports news network CNN/SI in 2002, many cable providers replaced that network with NBA TV.

The network mainly launched with two purposes; to serve as a barker channel for the league's out-of-market sports package NBA League Pass, along with featuring statistical and scoring information which was more easily accessible in the pre-broadband age, and it featured mainly archival content from the NBA Entertainment archives in its upper pane to fill programming time. As time went on, the network added more programming, including international basketball leagues and programming from FIBA usually unseen in the American market. The programming mix and channel format changed around the same time of the CNN/SI shutdown.

On October 8, 2007, it was reported that the National Basketball Association would transfer the channel's operations to Time Warner's Turner Sports division (operated by the company's Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary). [2]

Turner took over the channel's operations on October 28, 2008, and began using the same announcers and analysts used on TNT's NBA telecasts. [3] Analysis and news programming also received an upgrade, with production of the programs being relocated to Studio B at Turner Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, located adjacent to Studio J, where TNT's post-game program Inside the NBA is broadcast. The repeats of NBA games on TBS and TNT began in 2009, as NBA Classics.

Carriage agreements

On April 16, 2009, DirecTV announced that it had reached a carriage agreement with the NBA to continue carrying NBA TV, moving it (and out-of-market sports package NBA League Pass) from the satellite provider's Sports Pack add-on tier to its lower-priced Choice Xtra base package on October 1, 2009. DirecTV believed the move will make the channel available to an additional eight million subscribers. [4]

On June 4, 2009, Comcast announced that it had reached an agreement with the NBA to move the channel from the cable provider's Sports Entertainment Package to its basic level Digital Classic package, by the start of the 2009–10 NBA season. Like DirecTV, Comcast estimated that an additional eight million customers would effectively gain access to the channel. [5] Verizon FiOS added the channel and NBA League Pass to its systems on September 23, 2009. [6] The network also signed new multi-year agreements with Time Warner Cable, Cablevision and Dish Network on October 22, 2009, as well as a renewal agreement with Cox Communications earlier in the year. [6]

With all of the above carriage deals, the NBA estimates that it would increase NBA TV's overall subscriber reach to 45 million pay television homes. [7] On October 29, 2010, AT&T U-verse reached a carriage deal to carry the channel's standard and high definition feeds. [8]

NBA TV is not available to legacy Charter Communications customers using outdated billing plans, which carried the network as NBA.com TV prior to 2004, due to unknown carriage conflicts; NBA League Pass was likewise unavailable on Charter until a broader rollout for the 2020–21 season began (on May 18, 2016, Charter acquired Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks for $78.7 billion, which both carried the network). NBA TV has been available to Charter households where available since February 2017, if a customer switches to the new 'Spectrum' billing plan which united Charter, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks under the Spectrum branding (this is all likely unrelated to Charter's inherited naming rights of the Charlotte Hornets' home arena, the Spectrum Center).

As of June 2023, the channel was available in 38.6 million homes in the United States. [9]

Programming

NBA TV offers news programs devoted to basketball daily, in addition to programs showcasing the lives of individual basketball players, documentaries focusing on a particular NBA team during the season and archived broadcasts of well-known games.

NBA TV carries at least 90 regular season games per season, which typically air four days a week during the NBA season (mainly on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays, although occasional Wednesday, Friday and Sunday games may air in the event that ESPN does not hold rights to coverage on those nights), as well as some first-round playoff games. It also carries its own coverage of the NBA draft.

Live games on NBA TV are subject to local blackout restrictions, since NBA TV (despite being owned by the league) does not hold the exclusive broadcast rights to any of its games. Games carried by NBA TV are also carried by each team's local rights holder, either a regional sports network or a broadcast television station.

The network also shows international games, typically on Saturday evenings, with special emphasis on the Euroleague and the Maccabi Tel Aviv team from Israel. In April 2005, NBA TV televised the Chinese Basketball Association finals for the first time. [10]

The channel's flagship program is NBA Gametime Live , a program focusing on news headlines within the NBA and related leagues (including the WNBA and G League), highlights and look-ins at games currently in progress presented by a host and studio analysts. The show airs live six days a week, deferring any TNT game nights outside the playoffs to repeating that evening's edition of Inside the NBA . An edited 90-minute version of the broadcast is repeated during the overnight and early morning hours.

On October 11, 2017, it was announced that the Players Only franchise, which made its debut last season on TNT, will show live games on NBA TV, starting October 24, 2017 and every Tuesday after that, for the first half of the 2017–18 season before transitioning to TNT for the remainder of the regular season starting January 23, 2018. [11] After the cancellation of Players Only in 2019, Tuesday (first half) and Monday (second half) night games on NBA TV were rebranded as NBA TV Center Court, with Brian Anderson handling the Tuesday night games and Spero Dedes the Monday night games. They are joined alongside Greg Anthony and Dennis Scott. [12] With TNT moving its marquee games to Tuesdays in 2021 during the NFL regular season (thus avoiding competition with Thursday Night Football ), NBA TV Center Court was moved to Monday nights for most of the season, though it would continue to air select broadcasts on Tuesdays when TNT has other programming commitments.

Beginning 2021, NBA TV began to broadcast a package of men's and women's Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) college basketball games in February as an observance of Black History Month. This marked NBA TV's first broadcasts of college basketball games. [13] [14]

List of programs broadcast by NBA TV

High definition

NBA TV HD is a 1080i high-definition simulcast feed of NBA TV that is available on most providers. All studio programs and original programs are shot in HD, and all live games and recent game rebroadcasts are televised in HD. The high-definition version of this channel was launched in 2007.

Personalities

The studio host and analysts vary on each night's broadcast of NBA Gametime.

Studio hosts and play-by-play

Studio analysts and color commentators

Contributors

Other hosts

The Starters (2006–2019)
NBA Inside Stuff (2013–2016)

Former hosts and analysts

NBA TV International

NBA TV International is a feed of NBA TV available in countries outside the United States, utilizing the same studio for analysis and commentary segments and taped programming (except for FIBA events and highlights), but largely airs a different lineup of games than the U.S. channel. NBA TV International shows one or two live regular season games per day, with the delayed coverage of selected playoffs that not broadcast live by NBA TV, all conference semis, finals and the Finals, as well as All-Star live games and contests and most nationally televised U.S. games (such as those seen on ABC, TNT, ESPN and US feed of NBA TV); the rights to those games are instead sold to domestic television networks in each territory. As of 2022, NBA TV International can be seen in 100 countries via the following partners:

NBA TV Canada, the Canadian version of the channel, carries some of the same game broadcasts as the flagship U.S. service, ESPN, and TNT instead of the secondary game package found on NBA TV International.

On 16 October 2010, NBA Premium TV was launched in the Philippines. It was a redirect broadcast of NBA TV and aired locally televised and nationally televised games in the United States. It went defunct on 1 October 2019, almost 9 years after it existed.

In February 2012, NBA TV International was made available on NBA.TV as an internet subscription channel outside the United States.

On beIN Channels Network in the Arab world, NBA TV is not available, though beIN Sports NBA airs some of the same games.

On 31 July 2020, the Philippine version of the channel, NBA TV Philippines, was launched. [16]

Past playoff broadcast criticism

NBA TV was criticized in the past for its first-round playoff coverage merely passing down the broadcast of a game from a regional sports network for national broadcast, amplifying the chosen team's broadcast and bias for said team to a national level. [17] [18] Beginning with the 2011–12 playoffs, NBA TV began to produce a full and neutral national broadcast for those games. [19]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TNT (American TV network)</span> American pay television channel

TNT is an American basic cable television channel owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks unit of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) that launched on October 3, 1988. TNT's original purpose was to air classic films and television series to which Turner Broadcasting maintained spillover rights through its sister station TBS. Since June 2001, the network has shifted its focus to dramatic television series and feature films, along with some sporting events, as TBS shifted its focus to comedic programming.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NFL Network</span> American sports-oriented pay television network

NFL Network is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and NFL RedZone. Dedicated to American football, the network features game telecasts from the NFL, as well as NFL-related content including analysis programs, specials and documentaries. The network is headquartered in the NFL Los Angeles building located next to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, and broadcasts its worldwide feed from Encompass Digital Media in Atlanta, Georgia. The network has secondary East Coast facilities in the NFL Films building in Mount Laurel, New Jersey.

ESPNews is an American multinational digital cable and satellite television network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company and Hearst Communications.

ESPNU is an American multinational digital cable and satellite sports television channel owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company and the Hearst Communications. The channel is primarily dedicated to coverage of college athletics, and is also used as an additional outlet for general ESPN programming. ESPNU is based alongside its sister networks at ESPN's headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">YES Network</span> American regional sports network

The Yankee Entertainment and Sports Network (YES) is an American pay television regional sports network owned by Yankee Global Enterprises, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Entertainment Studios, Amazon, and The Blackstone Group, RedBird Capital and Mubadala Investment Company, which each own 13%. Primarily serving New York City, New York and the surrounding metropolitan area, it broadcasts a variety of sports events, as well as magazine, documentary and discussion programs; however, its main emphasis is focused on games and team-related programs involving the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball, the NBA's Brooklyn Nets, the WNBA's New York Liberty and New York City FC of Major League Soccer.

YurView California is an American cable television channel serving San Diego, California, owned by Cox Communications, which carries the channel primarily on its San Diego area systems on channel 4.

<i>NBA on TNT</i> NBA basketball telecasts aired by cable network TNT

NBA on TNT is an American presentation of National Basketball Association (NBA) games, produced by TNT Sports. In the United States, the TNT cable network has held the rights to broadcast NBA games since 1989, and its telecasts have been streamed on its Max platform since 2023. TNT's NBA coverage includes the Inside the NBA studio show, weekly doubleheaders throughout the regular season on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a majority of games during the first two rounds of the playoffs, and one conference finals series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NBA on television</span>

National Basketball Association (NBA) games are televised nationally in the United States, as well as on multiple local channels and regional sports networks. Since the 2002–03 season, broadcast channel ABC, and pay TV networks ESPN and TNT have nationally televised games. Throughout most of the regular season, ESPN shows doubleheaders on Wednesday and Friday nights, while TNT shows doubleheaders on Tuesday and Thursday nights. In the second half of the season, ABC shows a single game on Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons. Games are shown almost every night on NBA TV. There are some exceptions to this schedule, including Tip-off Week, Christmas Day, and Martin Luther King Jr. Day. More games may be shown as the end of the regular season approaches, particularly games with playoff significance. During the playoffs, the first round are split between TNT, ESPN, NBA TV, and ABC on mostly weekends the second round are split between ESPN, TNT and ABC on weekends. The conference finals are split between ESPN/ABC and TNT; the two networks alternate which complete series they will carry from year to year. The entire NBA Finals is shown nationally on ABC. The NBA Finals is one of the few sporting events to be shown on a national broadcast network on a weeknight.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NHL Center Ice</span> NHL sports program

NHL Center Ice is an out-of-market sports package distributed by most cable and satellite providers in the United States and Canada. The package allows its subscribers to see up to forty out-of-market National Hockey League games a week using local and national television networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Big Ten Network</span> American collegiate sports network

Big Ten Network (BTN) is an American sports network based in Chicago, Illinois. The channel is dedicated to coverage of collegiate sports sanctioned by the Big Ten Conference, including live and recorded event telecasts, news, analysis programs, and other content focusing on the conference's member schools. It is a joint venture between Fox Sports and the Big Ten, with Fox Corporation as 61% stakeholder and operating partner, and the Big Ten Conference owning a 39% stake. It is headquartered in the former Montgomery Ward & Co. Catalog House building at 600 West Chicago Avenue in Chicago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NHL Network (American TV channel)</span> Television sports channel

NHL Network is an American sports-oriented cable and satellite television network that is a joint venture between the National Hockey League (NHL), which owns a controlling 84.4% interest, and NBCUniversal, which owns the remaining 15.6%. Dedicated to providing broadcast coverage of ice hockey, the network features live game telecasts from the NHL and other professional and collegiate hockey leagues, as well as NHL-related content including analysis programs, specials and documentaries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Basketball TV</span> Defunct Philippine cable sports television channel

Basketball TV or BTV was a Philippine pay television sports channel with offices on Shaw Boulevard, Mandaluyong. It was owned by the Solar Entertainment Corporation. It was launched on October 1, 2006, rebranding the Sports Plus channel. On September 25, 2019, it announced on its official Facebook page as well as on its Instagram and Twitter accounts that the channel and NBA Premium TV will cease their operations on October 1, 2019. The final program to air on this channel was a replay of NBA Playoff Playback on September 30, 2019, before signing off at 12:00 m.n. on October 1, 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Root Sports Northwest</span> American regional sports television network

Root Sports Northwest, sometimes branded simply as Root Sports, is an American regional sports network owned by the Seattle Mariners. Headquartered near Seattle in the city of Bellevue, Washington, the channel broadcasts regional coverage of sports events throughout the Pacific Northwest, with a focus on professional sports teams based in Seattle and Portland. It is available on cable providers throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska and nationwide on satellite via DirecTV.

MSG Sportsnet is an American regional sports network owned by MSG Entertainment; it operates as a sister channel to MSG Network. The network serves the New York City metropolitan area, whose reach expands to cover the entire state of New York, Northern New Jersey, Southwestern Connecticut and Northeastern Pennsylvania; MSG Sportsnet carries sports events from several of the New York area's professional sports franchises, as well as college sports events.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MLB Extra Innings</span> Out-of-market sports package

MLB Extra Innings is an out-of-market sports package distributed in North America by satellite provider DirecTV since 1996 and by most cable providers since 2001. The package allowed its subscribers to see up to 80 out-of-market Major League Baseball games a week using local over the air stations and regional sports networks.

<i>NBA on TBS</i> American TV series or program

The NBA on TBS is an American presentation of National Basketball Association (NBA) regular season and playoff game telecasts that aired on the American cable and satellite network TBS. The games were produced by Turner Sports, the sports division of the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, TBS's corporate parent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NBA League Pass</span> Sports television service

NBA League Pass is the National Basketball Association's direct-to-consumer subscription-based product that provides live and on-demand NBA games. It is available to those in the United States and also as an international package for all other countries. TV versions can be viewed through a cable or satellite TV provider, as well as an over-the-top streaming service operated by the league.

NBC Sports Northwest was an American regional sports network owned by the NBC Sports Group unit of NBCUniversal, as an affiliate of NBC Sports Regional Networks. The network broadcast regional coverage of professional sports events throughout the Pacific Northwest, focusing primarily on the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers and college sports events involving the Oregon Ducks. It also covered other sports events involving teams within the northwestern United States, including those featuring college and high school teams.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NBA Premium TV</span> Defunct television channel in the Philippines

NBA Premium TV was a Philippine pay television sports-oriented network owned by Solar Entertainment Corporation. The channel is a joint venture between Solar and NBA TV. It was a live simulcast broadcast of NBA TV, the league's dedicated channel in the United States.

Spectrum SportsNet, formerly Time Warner Cable SportsNet, is an American regional sports cable and satellite television network owned by Charter Communications through its acquisition of Time Warner Cable in May 2016, with the Los Angeles Lakers maintaining editorial control over the content, including team-assigned reporters and anchors, as well as team-related programming. The network is based near the Lakers' team headquarters in the Los Angeles suburb of El Segundo, California.

References

  1. "NBA.com TV - On-Air Talent". NBA.com . August 15, 2000. Archived from the original on August 15, 2000. Retrieved February 1, 2022.
  2. "The Cavs Are Playing Poker – Basketball News & NBA Rumors". Hoopsworld.com. Archived from the original on February 6, 2009. Retrieved December 30, 2019.
  3. "Turner promotes NBA digital menu". October 6, 2008. Retrieved October 15, 2008.
  4. NBA TV scores multiyear distribution deal with DirecTV – Pact gives network berth on DBS leader's choice xtra package Multichannel News April 16, 2009
  5. NBA TV jumps to broader Comcast carriage – Pro Hoops Network moves from sports tier to MSO's digital classic Multichannel News June 4, 2009
  6. 1 2 NBA digital signs deal with FiOS for NBA TV and NBA League Pass TVWeek.com September 23, 2009
  7. NBA TV secures new agreements with TWC, Cablevision and Dish – League-owned network to reach 45 million homes this season Broadcasting and Cable October 22, 2009
  8. AT&T U-Verse tips off carriage of NBA TV – league-owned network available on telco's U300 package, HD tier Multichannel News October 29, 2010
  9. Robert Seidman (June 4, 2023). "How many homes the sports networks are available in". Internet Compost.
  10. "NBA.com – Chinese Basketball Association Coverage Expands to U.S." NBA.com . Archived from the original on October 20, 2018. Retrieved December 30, 2019.
  11. release, Official. "NBA TV to feature 106-game schedule during 2017–18 season". NBA.com. Retrieved December 30, 2019.
  12. release, Official. "NBA TV to Feature 107 Game Schedule, Including a New Tuesday Night Marquee Game of the Week – NBA TV Center Court – for 2019-20 Season". WarnerMediaGroup.com. Retrieved October 16, 2019.
  13. "NBA TV to showcase HBCU games in Celebration of Black History Month". www.nba.com. Retrieved February 5, 2022.
  14. Myerberg, Paul. "NBA TV will televise two HBCU basketball games in honor of Black History Month". USA TODAY. Retrieved February 5, 2022.
  15. "Turner Newsroom: NBA.com Host Kyle Montgomery". Archived from the original on October 15, 2011. Retrieved March 11, 2011.
  16. "NBA games return to Philippine television via Cignal-Smart collab". Spin.ph. Retrieved January 7, 2021.
  17. Yoder, Matt (April 27, 2011). "Gary Neal's Buzzer Beater And The Sounds Of Silence". Awful Announcing. Bloguin. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  18. Yoder, Matt (April 23, 2011). "Should NBATV Use Local Announcers For Playoff Games?". Awful Announcing. Bloguin. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  19. Hiestand, Michael (April 22, 2012). "Hiestand: NFL draft loses some spontaneity". USAToday.com. Archived from the original on June 1, 2014. Retrieved April 23, 2012.