NBA on NBC


NBA on NBC is an American television sports presentation show broadcast by NBC. Television broadcasts of National Basketball Association games produced by NBC Sports have aired on American broadcast network NBC under the NBA on NBC branding throughout three incarnations in its history.
The NBA was first televised by NBC from 1954 to 1962. In 1990, the NBA returned to NBC under a multi-year contract which coincided with the dynastic run of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls; the league rose to unprecedented popularity, with ratings surpassing the days of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird in the mid-1980s. NBC's coverage ended after the 2001–02 season after a 12-year run, when NBC was outbid for the broadcast television contract by Disney.
In July 2024, it was announced that NBCUniversal had regained rights to the NBA under a new contract, beginning in the 2025–26 season, under the title NBA on NBC and NBA on Peacock respectively, which will see coverage on NBC and streaming platform Peacock. NBCSN was later added in November to televise Monday and some playoff games.

History

First iteration (1954–1962)

NBC's first tenure with the NBA began on October 30, 1954, and lasted until April 7, 1962. NBC's very first NBA telecast was a game between the Boston Celtics and Rochester Royals in Rochester.
For the 1954–55 season, Marty Glickman and Lindsey Nelson called all games except on April 9, when Glickman worked with Jim Gordon. Nelson would later write in his autobiography, Hello Everybody, I'm Lindsey Nelson that NBA commissioner Maurice Podoloff would travel to the televised games and, when NBC needed to get in a commercial, he would go up to one of the coaches and say, "Call a timeout," and they had to, since the commissioner ordered it. On March 19, 1955, during the playoffs, NBC gave the national spotlight to the New York Knicks and rising Boston Celtics at New York City's Madison Square Garden.
For the first year of NBC's tenure, the first five weeks of coverage followed a Canadian Football League game. That contract decreed that the network show 13 games on Saturday afternoons beginning in late August, and was signed one week after NBC had lost the rights to NCAA football to ABC.
The following year, Lindsey Nelson was paired with Curt Gowdy on commentary for all games except on February 25, March 3, and March 24. On March 31, 1956, NBC broadcast the first nationally televised NBA Finals game, which was Game 1 of the Philadelphia-Fort Wayne series.
Gowdy and Nelson were retained as the primary broadcast team for NBC in 1956–57 except on March 23 and 30, when Nelson worked by himself. While the team of Gowdy and Nelson again did most games in 1957–58, Nelson worked the December 14 telecast with Chick Hearn, who in return, worked the January 11 telecast with Gowdy. For the January 18 telecast, Nelson worked alone while on February 1, Nelson was paired with Bill O'Donnell. Meanwhile, Gowdy worked alone on March 1.
NBC also during the 1957–58 season, broadcast a game in Detroit between Cincinnati and the Pistons on March 15. It was after this game, on the flight home to Cincinnati, that Maurice Stokes became ill and later suffered a seizure, fell into a coma and was left permanently paralyzed. This was the delayed reaction from having hit his head in a game three days earlier. Stokes died in April 1970.
In the 1958–59 season, Curt Gowdy worked alone on all games except on March 15, April 5. The 1959 NBA All-Star Game marked the first time that the All-Star Game was nationally televised. However, NBC only broadcast the second half at 10 p.m. Eastern Time, in lieu of its Friday Night Fights telecast. The fact that the All-Star Game prior to this, was almost always played on a Tuesday night meant that NBC would have had to sacrifice most, if not all, of their evening programming. In the first few years, that would have meant taking off Milton Berle's program, which was starting to slide, but still would have made more money for the network than a pro basketball game. Plus, NBA owners weren't terribly savvy when it came to working with television in this era, so they probably refused network requests to put it in a weekend afternoon slot.
During the 1959–60 season, Curt Gowdy worked alone most on Saturday games while Lindsey Nelson worked alone on most Sunday games. Nelson also worked on Saturday April 2 during the playoffs. Marty Glickman meanwhile, worked alone on December 6, January 2–3, February 28, March 13, 20, and 27, and April 3. Finally, Bill O'Donnell worked alone on March 12, 19, and 26.
In the 1960–61 season, Lindsey Nelson was alone on all games except when he worked with Bud Palmer on October 22 and 29, November 26, December 3, 10, and 24. Jerry Doggett helped call games on November 5 and 19. Marty Glickman contributed to commentary on January 8, 15, 22, and 29, February 19 and 26, March 12, 19, and 26, and April 2.
For NBC's final season of their first stint with the NBA, Bud Palmer worked alone on commentary on all games except for on February 3 and April 7, when he was paired with Bob Wolff.
NBC's ratings during this time period were lukewarm at best. By 1962, NBA ratings for NBC's Saturday afternoon games dipped to 4.8 as compared to Sunday afternoon NFL ratings of 10.4. As a matter of fact, CBS was at one point, getting better ratings for their National Hockey League telecasts than NBC was getting with the NBA. One possible factor for the dipping ratings the fact that NBC's 1960–61 schedule placed the three weakest teams--Cincinnati, Syracuse, and Detroit on television a total of 14 times. In comparison, three of the NBA's best teams--Boston, St. Louis, and Philadelphia—appeared on NBC a total of only seven times.

Second iteration (1990–2002)

Background

On November 9, 1989, the NBA reached an agreement with NBC worth US$600 million to broadcast the NBA's games for four years, beginning with the 1990–91 season. On April 28, 1993, NBC extended its exclusive broadcast rights to the NBA with a four-year, $750 million contract.

Coverage

NBC's coverage of the NBA began on Christmas Day each season, with the exception of the inaugural season in 1990, the 1997–98 season, the 1998–99 season, and the final season of NBC's contract in 2001–02. NBC aired the NBA All-Star Game every year, usually at 6:00 pm, Eastern Time. In 2002, NBC aired the game an hour earlier due to the Winter Olympics later that evening. Starting in 2000, during the NBA Playoffs, NBC would air tripleheaders on Saturdays and Sundays during the first two weeks of the playoffs. Prior to 2000, NBC would air a doubleheader on Saturday, followed by a tripleheader on Sunday.
On December 30, 2000, NBC aired a rare second December game. The Saturday match was the only time that NBC aired a game between Christmas Day and the start of the regular run of games in February. In 2001, NBC was scheduled to air an October preseason game involving an NBA team playing an international team; that game was canceled due to the September 11 attacks. During the 2001–02 NBA season, NBC added a significant number of Washington Wizards games to its schedule. When Jordan became injured during the middle of the season, NBC replaced the added Wizards games with the games that had been originally on the schedule.

Segments

The pre-game show for NBC's NBA telecasts was NBA Showtime, a title that was used from 1990 until 2000, with the pre-game being unbranded afterward. Showtime was originally hosted by Bob Costas from the inaugural season of the 1990 contract to the 1995–96 season; Hannah Storm took over as host beginning with the 1996–97 season, who in turn was replaced by Ahmad Rashad in 2001 when Storm went on maternity leave. The video game NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC, by Midway Games, was named after the pregame show.
During the NBA Finals, additional coverage would be immediately available on CNBC, in which the panelists provided an additional half-hour of in-depth game discussions, after the NBC broadcast network's coverage concluded.
The halftime show was sponsored by Prudential Financial, and later NetZero and Verizon Wireless. The broadcasts also featured a segment during the live games called Miller Genuine Moments, which provided a brief retrospective on a particular historically significant and/or dramatic moment in NBA history; this segment was discontinued towards the end of NBC's coverage. The song used as the soundtrack for the Miller Genuine Moments segment was "Black Hole" by John Tesh. For a brief period in 2001–02, NBC aired a studio segment called 24, in which each analyst would have 24 seconds to talk about issues concerning the NBA. NBC discontinued the segment in February 2002, after Williams was arrested on murder charges.

Ratings

During its twelve-year run, the NBA on NBC experienced ratings highs and lows for the NBA. In the 1990s, the NBA Finals ratings were stellar, with the exception of the 1999 Finals. In 1998, the NBA set a Finals ratings record, with an 18.7 household rating for the second Chicago Bulls–Utah Jazz series, the last championship run by the Michael Jordan-led Bulls. The very next year, the ratings for the 1999 Finals plummeted, marking the beginning of an ongoing period of lower viewership for the league's game telecasts. In 2002, NBC set a record for the highest-rated Western Conference Final, including a 14.2 rating for Game 7 of the series between the Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings.
NBC's highest-rated regular season game was Michael Jordan's first game back from playing Minor League Baseball; the March 1995 game between the Chicago Bulls and Indiana Pacers scored a 10.9 rating. As a comparison, the first game in Jordan's second comeback scored a rating between a 3.0 and 4.0. NBC's first game of Jordan's second comeback scored ratings similar to that number.