 After yesterday’s long diatribe on the state of the NHL on OLN and Comcast, we today turn our attention (briefly) to the NBA. As it turns out, over in the Association, gray skies are indeed clearing up, and ESPN’s right in the middle of it. Surprised? We thought not.
Mediaweek is reporting that ABC will increase its number of NBA broadcasts this year, up to 20 from last year’s total of 18 (not including the playoffs). A small increase, it nevertheless continues a two-year trend in ABC NBA broadcasts, which bottomed out at 13 in 2003-04.
Some perspective: as this chart at InsideHoops shows, the first few years of this decade have seen a bottoming-out of NBA broadcasts and ratings, especially after the transition from NBC to ABC following the 2001-02 season. As recently as 1999-2000, NBC showed a full 71 NBA regular-season games. But, then, the ratings were terrible, and the NBA was going through what we are increasingly able to refer to as its own dark ages.
One of the trends we need to watch for here is the increasingly strange division of labor between ABC and ESPN. ESPN gets Monday Night Football, ABC gets NASCAR. ABC gets NBA broadcasts, ESPN gets Disney’s MLB investment (including postseason). The conventional wisdom – that Disney would spend bigger dollars for network-worthy content – seems to be going out the window; here, ESPN’s level of cable saturation makes it the logical home for top-tier programming, leaving ABC with what we might call programming leftovers (and those girls as Wisteria Lane).
One of the further signs that the NBA is returning to broadcast prominence is the news that Sirius Satellite Radio has dramatically expanded its relationship with the Association. In early 2003, the NBA was the first professional sports league to sign a satellite radio contract; now Sirius and the NBA have expanded their relationship so that Sirius is an official marketing partner, providing extensive coverage and having a presence on NBA TV and through official NBA merchandising channels. While the future stability of satellite radio is still in doubt, Sirius’s $500 million deal with Howard Stern will likely draw significant numbers of new listeners and have a large spillover effect on Sirius’s sports contracts (the NFL, NASCAR, and the NBA).
Screw the Xbox 360. For Christmas, I Want My Own Franchise!
Various team officials have now confirmed the statement from Time/Warner yesterday that the media giant is considering the sale of the Atlanta Braves. And while this story has made the AP Wire, and has surfaced on the ESPN and Fox web sites, the less-reported aspect of it is that the Braves will be packaged with Turner South, the regional sports channel that is set to inherit the bulk of Braves’ broadcasts once TBS’s current deal reduces from 90 to 45 games per season in 2008 (from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
Forbes valued the Braves at $382 million last year, but bids for the Washington Nationals are breaking $450 million, and since all franchises are flush with new television revenue and about to gain from the Nats’ pending sale (since the Nats are owned by the 29 other franchises), the Braves’ price tag should be well in excess of the $400 million mark.
What is more difficult to ascertain – and as we found today, straight-up impossible to research -- is the precise value of Turner South. Certainly both Comcast and Fox are taking a very close look at the network, one of the nation’s largest regional sports networks currently not under the Comcast or Fox umbrella, and you can bet that the two giants are feeling very covetous. But whether either of them has any specific interest in the franchise is another matter, and neither have been mentioned among the potential speculative owners (mostly local Atlanta moguls).
Nevertheless, don’t be surprised to see Comcast or Fox show up for this party, if only to expand their ever-increasing web of regional, team-affiliated and cross-marketed sports media networks.
We Were Always Partial to Cat Herding
The New York Post reports, via Deadspin, that PETA is assembling a perspective Superbowl commercial that will feature women “flashing” the camera only to expose udders where their breasts might otherwise be. Now we certainly won’t be the first to point out that this ad will never see the light of day. And it’s a bit beyond the scope of the Digest to suggest that PETA doesn’t actually make these ads for broadcast, but rather for the press generated by their censorship.
Instead, it just seemed like a good lead-in to pointing out that this year’s Superbowl ad numbers are looking a bit different than in past years. The price -- $2.4 million for a 30-second spot – has not increased for the third time in five years. Some major clients, notably Visa and McDonald’s, are passing up the perennial marketing event, and many firms are advising clients towards the $700,000 price tag for Winter Olympics spots instead of splurging on Superbowl Sunday.
Two potential explanations: First, brands are increasingly nervous about oversensationalized ads that draw negative publicity or draw attention away from their own spots. See here last year’s GoDaddy.com ad, and Pepsi’s protest that the spot sucked viewer attention away from their ad that followed in the same commercial break. When you figure that all of that happened on Fox, and then look at this year’s game on Disney’s ABC, it becomes even more obvious that PETA’s udders are never seeing the light of a Superbowl broadcast.
The second explanation is that companies are increasingly interested in putting together marketing packages that involve cross-platform visibility. The Superbowl may have fully tapped its own potential, but the Olympics present a marketing opportunity that can move from television to print to online channels over the course of its duration, and the chance to work significantly throughout its duration is potentially more tempting to marketers and accountants both.
A similar case-in-point: the report in this morning’s Wall Street Journal that Golf magazine is putting together a network special – a golf challenge for everyday players – on CBS this Spring. The catch: Golf has no interest in creating a TV presence, but has considerable interest in selling cross-platform packages to potential advertisers. With network specials on the horizon, Golf can sell packages that include print, online, and TV avenues, and since CBS’s big PGA commitments will follow quickly after, it’s not exactly hurting the network. How it will play into May Sweeps is as-of-yet undetermined.
This Morning We Are Obsessed With:
Pat Riley. Over and over and over and over and over again. Because if you can’t afford lunch with Theo Epstein, and you didn’t make it to the Florida Marlins’ Bitch Session, then the simultaneous return of Pat Riley and Shaq just kinda draws all of our attention at once. And we would break down the opinions for you, but it basically goes like this: some people like him, and some don’t. And nobody – I mean nobody – buys this “personal reasons” bullshit we heard from Stan Van.
Tomorrow: SI hands out Christmas Unemployment, and we begin the Unbranded World Baseball “Event” Countdown. |
Daily Digest 
