NBA, NHL, ready to return to network television.

Two of the biggest holidays on the American calendar will also mark the respective debuts of two of the four major sports on network television.

The NBA on ABC will kick off on Christmas Day, with a doubleheader featuring a lackluster Heat/Cavs match-up at 2:00 PM ET, followed by Suns/Lakers at 5:00. Mike Tirico and Michele Tafoya will each have a fairly rough schedule, as both will go from covering Monday Night Football on Christmas Eve to the NBA on Christmas Day. Tirico may have the most difficult transition, traveling from San Diego, site of Broncos/Chargers on MNF, to Cleveland to work Heat/Cavs. Tafoya will merely have to travel in-state, from San Diego to Los Angeles.

Tirico will work with Hubie Brown and Lisa Salters on Miami/Cleveland. Tafoya will be the sideline reporter for Suns/Lakers, with Mike Breen, Jeff van Gundy and Mark Jackson making up the lead broadcast team.

For the first time since taking over the NBA in 2002, ABC will keep the name of its NBA pre-game show. The show formerly known as NBA Shootaround, NBA Hangtime, NBA Game Time and NBA Nation, will remain known as GMC NBA Countdown. Countdown will no longer take place from the site of the day’s featured game, instead moving into a new HD studio in Bristol. Stuart Scott is slated to host, with analysts Bill Walton and Michael Wilbon.

For the first time on ABC, the NBA will implement its new policy of miking coaches and players during games. With that in mind, everyone involved in the game telecast will have to be far more careful than they were last week, when an expletive by Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan made the air.

NBA fans also have reason to be cautiously optimistic. The press release issued by ESPN did not mention any band or musician the network would use for its NBA game coverage. As many fans no doubt remember, ESPN/ABC plagued NBA fans with The Pussycat Dolls last year.

While the NBA starts its broadcast season on Christmas Day, the NHL will wait a week later. New Year’s Day will feature the second outdoor game in NHL history, when the Pittsburgh Penguins and Buffalo Sabres square off at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo. The game will be the first of the season aired on NBC, as the network begins what could be its last year with the NHL.

Bob Costas will host NBC’s coverage of the event, which will be called by Mike Emrick and Eddie Olczyk. The game will mark the first time since NBC retained the rights to the NHL in 2005 that Costas has had some involvement. In a conference call today, Costas addressed the issue of his NHL expertise.

Other guys have more expertise in horse racing and golf, more than I do not that I don’t enjoy them and follow them, but my level of expertise isn’t the same there as it might be with baseball or football or basketball is, so it’s my job to provide the overview and set the scene, which is what people, I guess, have come to expect of me in my various roles at NBC, and that’s how I’ll approach it here.

I’m not going to be analyzing the game or providing any of the bits of information that Doc Emrick does so well, but I’ll get it on the air and present the concept, and it really is an event. I don’t think you have to be somebody who follows the NHL day in and day out to be an audience viewer, and that’s the way I’ll set it up.

Unlike the NBA’s Christmas Day games, which will be the only major sporting events on television that day, the NHL will go head to head with high profile college football bowl games. While Pittsburgh and Buffalo are two huge hockey markets, that may not be enough to help NBC draw more than a 2.0 rating.

Sam Flood, producer of the NHL on NBC, is hoping that the uniqueness of an outdoor NHL game will be enough to drive viewership.

We let ratings take care of themselves, but for us broadcasting the game, it’s about the story of the game, and we’ll let the viewers decide. And when you turn your TV and see this spectacle that’s going to be on the ice there, I think it will be tough to turn away.