Sports Media Watch visited Turner Sports last week and had a chance to speak with NBA Digital SVP and GM Bryan Perez. Topics of conversation included the use of local announcers on NBA TV playoff games, how NBA TV stacks up compared to MLB Network and NFL Network, and whether NBA TV will increase coverage of college basketball.
SMW: In Game 5 between the Celtics and Heat, the local announcers did the game [on NBA TV]. [Celtics analyst] Tommy Heinsohn ? very, very biased, as everyone knows ? did the game nationally. And it was one of those things where you think, maybe having your own crew calling the game nationally might have been better. So what goes into the thought process and the decision making to have the local crews do the games on NBA TV during the playoffs?
Perez: It?s just kind of where we are in our life cycle right now. We tripled distribution this year. So we also have the largest slate of national games of any broadcaster, TNT included. 96 games during the regular season. So what we did was, before we had the increased distribution ? and really, the economics that come along with that, both on the advertising side and the sub fee side ? we tried to focus on being very, very efficient, really, in our transition year.
Setting up that kind of regional sports network pass-through operation ? which has actually really come along, but for some of the announcer aspects; every regional broadcaster isn?t quite as biased or homeriffic as Boston might be ? if you look at the way even FOX is producing it, they?re actually using essentially the same television broadcast and just repurposing it for a home and away feed.
We?re able to do somewhat of the same and be very, very efficient. This was just a continuation of that model, this being the year when our distribution happened. Going forward next year, we?ll clearly look at ? particularly in the playoffs ? having more direct NBA TV presence on the game. But right now, it?s still a really quality production. You don?t even notice as much of the regional aspect of it because we?re running national ads, we strip out all the graphics and it?s a clean feed, and a lot of the sales elements that are getting inserted, we?re able to work around. So, we?ve probably taken that model as far as we can go, but it?s served us well up to now.
SMW: Let me ask you more about the distribution. You tripled this year to about 45 million. So that?s well behind MLB Network, I?m guessing, but probably fairly close to NFL Network.
Perez: I think MLB is in 50 [million]. So we?re right in there. 52, something like that. So we?re all kind of close to each other. I think the big difference is, we didn?t sell 40% of the network to the distributors to get our distribution. We retained 100% of the equity. So, we?re close to the same distribution, but retained 100% control of ownership. We kind of like that model.
SMW: One thing I always notice is that MLB Network gets a lot of praise, NFL Network also gets a lot of praise, and NBA TV seems to go under the radar. What do you think NBA TV has to do to matchup to an MLB Network, which has [Bob] Costas, [Peter] Gammons, and people of that stature?
Perez: Yeah, but we have Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley ? who?s arguably the most popular and well known sports broadcaster period.
SMW: True, but Charles doesn?t usually appear on NBA TV. EJ does ?
Perez: He?s there every week.
SMW: That is true, but MLB Network does seem to attract more, I don?t want to say marquee names ? but the sheer amount of recognizable, ?okay, this guy used to be a huge network guy? names that they have would seem to indicate that they?re kind of operating on a higher level, in a way.
Perez: Are they? The audience doesn?t seem to be there. Look at Sports Business Journal today. Fewer than 100,000 viewers. I think all that?s debatable. I think that?s more perception or wishful thinking than reality.
I will put the Turner platform and the Turner knowhow and assets ? no matter what we?re talking about, television production, digital production, mobile production ? I will put that up against anybody. And I think the results have shown that. We would not have gotten three times the distribution in one year without giving up 40% of our network had the distributors not realized the quality level we?re able to bring the network. You wouldn?t see the record numbers that we?re seeing ? where we?ve done 1 billion video views online ? if the content production wasn?t there. I think the big difference between how we manage versus maybe how MLB manages, is that we actually crossplatform 100% of our content. Whereas I don?t believe any other entity does. And that?s how we?re able to get to 1 billion video views online. Because it?s the same production unit creating that high quality content for the broadcast side, gets to distribute it online as well.
And then of course, our mobile story is pretty well noted at this point ? over 100 apps, 1.7 million, closing in on 2 [million] now distributed in the past fourteen, fifteen months. I would say we?re as good as anybody.
SMW: That Sports Business Journal article you referenced, they said today, fewer than 100,000 viewers for MLB Network. I know NBA TV is not a Nielsen rated network, but would you estimate that NBA TV gets a similar audience, a larger audience, a smaller audience?
Perez: It?s hard to compare. First of all, there?s just a difference in the overall ratings between the two sports, and how many games there are in baseball versus how many there are in basketball. It?s about matchups and competition. Think about it. When we?re out in fall, our audience is competing on Saturday nights with college football, on Sunday and Monday and Thursday with the NFL ? and baseball, in about three weeks, is going to have no competition for the rest of the season. So it?s hard to necessarily compare raw ratings, because it really comes down to how you?re selling it and what your expectations are.
Jeff Pomeroy: For Tuesday night Fan Nights, we had a lot of our games that got over 100,000 votes on NBA.com. I?m not saying all of those people are watching, but all of them are certainly aware of the NBA TV games.
Perez: And we look at crossplatform audience aggregation. So that?s where this model is going to move, ultimately, is that we?re going to be able to say, how many people were watching that show, not just via the Nielsen ratings on TV last night, but how many people got up the next morning and watched it online. That audience is global. It?s way bigger than the television audience.
I’ve used this stat publicly before, that one third of our advertisers that buy across all of our platforms are three quarters of our revenue. So that?s the key. The key is to get somebody into your entire ecosystem, because they tend to buy much, much bigger packages than they would if they bought each distribution platform in and of itself.
SMW: In the past, NBA players have been critical when they see that their playoff games are on NBA TV. I?m thinking about Chauncey Billups back in 2006 or Jermaine O?Neal in 2004. What do you think you can do to boost NBA TV?s profile among the other NBA broadcasters like ESPN and TNT and ABC?
Perez: I don?t think that?s an issue anymore. I mean, Shaq is sending in text messages to our studio as it?s live. I think the players ? now that we have the expanded distribution, they can see it. You can get it in hotels, you can get it in bars, they?re seeing it everywhere. We get realtime feedback from players all the time.
In one week, we had Kobe, LeBron, Durant and Wade all on two-ways within a three day span. Kobe was in studio. You?re not getting that kind of player involvement unless they?re feeling like it?s a legitimate outlet. So I don?t even think that?s an issue.
SMW: Is NBA TV going to start increasing the number of games it airs during the postseason?Right now, it airs the lesser known series, the Bucks/Hawks ?
Perez: Well, that goes to the billion dollar television contracts that ESPN and TNT have. It?s much better of the league to ? [laughing] I recognize that it?s much better for the league to get a check directly from Turner, to get those games on those fully distributed networks.
In the first round that capacity?s not there. That?s where we can play a really important role, at least in airing those games, but we play a very important support role no matter who has the actual broadcasts. We?re the only place you can go ? NBA Digital, broadly speaking ? to get the full press conference and we cover everything all night. Our guys will sometimes be here until two, three, four in the morning making sure that we?ve got every last piece of information covered for the next morning, to the depth and quality that we believe the fans should expect from somebody who?s focused like we are. I think it all works hand-in-hand. You see that in how NBA TV and TNT/Inside the NBA work together, and I think you?ll see that even more in the Western Conference Finals.
SMW: You guys air a lot of basketball beyond just the NBA. You air international, WNBA. Have you ever thought about adding college games to NBA TV? NFL Network airs [college football] bowls.
Perez: Certainly, we?ve been asked that question a lot more with the announcement of the NCAA relationship between Turner and CBS. I think that we have had discussions, particularly around the tournament, how do we more appropriately cover the tournament in the month of March. I think the NCAA deal is going to be a perfect opportunity for us to kind of work together to not only support that event, but have that event support us. A lot of the NBA players played there first. So there?s a lot of opportunities.
SMW: I noticed this year, a lot of references to college. Steve Smith and Michigan State, Eric Snow and Michigan State, so things of that nature.
Perez: I?m thinking more in-depth coverage on NBA TV, being about basketball more broadly, and what can we do to cover something that?s very much on the top of everybody?s mind in the month of March. We will have a much greater opportunity to do that now with this new relationship with the NCAA via Turner Sports. But it?s still so fresh that we haven?t figured it out yet.
So, you come out of All-Star, you start some of this college coverage, and from an NBA perspective, you?re going to start to highlight the people that could be entering the [NBA] Draft. We?ve got to be very careful there, because we?re not in a position to necessarily speculate who might declare and who might not. But you definitely want to start to build the profile of people that could be NBA players, regardless of where they are in their collegiate careers.
As playoffs start to roll around during April, really what you?ve got is a storyline now. The guys that you just showcased in March, one, they?re declaring, and two, they?re of particular relevance to the non-playoff teams. Then you go to lottery, which is coming up, and then right out of the playoffs into draft. You can really build a storyline. Then we have a huge commitment to Summer League. So you can really see how an investment, starting primarily in March, would really thread through those things quite nicely.
SMW: Are you thinking about hiring or bringing on some college-specific people? [Jay] Bilas types, [Dick] Vitale types, maybe even a Fran Fraschilla type for the international draft prospects?
Perez: Last year we had Bruce Pearl on [NBA Draft coverage], and we?ll continue to look to have people that are the best positioned to have knowledge of the players but be good broadcasters at the same time.
SMW: When you?re going to be promoting the NCAA Tournament on NBA TV and talking about it, is there a danger, because the NCAA basketball and the NBA are still competitors in a lot of ways … do you risk overshadowing or giving too much focus to the NCAA as opposed to the NBA?
Perez: Everything?s a balance. We?re not going to be in the middle of the season, and it?s just going to be nothing but Tournament coverage. But you also can?t be in a position where you?re not talking about it at all. Because like I said, basketball fans are basketball fans. And they want to know that information. So we?ll have an obligation to cover it. And we think we now have a path to being able to do that. But it?s just too early to really tell how.
SMW: What are some of the new things NBA TV might be doing within the next couple of seasons?
Perez: I think you?re going to see us develop a lot more in-depth, feature type programming. I think you?re going to see us build off of Tuesday night and really look to create another franchise on another night of the week. And we?re going through all that right now, just in terms of content planning, programming planning.
So we?re looking at taking what has become a very successful franchise for us, in Fan Night on Tuesdays, and how do we go from owning that night to transferring that success to another night of the week. … We?re in the middle of that right now, planning for next season. Which is interesting, because the season hasn?t even finished.
