Sports Media Watch presents thoughts on recent events in the industry, starting Monday’s news that Warner Bros. Discovery plans to spin off its cable networks — and what it means for both TNT Sports and the future of sports on cable.
In the history of cable, there are a handful of networks that were in some ways the equivalent of broadcast television — broad in scope, pursuing audiences across all demographics. Original movies and series across all genres, late night talk shows, even sports. When cable was at its height, these networks — TNT, TBS, USA Network and FX — were at or near 100 million homes.
With the news Monday that Warner Bros. Discovery is spinning off its cable networks, including the networks of TNT Sports, the end of that era is in sight.
Consider how expendable these four networks have become. TNT and TBS join USA Network in being spun off by their parent company. FX, which sold by Fox to Disney as part of a larger 2018 deal, was one of the linear Disney properties Bob Iger flirted with spinning off two years ago.
In a fragmented media space, a general cable network no longer needs to exist. 24-hour sports and 24-hour news are likely going nowhere, but in 2025 and beyond, the all-encompassing, everything-for-everyone media platform is going to be a streaming service, not a cable channel. [HBO] Max will have movies, series and perhaps sports — though David Zaslav was noticeably noncommittal on the latter. YouTube, of course, has everything, for better or worse.
Where does that leave these cable channels, which are still players in the sports rights marketplace?
Even with the loss of the NBA, TNT Sports still owns rights to numerous blue-chip sports properties, and per a report last week, is poised to even acquire a College Football Playoff semifinal starting in 2026. USA Network has not been an independent player for sports rights since before the 2004 GE-Vivendi Universal merger, which put it under the same umbrella as NBC. Even so, it owns a fair share of sports rights thanks to that soon-to-end association, as the majority of NBC’s rights deals — notably excluding the NBA — include a handful of games on USA. Will these channels continue to air their current properties and then bow out of contention for good?
It is tempting to suggest that these channels could be a useful pickup opportunity for one of the larger media companies. The full TNT Sports portfolio would be a content goldmine for an ESPN as it fills out its new direct-to-subscriber service, and as the ESPN-TNT Sports relationship continues to grow. But the chances of Disney even thinking of absorbing a debt-ridden cable business seem slim to none. The company’s acquisition of the 21st Century Fox assets did not age well, and as mentioned previously, it was only two years ago that Bob Iger flirted with spinning off all of Disney’s linear channels save for ESPN.
While Iger’s stance toward those linear channels has changed dramatically — from “no-growth businesses” in 2023 to “actually an asset” in 2024 — it is hard to imagine that he or his successor would have any interest in piling on more, regardless of the potential benefits. (Would ESPN go back down the Venu road by bundling TNT Sports content through its new app? It seems unlikely that Disney would want to revisit that headache.)
Obviously, Comcast is not going to just pick up more cable channels after spinning off its own. Nor is Fox Corporation, which made out like a bandit in selling its assets to Disney. Little can be said about Paramount until there is clarity on the Skydance deal.
Could smaller outlets have any interest? Surely Nexstar, which dismantled WGN to create the low-rated Newsnation, could have eyes for CNN. Any combination of Nexstar and the ex-WBD networks would dramatically strengthen CW as a sports enterprise. (It is perhaps worth noting that CW originated as a joint venture of Time Warner’s WB and Viacom’s UPN, so there is some history.) But the debt load of the WBD networks makes it unlikely that Nexstar, Scripps, or the ever-present Byron Allen make even a PR play.
Can these spinoff companies find a way to become self-sustaining? Doubtful. When the then-WarnerMedia networks were spun off from AT&T two years ago, it was additive. The networks remained intact and combined with another media conglomerate. This time, the spinoff reduces their resources. No longer are they under the protection — if one can call three difficult years under Discovery ‘protection’ — of a larger company. No longer will they have HBO, the Warner Bros. TV or movie content library, or most importantly, a major streaming service. The new company will get Discovery+ in the divorce, which could presumably be rebranded as a home for scripted and sports content, but considering that streamer was essentially sacrificed to bolster Max, it constitutes starting from scratch.
Similarly, the former Comcast cable networks lack the ties of a broadcast network or streaming service in any potential negotiations. While Versant is led by sports media veteran Mark Lazarus and clearly has designs on being a player — even throwing its hat into the ring for the expiring ESPN MLB package — it is hard to see them contending for more than second and third-tier properties.
Thus, the future of these generalist networks is very much in question. There are still some generalist cable networks that remain part of a broader media company — such as The Paramount Network (formerly Spike TV, and formerly TNN, both of which carried live sports for years) and technically Bravo (which has aired some of NBC’s Olympic programming) — but for the most part, they do not air any sports. The ultimate fate of TNT Sports, and to a lesser extent USA Network, could be the end of a particular kind of sports television.
In the cable industry, there have mostly been four different types of sports partner. There is the 24-hour sports network, defined by ESPN. There are the sport-specific specialty channels like NBA TV, MLB Network, NHL Network and Golf Channel. There are the RSNs. And there are the general cable networks discussed in the bulk of this piece.
Of those four types, all-but-one is in seemingly inexorable decline — and that would be the 24-hour sports network, and only then because ESPN is too big to fail.
So much of the focus in discussion of cable’s decline has been on falling subscriber numbers, and understandably so. But falling subscriber counts have not been a direct threat to networks’ existence, owing in large measure to the protection afforded by being a part of a larger overarching business — whether a media conglomerate, a league or a team. Absent that protection, it is hard to see how these cable properties can fend for themselves long-term.
Once the decline of cable becomes existential — not just in the abstract, but directly — it can be said that the industry is truly in a long-expected new era.
Plus: French Open, NBA theme music
The WBD spinoff news on Monday came just 24 hours after TNT Sports concluded a widely praised run at the French Open. Coverage previously aired on NBC — whose heart never seemed to be in it after losing Wimbledon — and Tennis Channel, and the difference between those platforms and ESPN (which airs all of the other Grand Slams) was noticable.
TNT Sports in one year has flipped the script, setting a bar that ESPN will have to reach when it reconvenes at Wimbledon next month. Key to TNT’s success was the general approach the company has to live sports — the conversational style of its studio in particular — and the fresh faces it brought to the staid tennis broadcasting landscape.
Among those new faces was play-by-play voice Brian Anderson, the voice of the Brewers who joined then-Turner Sports in 2008 to cover MLB Division Series games. During his nearly two-decade run with TNT Sports, Anderson has shown that he is one of the most verstaile broadcasters in the industry. While he was not perfect during Sunday’s men’s final — he referred to “deuce” as “40-all” at one point — he met the moment in a classic five-set final.
As he was signing off Sunday, Jim Courier — who has largely been absent from U.S. coverage of Grand Slams — offered the following praise for his bosses at TNT. “I want to thank the bosses here for putting together a pretty incredible team. I mean, really pretty amazing to have Venus Williams, to have Andre [Agassi] — these are people that I’m sure TV executives have always wanted to have get involved, and to be able to get it done, that’s a credit to the team here at TNT.”
The importance of sports theme music is no secret. From “Heavy Action” to “Roundball Rock,” sports theme songs are the accompaniment to some of the greatest games and voices in sports media history. All the more reason why ESPN’s NBA theme music, or lack thereof, is fairly confounding. The ESPN theme lacks the gravitas one expects of sports music and, moreover, is rarely even used. ESPN seems to go to every break with a playlist of oldies — and that is in the best case.
For Game 1 of the Finals, ESPN actually did not play any music at all during its open — in all probability a technical error — which made it fairly easy to overlay a medley of old-school and classic NBA themes onto the network’s open. See for yourself if you think any of these are an improvement.
