ESPN is seeking to assuage concerns that “Inside the NBA” will get limited airtime when it debuts on the network next month.
ESPN president of content Burke Magnus told Richard Deitsch of The Athletic that the network’s “goal” is for episodes of the TNT-produced “Inside the NBA” to run as long on ESPN as it did during its years on TNT. “It will be as close to that as we can possibly get,” Magnus said.
The ESPN advance schedule currently lists the first two editions of “Inside” — on October 22 and 23 — as being scheduled for 30-minute placeholder windows, while TNT’s placeholder windows were generally a full hour. But placeholder windows are just that.
TNT NBA analyst Charles Barkley has for months expressed concerns about the potential length of “Inside.” In a recent podcast interview with former ESPN host Bill Simmons, now of The Ringer, Barkley wondered whether ESPN executives are “going to say, you guys got three minutes, five minutes, 15, 20, 30, 45, or are we going straight to ‘SportsCenter?'” For his part, Simmons said that it is standard procedure at ESPN to get straight to “SportsCenter,” a view that has been echoed by other former ESPN employees like Bomani Jones.
Magnus addressed that with Deitsch: “I understand that standard operating procedure for us for many years has been to get to SportsCenter. There’s going to be 200 or 300 nights or so that we’re still going to do that.”
In addition to the length of “Inside,” there has also been much discussion about how often the show will be on the air. In ESPN’s announcement of its licensing deal to acquire the show last November, it was said that “Inside” would air during “the NBA Finals on ABC, Conference Finals, NBA Playoffs, all ABC games after January 1, Christmas Day, opening week, the final week of the season and other marquee live events.” It would seem clear from that statement that the show will be on only sparingly during the first two months of the season, and perhaps not at all between Opening Week and Christmas.
The limited early schedule would seem to be confirmed by Deitsch, who wrote that the show will go on “a hiatus early in the season.”
According to Deitsch, Magnus said that the “Inside” crew will be on the air for all ESPN playoff coverage. While it is likely that the NBA playoff schedule will change in some ways with the new media rights deals, ESPN has traditionally aired playoff coverage on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays during the opening round, adding Thursdays in the conference semifinals.
