The familiar NBA on TNT theme music will return when “Inside the NBA” does next week.
The TNT-produced “Inside the NBA” will continue using its preexisting graphics and music when it begins airing on ESPN next week, Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal reported and ESPN confirmed Wednesday. That means the longtime Trevor Rabin-composed TNT NBA theme song, which debuted in 2002, will continue to be used on NBA coverage despite TNT losing NBA rights.
There is some recent precedent involving the same two companies. In the first year of TNT’s sublicensing agreement with ESPN to carry College Football Playoff games, ESPN produced the two game telecasts, using its own music, graphics and announcers. (The TNT pregame, it should be noted, used its own music and personnel.)
When MLB Network produced the Fox Sports MLB pregame show from 2012-13 — using its own personnel and Secaucus, N.J., studios — it used the FOX graphics and music.
ESPN has stressed repeatedly that “Inside the NBA” will be the same show that it was in its days on TNT — just with an ESPN logo — but there have been any number of questions about its length, format and schedule. Now just one week away from the first edition, it would seem that most of those questions have been answered.
One of the few remaining loose ends concerns the length of the “Inside” postgame show when it airs on ABC, which it will on most dates this season. ESPN SVP/sports production Tim Corrigan told Karp that following ABC Saturday night games, “Inside” will run for “at least a half hour” before shifting exclusively to the ESPN app. A regular, half-hour postgame show would seem to be a first for the NBA on broadcast television.
As previously announced, the TNT-produced “NBA Tip-Off” and “Inside the NBA” will each run for a full hour when they air on ESPN.
In other NBA production news, Tom Friend of SBJ reported this week that there are “indications” NBC could invite Bob Costas, Hannah Storm, Ahmad Rashad or Marv Albert — all of whom were integral to the network’s previous NBA run from 1990-2002 — to cameo on or contribute to its coverage in some capacity.
