NBC is dropping its “Coast 2 Coast” format for its final NBA telecasts of the month.
NBC announced Saturday that it is switching to standard doubleheaders of 8 and 10:30 PM ET for its remaining NBA games this month. The network’s December 23 Rockets-Clippers and December 29 Mavericks-Blazers games will move up from 11 PM ET, while its December 30 Kings-Clippers game has been dropped in favor of Pistons-Lakers — which was already set to air at 10:30 PM.
The games will be the first true doubleheaders on NBC since Opening Night. All other game windows since have been part of the “Coast 2 Coast Tuesday” format, with NBC stations in the Eastern, Central and some Mountain time zones getting an 8 PM ET game and stations in the Pacific time zone getting an 11 PM ET game. (Stations are able to carry both games if they choose.)
The 11 PM ET starts have been the latest for any nationally televised NBA games since the 2003 playoffs, when a handful of games aired in that window as part of rare weeknight tripleheaders. By comparison, 10:30 PM ET starts were the norm for years before the league shifted most of its doubleheaders to 7:30/10 PM ET.
The most recent “Coast 2 Coast Tuesday” regional window was the most-watched thus far with 3.2 million viewers, a figure that combines the Nielsen estimate of 2.38 million with additional streaming data tracked by Adobe Analytics.
The “Coast 2 Coast” format has the advantage of combining two game windows into a single rated program. That is far from unusual, as the NFL singleheader regularly combines an early game audience at 1 PM ET with a late game audience at 4:05. It is, however, unusual for the NBA — which prior to this season had not had regionalized national TV windows since 2006, and had not had regional coverage split across multiple windows since the 1980s.
It is unlikely that NBC will switch away from the “Coast 2 Coast” format altogether, given the disruption to local newscasts and late night programming. But “The Tonight Show” and “Late Night” are typically in reruns the final two weeks of December, meaning that at least on that front, there will be no conflict.
