Viewers did not tune-in en masse to watch Dick Vitale call an NBA game.
The January 20 Jazz/Spurs game on ESPN, called by Vitale and Dan Shulman, drew a 0.8 U.S. rating and 1.3 million viewers — down 27% in ratings and 15% in viewership from Heat/Nuggets last year, which was also called by Vitale (1.1, 1.5 mil).
Jazz/Spurs finished well below the season average for NBA games on ESPN (1.1, 1.7 mil).
Additionally, Jazz/Spurs was the second-lowest rated of the eight nationally televised NBA games on ESPN and TNT last week — ahead of only Suns/Grizzlies on Martin Luther King Day, which began at 5:30 PM ET.
Ratings and viewership were unavailable for the Wake Forest/North Carolina game earlier in the night — called by the ESPN NBA team of Mike Breen, Jeff Van Gundy, and Mark Jackson.
