The 2010 NBA Playoffs begins on Saturday, and as in the previous seven years, the bulk of the games will air on cable television.
ABC will air nine playoff games prior to the NBA Finals, down from 10 last year, and the fewest playoff games on broadcast television since 2004. This year, the entire Eastern Conference Finals will air on ESPN (unless the second round ends early; in that case, Game 1 of the East Finals would move up to Sunday afternoon and air on ABC).
When asked by Sports Media Watch about the lack of playoff games on ABC compared to ESPN, ESPN senior director, programming & acquisitions Doug White noted that ESPN is in “just about 100 million homes” — not too far behind ABC, which has “a slightly higher distribution” of 114 million.
Even if ESPN is catching up to ABC in terms of distribution, the shrinking number of playoff games on broadcast has seemingly come at the expense of television ratings.
In 2001-02, NBC aired 31 playoff games prior to the NBA Finals, averaging a 5.6 rating. The year before, the network aired 30 games and averaged a 4.9 rating. By contrast, ABC averaged a 3.4 rating for its 10 playoff games prior to the Finals last season, and its pre-Finals average has never hit a 5.0 or higher.
“From a media consumption standpoint, it’s a lot different than it was in ’01 and ’02,” White said, pointing out the pervasiveness of the Internet and the fact that events are often streamed online. “It’s not quite apples-to-apples.”
While the general trend seems to be pointing towards more and more events leaving ABC for ESPN — for example, the British Open, several NASCAR races, and the Rose Bowl — White left the door open for more games on ABC in the future. “We analyze each season on a season-by-season basis, so if we want to rethink things, that option is always open for us.”
ABC will once again have coverage of the entire seven-game NBA Finals. This is the eighth straight year that ABC has aired the NBA Finals — a fairly long period of time when one considers that NBC’s eighth NBA Finals was Michael Jordan‘s last.
For the second straight year, ABC’s NBA Finals coverage will go head-to-head with at least one game of the NHL Stanley Cup Final on NBC. SMW asked White whether competition from another of the four major sports has any effect on the NBA Finals on ABC.
“It really doesn’t,” White said, noting that ESPN regularly has to compete against “entertainment programming or other sports programming on other networks,” and touting the NBA as one of the network’s “very strong products.”
Last year, Game 3 of the NBA Finals on ABC drew an 8.6 rating, compared to a 3.4 for Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final on NBC on the same night.
