2010 has been a very successful year for what used to be ABC Sports.
| State of ABC (2010) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Good: |
Most-Viewed BCS National Championship Game in four years; most-viewed NBA Finals in nine years; most-viewed NBA game in twelve years; most-viewed Men’s World Cup match ever on a single network
|
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| The Bad:
|
Least-viewed Indianapolis 500 since at least 1986; loss of BCS bowls, British Open, most NASCAR races; no World Cup next year
| |||
In January, ABC aired the BCS National Championship game for the first time in four years — drawing the most viewers for the event since the last time it aired on the network. In June, the NBA Finals hit a nine-year high in viewership, topped by the highest rated, most-viewed NBA game since Michael Jordan‘s retirement. Finally, the success of Team USA in the World Cup drove ABC to two of the largest audiences ever for soccer on a single network.
Excluding the NFL and primetime Olympic telecasts, ABC has aired the two highest rated, most-viewed sporting events of the past year (Alabama/Texas and Celtics/Lakers Game 7) — quite an accomplishment for a network that no longer has much of an identity when it comes to televised sports.
Nearing the four-year anniversary of being rebranded ESPN on ABC, ABC has lost the rights to many marquee sporting events over the past decade — often to ESPN.
Just recently, ABC has lost the British Open to ESPN (after a half-century covering the event) and most of NASCAR’s Chase for the Cup (the network will air one race, with ESPN carrying the rest). The network would have been completely shut out of the NBA’s Eastern Conference Final as well, had the series not been moved up due to a short second round.
Of course, those are small potatoes compared to the network’s biggest loss. Starting next year, ESPN will televise the entire Bowl Championship Series — including the Rose Bowl (on ABC since 1989) and the National Championship Game. ABC will be left with just one bowl game (the Outback Bowl in 2011), only five years after airing as many as three on one day.
The network’s dwindling sports line-up resulted in frustration from its affiliates earlier this year, which ESPN responded to with a weekly, two-hour block of studio programming. The block, ESPN Sports Saturday, has not been particularly successful in the ratings (excluding weeks when it had a strong lead-in), although the affiliates appeared at the outset to be pleased by the move.
ESPN has repeatedly touted ABC’s lineup. In February, ESPN/ABC President George Bodenheimer told Sports Media Watch as much: “We still have an extremely strong line-up — Indy 500, NBA Finals, Little League World Series, college football Saturday night — we still have an extremely strong line-up on ABC, and I expect that to continue.”
However, that line-up does not appear very strong compared to its competitors, CBS (NFL, NCAA Tournament, The Masters), NBC (NFL, Olympics every two years) and FOX (NFL, World Series, Daytona 500), or even cable nets TNT and TBS (NBA Conference Finals, MLB LCS and NCAA Tournament).
ESPN on ABC also pales in comparison to ESPN itself, which in addition to the Bowl Championship Series also has the rights to Monday Night Football, regular season and postseason NBA, regular season Major League Baseball and much more.
Overall, 2010 has been a very good year for ABC — mainly because the network has actually aired marquee sporting events. The BCS, the NBA Finals and the World Cup have made ESPN on ABC as relevant as its ever been — the aforementioned Texas/Alabama National Championship Game and Celtics/Lakers Game 7 were the two most-viewed events on ABC since the ESPN on ABC rebranding.
However, with the BCS moving to ESPN and the World Cup gone for another four years, that success will surely diminish next year.
See Also: SMW Q&A With George Bodenheimer, ESPN To Debut New Shows on ABC
