Turner Sports is holding onto MLB and moving Ernie Johnson back into his original role.
Turner Sports officially announced Thursday that it has reached a seven-year media rights extension with Major League Baseball that runs from 2022 through 2028. Under the deal, which was first reported earlier in the year by the New York Post, TBS will shift its regular season coverage from Sunday afternoons after the All-Star break to Tuesday nights all season long.
Turner’s postseason inventory — a Wild Card game, two Division Series and one League Championship Series — will remain unchanged from the current deal.
Per Sports Business Journal, Turner will pay $535 million per year under the deal, up 65% from the current level of $325 million. Initial reports in the summer had Turner paying around $470 million per year.
In addition to the new TV deal, Turner also announced Thursday that Ernie Johnson will return to the TBS MLB studio starting this postseason. Johnson replaces Casey Stern, who had been the network’s studio host since 2014. The New York Post first reported the move.
Johnson, who previously anchored the TBS studio show from 2007-09, is slated to work alongside the returning Pedro Martinez, Jimmy Rollins and Curtis Granderson. Granderson is joining Turner Sports full-time after serving as a guest studio analyst last season. He was also a guest studio analyst in 2007 and 2008, during Johnson’s initial studio tenure.
Gary Sheffield, who had been in the TBS studio since 2013, is not returning.
TBS said in a Thursday press release that it will use the Johnson-led studio team on its Tuesday night package when that launches in 2022.
Per the Post, Brian Anderson — currently calling the NBA Western Conference Finals for TNT in the league’s Walt Disney World “bubble” — is set to return as the lead MLB Postseason voice on TBS. He would work with Ron Darling in the Division Series, with Jeff Francoeur joining them in the LCS. Don Orsillo would work with Francoeur in the LDS.
[News from Turner Sports, New York Post 9.23]
