N.B.A.'s New Universe Rotates Around Cable

N.B.A.'s New Universe Rotates Around Cable. The next time ABC Sports broadcasts an N.B.A. game, it will be Game 1 of the finals, on June 6. Though hardly winded, ABC will rest during the conference finals (it did two games last year), as it will for the next four years during what is probably the best part of the playoffs. ESPN and TNT have taken over. ¶ ABC hardly makes the ripple that NBC Sports did for a dozen years through the 2002 finals. ¶ At no time in recent N.B.A. television history has a broadcast network — which reaches more people than cable and, thus, more casual viewers who might tune in as series heat up — been so minor a player. ¶ But this was ordained by N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern when he made his six-year, $2.4 billion deal with ESPN and ABC, and renewed his long-term deal with TNT, for $2.2 billion. And ever since, Stern has been saying that the allure of NBC's doubleheader/tripleheader approach had faded, along with the appeal of 5:30 and 8 p.m. prime-time games in Eastern time. ESPN's young viewers, he said, are my young viewers. Come hoop with me. ¶ So this is the new N.B.A. paradigm: Go where you think your fans are and where the money is — cable. Expose your league to ESPN, the Walt Disney Company's real Magic Kingdom, through its networks, its Web site, radio network, Spanish-language TV network, its magazine, wireless, video-game and high-definition TV businesses. [snip] [New York Times]