{"id":243250,"date":"2025-10-27T10:31:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T10:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/243250\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T10:31:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T10:31:12","slug":"nba-opening-week-delivered-highlights-can-it-remain-must-watch-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/243250\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Opening Week Delivered Highlights. Can It Remain Must-Watch TV?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNBC<\/a> couldn\u2019t miss during its first NBA<\/a> broadcast since 2002.<\/p>\n

\n\tNBA fans welcomed the voice of Mike Tirico, now synonymous with Super Bowls and Olympic Games, alongside Jamal Crawford and Reggie Miller for the league\u2019s 2025-26 tipoff game Tuesday. Viewers complimented NBC\u2019s camera quality and new graphics. An intro montage featuring NBA stars past and present garnered more than 5 million views online, separate from a halftime sit-down with Michael Jordan that generated its own digital waves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNow comes the hard part.<\/p>\n

\n\tNBC will broadcast games every Tuesday night, plus Sunday nights beginning in February. Peacock will have its own exclusive action on Monday. Tirico, MJ, the on-site pregame crew and A-tier production outfit won\u2019t always be there. But the broadcaster will still need to convince fans that the games are worth tuning into.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSports television<\/a> is being split in two right now. The growing divide\u00a0doesn\u2019t separate streaming and linear\u2014in fact, those two distribution approaches increasingly mirror each other. Instead, it\u2019s between what\u2019s served via those channels: must-watch\u00a0events, and everything else, AKA background entertainment or \u201cambient sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe NBA\u2019s tip-off night fit into that first category. ESPN\u2019s addition of the\u00a0Inside the NBA\u00a0quartet gave fans an extra reason to tune back in for night two, and Amazon Prime Video wooed audiences to its Friday night debut with the introduction of a high-tech studio and its own slate of commentating talent.\u00a0But future contests risk slipping into box No. 2.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAmbient denotes something that you don\u2019t have to pay attention to in order to enjoy but which is still seductive enough to be compelling if you choose to do so momentarily,\u201d\u00a0New Yorker\u00a0writer Kyle Chayka said in 2020, writing about all-too-digestible streaming television shows like\u00a0Emily in Paris. But he could have just as easily been describing a Monday night Wizards at Pistons game (Nov. 10, Peacock) or many other NBA contests that don\u2019t involve a given fan\u2019s favorite team or all of that squad\u2019s marquee stars.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTV sets are ceding their position as primary entertainment devices to the screens in our hands, accepting a background role instead. At the same time, live sports are no longer scarce. You can watch\u00a0something\u00a0in real-time 24\/7. We\u2019re in the middle of nearly 50 straight nights<\/a> with FBS or NFL football. And once football\u2019s gone, the NBA will be on every night of the week for those with the right combination of streaming services. In that kind of world, how special can a single game be?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNetflix has been the clearest in its hunt for sports\u00a0event\u00a0programming. It wants standalone NFL games on Christmas, the first game of the MLB season and the Home Run Derby more than what might come in between. On the other end of the spectrum, the platform just\u00a0acquired<\/a>\u00a0distribution rights for a raft of\u00a0Ringer\u00a0podcasts, increasing the chances sports fans throw on Netflix rather than YouTube when looking for sports chatter without having to shell out for more exclusive game rights.<\/p>\n

\n\tNetflix\u2019s approach is informed by its experience in movies, where a big event is the coin of the realm. A unique experience that must be consumed now is what it takes to break out in a world of infinite entertainment options\u2014in theaters or at home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd sports have responded by forming their schedules around events. After the excitement of Opening Week, the NBA pivots to NBA Cup Play. Then Christmas Day, the All-Star Game, and before you know it the Play-In Tournament and Playoffs, which all three broadcasters will split.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNASCAR is currently re-evaluating its own schedule and playoff format, trying to determine just how many of its races can be standalone draws and how to maximize the significance of the rest. The NFL, blessed with the physical drama at its game\u2019s core, has found a way to make most national matchups must-see TV, if not for reasons of typical fandom then for fantasy football or gambling implications. Its\u00a0RedZone\u00a0programming creates a seven-hour beast of an event out of some dozen or so games that individually might not move the needle.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s nothing inherently wrong with presenting an ambient experience. Baseball broadcasts thrive as the background sound of summer. I\u2019ve fallen in love with professional cycling in large part because its hours-long races airing in the mornings here offer a compelling alternative to a black screen and silence.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut NBC wants the NBA to be much more than that. It\u2019s paying $27 billion to boost the value of its broadcast network, deliver audience attention to advertisers and drive people to subscribe to Peacock. All of that is a harder sell if fans are accustomed to watching only intermittently.<\/p>\n

\n\tUltimately, it\u2019s up to the athletes to deliver events worth our time. The Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder lived up to Tuesday\u2019s hype with a double overtime affair that garnered 5.9 million average viewers, the most for an NBA opening night game played in October since LeBron James\u2019 Miami Heat debut in 2010. A night later, Victor Wembanyama<\/a> delivered a 40-point, 15-rebound showcase for those wise enough to lock into his game against the Dallas Mavericks.\u00a0ESPN\u2019s 2.5 million average viewers for that game was up 63% from a year prior, part of its third-most watched NBA opening Wednesday ever.<\/p>\n

\n\tA lot of sporting contests can be enjoyed ambiently these days. Wemby is worth planning around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBC couldn\u2019t miss during its first NBA broadcast since 2002. NBA fans welcomed the voice of Mike Tirico,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,7607,459,7817,82,1788,21217],"class_list":{"0":"post-243250","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-media","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-nbc","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-television","15":"tag-victor-wembanyama"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}