ESPN is seeking to assuage concerns that \u201cInside the NBA\u201d will get limited airtime when it debuts on the network next month.<\/p>\n
ESPN president of content Burke Magnus told Richard Deitsch of The Athletic<\/a> that the network\u2019s \u201cgoal\u201d is for the TNT-produced \u201cInside the NBA\u201d to run as long on ESPN as it did during its years on TNT. \u201cIt will be as close to that as we can possibly get,\u201d Magnus said.<\/p>\n The ESPN advance schedule currently lists the first two editions of \u201cInside\u201d \u2014 on October 22 and 23 \u2014 as being scheduled for 30-minute placeholder windows, while TNT\u2019s placeholder windows were generally a full hour. But placeholder windows are just that.<\/p>\n TNT NBA analyst Charles Barkley has for months expressed concerns about the potential length of \u201cInside.\u201d In a recent podcast interview with former ESPN host Bill Simmons, now of The Ringer, Barkley wondered whether ESPN executives are \u201cgoing to say, you guys got three minutes, five minutes, 15, 20, 30, 45, or are we going straight to \u2018SportsCenter?’\u201d For his part, Simmons said that it is standard procedure at ESPN to get straight to \u201cSportsCenter,\u201d a view that has been echoed by other former ESPN employees like Bomani Jones<\/a>.<\/p>\n Magnus addressed that with Deitsch: \u201cI understand that standard operating procedure for us for many years has been to get to SportsCenter. There\u2019s going to be 200 or 300 nights or so that we\u2019re still going to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to the length of \u201cInside,\u201d there has also been much discussion about how often the show will be on the air. In ESPN\u2019s announcement of its licensing deal to acquire the show last November, it was said that \u201cInside\u201d would air during \u201cthe NBA Finals on ABC, Conference Finals, NBA Playoffs, all ABC games after January 1, Christmas Day, opening week, the final week of the season and other marquee live events.\u201d It would seem clear from that statement that the show will be on only sparingly during the first two months of the season, and perhaps not at all between Opening Week and Christmas.<\/p>\n The limited early schedule would seem to be confirmed by Deitsch, who wrote that the show will go on \u201ca hiatus early in the season.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Deitsch, Magnus said that the \u201cInside\u201d crew will be on the air for all ESPN playoff coverage. While it is likely that the NBA playoff schedule will change in some ways with the new media rights deals, ESPN has traditionally aired playoff coverage on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays during the opening round, adding Thursdays in the conference semifinals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ESPN is seeking to assuage concerns that \u201cInside the NBA\u201d will get limited airtime when it debuts on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[101076,355,101077,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-167967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-inside-the-nba","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-nba-on-espn","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}