“Their shows come on so late, it’s supposed to be different,” Wilbon said this past week. The members of the ABC cast dislike comparisons to the TNT show as much as Barkley dislikes “whiny” Heat fans. (But Magic has made several head-scratching comments, such as this one a few months ago: “Until the Knicks hate the Heat like the Bulls hate the Heat, they can’t beat them.” Huh?) We’ll be the smarty pants show.” Wilbon, in fact, calls Johnson “the smartest person I’ve ever dealt with in basketball.” What we’re trying to do is let them be the entertaining show. While TNT’s cast has remained stable, aside from adding Shaquille O’Neal two years ago, ABC/ESPN has continued to tinker, with Simmons and Rose joining the cast this season.ĮSPN president John Skipper said several months ago that Barkley “is a tough act to compete with. The comparisons between ABC’s and TNT’s studio shows are inevitable, and it’s a battle ABC cannot win, because Charles Barkley and the Turner cast mix analysis with comedy and entertainment more skillfully than any pregame or postgame show in network sports television history.
But an ABC publicist expressed no anger publicly, saying the local station reserves the right to preempt ABC programming. But Channel 10 hasn’t done enough to make viewers aware of that, and some viewers insist they’re not getting the pre-game on ESPN2.īecause of the ESPN/ABC/NBA contract, Manso – who had nothing to with this decision – was banished from the AmericanAirlines Arena court before Game 1 and had to stand outside in the rain to do his standup.Ī station official said WPLG can make more in ad revenue by producing its own pregame show instead of airing ABC’s.Īsked why Channel 10 preempted ABC's pre-game show for the first three games of the series, WPLG general manager Dave Boylan said: “It allows South Florida viewers to get in-depth local reporting they cannot get from any other source.” But the content isn’t close to the quality of ABC’s.Ī WPLG official said ABC is annoyed with Channel 10 for doing this. To accommodate South Florida viewers, ABC has moved its pre-game show to ESPN2 in Dade and Broward homes with cable or satellite service. (ABC’s San Antonio affiliate is doing the same thing.) That’s what affiliates do when your network has a championship series, and your team is participating.īut by extending that program to shortly before tipoff, WPLG shortchanges viewers curious to hear the national perspective from ABC’s Johnson, Michael Wilbon, Jalen Rose and Bill Simmons, and watch feature stories prepared by ESPN announcers. Finals games so it can inject local flavor into Heat coverage. There’s nothing objectionable with Channel 10 preempting the 30-minute ABC entertainment program that airs at 8 p.m. In sum, you missed some of the most inane television you’ll ever witness. You missed a WPLG reporter asking a sports bar owner “if it will be loud in here” during the game.
You missed irrelevant interviews with random fans opining about who would win. Besides the talking puppet, you missed anchor Calvin Hughes telling us “how pumped up the fans are.” (You don’t say?)
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If you missed Channel 10’s Finals pre-game show earlier in the series (aside from the short segment competently handled by sports anchor Will Manso), consider yourself lucky. But that was only because WPLG did not believe it could come up with enough material to fill a pre-game show from the road. Thankfully, Channel 10 decided to show ABC's pregame show for Game 4 and will do the same for Game 5, but not necessarily Game 6. But doing so to air a broadcast comprised mostly of mindless, pom-pom waving fluff is especially galling, and WPLG should be embarrassed. Preempting ABC’s 30-minute NBA pregame show to air its own, as WPLG has done through much of these Finals, is irritating enough. # While most of the country was watching Magic Johnson and the ABC pre-game analysts discuss Game 2 of the Finals on Sunday night, South Florida viewers were suffering the indignity of watching a WPLG-Channel 10 reporter interview a puppet about the Heat-Spurs series.
Media news and views from The NBA Finals: Please see the last post for notes, quotes and postscripts from Game 4.
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