Jaylen Tatum
Veteran
With a Wednesday night victory for the Golden State Warriors in the books, the top-seeded team from the NBA’s Western Conference will head to the Finals to face LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers. That series won’t start for another week, however, as the league’s Conference Finals wrapped up particularly early. That’s unfortunate for viewers hoping to see some competitive on-court action, and it’s especially bad news for ESPN and TNT, the networks relying on Rockets/Warriors and Cleveland/Atlanta, respectively, to bring in millions of viewers.
As we’ve highlighted in recent weeks, the optimal outcome for the networks are lengthy, competitive series. More games mean more viewers, and games later in a series also draw much bigger audiences. Yet the NBA’s semifinal round has been anything but competitive. The Cleveland Cavaliers swept an injury-riddled Atlanta Hawks team, and the Golden State Warriors had little trouble running to a 3-0 series lead over the Houston Rockets. Houston’s James Harden dragged his team to victory in a do-or-die Game 4, but on Wednesday the series returned to the Bay Area, where Steph Curry’s Warriors wrapped up the series with a 104-90 victory.
That’s a remarkably brief set of showdowns for this late in the NBA postseason. In fact, this year’s nine Conference Finals games are the fewest played since 1986, when Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics swept the Milwaukee Bucks while Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets took just five games to upset the top-seeded Los Angeles Lakers. Even with the massive surge in viewership over the holiday weekend – Cavs/Hawks scored 7.8 million viewers on Sunday, and Warriors/Rockets drew 8.3 million Monday night - both ESPN and TNT will still come up well short of recent viewership totals thanks to the one-sided series.
TNT’s first three Conference Finals games netted a total 20.5 million viewers, while ESPN got 27.7 million viewers from its first four games between the Warriors and Rockets (viewership figures for Tuesday and Wednesday’s games are not yet available). Those average viewership figures – just under 7 million per game for both networks – are a big step up from the earlier rounds, but in terms of total viewers the minimal game inventory leaves the networks well behind.
A year ago the NBA’s Conference Finals (Pacers/Heat and Spurs/Thunder) were also drawing around 7 million viewers per game, but each series went six games. The two series combined for over 76 million viewers, and that’s without accounting for Game 1 of Indy/Miami, which aired on ABC. Even if viewership of the deciding games in this year’s Conference Finals comes in high, the semifinal round will still come up more than 12 million viewers, or over 15%, short of last year’s total. And it’s more than likely that the gap is even wider.
At least the networks got the teams they wanted with the Heat and Warriors advancing to the championship round, where per-game viewership is sure to be sky-high. And there’s little doubt that fans will be more than thrilled if ABC gets its wish and the much-anticipated showdown between James and Curry goes the distance.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2015/05/28/nba-conference-finals-a-bust-for-espn-tnt/
As we’ve highlighted in recent weeks, the optimal outcome for the networks are lengthy, competitive series. More games mean more viewers, and games later in a series also draw much bigger audiences. Yet the NBA’s semifinal round has been anything but competitive. The Cleveland Cavaliers swept an injury-riddled Atlanta Hawks team, and the Golden State Warriors had little trouble running to a 3-0 series lead over the Houston Rockets. Houston’s James Harden dragged his team to victory in a do-or-die Game 4, but on Wednesday the series returned to the Bay Area, where Steph Curry’s Warriors wrapped up the series with a 104-90 victory.
That’s a remarkably brief set of showdowns for this late in the NBA postseason. In fact, this year’s nine Conference Finals games are the fewest played since 1986, when Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics swept the Milwaukee Bucks while Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets took just five games to upset the top-seeded Los Angeles Lakers. Even with the massive surge in viewership over the holiday weekend – Cavs/Hawks scored 7.8 million viewers on Sunday, and Warriors/Rockets drew 8.3 million Monday night - both ESPN and TNT will still come up well short of recent viewership totals thanks to the one-sided series.
TNT’s first three Conference Finals games netted a total 20.5 million viewers, while ESPN got 27.7 million viewers from its first four games between the Warriors and Rockets (viewership figures for Tuesday and Wednesday’s games are not yet available). Those average viewership figures – just under 7 million per game for both networks – are a big step up from the earlier rounds, but in terms of total viewers the minimal game inventory leaves the networks well behind.
A year ago the NBA’s Conference Finals (Pacers/Heat and Spurs/Thunder) were also drawing around 7 million viewers per game, but each series went six games. The two series combined for over 76 million viewers, and that’s without accounting for Game 1 of Indy/Miami, which aired on ABC. Even if viewership of the deciding games in this year’s Conference Finals comes in high, the semifinal round will still come up more than 12 million viewers, or over 15%, short of last year’s total. And it’s more than likely that the gap is even wider.
At least the networks got the teams they wanted with the Heat and Warriors advancing to the championship round, where per-game viewership is sure to be sky-high. And there’s little doubt that fans will be more than thrilled if ABC gets its wish and the much-anticipated showdown between James and Curry goes the distance.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2015/05/28/nba-conference-finals-a-bust-for-espn-tnt/
. Imagine MJ in a ECF drawing those ratings 
I didn't know
?
the so called greatest player of all time cant even get people to watch him