Thursday's game against the 76ers earned a solid 4.03 local rating despite also airing on TNTNBAE/GETTY IMAGES
The Celtics are proving to be an outlier in the NBA's TV viewership trend this season, as their "ratings are up year-over-year" on NBC Sports Boston, according to Chad Finn of the BOSTON GLOBE. Thursday's game against the 76ers earned a 4.03 local rating on the RSN, ranking as the "fourth-highest-rated game" of the year. That was "impressive given that the game also aired on TNT." The NBC Sports Boston telecast "outdelivered the TNT broadcast" by nearly 400% in total audience in the local market. Viewership is down 15% to date across the NBA, but those figures likely will "turn for the better after the Christmas Day games, when rivalries are reestablished and the new league order is clearer." Meanwhile, Finn wrote a "high point" of Celtics games on the RSN comes whenever there is a "flashback clip," and viewers "get to hear Mike Gorman and Tommy Heinsohn's in-the-moment call of that game 30-something years ago." Finn: "Then it cuts back to live action and you get Mike and Tommy now. Gotta love that institutional knowledge" (BOSTON GLOBE, 12/15).
THERE'S A GAME GOING ON: In Salt Lake City, Andy Larsen wrote one reason NBA ratings are down is the league's broadcast partners "do a poor job about talking about the game." TNT's Reggie Miller and Chris Webber spend "much of the conversation ... talking about their careers, and how much the game has changed since then," while ESPN's Jeff Van Gundy seems "upset about how the referees called a foul, and how the rules need to change." Shoulder programming features TNT's Charles Barkley and Shaquille O'Neal "going on unintelligible tangents about inside jokes," or ESPN's Paul Pierce "proving just how inaccurate The Truth can be." While NFL analysts like Tony Romo and Cris Collinsworth often talk about what is going on in front of them, top NBA game analysts "appear uninterested in the nuances of anything" (SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, 12/15).
