By Bob Keisser
SportsLine Sports Media Writer
Jan. 13, 1999
Imagine for a moment that you are Dick Ebersol, president of NBC Sports.
You have a fine life. Your wife is actress Susan St. James. You have the Olympic Games in your pocket through the year 2008. Your domain includes stellar talents like Bob Costas and Dick Enberg.
So why aren't you smiling?
Maybe it's because the NFL regular season just ended, your first without pro football in more than 30 years. Maybe it's because CBS announced it broke even financially on the NFL, an especially impressive note since you predicted beaucoup losses for NFL rights holders the day you walked away.
And maybe it's because all of the Air just leaked out of your basketball.
The official retirement of Michael Jordan Wednesday left NBC with the prospect of trying to sell a lockout-damaged product that depended on Jordan the way new mothers depend on diapers. Without either, you have a mess on your hands.
FIRST THERE'S THE FINANCIAL MESS. NBC paid the NBA $1.75 billion for a four-year contract beginning in the 1998-99 season. That's $437.5 million a year. With Jordan and high Nielsen ratings, plus some partnership sponsor revenue with the league, the NBA was a profitable venture for NBC.
The network now will have to discount ad rates with Jordan out of the picture. Last season, Jordan and the Bulls appeared on eight NBC game of the week telecasts, and a 30-second spot sold for around $100,000. That $100,000 average now will suffer a 10-to-20 percent hit.
Then there's the ratings mess. Last year, the eight Bulls' telecasts averaged a 6.5 in the Nielsens, which translates into 6.4 million households. Those eight Bulls telecasts were the top eight of the season for NBC. The other non-Jordan telecasts limped home at an average of 3.8 (3.7 million homes).
Before
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| Jordan's retirement will give NBC Sports reason for pause.
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One only has to look at the numbers for recent NBA Finals to see where the ratings might fall without Jordan.
With Jordan, the NBA averaged a 14.2 Nielsen for the 1992 Finals against Portland; a 17.9 for 1993 versus Phoenix; a 16.7 for 1996 against Seattle; a 16.8 for 1997 versus Utah; and an 18.7 in 1998, again against Utah.
THE TWO FINALS JORDAN MISSED, the first because he was playing baseball and the second because the Bulls were eliminated after Jordan's late return, were more than 30 percent lower. The 1994 Houston-New York final did a 12.5, and the 1995 Houston-Orlando title sweep a 13.9.
The best example: In 1994, approximately 12 million households watched the NBA Finals between the Rockets and Knicks. Last year for the Bulls and Jazz, 17.6 million households were tuned in.
Ebersol contorted himself into a pretzel trying to find a positive spin on Jordan's retirement.
``We've been here before,'' he said. ``When we acquired the NBA in 1990, there were those who wondered where we'd find a superstar on the level of Larry Bird or Magic Johnson, who were about to retire. Nobody wondered for long, because Michael jumped into the spotlight and was immediately embraced by the fans.''
Actually, if you go back in time attendance-wise, you'll find that the Bird and Magic era didn't really stimulate the masses until the mid-80s. Starting in 1987, Jordan's third season and his first as the scoring champ, the league's butts-in-seat growth went from 12 million to 20 million-plus the last three years.
``NOW WE HAVE TO REINTRODUCE the new generation of stars in the NBA,'' said Ebersol. ``While no single player can replace the transcendent athlete of this decade, it will be exciting to see what players and super teams step into the spotlight.''
If anyone's excited, it's a cautious excitement. There are no super teams on the horizon. A handful of name stars, such as Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing, will soon join Jordan on his national tour of PGA Pro-Am tournaments.
Late last season, NBC experimented with an NFL-like regional wheel of games, airing four games on one Sunday regionalized like NFL telecasts. They drove the usual non-Jordan rating up about a point.
The NBC philosophy for 1999 will copy that trend and put the home team on in the home market as often as possible. But ratings-wise, regular season numbers won't mean as much as the playoff Nielsens.
Here may be the strangest bottom-line attitude about Jordan and the networks: Given the choice of a season without Jordan or no season at all, NBC might have voted to continue the lockout.
More air stuff
TNT and TBS, Ted Turner's cable entities that paid $890 million for four years ($222.5 million per) of the NBA starting with this season, were scheduled to air a maximum 14 Bulls games this season. They will get extra dates to replace those lost to the lockout. Because of smaller overall numbers, Jordan's loss won't impact cable as much as it will NBC.The 26 Fox Sports Net regional cable systems with ties to NBA teams will receive extra games to compensate for their lockout losses. And because cable is regionally driven, the only real suffering will be in Chicago.
ESPN likes to boast that it is always there when sports news happens, but it got busted during the Jordan press conference Wednesday by the aggressive Fox Sports News game plan.
Fox scored the first live shot of Jordan entering the United Center, got the first live interview with NBA Commissioner David Stern, the only electronic interview with Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, the first shot unveiling Jordan's retired number in the United Center rafters and a video of President Clinton's reaction to Jordan's retirement, fetched from Washington by a Fox News unit.
IT ALSO INCLUDED IN ITS COVERAGE tape from an interview with Phil Jackson that aired Tuesday on Jim Rome's The Last Word. Fox did not leave the press conference for commercial breaks, either. It essentially stayed with its coverage until the janitors started folding up chairs.
Jordan didn't do any one-on-one interviews, but Fox did catch Jordan shaking hands with someone as he exited through a curtain: It was NBC's Ahmad Rashad.
ESPNews and ESPN Classic will keep the Air going. Twenty minutes of every half-hour news wheel on ESPNews (through Thursday morning) was being devoted to Jordan coverage, and ESPN Classic will begin a 56-hour marathon of vintage Jordan clips and interviews beginning Friday night.
Bob Keisser covers the sports media for the Long Beach (Calif.) Press Telegram.
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