It’s still not assured that TNT Sports’ NBA rights and Inside The NBA will be coming to an end after the 2024-25 season. Parent company Warner Bros. Discovery is reportedly preparing an offer to match Amazon’s “C” package, so some fighting on if they can seems imminent, and there are still discussions on Inside The NBA ‘s future. But ahead of what could be that famed studio show’s final season, there have been plenty of lookbacks on what made it work so well and separated it from ESPN’s coverage in particular. And David Aldridge has notable perspective there.
Aldridge worked at what’s now TNT Sports (which was then Turner Broadcasting) from 2004-2018, when he joined The Athletic . That included work as a sideline reporter, but also time as a contributor to Inside The NBA studio programming. And before his time at Turner, Aldridge worked at ESPN for eight years. So the start of Aldridge’s Athletic piece on this , on the profane directions famed producer Tim “TK” Kiely (who retired last year ) gave him before his first Inside The NBA appearance in 2005 and how that differentiated from ESPN’s studio approach at the time, is quite interesting. Kiely told Aldridge “If you look at the (bleeping) camera, I’ll wring your neck,” and Aldridge explains how he knew exactly what that meant given the past work he and Kiely had done at ESPN:
At ESPN, the network was the star. You could be on the network for a while, and if you were deemed essential for a while (it was, with few exceptions, not for all that long), you could be on the network a lot. But no one anchor or reporter was indispensable. The iconic SportsCenter set? That was indispensable.
So, when you were on an ESPN show, it was important for you, representing the show when you were on it, to connect with the people watching at home, not the people sitting next to you in the studio. You were told, early and often, when you wanted to make a point, to literally turn your body away from the person sitting next to you, who may have asked you a question, and to look into whatever camera to which you were assigned. Then, you could disseminate your information, or make your point, to the people watching.
By contrast, in Techwood’s Studio J, from where TNT’s “Inside” was broadcast, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith and, later, Shaquille O’Neal were the stars, along with the best studio host of all time, Ernie Johnson. But, and this is why the show worked, they weren’t cast in bronze. If you were on the set with them, you were, as far as everyone on set was concerned, their equal. If you thought they were wrong about something, you were allowed – you were expected – to challenge them. Just because they were former players, and great ones, didn’t mean your opinion didn’t count. But, it had to be genuine, not forced, canned “debate.”
TK would say, over and over, “Charles is right there. Talk to him! Kenny’s right there! Talk to him! You disagree with Chuck? Say so!”
The particular ESPN/TNT divide here may not be currently playing out exactly the way it did back in 2005. Inside The NBA has worked in close-ups of its cast many times over the years (but that may be more about getting cameras into position to capture talent speaking to each other this way), and ESPN has tried to emulate Inside The NBA in many ways across many shows. And there are recent examples of wider shots on ESPN shows in advance of closeups from more natural angles rather than turning bodies away from subjects and into cameras. But Kiely’s comment here illustrates a way Inside The NBA took a dramatically different approach to what ESPN was doing at the time.
And, more than the camera specifics, the big takeaway here is from the different philosophies. Aldridge is quite right that ESPN’s approach for a long time was “the network was the star” and “no one anchor or reporter was indispensable.” That’s arguably changing a bit these days, with the network certainly focusing much more on and catering more to a few big stars like Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith and emphasizing their personalities and takes, but some of that can also be traced to what worked for Turner here.
Perhaps the even more crucial element of this that Aldridge hits on (in both the quoted section and the rest of his piece ) is the authenticity of Inside The NBA . There have been many arguments on Inside The NBA over the years, but they’ve never felt manufactured, and there hasn’t been deference to any one analyst based on their on-court accomplishments. The show’s also been much more willing to have fun and let its cast roast each other in ways we’ve seen less frequently at ESPN.
It’s interesting to read about the ways that different TNT approaches played out on set, including with things as basic as that different approach to cameras. We’ll see what this potentially-final season holds for Inside The NBA and its cast. But regardless of what happens, it’s worth looking back at some of what worked for Inside The NBA.
[ The Athletic ]
The post David Aldridge on how Tim Kiely’s profane camera advice set ‘Inside The NBA’ apart from ESPN’s shows appeared first on Awful Announcing .
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