Searching for truTV on your entertainment system has become a ritual of March. It’s like taking the shortcut to the bar your friend told you about: You know it’s probably here somewhere, but the whole neighborhood around these parts feels pretty unfamiliar.
Believe it or not, that could be changing. And if it does change, it’ll be sports that drives truTV out of the shadowy corner and into more recognizable territory.
Bye, Impractical Jokers. Greetings, alterna-cast.
It’s been almost 15 years since the little network that couldn’t got thrown into the NCAA tournament broadcast mixer, and here in 2024 truTV will be home to 13 men’s games during the tournament, including the two First Four games that aired Tuesday and another pair that air Wednesday.
But that’s only part of a larger rollout of sports-related programming for the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned network. Its corporate parent has decided to try to make truTV relevant (at least in terms of its carriage costs) by injecting a heavy dose of sports that’ll include simulcasts of TBS and TNT broadcasts of the NBA, MLB and NHL, along with original programming and alt-casts of some of the bigger properties.
It is all synergistic, of course. Warner Bros. Discovery owns TBS, TNT and truTV, along with a slew of other brands, including Max, HBO, Food Network, HGTV, OWN – on and on. Finding more ways to distribute high-cost acquisitions like the NCAA tournament only makes sense.
But truTV’s future is also tied up in Warner’s joint venture with Fox and Disney to launch their sports-exclusive streaming service sometime next year. That involves packaging content from ESPN, Fox Sports1 and TNT, but truTV is also a part of it – so driving more sports through truTV now is a way to set the network up for that future parlay.
And truTV could use the attention. In 2023, the network ranked 84th in ratings across all viewers, with an average audience of 120,000, an 18% drop from the year before. If you put that in the context of what’s happening this month, it means that truTV is the throw-in network for the NCAAs behind CBS (No. 2 overall in 2023 ratings), TNT (11th) and TBS (14th).
Maybe you can only slam together so many rock-blocks of Impractical Jokers and World’s Dumbest before people start nodding off. At any rate, truTV generally trails such networks as Laff, Great American Family and Defy TV.
Sports content isn’t a panacea for everything that might ail a network, but considering that a chunk of truTV’s new programming will be games already owned by Warner, there’s every reason for it to build around that valuable existing stock.
“We are constantly striving to create and deliver the best sports content and experiences to sports fans wherever they are, and this is an exciting opportunity to expand the reach of our premium TNT Sports programming with greater consistency throughout the year,” said Luis Silberwasser, chairman and CEO of TNT Sports, in a statement to Variety. “By creating a primetime block of sports programming on truTV, in addition to our existing premium live sports on TNT and TBS, we are now able to deliver a more comprehensive sports offering for our fans, while generating additional growth opportunities for our sports division and strategic business and league partners.”
And yes – truTV will be getting sportsy, at least in concept. In addition to the simulcasts and alt-casts, the network will have a nightly sports update show as well as a weekly program based on “House of Highlights,” the social media-driven sports-clip showcase that has 52 million Instagram followers.
There are also plans for sports movies and documentaries, a nightly betting-themed show and an interactive program built around whatever sports conversations that happen to be dominating social media in the moment. (They’re calling it “Handles.”)
Will it work? It’s gotta work better that truTV in its current form. Warner is offloading Impractical Jokers to TBS later this year, and although the show has a loyal following, it was never enough by itself to lift truTV out of the ratings doldrums. As a result, truTV is reported to command about 33 cents per cable subscriber monthly, compared with more than $10 for ESPN and around $3 for TNT. (These are market research estimates.)
Adding a heavy rotation of sports isn’t an overnight fix, but you’re not required to care about it. All you need to know is that the network you’ve always had to re-learn how to find during March Madness may soon be more easily located – and you might have more reason to want to find it.
Mark Kreidler is a national award-winning writer whose work has appeared at ESPN, the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and dozens of other publications. He’s also a sports-talk veteran with stops in San Francisco and Sacramento, and the author of three books, including the bestselling “Four Days to Glory.” More of his writing can be found at https://markkreidler.substack.com. He is also reachable on Twitter @MarkKreidler.
