Nostalgia is a drug. All it can offer is a temporary high. Rarely does anything memorable result from a desire to make you “remember when…”
Look at Hollywood. This summer, we’ll see remake of Lilo & Stitch, a remake of Superman, and a remake of The Naked Gun. We’ll get the 8th Mission Impossible movie, the 7th Jurassic Park movie, and the 5th John Wick movie. When was the last time you saw a truly original movie that wasn’t a sequel or a reboot of a franchise from your childhood? It’s tough to get people excited about something new and that effort is unnecessary when it’s so easy to just appeal to nostalgia instead.
Reading all of the announcements coming out of NBC’s upfront presentation last week, I couldn’t help but notice how much nostalgia was charting the course for the network’s NBA coverage.
Pro basketball returns to the network next season for the first time since 2002. It was the home of Michael Jordan’s Bulls dynasty, the historic end of Magic Johnson’s playing career, and where most of us saw Shaquille O’Neal, Allen Iverson, and so many others in an NBA jersey for the first time.
NBC is going to lean hard into those days and those memories. The iconic NBA on NBC theme “Roundball Rock” is back. Announcer Jim Fagan will return with the help of AI, and the graphics package, while updated, will still echo the glory days of the network’s 90s presentation.
I say this respectfully, because I know the people working on these elements are doing so at the direction of bosses, who are not creative people and are looking at stats about recognition and misinterpreting “do you recognize this” as “do you like this”.
Who gives a s**t?
For years, I think the internet has overestimated the appeal of “Roundball Rock.” It’s not bad. It’s fine, but no one is logging into Spotify to fire up “Roundball Rock.” NBC is about to learn that without Jason Sudekis and Tim Robinson, that song’s impact is pretty minimal.
The entertainment industry is so painfully risk averse now. Recognizable intellectual property is all that matters. It’s not just NBC’s NBA presentation, but we cover the sports media here, so I am going to focus on why their future seems pretty vanilla compared to some of the other sports announcements we saw from upfronts week in New York.
They Fooled You With Michael Jordan
I know what NBC told us. Michael Jordan is going to be “a special contributor” on its NBA broadcasts. I know what they wanted, and they got it. People at home and in our business took to the airwaves and internet to collectively freak out.
But what the hell does “special contributor” mean?
We have seen other networks hire their sport’s GOAT. Tom Brady is a game analyst for FOX. Wayne Gretzky is a studio analyst for TNT. They have job titles that tell you exactly what they do and where they are going to be.
NBC is keeping Michael Jordan’s title vague, because I don’t think he’s really going to do much of anything. You aren’t going to see him in studio. You aren’t going to see him at the broadcast table for LeBron James’ final game.
Alex Sherman of CNBC reports that Jordan’s presence will be confined to pre-taped segments. Maybe that role evolves over time, but right now, that is all that is set in stone.
What do you think the reaction to that is going to be? Sports aren’t a zoo. We aren’t just happy to see Michael Jordan. A whole lot of people are going to feel like they were lied to when they find out there will be no real-time Jordan presence on the broadcasts.
They Are Officially Out Of Ideas
There are things NBC announced that I liked. The hire of Carmelo Anthony really stands out. Don’t get me wrong, I like Inside the NBA a lot, but the whole show is about how much Charles, Shaq and Kenny hate the NBA now. It’s a good thing the personalities are so dynamic, because the content never changes.
Anthony will be a welcomed new, dynamic voice that has a real connection to the league today. Unfortunately, most of what else I heard from NBC sounds like the whole network is stuck in neutral.
Mike Tirico is a perfectly fine play-by-play man. He is not the problem. The problem is the network uses him on everything. NBC Sports has turned from a beautiful Thanksgiving spread into the homogenous glob that all of those foods become when they are stored in a single tupperware container in the fridge. The NBA sounds like the NFL sounds like Notre Dame football sounds like horse racing sounds like the Olympics.
Using artificial intelligence to recreate Jim Fagan is another example of NBC spinning its tires to go nowhere.
I don’t think there’s very much nostalgia for voiceover artists. I know people don’t like AI. Like at all. Maybe the application has some real benefits, but right now, when the public hears “AI,” thoughts range from “it has made Google worse” to “it is spying on me”. Find me the positive point in there.
Telling me AI is good is not the same as AI actually being good. Advertising that NBC is going to use the AI generated voice of Jim Fagan doesn’t make me say “Great! They found a way to bring Jim Fagan back!”. It makes me say “Wow, NBC must be having money problems.”
Celebrate Real Innovation
Everything we saw from the NFL last week was the polar opposite of the NBA on NBC. YouTube isn’t just going to put an NFL game exclusively on its platform. The company is going to present that Week 1 game in a way that fits into what YouTube users expect from the company. It won’t look like FOX or CBS or ESPN or NBC.
Roger Goodell and Ted Sarandos also reportedly met away from Netflix’s presentation to talk about how the streaming giant could secure rights to more games. That has the NFL thinking about what it would mean for them. Does the league have to figure out more “events” like the Christmas games are now or like Amazon’s Black Friday game, or does it mean that the league would consider if it’s time to do away with its ridiculous and restrictive broadcasting approach to Sunday afternoons? That is the time slot COO Bela Bajaria has said in the past that she wants on Netflix.
The NFL isn’t being driven by nostalgia and thinking about what would have excited its 40-and-50-something fans when they were kids. The league is thinking about what turns those 40-and-50-something fans’ kids into the kind of fan their mom or dad are.
ESPN is also showing real innovation. Do you think anyone inside of Disney is going to look at this streaming platform as a failure if it doesn’t do the kind of business Disney+ did out of the gate?
No! It’s the first step in a long path to taking ESPN off of linear television and forcing fans to consume it in a way that is more valuable to Disney.
Maybe ESPN is tickling the nostalgia bone in bringing back Rich Eisen and finding more ways to use Chris Berman, but nostalgia is taking a backseat to the future. The future Disney wants for ESPN is something more like YouTube where consumers are constantly feeding it valuable information it can take to advertisers.
Nostalgia feels nice, but that feeling is temporary. Nostalgia is a trap of diminishing returns. You don’t get the same dopamine rush every single time you experience something familiar from your youth. It’s like any drug. After a while, the high just isn’t the same.
We see it with Marvel. We see it with The Walking Dead. When the audience feels like you only have one card to play, they lose interest.
Sports aren’t exactly the same. The games are what matter the most and as long as NBC gets to put charismatic, athletic freaks like Anthony Edwards and Giannis Antetokounmpo on TV each week, the network will be fine, but it is starting from a place full of flash and absolutely devoid of substance. I wouldn’t call that a successful roll out.
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Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
