When the National Basketball Association and Warner Bros. Discovery reached a settlement pertaining to a lawsuit filed by the former, it included a new 11-year deal expanding their business partnership through TNT Sports and the company’s sports digital brands. On top of that, TNT Sports reached a sublicensing agreement for ESPN to air episodes of its award-winning studio program Inside the NBA on its platforms. With the NBA on TNT officially signing off in the United States this past Saturday, the studio show featuring Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Kenny “The Jet” Smith and Shaquille O’Neal surrounding live game broadcasts will no longer air on TNT airwaves.
Barkley, who has been a member of Inside the NBA since 2000, joined his colleagues in giving their farewells to the program on Saturday night after the Indiana Pacers secured a spot in the NBA Finals. During a recent appearance on the Dan Patrick Show, Barkley revealed that he has seven years remaining on his contract with TNT and informed the company that he could give them two more years.
“You know, Dan, it was so funny,” Barkley explained. “I said, ‘I’ll give you two years.’ They said, ‘Can we get three?’ I said, ‘I just told you I was going to do two.’… This is the TNT people because I think my contract technically is still with TNT, but I’m going to be a good soldier.”
Barkley and TNT Sports reached a long-term commitment last August, and while he will still be with the company, it was challenging to sign off the airwaves on Inside the NBA for the last time. In fact, he conveyed how he was fine until Johnson started to get emotional, which led to him beginning to tear up. Having worked with the company for 25 years is something he acknowledged as being great, but he is now looking ahead to the next chapter of the program.
“ESPN is the most famous sports brand ever, and it’s going to be awesome working for them, and nobody knows what’s going to happen,” Barkley said. “I think that’s the only thing, but like I say, I did not want to leave people out in the cold, so I [went], ‘Hey, you know what? Let me do it for a couple of years, and then y’all can have it.’”
Barkley referenced that the crew taped a pilot last month for something new TNT wants to do, which ostensibly could have been a reference to the Inside Sports show said to be in development for next season. In reflecting on the enterprise, he does not feel that the on-air product is something people would watch over a live game broadcast, which will be airing on national platforms every day of the week under new 11-year media rights contracts with The Walt Disney Company (ESPN/ABC), Comcast Corporation (NBC/Peacock) and Amazon (Prime Video). Barkley also formulated that the cast is not going to be on ESPN as much as people think, estimating that they are going to be working on the network one-third or half of the time.
“I’ll give TNT credit – they did say it was an awful pilot,” Barkley articulated. “They were honest, so they want to do something, but like I say, the problem we got [is] we’re going to be going up because I know there’s going to be an NBA game on every night, so whenever we do it, it’s going to be up against an NBA game, so that’s the first problem, but I guess they want to feel like they’re doing something to make us earn our money from TNT.”
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