Fans of big NBC sports franchises like the NHL and Premier League will have to follow them to a new home.
NBCUniversal will shutter its NBCSN sports network, and move some of its top sports properties to the USA network in a maneuver executives believe will boost the economics of the general-entertainment cable outlet at a time when new streaming-video hubs are luring bigger audiences. The company has told its distributors it intends to shut down NBCSN at the end of 2021, according to a person familiar with the matter.
NBCU’s top sports properties include Nascar racing, National Hockey League contests and English Premier League football. USA is not going to become an all-sports network, this person cautioned, but might function more like WarnerMedia’s TNT, which has built a durable franchise out of its rights to air National Basketball Association games, does for that media company. It remained unclear whether the move would affect NBC Sports employees; the division recently experienced staffing cuts as part of a restructuring at NBCUniversal as it grapples with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
“USA has been a top five cable entertainment brand for over twenty years by way of constantly broadening our slate and finding ways to excite our viewers through immersive storytelling and iconic personalities, “said Frances Berwick, chairman, of NBCU’s entertainment networks, in a statement provided after the move became known. “We remain committed to original entertainment programming, and believe that high-profile live sports will complement USA’s broad premium scripted, unscripted and WWE slate, enabling us to engage our passionate, intersecting audiences more deeply and with greater urgency.”
USA has always had a sports lineage. In its early days, when it was launched by entrepreneur Kay Koplovitz and subsequently owned jointly by MCA and Viacom, the network had rights deals at various times with Major League Baseball, the NHL, and the NBA, and its evening schedule was often dominated by sports programs. USA carried boxing matches on Tuesday nights for more than a decade. But in 2004, most of its sports operations were merged into NBC Sports, when NBC purchased Vivendi Universal.
In a new era, sports may be more essential to maintaining the health of a traditional general-entertainment outlet like USA. Cable networks have suffered as audiences move to streaming-video hubs for the sorts of high-caliber scripted series that had long been a staple of cable. Even as they place more emphasis on their own streaming hubs, big media outlets like NBCUniversal, Disney and others need to maintain the large, live audiences that advertisers and cable and satellite distributors crave. Sports and news programming continues to draw those crowds.
More to come…