Stern Ponders Moving Start Times Earlier

[MapleLeaf]

From realgm.com

Commissioner David Stern is thinking about moving the start times of the NBA Finals games up so the league's young fans are able to watch, according to The New York Times.

“We struggle with it,” Stern said. “There’s no doubt that at 11:30 Eastern, that’s when the largest audience is gathered in.”

The problem is offset somewhat by fans downloading from NBA.com, Stern admitted.

“We’re literally having billions of visits a year to those sites and hundreds of millions of downloads of video streaming,” he said. “And we’re spending a lot of time focusing on the kids that are very much involved in that, and video games and the like.”

“It wouldn’t be a terrible thing to have a Sunday night game at 7 o’clock, but our network partners tell us that your ratings will be lower,” Stern said. “And to me, that isn’t just about selling air time; that means that you’ll have a lower audience count, and why would you want to have a lower audience count?”

 

[yezzir]

haha, who cares. a true fan would stay up anyways.

 

[DJT]

I'd say he should...even though I watch the whole game anyways.

 

[yezzir]

but at the same time in LA it'd start around 5 this way. that's pretty early.

 

[elcheato]

Yea.. The starting times are fine. These games are being played in LA and Boston. At 5 PM lots of people who are at work would miss the beginning. It is a perfect time to start.

 

[bulls12]

Ha, the game starts at like 4:30 or 5 here.

 

[.GR]

Over here they are perfect.

 

[Mexi]

In LA, game time is 6.
I cant imagine waiting til 9 to watch a game.
West Coast > East coast

 

[MapleLeaf]

On Sunday night the game was in Boston and didn't start till 9:05 local time, on a Sunday where there was no other major sporting events. Why start so late on a Sunday Night?

 

[DJT]

Yea, I looked at the NBA site to see when it was starting it said 8:30 EST (6:30 MST), it was 7 MST I switched to it, and it wasn't even started.