NBA ‘Crunchtime’ Gets Big Platform Monday as It Attempts to Change How Fans Watch Basketball
Monday is a big night for the NBA. All 30 teams will be in action and all 15 games will be available for free on the new NBA App. The Election Eve slate of contests will also feature an expanded, four-hour edition of “CrunchTime” for U.S. and Canadian viewers.
If you are unfamiliar, “CrunchTime” — referring to the final few minutes of a close game — is the NBA App’s whip-around show hosted by Jared Greenberg that keeps fans up-to-date on all of the games happening around the NBA. Due to the varying number of games on the NBA schedule every night, “CrunchTime” — which is produced by Warner Bros. Discovery Sports — doesn’t air every day, but it will be a must-watch for hoops fans tonight looking to make the most of the jam-packed slate.
On Monday, Nov. 7, “CrunchTime” will air exclusively on the NBA App from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. ET and Greenberg will be joined by longtime NBA player and NBA TV analyst Channing Frye to run through all of the night’s biggest moments, craziest highlights, and most important storylines.
With 15 games happening over the course of the evening, and potentially eight to 10 on air at once, “CrunchTime” producer Bert Bondi thinks that nights like tonight are exactly what the show is built for.
“I think we cater to the NBA fan, but we’re going to give you all of the action, all night, as it happens,” he said. “We’re your Twitter feed … we’ve got this play, this play, this play. We might go on a live-look, but even if that game slows down with a free throw, or a referee review, or they go to commercial, we’re gonna keep you up to date.”
Bondi has been working at Turner Sports for over 20 years and as a producer for 10. Having worked on “NBA on TNT” broadcasts, he feels that the way that “CrunchTime” approaches the basketball action is perfect for the full slate of games that his production team will have to keep up with tonight.
“[Last] Monday night, there was only seven games going on, and one of them was so late,” he said. “So you had maybe four to five to six games going on at once. So even with that, we were able to keep the action going for a good two hours. Now, when you’ve got eight to 10 simultaneous games, it’s really easy for us. The only thing I worry about is just missing anything big that happens. We might get to it late, but we won’t miss it, we’ll catch up on everything. We’re gonna show you all the plays, all the big performances, and we’re gonna keep hammering those home.”
At this point, nearly all sports fans are familiar with the whip-around concept thanks to the NFL’s increasingly popular version “NFL Redzone,” but there are inherent differences between the sports of football and basketball that present unique challenges in showing fans the biggest moments in realtime (or as close as possible).
“RedZone” conceit is to show every single touchdown from every single game by focusing its live look-ins on games that have entered the red zone (inside the defense’s 20-yard line). But with basketball’s frenetic pace and unpredictability, “CrunchTime” has to approach the action from a slightly different perspective.
“[A team in the redzone] happens multiple times in every single NFL game;” Bondi said, “crunch time technically happens once in every NBA game, right? So, how do we get fans there? The word Jared Greenberg and I use all the time is ‘urgency.’ We want to show that there’s always urgency in everything we do … Whether it’s a play that just happened, or it’s three baskets from the first quarter … I think that’s the biggest thing; telling people, ‘This has happened, but this is going to happen, and we’re going to show it to you,’ and then eventually we are going to get to crunch time and you cross your fingers and hope you get the buzzer-beater.”
“Crunchtime” is just one of the ways that WBD is attempting to engage basketball fans outside of the traditional game broadcasts. In addition to the content on the Bleacher Reports app — which WBD is hoping to integrate into live broadcasts more in the future — the House of Highlights social media network, and the “NBA on TNT” social handles, the company’s philosophy is to meet diehard hoops fans where they are, especially as the sport tends to have a younger viewership than most of the other major professional leagues.
“The NBA fan does skew younger,” Bondi said. “[So] how can we keep them engaged? If you like basketball, we think if you turn [‘Crunchtime’] on, you’re gonna be entertained for however long you want to stick with us. But, it does skew younger and that’s why we think the urgency and always having something next, and always teasing something is really important to us.”
One of the other ways that the whip-around show is attempting to cater to the viewing needs of younger audiences is by acknowledging the realities of sports betting. Until the last few years, gambling was the third rail of sports broadcasting, with most announcers ignoring the topic altogether, and only a few subtly mentioning it with a sly smile, a wink, and a nod.
“For years, I’ve heard Al Michaels, he was always the one who would refer to it, ‘This field goal means more to some people than others.’ I remember hearing that 20 or 30 years ago,” Bondi said. “But it is exciting that it’s more accepted, and that helps our show, there’s no doubt about it … It certainly gives us another talking point if it’s a double-digit lead with less than a minute left.”
In the past, “Crunchtime” has had gambling experts on the broadcast to break down betting angles throughout the night, and the show will bring on basketball analysts on occasion — like with Frye for tonight’s super-sized, four-hour broadcast. However, for the most part, “CrunchTime” centers around the action and Greenberg’s ability to provide context and insight into what’s happening across each evening’s slate of games.
While the show does welcome guests and conducts interviews on occasion, it is within a very different format than the “ManningCast” alternative broadcasts that have become popular across platforms in the past few years. In the rare instances that “CrunchTime” does bring on a guest, it is always done with a focus on the on-court action.
“If somebody has a huge performance — and generally a superstar like Ja Morant,” Bondi said, “we would have [Morant] on, but there’s still going to be action on. So we would actually two-box his interview, and we would have him watch the game with us. We would ask him about his performance, but we might also say, ‘Hey, Ja, there’s 10 seconds left in this Dallas game, what is Dallas going to do?’”
Between the recent relaunch of the NBA App and Monday night’s mega Election Eve broadcast, “CrunchTime” is getting an exciting opportunity to be seen by even more basketball fans than normal. For Bondi, he is hoping that the increased attention will lead to even more opportunities to get the show on the air. Currently, “CrunchTime” airs once or twice each week, but the producer feels like there is a lot more that they could do, even given the uneven NBA schedule.
“Roughly three or four times a week would be the absolute max you could do it; that’s just the way the NBA schedule breaks down,” he said. “But I think the biggest thing is evolving and making [the show] bigger, making it four times a week instead of just one.”
Bondi refers to “CrunchTime” as the broadcast equivalent of an NBA fan’s social media feed, and with more and more fans consuming sports content via Twitter, YouTube, and other non-traditional outlets, the show could be on the brink of becoming the unofficial hangout of all hoops fans.