Even for a league with charismatic superstars and dominant, must-watch teams, it’s a bold move. The NBA is heading to primetime on broadcast television. For the first time.

Starting Saturday night, ABC and ESPN are launching NBA Saturday Primetime on ABC, the first of eight Saturday prime-time match-ups featuring the league’s marquee teams under the big lights.

“It talks to the interest in the NBA,” said Jeff Van Gundy on a conference call with reporters Tuesday. Van Gundy will serve as the analyst for most of the games alongside play-by-play man Mike Breen, fellow analyst Mark Jackson and sideline reporter Lisa Salters. “No matter what you broadcast, if it’s not what the consumer wants, they’re not going to watch. The company feels very strongly that it’ll be well-viewed.”

ESPN executives hope the programming will establish the NBA as a Saturday night destination for fans, along the same lines as its SaturdayNight Football on ABC property.

Executives clearly hope big-team teams will draw prime-time eyeballs. Only seven teams occupy the 16 available slots. The Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, San Antonio Spurs and Golden State Warriors will all appear three times in the eight-game slate. The Oklahoma Thunder will be featured twice and the Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Clippers once. Six of those teams are currently among the top four in their respective conferences and each of the seven featured teams has at least one player who is a top-five all-star vote-getter at his position.

“As far as Saturday coverage, it’s just as important for the NBA to do what the NFL has been a master of,” said Jalen Rose, who will provide pregame commentary on NBA Countdown with host Sage Steele and co-analyst Doug Collins. “We all remember the days when the NFL was always played on Sunday. Then one game on Monday night. Now they have games on Thursdays…I really appreciate now we have Friday,Saturday and Sunday basketball.”

The opening game features the Cavs hosting the Bulls on Jan. 23. The NBA will face competition from NCIS: Los Angeles and 48 Hours on CBS, the U.S. Figure Skating Championships on NBC and Fox’s Premiere Boxing Champions’ debut featuring a welterweight battle between Danny Garcia and Robert Guerrero from the Staples Center.

Longtime ESPN producer Tim Corrigan will oversee production of the broadcasts. Special features like slow-mo cameras and a new LED board will be added in hopes of creating a product of heightened importance.

Despite a historically great early-season run by the Golden State Warriors and a bankable cadre of young superstars, league cable ratings were down through late last month. ESPN’s national games had dropped more than five-and-a-half percent, according to figures from theWall Street Journal.

Still, Christmas Day was a boon for the league, with all five games up from 2014 and the Warriors-Cavs NBA Finals rematch drawing close to 11 million viewers.

The league is clearly hoping to build on the success of big event programming, drawing from that Christmas Day success. The NBA is about to find out if Saturday night’s alright too.

[Photo credit: ESPN Media Zone]

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