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9809_10 | Commentators included Fred Manfra on play-by-play and Oscar Robertson (from 1984 to 1985 through 1985–86), Dick Vitale (from 1986–87 through 1989–90) and Earl Monroe (from 1988–89 through 1989–90) on color commentary. Other announcers included Marv Albert (1989 All-Star Game) and Chick Hearn (1988 All-Star Game) on play-by-play and Rod Hundley (1987 and 1989 All-Star Games), Johnny Most (1988 All-Star Game), and Dave Barnett (1986 All-Star Game) on color commentary.
ESPN outbids NBC for the NBA contract (2002–present)
In late 2001, the NBA was in the midst of putting together a new broadcast and cable television deal. At the time, conventional wisdom was that NBC would renew its existing broadcasting contract with the league. An October 5, 2001, Sports Business Daily article cited The New York Times sports columnist Richard Sandomir regarding the possibility of ESPN joining with ABC in obtaining a portion of the contract: |
9809_11 | The negotiations were closely watched by those in the business world, as it was the first time that a major sports league crafted a television deal in the new economic environment since the September 11 terrorist attacks a few months before. Declining ratings for NBC's NBA game telecasts had already led many to believe that the NBA's next television rights fee would be lower than previous years, and the economic recession made that a likely scenario. As predicted, NBC's offer to the league was lower than the previous agreement's amount. Had the NBA agreed to the network's offer, it would have been the first sports league to experience a decline in rights fees. However, the NBA rejected NBC's offer and after the network's exclusive negotiating period with the league expired, ABC and ESPN stepped in. On January 22, 2002, the NBA signed a six-year deal with The Walt Disney Company and Turner Sports, which renewed an existing deal with TNT and allowed ABC and ESPN to acquire the rights to |
9809_12 | air the league's games. ABC and ESPN reportedly paid an average of about US$400 million a season. Technically, ESPN pays the NBA for its broadcast rights and "buys" time on ABC to air select games (this is noted in copyright tags during the end credits at the conclusion of the telecasts, saying "The preceding program has been paid for by ESPN, Inc.") In all, the contract allowed the NBA to increase its rights fees by 25%. |
9809_13 | NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol said regarding the deal:
In 2006, after ABC Sports became ESPN on ABC the NBA on ABC started to be produced by ESPN with ESPN graphics. All broadcasts have an "on ABC" suffix on their titles after this rebrand.
In June 2007, and again in October 2014, the NBA renewed its television agreement with ESPN, as well as TNT, with the current contract extending through the 2024–25 season.
2010s schedules
2014–15 schedule
Primary commentating team: Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy. Secondary commentating team: Mike Tirico and Hubie Brown.
2015–16 schedule
Saturday games called by Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy unless otherwise noted. Sunday games called by Mike Tirico and Hubie Brown unless otherwise noted. This was the first season of NBA Saturday Primetime, which replaced NBA Sunday Showcase doubleheaders. |
9809_14 | 2016–17 schedule
Saturday games called by Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy unless otherwise noted. Sunday games called by Mark Jones and Hubie Brown unless otherwise noted.
2017–18 schedule
Saturday games called by Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy unless otherwise noted. Sunday games called by Mark Jones and Hubie Brown unless otherwise noted. |
9809_15 | 2018–19 schedule
Saturday games called by Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy unless otherwise noted. Sunday games called by Mark Jones and Hubie Brown unless otherwise noted.
{| class="wikitable"
! Date
! Teams
! Start times (All times Eastern)
!Notes
|-
|rowspan=3|Tuesday, December 25, 2018
|Thunder vs. Rockets
|3:00 p.m.
|NBA Christmas Game. Dave Pasch and Doris Burke on call. No sideline reporter.
|-
|76ers vs. Celtics
|5:30 p.m.
|NBA Christmas Game. Mark Jones and Hubie Brown on call. Israel Gutierrez worked sideline.
|-
|Lakers vs. Warriors
|8:00 p.m.
|NBA Christmas Game. Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy on call. Lisa Salters worked sideline.
|-
|rowspan=2|Saturday, January 19, 2019
|Thunder vs. 76ers
|3:30 p.m.
|NBA Saturday Primetime. Mark Jones and Hubie Brown on call. Israel Gutierrez worked sideline.
|-
|Lakers vs. Rockets
|8:30 p.m.
|NBA Saturday Primetime. Lisa Salters on sideline.
|-
|Saturday, January 26, 2019
|Warriors vs. Celtics
|8:30 p.m. |
9809_16 | |NBA Saturday Primetime. Israel Gutierrez on sideline.
|-
|Saturday, February 2, 2019
|Lakers vs. Warriors
|8:30 p.m.
|NBA Saturday Primetime. Lisa Salters on sideline.
|-
|Sunday, February 3, 2019
|Thunder vs. Celtics
|2:00 p.m.
|NBA Sunday Showcase. Israel Gutierrez on sideline.
|-
|Saturday, February 9, 2019
|Thunder vs. Rockets
|8:30 p.m.
|NBA Saturday Primetime. Lisa Salters on sideline.
|-
|Sunday, February 10, 2019
|Lakers vs. 76ers
|3:30 p.m.
|NBA Sunday Showcase. Israel Gutierrez on sideline.
|-
|Saturday, February 23, 2019
|Rockets vs. Warriors
|8:30 p.m.
|NBA Saturday Primetime'''. Lisa Salters on sideline.
|-
|Saturday, March 2, 2019
|Warriors vs. 76ers
|8:30 p.m.
|NBA Saturday Primetime. Tom Rinaldi on sideline.
|-
|Sunday, March 3, 2019
|Rockets vs. Celtics
|3:30 p.m.
|NBA Sunday Showcase. Israel Gutierrez on sideline.
|-
|Saturday, March 9, 2019
|Celtics vs. Lakers
|8:30 p.m.
|NBA Saturday Primetime. Lisa Salters on sideline.
|-
|Sunday, March 10, 2019
|Pacers vs. 76ers |
9809_17 | |3:30 p.m.
|NBA Sunday Showcase. Israel Gutierrez on sideline.
|-
|Saturday, March 16, 2019
|Warriors vs. Thunder
|8:30 p.m.
|NBA Saturday Primetime. Doris Burke on sideline.
|-
|Sunday, March 17, 2019
|76ers vs. Bucks
|3:30 p.m.
|NBA Sunday Showcase. Lisa Salters on sideline.
|-
|Sunday, April 7, 2019
|Thunder vs. Timberwolves
|3:30 p.m.
|NBA Sunday Showcase. Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy on call. Lisa Salters worked sideline.
|-
|} |
9809_18 | 2020s schedules
2019–20 schedule
All games called by Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy unless otherwise noted.
2020–21 schedule
All games called by Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy with Rachel Nichols on sideline unless otherwise noted.
2021–22 schedule
Coverage
Overview
Each season, ABC begins its NBA coverage with a Christmas Day tripleheader (with the exception of 2004 and 2006, when the network broadcast only one game, and 2002, 2003 and 2007–2016 when the network broadcast a doubleheader, and 2021 when it will carry a NBA Saturday Primetime on December 11, 2021). From 2004 to 2006, ABC insisted on carrying a Christmas game between the Miami Heat and the Los Angeles Lakers. Since 2009, ABC's Christmas Day triple header has featured a music video featuring Mariah Carey performing her hit 1994 single "All I Want for Christmas Is You." In 2010, Carey was featured singing "Oh Santa!" |
9809_19 | Following the initial Christmas game telecasts, Sunday afternoon coverage of regular season games begins in mid-January or early or mid February. The number of Sunday afternoon regular season games that ABC normally covers is significantly lower than what NBC broadcast during its tenure with the league. In its first season of coverage, ABC aired 14 regular-season games, in comparison to NBC's yearly average of 33 games. That number increased to 18 games in the next two seasons ( and ), and 20 games in the season. For , ABC decreased the number of game telecasts it aired during the season to 19. In a 2002 interview with Jim Rome, NBA commissioner David Stern commented about the number of league games broadcast on ABC: |
9809_20 | By contrast to Stern's assessment, media analysts and many fans found that the cable-heavy television deal made many games unavailable and, in addition, devalued the league. Starting with the second round of the playoffs, TNT's NBA coverage becomes exclusive, meaning that no locally produced league broadcasts can compete against the TNT telecasts (though commensurate with the move to sports rights to cable, few over-the-air local stations currently carry NBA coverage). Because of this, fans of teams in the playoffs who do not have a cable television subscription are unable to watch most playoff games. In addition, ABC's coverage is always exclusive, including during the regular season. If an ongoing game airs opposite one televised by ABC, it cannot be televised in the local market, which has the side effect of causing some games to not be aired on television at all. Sports Business Daily quoted Houston Chronicle writer Jonathan Feigen regarding the structuring of the NBA's deal with |
9809_21 | ABC: |
9809_22 | On July 17, 2015, ESPN announced that ABC would add a series of eight of Saturday night games to its slate of broadcasts in the 2015–16 season. The first of these games will air on January 23, 2016, and will air mostly bi-weekly until the end of the regular season. As a result of this change, ABC will no longer have regular Sunday doubleheaders. |
9809_23 | In addition, unlike NBC or its preceding rightsholder CBS, ABC does not televise the NBA All-Star Game (with TNT instead holding the exclusive television rights to the game itself and most other events held during All-Star Weekend). Also unlike the other networks, ABC rarely televises either of the NBA's Conference Finals series. TNT airs one Conference Final exclusively each year (the Western Conference Finals in 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018. and the Eastern Conference Finals in 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017, while ESPN will get the other. With the exception of 2004, 2010, 2012, and 2015 (when the network did not air any games from that round at all), ABC airs Conference Final matches – whichever one to which ESPN holds the rights in a given year – held on weekends. Due to the checkerboard schedule of the NBA Playoffs (in which games are scheduled every other day), this is limited to one game per Conference Final, as series do not often reach |
9809_24 | a sixth or seventh game (for example, the network aired only Game 3 of the 2009 Western Conference Finals; ABC was scheduled to air the Sunday Game 7 of the series; however, the Los Angeles Lakers won the series in Game 6). |
9809_25 | Outside of the Conference Finals, ABC generally airs playoff games throughout the first five weeks of the NBA Playoffs, in addition to a number of special prime-time playoff games, usually televised on Thursday or Saturday nights. In 2005, ABC aired the first non-cable Memorial Day game in three years, when the Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs battled in Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals. Prior to the most recent NBA television deal, Memorial Day playoff games had become a yearly tradition on network television.
Pregame show
Statistics
Graphics |
9809_26 | In its first year of coverage, ABC used the same graphics package as partner network ESPN, with the "score bug" being the only difference between the two networks' packages. This habit had already been put into practice by the network in regards to its NHL and college basketball coverage. However, ABC did utilize its own graphics (though they were similar in resemblance to ESPN's at the time) for college football and other sports broadcasts. For the 2003–04 season, ABC established new graphics for its NBA broadcasts, in an effort to differentiate its telecasts from ESPN's. On February 5, 2006, ABC established another new graphics package, including a horizontal scoreboard (similar to that introduced the previous fall for its final season of Monday Night Football) for the network's NBA telecasts. |
9809_27 | ESPN, along with partner network ABC, began using graphics packages inherited by ESPN's Monday Night Football broadcast starting in 2006, featuring a score banner with an oblique red and white design. The graphics were later replaced in April 2009 with a more compact grey design, with panel-like lower thirds and a permanent "stats bar" located underneath the score and time. This was replaced in 2010 with an updated appearance based on another redesign adopted by Monday Night Football in late 2009, featuring a more metallic appearance that would later be adopted by other ESPN properties, along with the addition of yellow lights beneath a team's name to indicate remaining timeouts. At the start of the 2011–12 season, an updated version of the design was adopted with a more translucent appearance, and the addition of a "BONUS" indicator under a team's score if they have reached enough fouls to initiate the Bonus situation. Starting with the 2013 Western Conference Finals, a newly |
9809_28 | designed banner featuring 3-dimensional renditions of the team logos were used. During the 2015 NBA Finals, the graphics were updated with gold coloring, patterned backgrounds, and a modern, unified font. At the start of the 2015–16 season, however, ESPN reverted to the banner used since 2013. On May 17, 2016, the aforementioned updated graphics package from the previous year's NBA Finals returned for the 2016 Eastern Conference Finals and again for the 2016 NBA Finals. |
9809_29 | Beginning with the 2016 NBA preseason on October 4, 2016, the graphics were updated again, this time, they are formatted for the full 16:9 letterbox presentation. The score bar, which is significantly larger than the previous one (used since the 2013 Western Conference Finals), was given a complete overhaul, with a numerical representation of timeouts replacing the "lights" used since the 2010–11 season and a permanent "stats bar" being moved to the right side of the score bar. The new, co-branded NBA on ESPN logo is now seen as an overlay on the upper left hand corner of the 16:9 screen. As was the case the previous two years, the gold coloring and patterned backgrounds were used again for the 2017 NBA Finals. Notably, this is the first time that both ESPN and ABC have used the full 16:9 frame for its graphics in the networks' NBA coverage. |
9809_30 | Starting with Saturday Primetime in 2017, live NBA game action no longer shows the ESPN identification on screen. Previously under ESPN on ABC (since 2006–07), the ESPN logo was part of the score banner, while the ABC logo was separately floating on the right side of the screen, remaining on screen during replays. The version of the new 2016–17 graphics package used on ABC replaces the ESPN logo in the score banner with several stars, while the ABC logo (still constantly on screen) anchors the right side of the banner; however for the 2017–18 season, the ESPN logo was reintroduced onto a revised version of the score banner with the ABC logo still located to the right. In addition, commercial transitions for ABC games now contain the ABC logo. It is the first time NBA games on ABC don't have ESPN identification during live action since the 2006 NBA Finals.
For the 2017–18 season, the stat bar is only shown at the beginning of the game and after commercial breaks. |
9809_31 | Criticisms
One common complaint about NBA coverage on ABC is the use of unconventional camera angles, including the Floorcam and Skycam angles, used by the network throughout its coverage. Other complaints are of camera angles that appear too far away, colors that seem faded and dull, and the quieting of crowd noise so that announcers can be heard clearly (by contrast to NBC, which allowed crowd noise to sometimes drown out their announcers). |
9809_32 | Some complaints have concerned the promotion, or perceived lack thereof, of NBA telecasts. The 2003 NBA Finals received very little fanfare on ABC or corporate partner ESPN; while subsequent Finals were promoted more on both networks, NBA-related advertisements on ABC were still down significantly from promotions on NBC. NBA promos took up 3 minutes and 55 seconds of airtime on ABC during the week of May 23, 2004 according to the Sports Business Daily, comparable to 2 minutes and 45 seconds for the Indianapolis 500. Promotions for the Indianapolis 500 outnumbered promotions for the NBA Finals fourteen-to-nine between the hours of 9:00 and 11:00 p.m. during that week. |
9809_33 | The network was also criticized for focusing its coverage on a select number of teams, particularly the decision to broadcast a Lakers-Heat game on its Christmas Day schedule for three consecutive years. However, for 2007, ABC decided to break this tradition by instead having the Heat, for the fourth straight time, appear on Christmas Day facing the 2007 Eastern Conference Champions, the Cleveland Cavaliers. In 2008, the Boston Celtics replaced the Heat on the Christmas Day schedule, and faced the Los Angeles Lakers; and in 2009, the Cavaliers played the Lakers on Christmas Day. However, the Heat-Lakers Christmas Day special would make its return in the 2010–11 NBA season, as a result of LeBron James' recent move from the Cleveland franchise to Miami. For the 2011–12 NBA season, the Lakers and Heat played again on Christmas Day, but against separate opponents. The Lakers played the Chicago Bulls, while the Heat played the Dallas Mavericks in a rematch of the 2011 NBA Finals; both the |
9809_34 | Bulls and Mavericks made their ABC Christmas Day debuts, which also acted as the league's opening day that season due to the 2011 NBA lockout delaying the start of the season. In the case of the latter, ABC aired the pre-game championship ring and banner ceremony for the Mavericks, which marked the first time in NBA history a national broadcast network televised the ceremony. |
9809_35 | Music
After the 1990s (when the NBA arguably reached its highest point in terms of popularity) many hardcore and casual fans began to associate the league with NBC, and more accurately, the network's theme music, "Roundball Rock". After ABC took over the NBA coverage from NBC, "Roundball Rock" composer John Tesh offered his iconic theme song to the new rightsholder, but ABC turned it down and told Tesh that they wanted a completely different song. Whereas NBC used "Roundball Rock" for all twelve years of its coverage, ABC ended up using at least nine themes in its first four years. Three of the themes were traditional sports themes, while six of them ("'We Got Hoops" by Robert Randolph and the Family Band, "Can't Get Enough" by Justin Timberlake, "Let's Get It Started" by The Black Eyed Peas, "Lose My Breath" by Destiny's Child, "This Is How A Heart Breaks" by Rob Thomas and "Runnin' Down a Dream" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) were contemporary pieces by known artists. |
9809_36 | For the 2006–07 NBA season, ESPN began using "Fast Break", the theme music used for ABC's NBA broadcasts since 2004, as the theme for its own NBA games. Because of the reorganization of ABC Sports under the oversight of ESPN, and its 2006 rebranding as ESPN on ABC (which calls for all sporting events aired on ABC to utilize the same production elements as ESPN's sports telecasts), this means that games broadcast on ABC will use the same theme music from previous years. In addition, ABC selected pop group The Pussycat Dolls to perform "Right Now" as the new introduction for NBA games. |
9809_37 | For the 2008 season, "Nine Lives" by Def Leppard and Tim McGraw was used as the new intro song for ABC's game broadcasts, and was also used by ESPN during the playoffs prior to the start of each game. For the 2012 NBA Playoffs, the revised version of the 1972–73 theme was introduced, incorporating features of the current NBA players from going back from the previous year to years past during the network's tenure with the NBA.
For the 2011 NBA postseason, ESPN used an updated composition of the "Fast Break" theme music for the postseason, yet the original composition was still used for the regular season through the 2015-16 NBA season. |
9809_38 | For the 2016-17 NBA season, ESPN used another updated composition of the "Fast Break" theme music. This time, for the regular season, replacing the original composition that was first used by ABC since the 2004–05 season and by ESPN two seasons later. Adding Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly's " Before I Let Go" to start the court side play by play commentary. |
9809_39 | Team appearances |
9809_40 | In its first three years of coverage, ABC televised 40 playoff games, whereas NBC aired 35 in 2002 alone. The San Antonio Spurs have appeared on ABC 36 times , the most of any other team. The second iteration of the Charlotte Hornets are the only team to have not appeared on ABC for a regular-season game (their 2016 Game 7 loss to Miami was broadcast on ABC) during the length of the current contract, whereas the San Antonio Spurs, Detroit Pistons, Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks have appeared on the network every year since 2002. The Atlanta Hawks did appear on ABC during the network's coverage in the 1960s and 1970s, including a Christmas Day game against the Phoenix Suns in 1970. The network did not air a game involving that team until Game 7 of the 2008 1st Round Playoffs, against the Boston Celtics. The Utah Jazz's appearances have all occurred during the playoffs, with the exception of a doubleheader game that occurred on April 2, 2017, against the Spurs. |
9809_41 | The Los Angeles Lakers had appeared in ABC's featured Christmas Day game every season from 2002 to 2016 (against the Sacramento Kings in 2002, the Houston Rockets in 2003, the Miami Heat in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2010, the Phoenix Suns in 2007, the Boston Celtics in 2008, Cleveland Cavaliers in 2009, the Chicago Bulls in 2011 and 2014, and the Los Angeles Clippers in 2015 and 2016). After the Miami Heat, which have four Christmas Day appearances on ABC, the Sacramento Kings and the Boston Celtics are the only other teams to have had repeat appearances on the holiday.
WNBA on ABC
In the early years, two women's-oriented networks, Lifetime and Oxygen, also broadcast games including the first game of the WNBA. NBC showed games from 1997 to 2002 as part of their NBA on NBC coverage before the league transferred the rights to ABC/ESPN. |
9809_42 | Coverage breakdown
In June 2007, the WNBA signed a contract extension with ESPN. The new television deal runs from 2009 to 2016. A minimum of 18 games will be broadcast on ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 each season; the rights to broadcast the first regular-season game and the All-Star game are held by ABC. Additionally, a minimum of 11 postseason games will be broadcast on any of the three stations. Along with this deal, came the first-ever rights fees to be paid to a women's professional sports league. Over the eight years of the contract, "millions and millions of dollars" will be "dispersed to the league's teams".
WNBA All-Star Game
Select WNBA regular season games
Select Sunday game of the WNBA Finals (usually the first scheduled Sunday game airing at 3:30 PM ET) |
9809_43 | Initially, Saturday and Sunday afternoon games were broadcast on ABC. But over time that changed. For 2013, only one game was shown on ABC on Saturday, June 8, and thirteen games were shown on ESPN2 on five different days of the week (no WNBA games were shown on Sunday or Friday on ESPN2). On opening day for the 2008 season (May 17), ABC broadcast the Los Angeles Sparks and Phoenix Mercury matchup. The game received a little over 1 million viewers. Average viewership for games broadcast on national television (ABC and ESPN2) was 413,000 (up from 346,000 in 2007). Average viewership for the 2007 WNBA finals was 545,000. |
9809_44 | Viewership for the 2011 WNBA All-Star Game on ABC was up 46% from the previous game. Game 1 of the 2015 WNBA Finals telecast on ABC, drew 571,000 viewers, up from 558,000 for Game 1 in 2014. Game 1 of the 2016 WNBA Finals was broadcast on ABC and had 0.5 overnight rating (597,000 viewers), which was the best since 2010. The five game 2016 Finals broadcast on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 averaged a 0.3 rating and 487,000 viewers. Average viewership in 2016 was 224,000 viewers.
Announcers
Ryan Ruocco (play-by-play)
Rebecca Lobo (color commentary)
Holly Rowe (sideline reporter)
2021 schedule
Announcers |
9809_45 | Brad Nessler era (2002–03)
After obtaining the NBA broadcast rights, ABC courted two main announcers from the NBA on NBC, Bob Costas and Marv Albert. After Costas (who was reportedly offered a generous deal which also included offers to do play-by-play for ESPN's Major League Baseball telecasts and feature reports for ABC News) elected to remain with NBC, and Albert signed a six-year deal with TNT, the network went with veteran broadcaster Brad Nessler to be the lead play-by-play announcer for its NBA broadcasts. Nessler, who prior to that point had not been the main voice for any professional sport on television, received a call from Marv Albert's agent, soon after getting the job. On the call, Nessler said in an interview with the Internet Movie Database: |
9809_46 | Nessler was initially joined on the broadcasts by color commentator Bill Walton and lead sideline reporter Michele Tafoya. The team of Nessler and Walton did two broadcasts together before ABC decided that Walton needed a partner (much like he had at NBC with Steve Jones) and assigned pre-game analyst Tom Tolbert to join the team. Nessler, Walton and Tolbert called most regular season games, and every network playoff game. Other games were called by the team of Brent Musburger and Sean Elliott. After suffering the worst ratings in NBA Finals history for the 2003 series, low ratings overall, and harsh criticism, ABC decided to retool the team. More to the point, during this particular period, Brad Nessler was accused by media analysts (among them, New York Times columnist Richard Sandomir) of not knowing game strategy well, lacking rhythm and enthusiasm in his game call, not bringing out the best in his partners, too often ignoring the score and his tendency to stammer. |
9809_47 | This was also the only year that ABC broadcast both the NBA and the Stanley Cup Finals involving teams from one market in the same year, as both the New Jersey Nets and the New Jersey Devils were in their respective league's finals. During ABC's broadcast of Game 3 between the San Antonio Spurs and the Nets in New Jersey on June 8, Nessler, Tolbert and Walton said that ABC was in a unique situation getting ready for both that game and Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Devils and the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim the following night. Gary Thorne, Bill Clement and John Davidson mentioned this the following night, and thanked Nessler, Tolbert and Walton for promoting ABC's broadcast of Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. |
9809_48 | Al Michaels era (2003–05)
After disastrous ratings for the 2003 Finals, ABC decided to completely revamp its lead NBA broadcast team. Brad Nessler was demoted to the secondary broadcast team, where he was joined by Sean Elliott and Dan Majerle. Tom Tolbert was relegated to pre-game show duties only, and Bill Walton was removed from the network's NBA coverage altogether (however, he would remain with ESPN). Meanwhile, longtime Monday Night Football commentator Al Michaels was hired to replace Nessler as the network's lead NBA play-by-play announcer; Michele Tafoya remained as its lead sideline reporter. |
9809_49 | Doc Rivers, a critically acclaimed analyst when he worked with Turner Sports for TNT's NBA broadcasts, became available after a 1–10 start by his Orlando Magic led to his firing as the team's coach. Rivers was hired weeks before ABC's Christmas Day season opener. He and Michaels worked that game together, one of only six they did together during the regular season (all other games Rivers worked were with Brad Nessler). During the playoffs, Michaels and Rivers worked every single telecast, including the 2004 NBA Finals, which saw significant ratings improvement.
During the 2004 NBA Playoffs, Doc Rivers was hired as head coach of the Boston Celtics. Though Rivers continued to work games with Al Michaels throughout the rest of the playoffs, ABC was forced to search for a new lead analyst for the 2004–05 season. In addition, the network dropped Brad Nessler from all NBA coverage, and did not retain Sean Elliott or Dan Majerle. |
9809_50 | Early in the 2004–2005 season, Memphis Grizzlies coach Hubie Brown, a broadcasting legend with CBS, TBS and TNT, was forced into retirement due to health issues and was soon after hired to replace Doc Rivers as Al Michaels' broadcast booth partner. Brown called his first ABC game with Michaels on Christmas Day 2004, working the highly anticipated a Heat-Lakers game pitting those team's respective star players Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. After that game, the two did not do a game together again until March 2005. Michaels began covering NBA games sporadically, doing two games in early March and three additional games in April. Meanwhile, Brown worked every week of ABC's coverage, broadcasting some games with veteran broadcaster Mike Breen. Michele Tafoya served as lead sideline reporter for all of the network's game broadcasts. |
9809_51 | In addition to Hubie Brown, ABC added other known analysts to its NBA coverage. Jim Durham and Dr. Jack Ramsay both worked several games during the regular season, while Brent Musburger, John Saunders, Len Elmore and Mark Jackson were involved with others. Breen and Ramsay were the first secondary broadcast team to work a playoff game for ABC. Breen called three playoff games for the network in 2005, the most notable being Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals with Hubie Brown. |
9809_52 | Al Michaels was criticized by the New York Post for not broadcasting the game and seeming uninterested in the NBA in general. Barry Horn of The Dallas Morning News said that Michaels was simply "not a basketball guy". Meanwhile, Bill Simmons said during the 2005 Finals that Michaels "shows up for these games, does his job, then drives home thinking, 'Only five weeks to the [NFL] Hall of Fame Game, I'm almost there!'" Another criticism that Michaels received was that he too often found himself making tediously long-winded explanations. In return, he would tend to talk over two or three possessions in a row (which Michaels seemed to be better suited for football and baseball broadcasts, for which he's better known for). The end result was that he would hardly have time to comment on the action viewers were seeing because he was so hung up on a prior subplot or storyline that he felt the audience just had to know about. Michaels was also accused of apparently lacking the kind of |
9809_53 | enthusiasm and confidence (for instance, Michaels initially reacted to Amar'e Stoudemire's block of Tim Duncan's shot during the 2005 playoffs by calling it a "great, great contested shot") expected of a main play-by-play voice. |
9809_54 | Michaels, who by the end of his tenure on the NBA on ABC only called a total of 37 NBA games overall with ABC (a combined thirteen regular season games), did return for the NBA Finals, which scored its second-lowest rating of all time (despite the fact that it was the first Finals in eleven years to go to a seventh game). From March 7, 2004 to April 17, 2005 – including playoff games – each game Michaels called involved either the Los Angeles Lakers (whose home city Michaels resides when not broadcasting sports events) or Sacramento Kings, a total of 21 consecutive games. Game 7 of the 2005 NBA Finals would end up being Michaels' last with the NBA on ABC. |
9809_55 | For the 2005–06 season, Al Michaels and Hubie Brown were slated to remain as ABC's main broadcast team. The duo worked that year's Christmas Day game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat and were expected to work the NBA Finals together as well. However, that plan did not come to fruition. In 2005, the National Football League (NFL) signed a contract with NBC for the rights to the Sunday night football (a package previously held by ESPN), which in turn resulted in Monday Night Football, which Al Michaels had been broadcasting for nearly 20 years, ending its run on ABC after the league's 2005 season. |
9809_56 | Speculation arose that Michaels would leave ABC for NBC; however, he subsequently signed a deal to remain on Monday Night Football, when it moved to ESPN in 2006. However, in the weeks leading up to Super Bowl XL (ABC's final NFL broadcast to date), it was widely speculated that Michaels was attempting to get out of his contract with ESPN to join John Madden (who worked alongside Michaels for the previous four years on Monday Night Football as an analyst) at NBC. Michaels added fuel to the fire by refusing to state his future plans, and he could not "respond to rumors... because that would become a distraction." On February 8, 2006, ESPN announced that its Monday Night Football team would consist of Mike Tirico on play-by-play, with football analyst Joe Theismann and Tony Kornheiser as analysts. ESPN explicitly stated that Michaels would not return to either Monday Night Football broadcasts or ABC's NBA broadcasts, all but assuring Michaels' departure from ABC after 30 years, and |
9809_57 | joining Madden at NBC. |
9809_58 | Mike Breen era (2006–present)
Michaels was replaced by Mike Breen, who became the lead broadcaster for an over-the-air NBA package for the first time in his career. Breen worked the 2006 Eastern Conference Finals and 2006 NBA Finals with Hubie Brown for both ESPN and ABC, as well as all the main games ABC broadcast that year. The promotion of Breen gave ABC its first consistent lead broadcaster since Brad Nessler, as Breen worked games every week. Breen previously had worked the Eastern Conference Finals for NBC in 2001 and 2002, as well as the Western Conference Finals for ESPN in 2005. |
9809_59 | Many sportswriters and sports media analysts praised Breen, some for his explosive voice and excited calls on game-deciding and game-winning shots and others for the fact that, unlike his predecessor Al Michaels, he was already very familiar with broadcasting basketball games (prior to NBC and ABC, he is also working New York Knicks games on MSG Network) and was essentially a basketball lifer. Despite that, he faced some criticism from those who complained that they would prefer a more established voice, such as Marv Albert or Kevin Harlan. Hubie Brown faced criticism from writers (most notably Richard Sandomir of The New York Times) as well as bloggers and viewers. |
9809_60 | Lisa Salters also served as the lead sideline reporter for ABC's regular-season game coverage and the NBA Finals that season, filling in for Michele Tafoya while she was on maternity leave. Salters returned to her role as its secondary sideline reporter when Tafoya returned the following year. For the secondary broadcast team, ABC reunited Bill Walton and Steve Jones for game coverage. Walton and Jones worked the Christmas Day 2005 broadcast between the San Antonio Spurs and Detroit Pistons for ABC, the first game they called together since Game 4 of the 2002 NBA Finals for NBC (NBC's last NBA telecast to date). The pair worked their first broadcast with Mike Breen, and worked the remainder of the season with Brent Musburger, Jim Durham and Mike Tirico. That team, along with the Breen-Brown duo, now often does ESPN's Wednesday or Friday game coverage, which the previous ABC announce teams rarely did. |
9809_61 | ABC also used several SportsCenter reporters, including Tom Rinaldi, Rachel Nichols and Jeremy Schaap, for pregame and halftime features during 2006.
For the 2006–07 NBA season, ABC's sports operations were fully integrated into ESPN (rebranding the sports division as ESPN on ABC). As a result, Mark Jackson replaced Hubie Brown as ABC's lead analyst (Brown would still pair with Mike Breen on ESPN's primary broadcast team and Mike Tirico on ABC's secondary team). ABC's pre-game show, which Jackson was a part of, also began to be broadcast from the site of the main game each week (much as was the case during first season of the network's current NBA deal in 2003).
Additionally, Michele Tafoya returned as a sideline reporter, after sitting out the 2005–06 season on maternity leave. Lisa Salters returned to her role as its secondary sideline reporter the following year as Tafoya returned to her old role. |
9809_62 | On July 9, 2007, it was announced by Dan Patrick that he would be leaving ESPN after 18 years with the network. Stuart Scott hosted ABC's pregame show for the 2007–08 season along with analysts Bill Walton and Michael Wilbon. Jeff Van Gundy also joined Mike Breen and Mark Jackson full-time, starting Christmas Day. After Walton had back problems in February, Jon Barry replaced him for the rest of the season.
Michele Tafoya left her role as NBA sideline reporter for ABC after the 2007–08 season to spend more time with her family; however, she continued to work for ESPN, primarily serving as a sideline reporter for Monday Night Football (before leaving for NBC in 2011 to serve that same position for Sunday Night Football). Doris Burke, who already served as an analyst for ESPN's NBA telecasts, replaced Tafoya as lead sideline reporter on the ABC broadcasts. |
9809_63 | Lisa Salters serves as a substitute for Burke in the event she is on assignment or is slated to handle analyst duties for the NBA on ESPN, with Heather Cox filling in as part of the secondary announcing team for Salters, when she is working within the primary broadcast team. Cox took over the secondary role in 2012 after Salters became a full-time sideline reporter for Monday Night Football, with either Chris Broussard, J. A. Adande or Holly Rowe serving as the secondary reporter whenever Cox was assigned as the lead reporter. |
9809_64 | , the main broadcast team currently consists of Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy, while the secondary broadcast team consists of Mike Tirico and Hubie Brown, with either Mark Jones, Ryan Ruocco or Dave Pasch filling in when Tirico has other commitments. The NBA Countdown studio team consists of host Sage Steele, and analysts Jalen Rose and Doug Collins. ABC's second team of Tirico and Brown also comprise the lead team for NBA Finals coverage on ESPN Radio, with Kevin Calabro subbing in for Tirico on some occasions. |
9809_65 | Jackson briefly left the broadcast booth to serve as head coach of the Golden State Warriors from 2011 to 2014. Prior to the 2011–12 season, ABC reassigned Stuart Scott to another role while the studio team worked without a main host in a more free-flowing approach. This experiment ended prior to the 2013–14 season, when Sage Steele became the lead host of Countdown. Magic Johnson, Jon Barry, Michael Wilbon, Bill Simmons, and Chris Broussard have previously served as analysts for NBA Countdown.
For the 2016–17 season, Mark Jones replaced Mike Tirico as part of the secondary broadcast team with Hubie Brown as Tirico left for NBC. Also, Doug Collins left NBA Countdown and joined ESPN's roster of game analysts, returning to a position he previously held while working with NBC and TNT. Steele was replaced as host by Michelle Beadle during the season. |
9809_66 | For the 2019–20 season, ABC's pregame show was completely revamped. ESPN decided to drop Beadle, who had been granted a buyout at the company, and Chauncey Billups, though he would remain with ESPN as a regular game analyst until he left the company to take a coaching job with the Los Angeles Clippers. Beadle's role would end up being split between Maria Taylor, who works ABC's college football game of the week, and Rachel Nichols, host of the popular ESPN show The Jump. Richard Jefferson and Jay Williams were brought in to replace Billups, with the network retaining Jalen Rose and Paul Pierce. Nichols will also be ABC's pregame host for the NBA Finals. ESPN also decided to replace NBA Countdown with The Jump for their NBA Saturday Primetime pregame show. NBA Countdown will remain the main pregame show for NBA Sunday Showcase. |
9809_67 | Those plans did not continue as planned after March 8th, as the NBA suspended play due to the coronavirus pandemic. Because of that, Nichols resorted to the NBA Bubble at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, FL, where the NBA restarted their season and held the Playoffs, where she eventually took Doris Burke's spot as sideline reporter for the Finals, meaning Taylor was elevated to host the NBA Finals on ABC, and Countdown being restored as ABC's pregame show. |
9809_68 | For the 2020–21 season, Nichols was tapped to serve as sideline reporter for NBA Saturday Primetime, meaning Taylor was promoted to Nichols' spot as host, with Countdown being restored as pregame show. After he was part of an inappropriate Instagram video, ESPN quietly dropped Pierce on April 6, without replacement for the remainder of the season. Prior to the 2021 NBA Finals, Nichols was removed in favor of Malika Andrews after a video revealed of Nichols uttering racially insensitive comments towards black colleague Taylor. Soon after, Taylor departed to join NBC Sports, and Nichols was removed from all ESPN programming.
For the 2021–22 season, Lisa Salters replaced Nichols as the primary sideline reporter, and Mike Greenberg replaced Taylor on NBA Countdown along with returning analysts Michael Wilbon, Stephen A. Smith, Jalen Rose and Magic Johnson.
Television ratings |
9809_69 | Between 2012 and 2019, the NBA lost 40 to 45 percent of its viewership. While some of it can be attributed to "cable-cutting", other professional leagues, like the NFL and MLB have retained stable viewership demographics. The opening game of the 2020 Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat brought in only 7.41 million viewers to ABC, according to The Hollywood Reporter''. That is reportedly the lowest viewership seen for the Finals since at least 1994, when total viewers began to be regularly recorded and is a 45 percent decline from Game 1 between the Golden State Warriors and Toronto Raptors, which had 13.51 million viewers a year earlier. Some attribute this decline to the political stances the league and its players are taking, while others consider load management, the uneven talent distribution between the conferences and the cord-cutting of younger viewers as the main reason for the decline.
References |
9809_70 | External links
ESPN's official website for coverage of the NBA
NBA.com's website for ABC's broadcast schedule
The NBA on ABC -- Then and Now
NBA News & Videos - ABC News
1965 American television series debuts
1973 American television series endings
2002 American television series debuts
1960s American television series
1970s American television series
2000s American television series
2010s American television series
2020s American television series
American Broadcasting Company original programming
ABC Sports
ABC Radio Sports
Black-and-white American television shows
ABC
American television series revived after cancellation
ABC
1980s American radio programs
American sports radio programs
ABC radio programs |
9810_0 | Viktor Matejka (4 December 1901 - 2 April 1993) was a Viennese politician and writer.
He spent most of the Hitler years as a detainee at one of two concentration camps. In the summer of 1943 inmates at Dachau presented a satirical focusing on Adolf Hitler, watched by the camp's SS guards. The episode was described in his obituary, half a century later, as "probably the most dangerous stage performance in the world, as well as the most absurd". The leader of the improvised performance group was Viktor Matejka. Later he liked to assert that he had survived National Socialism through a blend of cunning and skill, which only the malicious and ignorant would have called "collaboration".
Life |
9810_1 | Provenance and early years |
9810_2 | Viktor Matejka was born the third of his parents' children into a lower middle-class catholic family at Korneuburg, a small town a couple of hours' walk up-river of Vienna. His father was a former "tavern singer" who subsequently worked as a court bailiff. His mother was a former domestic servant. Matejka grew up in nearby Stockerau under conditions of some poverty. Obsessed even as a child with the importance of education, and encouraged by his mother, he saved up the money he received for serving as an altar boy and used the resulting savings to pay the fee necessary to sit the entrance exam for admission to an academically oriented secondary school ("Gymnasium"). As his school career progressed he continued to take jobs where he could find them in order to supplement the family income, taking on tutoring work and, on at least one occasion, working as a film-extra. He concluded his school career by passing his Matura exam with distinction, which opened the way for |
9810_3 | university admission. |
9810_4 | Student years
At the University of Vienna, having enrolled to study Chemistry, Matejka very soon switched to History and Geography. The switch may have been inspired by his admiration for Ludo Moritz Hartmann who became his tutor and, it appears, an important influence. It was also Hartmann, as his "Doktorvater", who supervised him for his doctorate in international law, which was awarded by the university in 1925. After that he embarked immediately on a career as a journalist. His passionate faith in education never left him, however. |
9810_5 | Matejka was introduced to the world of Adult Education by his university tutor Ludo Hartmann. From as early as 1926 he combined his regular written contributions to various Vienna newspapers with work delivering numerous lectures at various adult education institutions across Vienna. He employed a geopolitical approach in his classes and encouraged free discussion of economic and political issues in ways which have encouraged commentators to hold him out as a pioneer of open socio-political education in the context of "Popular Education" ("Volksbildung"). |
9810_6 | Post-democratic Austria
The Great Depression was followed by a retreat from democratic government across much of the western world. As early as 1932, in his capacity as a journalist, Viktor Matejka was warning readers against the risk of another war. He was nevertheless at this stage a member of the proto-fascist Fatherland Front (political party) established during 1933 by Chancellor Dollfuss, as one of a series of changes whereby the country now quickly became a one-party-state. |
9810_7 | In 1934 Viktor Matejka was appointed to two important jobs which for the next two years he carried out simultaneously. In the aftermath of the February uprising, with a new "Popular Front" government installed under Engelbert Dollfuss, he was appointed to the post of "Bildungsreferent" (loosely, "chief education officer") of the Vienna "Abeiterkammer" ("Chamber of labour"). The new government had mandated a major purge of government employees at the start of 1934, and this was the context in which Matejka now also found himself appointed executive deputy chairman of Vienna's Ottakring Adult Education Centre. Despite his party membership, there was some surprise at the time that this left-wing journalist should have obtained such sudden promotion, given the right-wing instincts of the government, and in both his important government roles he did what he could to maintain the most open educational system possible, subject to the constraints imposed by the government. He saw to |
9810_8 | it that students could still benefit from hearing lecturers who were not government supporters, such as Leo Stern who was widely known to have been a left-wing activist member of the (subsequently outlawed) Social Democratic Party before 1934. In the Summer of 1935 he organised readers by left-wing worker intellectuals such as Benedikt Fantner at the Vienna Workers' Riverside Bathing Facility ("Arbeiterstrandbad"). Still in 1935 he made no secret of his decision to become a member of the pacifist "Weltvereinigung für den Frieden!" organisation, viewed by many government backers as a thinly veiled front organisation for Soviet foreign policy. Despite working in a prominent position for the government of a one-party state, Matejka also pushed during this period for the reinstatement of employees who had been dismissed from their posts on political grounds. |
9810_9 | Within the ruling Fatherland Front (party) complaints surfaced that the Ottakring Adult Education Centre was becoming "anti-state". As the responsible executive head, Viktor Matejka was accused of allowing socialist propaganda to take hold in the college. A series of "scandals" ensued at Ottakring until on 17 July 1936, probably in response to a critical article in the catholic-conservative newspaper Reichspost, Mayor Schmitz had Matejka removed from his post. |
9810_10 | Matejka was a prodigious reader with an insatiable appetite for political information. Early on he had read "Mein Kampf", the autobiographical manifesto produced during the 1920s by the man who in 1933 took power in Germany and five years later extended his self-conferred mandate to Austria. Having digested the book, Matejka became committed to unpicking the destructive political polarisation which the fascists were bringing to Austria. Along with Ernst Karl Winter he joined up with the circle of intellectual pacifists around Franz Kobler. Others group members included Oskar Kokoschka, Stefan Pollatschek, Rudolf Rapaport and the artist Georg Merkel. There is nothing to indicate that the men's intense discussions together did much to roll back the tide of fascism in the immediate term, but the written works and, in some cases, paintings produced by group members provided markers that pointed the way towards a saner political framework at some yet to be determined point in the |
9810_11 | future. During the 1930s Matejka also teamed up for a time with Nikolaus Hovorka to produce the pocket-book format political journal, "Berichte zur Kultur- und Zeitgeschichte" ("Reports on cultural and contemporary history"). |
9810_12 | Anschluss years
In March 1938 Austria was invaded and integrated into Hitler's Germany. Germany and Austria had been in many ways closely aligned for several years, and for many Austrians there were few immediate changes. The "invaders" had arrived with a list however, and Viktor Matejka's name was on it. He was arrested on 12 March 1938 and, on 1 April 1938, delivered to the Dachau concentration camp which had opened just outside Munich a few years earlier to hold political prisoners. It turned out that he had been included in the very first batch of Austrian political prisoners to be arrested and transported to Dachau following the annexation ("Anschluss"): he would spend the next six years as a concentration camp inmate. Also included in that first post-annexation transportation of "prominent persons" was Richard Schmitz, the man who two years earlier, as Mayor of Vienna, had put an end to Viktor Matejka's career as a top-level education administrator in the city. |
9810_13 | Dachau and Flossenbürg |
9810_14 | Following his arrest Matejka discovered that the security services already knew all about his foreign contacts in considerable detail. He spent the next two and a half weeks at the Roßauerlände police jail, before being transported across the (former) border to the concentration camp in Bavaria. At some point during 1940 he was transferred to the Flossenbürg concentration camp in a remote mountain location where it had been established in the hills to the west of Prague as a centre for forced labourers working the nearby granite quarries. The camp was originally intended for "criminal" and "asocial" prisoners, but sources are silent over whether or how Matejka might have fallen into those categories. During his time in the Flossenbürg camp Matejka developed friendships with the communist Karl Röder (who had been a concentration camp inmate since 1933) and the pastor-theologian Emil Felden from Bremen. It would appear that Matejka was transported back to Dachau after perhaps a |
9810_15 | year at Flossenbürg. |
9810_16 | The slaughter of war, especially after 1941, was leaving the country starved of fighting/working age men, with the result that the daily administration at the (men's) concentration camps was increasingly delegated to carefully selected inmates. Matejka had evidently succeeded in having himself listed among the trustworthy prisoners, and following his return to Dachau he was assigned to work as a library assistant, and then to take charge of the camp book-binding workshop. This provided him with an opportunity to start producing "Pick Books" ("Pickbüchern") with articles cut out of newspapers pasted on their pages which were distributed among fellow prisoners to try and keep them informed. The articles selected included Hitler speeches and army reports, along with features on the arts, literature, music and philosophy, all neatly cut out and grouped according to subject matter. |
9810_17 | Despite the backbreaking nature of much of the work that the prisoners were set to perform, Sunday afternoons were respected as "time off". One Sunday afternoon during 1943 Viktor Matejka organised a production of Rudolf Kalmar's satirical "stage" show, "Die Blutnacht auf dem Schreckenstein oder Ritter Adolars Brautfahrt und ihr grausiges Ende - oder - Die wahre Liebe ist das nicht". The piece, written in the style of a Pradler Ritterspiele, was full of barely disguised unflattering oblique references to the leader which, sources insist, the SS guards in attendance failed to notice. |
9810_18 | Early release
On 7 July 1944 Matejka was released from the camp and returned to Vienna. He managed to get himself admitted to hospital as a patient in order to avoid the risk of recruitment into the German army. The avoidance of conscription, and possibly also the early release which preceded it, involved him in the use of several medical certificates, some of which were genuinely produced by physicians: others were simple forgeries. He then "disappeared underground" (lived out of official sight and without a registered domicile or an identity card) till the war ended. It is known that during the final months of the National Socialist tyranny Matejka had links with the "O5" anti-fascist liberation organisation. |
9810_19 | Communism and city politics
Vienna was liberated by the Red army in April 1945. Almost immediately Viktor Matejka used the new political freedoms to become a member of the Austrian Communist Party. For surviving party comrades emerging from the illegality which had been their lot since 1933, Matejka became something of an intellectual figurehead; and he seems during the later 1940s to have succeeded in living beyond the party discipline that constrained comrades without his robust intellectual hinterland and record of fearless public service during the 1930s. |
9810_20 | On 20 April 1945 there had not yet been time for any elections to be held, and it was accordingly through nomination by his party that Matejka joined the Vienna senate (governing executive body), which was a coalition administration dominated by the Social Democrats and led by Theodor Körner. Matejka became the city senator with special responsibility for Adult and Further Education, along with The Arts. He was at this point one of three Communist Party members appointed to the Vienna city senate. All three found they had also been appointed to membership of the Party Central Committee with effect from April 1945. The appointment of the Catholic left-winger Viktor Matejka to membership of the party's ruling committee came as a surprise to many, not leastly to traditionalist comrades whose own commitment to the Austrian Communist Party had demonstrably longer roots. |
9810_21 | City Elections held in November 1945 were disappointing for the Communist Party which was already being tarnished in the public mind by its links to the Soviet Union. Awareness of Red army atrocities against ethnic German civilians - notably the atrocities against women - had seeped quickly into the public consciousness. Nevertheless, before the election even took place the coalition partners had agreed that, at least in Vienna, their governing coalition should remain in place after it. So although the election left the Social Democrats with 58 council seats while the Communists won only 6, the Communists were still represented in the city senate. This time, however, there was one Communist Senator whereas before November there had been three. In order to comply with the pre-election coalition agreement the Social Democrats gave up one of their senate seats in favour of Viktor Matejkar. He remained the KPÖ senate member, and retained the arts and education portfolio, |
9810_22 | till 7 December 1949. |
9810_23 | One highpoint in his four years senatorial career was the 1946 "Niemals vergessen" ("Never forget") exhibition which he commissioned (and according to at least one plausible source organised). The exhibition ran between 15 September and 26 December in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. Employing a succession of drastic displays and images, it courageously tracked the emergence and working through of fascism at a time when many people were driven by an overwhelming urge to forget the whole nightmarish business. There were plans to tour the exhibition across all the major Austrian cities, but in the end, during 1947, it toured only to Innsbruck and Linz. Matejka's senatorial term was, in addition, characterised by promotion of a number of contemporary artists who subsequently became well known. Unlike many politicians, he was also not afraid to campaign for the return to Austria artists, such as Franz Werfel, Arnold Schoenberg and the polymath Oskar Kokoschka, who had been driven into |
9810_24 | exile during the National Socialist years. Sources attribute his lack of success in enticing exiled artists to "come home" to an absence of backing from other politicians at both a city and a national level. He backed the establishment in Vienna of the Institute for Arts and Humanities (Institut für Wissenschaft und Kunst) as an information exchange between academic institutions and the wider world and worked effectively to revive Vienna's cultural life more generally. He also successfully opposed plans to tear down of Schloss Hetzendorf, an elegant albeit relatively small Baroque palace located behind the vast gardens of Schönbrunn Palace. Hetzendorf was instead reconfigured for use as a prestigious fashion academy. Although they came from different political parties, Viktor Matejka's effectiveness as senator for Arts and Education was enhanced by the fact that he generally sustained an excellent personal relationship with Mayor Theodor Körner. |
9810_25 | Beyond senatorial office
In the 1949 city elections the Communist share of the vote slipped a little further: after the election there was no longer space for the party in the governing coalition. Matejka resigned his seat in the senate, but represented the party as a Vienna councillor (Gemeinderat) and member of the regional parliament (Landtag) till 1954. He continued to serve as a member of the party central committee till 1957, and only resigned from the Communist Party itself in 1966. |
9810_26 | In 1949 he became co-producer and editor in chief of the party's bi-monthly news magazine, "Tagebuch" (literally, "Diary"). Matejka had always taken a highly individualistic - some commentators prefer the adjectives "candid" and "unorthodox" - approach to his journalism, and that approach was on display in his many "Tagebuch" contributions. Circulation reached 10,000 copies by 1952, and peaked at 20,000. Keen both to build the readership and reduce the publication's financial dependency on the Austrian Communist Party, Matejka did what he could to extend circulation to neighbouring states that were still undergoing significant political turbulence, notably Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania. However, ethnic cleansing during the 1940s meant there was no longer a large population in those countries with mother-tongue German, while Soviet-backed governments, especially in Prague and Budapest, quickly came to identify "Tagebuch" as a "[western/imperialist] trojan horse". |
9810_27 | The Communist Party of Austria also came under pressure to discourage the sale of "Tagebuch" beyond Austria's borders. Distribution was hampered in "socialist" neighbouring states and then blocked. In February 1957 he was replaced as co-producer and editor in chief at "Tagebuch", but he remained a member of the publication's "editorial college" till his retirement from it at the end of 1966. |
9810_28 | Matejka sustained a high public profile through his old age as an exceptionally prolific contributor, notably in the letters pages, to serious newspapers and news magazines. In addition between 1983 and 1993 he published three highly quotable autobiographical books about his overlapping careers in journalism, education administration and politics.
Collector
Viktor Matejka was a collector. He specialised in collecting portraits (including several of himself) and paintings of roosters. A public exhibition of paintings from his collection was held during April 1982 at the "Wiener Secession" exhibition hall.
Personal
Viktor Matejka married the artist Gerda Felden on 23 June 1932. The bride converted to Roman Catholicism in order to facilitate the union. The marriage lasted till 5 May 1948, but the two of them remained in close contact till Viktor's death in 1992. Indeed, they continued to live together in the same apartment for several years after the divorce. |
9810_29 | Recognition
It is not unusual in mainland Europe for streets to be named or renamed to honour well-regarded public figures. In the case of Viktor Matejka it was not a street but a public stairway that was named for him. The elegant "Viktor-Matejka-Stiege", beside the Apollo Cinema, close to Matejka's former home in the central district of Vienna-Mariahilf, provides a connection for pedestrians between the Eggerthgasse (...alley) and the Kaunitzgasse. The staircase, formerly known as the "Eggerthstiege" ("Eggerth steps") was re-named in 1998, and has enjoyed the protected status of a historic monument ("Denkmalschutz") since 2003.
Published output (selection)
Notes
References
People from Korneuburg
20th-century Austrian writers
University of Vienna alumni
Politicians from Vienna
Communist Party of Austria politicians
Dachau concentration camp survivors
1901 births
1993 deaths |
9811_0 | Zhang Chenglong (; born October 17, 1997) is a Chinese Muay Thai kickboxer who competes in ONE Championship. He has also competed for EM Legend and Glory.
Career
At the age of 13 he began training Muay Thai, and at the age of 17 he went to Thailand .
On July 15, 2015 at the Pattaya Beach Square in Pattaya, Thailand, in MAX Muaythai, Zhang draw with Longchai.
On September 13, 2015, in MAX Muaythai 4 man Tournament, Zhang wins the MAX Muaythai 63 kg Silver Belt.
On May 20, 2017 at the Brabanthallen in Den Bosch, Netherlands, Zhang beat Wilson Sanches Mendes by decision.
ONE Championship
Zhang made his ONE debut at ONE Championship: Call to Greatness on February 22, 2019. He defeated Kong Sambo via split decision.
He next faced Panicos Yusuf at ONE Championship: Warriors of Light on May 10, 2019, winning by unanimous decision.
Zhang then defeated Tyler Hardcastle by first-round knockout at ONE Championship: Legendary Quest in June 15, 2019. |
9811_1 | On December 6, 2019, Zhang Chenglong faced Alaverdi Ramazanov for the inaugural ONE Bantamweight Kickboxing World Championship at ONE Championship: Mark of Greatness. Despite his more extensive kickboxing background, whereas Ramazanov was used to Muay Thai, Zhang lost by unanimous decision after getting knocked down during the fight.
On October 17, 2020, Zhang lost to Hiroki Akimoto by split decision in a back-and-forth contest at ONE Championship: Reign of Dynasties 2.
Zhang faced Petchtanong Banchamek at ONE Championship: Revolution on September 24, 2021. He lost the bout via unanimous decision.
Championships and awards
Kickboxing
2016 MAX Muaythai 63 kg Silver Belt
Kickboxing record |
9811_2 | |- bgcolor="#FFBBBB"
| 2021-09-24|| Loss ||align=left| Petchtanong Banchamek || ONE Championship: Revolution || Singapore || Decision (Unanimous) || 3 || 3:00
|- bgcolor="#FFBBBB"
|2021-02-26
|Loss
| align="left" | Hiroki Akimoto
|ONE Championship: Fists Of Fury
|Kallang, Singapore
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#FFBBBB"
|2020-10-17
|Loss
| align="left" | Hiroki Akimoto
|ONE Championship: Reign of Dynasties 2
|Kallang, Singapore
|Decision (Split)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#FFBBBB"
|2019-12-06
|Loss
| align="left" | Alaverdi Ramazanov
|ONE Championship: Mark Of Greatness
|Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
|Decision (Unanimous)
|5
|3:00
|-
! colspan="8" style="background:white" |
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2019-06-15
|Win
| align="left" | Tyler Hardcastle
|ONE Championship: Legendary Quest
|Shanghai, China
|KO (Right Jab)
|1
|1:45
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2019-05-10
|Win
| align="left" | Panicos Yusuf
|ONE Championship: Warriors Of Light
|Bangkok, Thailand |
9811_3 | |Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2019-02-22
|Win
| align="left" | Kong Sambo
|ONE Championship: Call to Greatness
|Kallang, Singapore
|Decision (Split)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2018-12-23
|Win
| align="left" | Raza Fazaraly
|Fight Fans Night
|Haikou, China
|KO (Left Hook)
|2
|
|- align="center" bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2018-09-29
|Win
| align="left" | Fabio
|Wu Zhun Fight
|Macau, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#c5d2ea"
|2018-08-25
|NC
| align="left" | Nafi Bilalovski
|Glory 57: Shenzhen
|Shenzhen, China
|No Contest (Accidental Foul)
|1
|2:43
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2018-06-02
|Win
| align="left" | Adrian Maxim
|Glory 54: Birmingham
|Birmingham, England
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#FFBBBB"
|2018-01-20
|Loss
| align="left" | Thodkhui MR.Manas
|Emei Legend
|Guizhou, China
|Ext. R TKO (Broken Eyes)
|4
|
|- align="center" bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2018-01-20
|Win
| align="left" | Singmanee Kaewsamrit
|Emei Legend
|Guizhou, China |
9811_4 | |Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2017-12-31
|Win
| align="left" | Brice Delval
|SEF
|China
|Decision
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#FFBBBB"
|2017-12-09
|Loss
| align="left" | Bailey Sugden
|Glory 49: Rotterdam
|Rotterdam, Netherlands
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2017-11-18
|Win
| align="left" | Maksim Petkevich
|Emei Legend 25
|Guizhou, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2017-10-14
|Win
| align="left" | Masaya Kubo
|Glory 46: China
|Guangzhou, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2017-10-14
|Win
| align="left" | Quade Taranaki
|Glory 46: China
|Guangzhou, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2017-08-05
|Win
| align="left" | Spencer Brown
|Emei Legend 22
|Bangkok, Thailand
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2017-07-09
|Win
| align="left" | Mahachai M.U.Den
|Topking World Series
|China
|KO
|2
|
|- align="center" bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2017-06-17
|Win |
9811_5 | | align="left" | Abramenko
|Emei Legend 20 & Top King World Series
|Emeishan, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2017-05-20
|Win
| align="left" | Wilson Sanches Mendes
|Glory 41: Holland
|Den Bosch, Netherlands
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2017-04-28
|Win
| align="left" | Merey
|Emei Legend 18
|Dujiangyan, China
|KO (Knee Strike)
|1
|
|- align="center" bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2017-02-25
|Win
| align="left" | Mr.Sompoch
|Emei Legend 16
|Xichang, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2017-01-14
|Win
| align="left" | Sebastien Arias
|Top King World Series
|Hohhot, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2016-12-31
|Win
| align="left" | Masaya Saeki
|Emei Legend 15
|China
|Decision
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2016-11-19
|Win
| align="left" | Kang Minsuk
|Emei Legend 14
|Emeishan, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#FFBBBB"
|2016-10-15
|Loss
| align="left" | Victor Pinto |
9811_6 | |Emei Legend 13 & Thai Fight
|Emeishan, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2016-09-23
|Win
| align="left" | Jonnata
|Emei Legend 12
|Emeishan, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2016-07-10
|Win
| align="left" | Padsanlek Rachanon
|Top King World Series 9
|Luoyang, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#FFBBBB"
|2016-06-05
|Loss
| align="left" | Antoine Habash
|Emei Legend 9
|Chengdu, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2016-05-17
|Win
| align="left" | Bohdan
|Emei Legend 8
|Chengdu, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2016-05-13
|Win
| align="left" | Yang Zhenhua
|United Fighting Union
|Shenzhen, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2016-04-16
|Win
| align="left" | Horoki Tanaka
|Superstar Fight 2
|Changsha, China
|TKO (Ref. Stoppage)
|3
|
|- align="center" bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2016-03-12
|Win
| align="left" | Arslan
|Emei Legend 6
|Xichang, China |
9811_7 | |TKO (Throw in the towel)
|2
|
|- align="center" bgcolor="#FFBBBB"
|2016-02-27
|Loss
| align="left" | Singdam Kiatmuu9
|Superstar Fight 1
|Changsha, China
|TKO (Broken Arm)
|1
|
|- align="center" bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2016-02-20
|Win
| align="left" | Dima
|World Fighting Series
|Quanzhou, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2016-01-30
|Win
| align="left" | Lei Penghui
|Emei Legend 5
|Wenjiang, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2016-01-30
|Win
| align="left" | Banpetch
|Emei Legend 5
|Wenjiang, China
|Decision (Split)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2015-12-22
|Win
| align="left" | Stallan
|Emei Legend 4
|Panzhihua, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#FFBBBB"
|2015-12-06
|Loss
| align="left" | Raampetch
|MAX Muaythai
|Bangkok, Thailand
|Decision (Unanimous)
|5
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2015-11-28
|Win
| align="left" | Sugita
|Wulin Duel
|Xinhua, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#FFBBBB"
|2015-11-08
|Loss |
9811_8 | | align="left" | Fanta
|MAX Muaythai
|Bangkok, Thailand
|Decision (Unanimous)
|5
|3:00
|-
! colspan="8" style="background:white" |
|- bgcolor="#FFBBBB"
|2015-10-04
|Loss
| align="left" | Kiatpetch
|MAX Muaythai
|Bangkok, Thailand
|Decision (Unanimous)
|5
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2015-09-13
|Win
| align="left" | Padsanlek Rachanon
|MAX Muaythai
|Bangkok, Thailand
|Decision (Unanimous)
|5
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2015-08-30
|Win
| align="left" | Nontachai Sor.Jor.Surapoj
|MAX Muaythai
|Pattaya, Thailand
|Decision (Unanimous)
|5
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2015-08-16
|Win
| align="left" | Yu Haiyang
|ACC
|Langzhong, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#c5d2ea"
|2015-07-15
|Draw
| align="left" | Longchai
|MAX Muaythai
|Pattaya, Thailand
|Draw (Majority)
|5
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2015-06-13
|Win
| align="left" | Arai Shi
|WFK
|Xinxiang, China
|Decision (Unanimous)
|3
|3:00
|- bgcolor="#CCFFCC"
|2014-12-27
|Win
| align="left" | Palmer Kex
|I am National Hero |
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