By David Bauder, Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --It’s not just the city of Cleveland that’s happy with LeBron James and his comeback Cavaliers.
The seven-game series with the Golden State Warriors was the most-watched NBA Finals since 1998, the year Michael Jordan won the last of his six titles, the Nielsen company said Tuesday. Game 7 on Sunday, seen by 31 million viewers, was the most popular individual Finals game since Jordan’s clincher – with 10 million more people watching than during any other playoff game this year.
It was a winner-take-all game for the NBA championship involving the league’s two best players, and it went down to the last minute.
“I’m sure (ABC) wishes they were able to foresee that and price their ads accordingly,” said Jon Swallen, chief research officer for Kantar Media.
The series as a whole averaged 20.2 million viewers, Nielsen said. No NBA Finals that didn’t involve Jordan has scored as high since 1989. The last time Cleveland was in the Finals, in 2007, the series averaged 9.3 million viewers.
Kantar Media estimates that ABC earned $295 million in advertising revenue from the seven-game series, or about $120 million more than if it had been a four-game sweep. While ABC still would have earned advertising revenue for entertainment programming if there weren’t extra games, it wouldn’t have been that much more, Swallen said.
ABC sets ad rates before the playoffs begin, with prices escalating if the Finals go to six or seven games. But since the network couldn’t have predicted a finale that was the year’s most popular program after the Super Bowl and the Oscars, Sunday’s advertisers got a relative bargain, he said.
That includes ABC: an estimated 15 percent of Sunday’s ads were touting upcoming ABC shows, and exposure before 31 million people can significantly boost awareness of the network’s upcoming shows, he said.
The NBA series also boosted ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, who records a show to air before each night’s game in the East, and after the game out West. Thursday’s episode, with Oprah Winfrey, drew an all-time best 4.8 million viewers for a Kimmel show.
For the week, the games helped ABC to an average of 10.5 million viewers in prime time. CBS and NBC were tied for second with 4.57 million viewers, Fox had 3.1 million, Univision had 2.6 million, Telemundo had 1.4 million, ION Television had 1.3 million and the CW had 900,000.
Fox News Channel was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.04 million viewers in prime time. HGTV had 1.56 million, TBS had 1.42 million, USA had 1.31 million and Disney had 1.3 million.
NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.9 million viewers. ABC’s “World News” was second with 7.8 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.5 million viewers.
Below are primetime viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for June 13-19. Listings include the week’s ranking and viewership.
1. NBA Finals Game 7: Cleveland at Golden State, ABC, 31.02 million viewers.
2. “NBA Trophy Presentation,” ABC, 27.77 million.
3. NBA Finals, Game 6: Golden State at Cleveland, ABC, 20.7 million.
4. NBA Finals, Game 5, Cleveland at Golden State, ABC, 20.54 million.
5. “America’s Got Talent” (Tuesday), NBC, 11.54 million.
6. “Game of Thrones,” HBO, 7.66 million.
7. “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 6.91 million.
8. “NCIS,” CBS, 6.88 million.
9. “American Ninja Warrior,” NBC, 6.84 million.
10. “NCIS: New Orleans,” CBS, 6.726 million.
11. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 6.725 million.
12. “NBA Countdown: Game 6,” ABC, 6.39 million.
13. “Person of Interest,” CBS, 6.27 million.
14. “NBA Countdown: Game 7,” ABC, 6.1 million.
15. “Blue Bloods,” CBS, 5.89 million.
16. “NBA Countdown: Game 5,” ABC, 5.65 million.
17. Copa America Soccer: Mexico vs. Chile, Univision, 5.41 million.
18. “To Tell the Truth” (Tuesday, 10 p.m.), ABC, 5.22 million.
19. “To Tell the Truth” (Tuesday, 8 p.m., ABC, 5.21 million.
20. “Hawaii Five-0,” CBS, 5.19 million.
SCHROM x Yacht Club and Be Electric Studios Launch Electric XR for Virtual Production
SCHROM x Yacht Club, a full-service live-action, tabletop, and postproduction company, has teamed with Be Electric Studios, a soundstage, equipment rental, and virtual production company, to launch Electric XR, a virtual production collective.
Industry veteran Thomas Rossano will lead the new venture, which provides advanced virtual production solutions across multiple facilities. He brings over 25 years of experience in live-action, tabletop, postproduction and talent curation to enhance Electric XR’s offerings as a resource for brands and agencies, as well as other production companies in need of virtual production solutions. Additionally Rossano continues to serve as EP at XR New York (XR-NY), a role he’s held since December 2022. SCHROM x Yacht Club originally established XR-NY to help provide XR services for third-party rentals. While XR-NY will continue to function independently for SCHROM X Yacht Club, it now operates under the Electric XR umbrella.
Rossano’s expertise spans producing live-action commercials, branded content, interactive and experiential content. In addition to leading Electric XR, he holds responsibilities at SCHROM x Yacht Club which include driving business development, collaborating with sales reps and expanding the company’s creative talent network. Rossano’s career includes serving as an exec producer at Hungry Man for about 11 years, right from that company’s inception. He then went on to become a partner at Station Film where he also had a lengthy tenure. Later he was a partner at PRISM. Then after the pandemic hit, he became a freelance EP for nearly two years, looking into opportunities in virtual production, which led him to XR NY and now Electric XR. Over the years, he has produced high-profile... Read More