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The mid’ 90s also saw Channel 4 attempt to revive interest in basketball. This time, however, it was decided to cover the planet’s premier competition, the NBA of America. Interestingly, the BBC had daringly broadcast weekly NBA highlights in 1987 and 1988, although their coverage largely failed, because the programmes were invariably shunted to the early hours of Sunday mornings and were hamstrung by the staid, schoolmistressy presence of host Sally Jones, who seemed completely at odds with the audience and the razzamatazz of the league.


Seven years on, C4 picked up the British rights to the NBA in a three-year deal. Its inaugural coverage of the 1996 season was preluded the previous October by live coverage of a pre-season event at the Docklands Arena involving the NBA’s Houston Rockets and several European teams including the Sheffield Sharks.


The network invested heavily in airtime when coverage of the NBA regular season started in February 1996. Every week the presentation team of Scoop Jackson, Dave Lewis, Carlton Dixon and Mark Webster fronted three distinct programmes. NBA Raw was a Sunday morning magazine programme, while NBA XXL featured complete coverage of the week’s top match, transmitted on Wednesdays around midnight. And NBA 24/7 was a Thursday night wrap-up of the latest action and results.


Basketball fans were well served, with live coverage of the mid-season All-Star Game and the June play-offs. But just as in the mid ’80s, basketball was unable to break out of the margins and take its place as a mainstream sport. Channel 4 continued to apportion plenty of airtime to the NBA for the three seasons of its contract, but in 1998 the competition disappeared from British terrestrial television for the second time in a decade.


was it c4?