Time Warner to snag NBA TV.

John Dempsey of Variety reports that Time Warner is the "frontrunner" to take over the operations of NBA TV.

This comes in the wake of reports that NBA TV is offering buy-outs to sixty-eight of its employees, in anticipation of turning "the channel over to a new operator in the coming months." The news certainly is not out of the blue; the league has been considering "selling a stake in its media assets", including NBA TV and NBA.com, since last November. Commissioner David Stern:

We are thinking about expanding the ownership base of our digital assets to include a media company. We anticipate a new deal will make both NBA TV and NBA.com more robust. ... To be engaged with a company like Time Warner or a company like Disney on either a digital or global scale is to engage partners who bring their expertise and the scope of their businesses in ways that we don't have yet and might not even be the best investment of our resources. ... As those negotiations unfold, you will see [Time Warner] having a larger opportunity in our digital assets.

If Time Warner were to take over NBA TV, the network may be able to get more exposure. Currently, NBA TV is "relegated to digital sports tiers ... If Time Warner, which owns cable systems reaching more than 14 million subscribers, agreed to shift NBA TV from sports tiers to digital basic, the network would add millions of new customers."

According to Dempsey, the only other media company in the running with Time Warner is Comcast. While the league would benefit if Comcast moved NBA TV to its basic cable package, giving 24 million households access to the network without having to pay extra (10 million more households than Time Warner), look for the NBA to keep NBA TV 'in house', so to speak. The league recently completed an eight-year television deal with Time Warner owned TNT, and one expects that league officials are more apt to negotiate with a corporation with which it is already partnered.

Related: "NBA media to Turner?" and "NBA to sell itself."

Link to Variety article found via The FanHouse.