The NBA season is up and running again and this year the schedule kicked off on TNT for the season openers with the Miami Heat taking on the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Clippers taking on the Lakers and the airings were very solid across the board for the network.
According to Awful Announcing, the ratings were up from last season for the openers on the schedule and TNT reported that the Bulls and Miami Heat game ended up with "a 3.3 U.S. HH rating and 5.4 million total viewers", making it one of the most viewed games for the network. The report says that the matchup between LeBron James and Derrick Rose was the second best number for an opening game in network history and also that it was the most viewed game on TNT since back when LeBron and company made their debuts in Miami Heat uniforms.
Turner Sports has been working with the NBA for a number of years, including 30 years of broadcasting games and this is the 12th time they have had a doubleheader and even with dealing with the World Series, from earlier in the week, the network was able to get a nice amount of viewers. Obviously the best local ratings were from Miami and Chicago and the two teams played a fairly close game and since it was an exciting matchup it got a nice number for TNT.
The network also said that the doubleheader ratings overall were up over 120 percent this season and that the coverage this season has been off to a good start. The network also looked at social media and said that the game had "more than 2.7 million tweets combined" going on while TNT was airing it. The schedule continues next week on TNT.
