The 2026 NBA playoffs were the first time since 1984 that neither TNT nor TBS aired them, and a report suggests that Warner Bros. Discovery is feeling financial pressure as a result.
The report comes from Guggenheim analyst Mike Morris. According to Morris, advertising revenue for Warner Bros. Television division (chiefly TNT and TBS) is down 21% year-over-year. Notably, advertising revenue was only down 5% year-over-year in Q1.
That decrease is not particularly surprising when you factor in that this year-over-year comparison includes the NBA playoffs — by far the most-watched part of the NBA season — which also happened to be when TNT had the most games on air. It would be extremely surprising if advertising revenue did not decline with the loss of such a premium product.
But it does highlight how important the NBA was to TNT and just how significant the loss seems to have been, despite public claims that the network could survive without it. During this same time period, TNT aired the NCAA Tournament final (most of the rest of the tournament was in Q1) and the Stanley Cup Final. According to Morris, those two events offset the NBA’s advertising losses by four percentage points, but that wasn’t enough to offset an overall 21% advertising decline.
This would be a much easier decline to witness when cable was printing money in its glory days. Cable networks like TNT charge cable companies a fee for each subscriber to the channel. When most Americans had cable, those fees printed money. But with the rise of cord-cutting, that is no longer the case, though they still remain profitable.
All of this will make it very interesting to see what happens when Paramount acquires Warner Bros. Discovery.
About Manny Soloway
Manny Soloway is a Iowa based writer focusing on TV ratings. He is also the founder of the TV Media Blog substack.