NBA Rights Shuffle Ends 'Inside the NBA' Era

Ernie Johnson announced Wednesday that the 2026-27 season will be his last hosting "Inside the NBA," as a corporate reshuffling of broadcast rights has already pushed the show from TNT to ESPN. Johnson, 70, said, "It's just time." The show is expected to end after the season, with Charles Barkley also saying this will be his final season.

Who Controls the Broadcast

The league split its digital package among ESPN, NBC's streaming service Peacock and Amazon Prime Video after TNT Sports lost the NBA's broadcast cable rights in 2025. The show now airs on ESPN. That shift in who holds the rights sets the terms for a program built around its hosts and the conversations they shaped: "Inside" began as part of Turner's NBA coverage and typically set the tone on Thursday nights, and sometimes Monday and Tuesday nights, for discussion in the NBA community.

The show won 21 Sports Emmy Awards, including six for Best Daily Show. Johnson won eight Sports Emmys for Outstanding Sports Personality, Studio Host. Awards and familiar routines couldn't insulate the program from the corporate decisions around broadcast rights.

Johnson joined Turner in 1989 and moved full-time to NBA coverage and "Inside" in 1990. He had worked Braves games with his father, Ernie Johnson Sr., a longtime Atlanta Braves broadcaster, for three years. On "Inside," Johnson directed conversations and segments featuring Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O'Neal. When Barkley or O'Neal made a remark, Johnson's familiar response was, "Come on, man."

A Show Built in Conversation

Tim Kiely, the longtime producer of "Inside," said Wednesday that he wanted a conversational show with little or no teleprompter. He recalled Johnson's off-camera humor as "really dry-wit and snarky funny," while his scripted delivery sounded "mechanical." Kiely once switched off the teleprompter during a show. "We were winging it the whole time," he said.

Johnson was angry, Kiely recalled, and left the studio. Kiely followed him, and a coffee cup Johnson had thrown flew past Kiely's face and smashed against a wall. The next day, Kiely said, he left a cup on Johnson's desk that read "Going Postal." Johnson loved it. The episode captures a production built not only around a script, but around the people in the room and the friction between them.

Johnson was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2003. Chemotherapy caused hair loss, and he has kept his hair cut close since. The lymphoma and prostate cancer discovered in 2019 are in remission. He also spoke publicly about his son Michael, who had Duchenne muscular dystrophy and died in 2021 at 33.

What Remains After the Final Season

In 2020, Johnson, Barkley and Smith consoled O'Neal after Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash. Bryant's daughter Gianna was aboard the helicopter, which was carrying nine people to a basketball tournament in Newbury Park, California. Johnson spoke at the 2016 funeral of Craig Sager, a Turner NBA sideline reporter who died of leukemia.

Johnson said long hours of preparation and his recovery from bypass surgery 14 months earlier led him to take some things off his plate. He'll continue working on the NCAA basketball tournament for TNT and CBS and plans to focus more on his production company, 32 Bowties, which he said would tell "feel-good" sports stories. He also won the "Black Masters," an annual golf tournament among the show's four hosts in Braselton, Georgia.

The source describes no grassroots response or community-led effort around the show's ending. What it does describe is a program whose future followed the movement of corporate broadcast rights, while its host steps away after a long run. Johnson's final season will close a show with 21 Sports Emmy Awards—and a place in NBA discussion that a rights deal couldn't preserve.