Will Hornets fans get a local call for broadcasts of NBA road games this season?
Charlotte Hornets fans will get a local-origination telecast from home games this season.
That doesn’t mean Fox Sports Southeast’s announcers will travel with the team.
Eric Collins, Dell Curry and Ashley Shahamadi will call the Hornets’ season-opener Wednesday, on the road against the Cleveland Cavaliers. However, they will do so from a video feed in Spectrum Center, rather than be at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse.
That will be the norm this season in the NBA, in response to the pandemic, according to FSSE spokesman Brad Bernstein. In an email to The Observer, Bernstein said home teams would provide video for both teams’ telecasts, with announcers for each road team calling games remotely.
FSSE’s telecast of the Hornets’ two preseason games in Orlando, Fla., used the Magic’s broadcasters. Bernstein said that wouldn’t be the case in the regular season.
The Hornets’ radio broadcasts of road games will also be done remotely from Spectrum Center, by new play-by-play announcer Sam Farber.
The NBA has announced only the first half of a 72-game schedule. While FSSE will televise all 38 Hornets games announced so far, most fans who have cut the cord from traditional cable aren’t getting those games due to a carriage-fee issue involving Sinclair, the parent company of FSSE and other regional sports networks (RSNs).
The RSNs that broadcast games for the Hornets and the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes are no longer available on popular streaming services FuboTV, Hulu, SlingTV or YouTube TV.
NBA League Pass — a subscription streaming package to watch out-of-market games — blacks out games locally (although, using a VPN to trick the service into thinking you’re in a different location could potentially work).
Fans in the Charlotte region are able to watch the games one of four ways: AT&T TV, AT&T TV NOW, DIRECTV or Spectrum. The cable offering of Spectrum, the satellite required for DIRECTV and the two-year commitment for AT&T TV leaves just one streaming option for watching the Hornets and Hurricanes: AT&T TV NOW.
This story was originally published December 20, 2020 at 12:19 PM with the headline "Will Hornets fans get a local call for broadcasts of NBA road games this season?."
