The ''WNBA on Lifetime'' refers to the presentation of

Women's National Basketball Association The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is an American professional basketball league. It is composed of twelve teams, all based in the United States. The league was founded on April 22, 1996, as the women's counterpart to the Natio ...

games on the Lifetime television network.

Coverage

From its inaugural season in 1997 to 2000, Lifetime was one of three broadcasters of the WNBA, alongside

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

and

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

. Lifetime as well as NBC and ESPN didn't pay the WNBA in rights fees. By 1999, Lifetime was broadcasting 11 regular-season games on Friday nights, the

All-Star Game An all-star game is an exhibition game that purports to showcase the best players (the "stars") of a sports league. The exhibition is between two teams organized solely for the event, usually representing the league's teams based on region or d ...

Madison Square Garden Madison Square Garden, colloquially known as The Garden or by its initials MSG, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in New York City. It is located in Midtown Manhattan between Seventh and Eighth avenues from 31st to 33rd Street, above Pennsylva ...

and three

playoff The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be eithe ...

dates. In 2000, Lifetime phased out its live broadcasts and replaced them with an original series documenting the lives of WNBA players. The network stated that it wanted to focus on "stories" rather than event coverage; Lifetime transferred its package of games to

ESPN2 ESPN2 is an American multinational pay television network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and Hearst Communications (which owns the remaining 20%). ESPN2 was initially fo ...

. Lifetime's final live WNBA broadcast was Game 1 of the 2000 WNBA Championship on August 24.

Ratings

At the conclusion of the first WNBA season in 1997, Lifetime Television registered a 0.5 household

rating A rating is an evaluation or assessment of something, in terms of quality, quantity, or some combination of both. Rating or ratings may also refer to: Business and economics * Credit rating, estimating the credit worthiness of an individual, c ...

, while ESPN scored a 0.8. Ratings were up 20 percent on Lifetime and 16 percent on ESPN from 1998 to 1999. However by 2000, Lifetime's WNBA ratings were down by 20 percent, and ESPN dropped by 29 percent. Lifetime had created a problem in that being a specialty channel aimed at women, whenever a WNBA game aired on the network, the chances were that they were neglecting male viewers who would otherwise, not watch cable channels marketed towards women.

Commentators

Christine Brennan Christine Brennan (born May 14, 1958) is a sports columnist for ''USA Today'', a commentator on ABC News, CNN, PBS NewsHour and NPR, and a best-selling author. She was the first female sports reporter for the ''Miami Herald'' in 1981, the first ...

(color commentator) *Persefone Contos (studio host) *Maura Driscoll (studio host) *Camille Duvall-Hero (studio host) * Fran Harris (color commentator) *

Ann Meyers Ann Meyers Drysdale (born Ann Elizabeth Meyers; March 26, 1955) is an American former basketball player and sportscaster. She was a standout player in high school, college, the Olympic Games, international tournaments, and the professional level ...

(sideline reporter) *

Reggie Miller Reginald Wayne Miller (born August 24, 1965) is an American former professional basketball player who List of NBA players who have spent their entire career with one franchise, played his entire 18-year National Basketball Association (NBA) ca ...

(color commentator) * Mary Murphy (color commentator) *Meghan Pattyson (color commentator) * Summer Sanders (sideline reporter) *

Michele Tafoya Michele Tafoya is an American former sportscaster. From 2011 to 2022, she was a reporter for NBC Sports, primarily as a sideline reporter for ''NBC Sunday Night Football''. She currently works as a political advisor and makes television appear ...

(play-by-play) *

Suzyn Waldman Suzyn Waldman (born ) is an American sportscaster and former musical theater actress. Since the 2005 season, she has been the color commentator for New York Yankees baseball, working with John Sterling on radio broadcasts, first for WCBS-AM a ...

(play-by-play) In 1997, the American Women in Radio and Television honored Michelle Tafoya with a

Gracie Award The Gracie Awards are awards presented by the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation (AWM) in the United States, to celebrate and honor programming created for women, by women, and about women, as well as individuals who have made exemplary contr ...

for "Outstanding Achievement by an Individual On-Air TV Personality" for her play-by-play calling of WNBA games on Lifetime Television. Upon being let go by the

Sacramento Monarchs The Sacramento Monarchs were a basketball team based in Sacramento, California. They played in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) from 1997 until folding on November 20, 2009. They played their home games at ARCO Arena. The Mona ...

, Mary Murphy was hired by Brian Donlon, Lifetime Television's vice president of sports and executive producer, to be part of its WNBA broadcast team along with Michele Tafoya and Reggie Miller. Murphy started with her own halftime feature, "Murphy's Law" before joining Miller and Tafoya as a game analyst. When Lifetime ended its WNBA broadcasts in 2000, Murphy moved to

for women's NCAA tournament games and WNBA broadcasts while

Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

would bring her on board to call the Pac-12 women's games on FSN in the early 2000s. In the league's inaugural season, Fran Harris was a member of the Houston Comets. She started one game for the

Comets A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ar ...

but played in 25 games coming off he bench, scoring a total of 104 points on the season as the Comets won the first-ever

WNBA Championship The WNBA Finals are the championship series of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) and the conclusion of the league's postseason each fall. The series was named the WNBA Championship until 2002. Starting 2016 Verizon is the officia ...

.Basketball-reference.com
1997 Houston Comets Statistics
Retrieved 2011-03-19. The next season, she was a starter for the

Utah Starzz Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...

. At the end of the season, she was waived from the team's roster, and chose to retire and begin her career in broadcasting with TV partner, Lifetime.

References

External links

* {{Lifetime Shows Lifetime (TV network) original programming English-language television shows Lifetime 1997 American television series debuts 2000 American television series endings 1990s American television series 2000s American television series

Coverage

Ratings

Commentators

See also

References

External links