{"id":370898,"date":"2025-11-11T06:03:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T06:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/370898\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T06:03:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T06:03:10","slug":"fox-could-have-blocked-roundball-rock-from-returning-to-nbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/370898\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox could have blocked ‘Roundball Rock’ from returning to NBC"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NBA is back on NBC, and \u201cRoundball Rock\u201d is back with it. Along with Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird, John Tesh\u2019s iconic theme was a critical part of NBC Sports\u2019 basketball coverage in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

When NBC reacquired NBA rights for this season, the first question everyone asked was, \u201cWill you also bring back \u2018Roundball Rock?<\/a>\u201d Things got a little dicey there<\/a> for a moment, but the theme returned to its rightful home<\/a>, much to the delight of longtime NBA fans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Turns out, Fox had the opportunity to put the kibosh on that return.<\/p>\n

Puck\u2019s John Ourand shared in Monday night\u2019s edition of The Varsity newsletter<\/a> that he had been told Fox, which has a license on the song, also allowed NBC to do so, with the implication that they could have easily said no.<\/p>\n

\u201cI checked in with NBC\u2019s Greg Hughes, who cleared up this mystery,\u201d wrote Ourand. \u201cFox actually has a license on the song and has used \u2018Roundball Rock\u2019 for Big East, Big Ten, and Big 12 college basketball games since 2018. The network has one year left on its deal. \u2018Fox has an exclusive deal for \u2018Roundball Rock\u2019 and had to allow NBC to use the song,\u2019 Hughes confirmed. \u2018They graciously agreed to do so.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Eagle-eared viewers of FS1 college basketball games have indeed noticed \u201cRoundball Rock\u201d being used as part of those broadcasts in recent years. And the fact that they\u2019re still doing so<\/a>, despite NBC now using it once more, led to some confusion.<\/p>\n

The real question here is, did Fox ask for something in return? Surely they understood what a big deal it was for NBC to bring back the iconic theme as part of their basketball coverage and use it across not just NBC but also Peacock. It stands to reason there was quid pro quo for something like that. Perhaps we\u2019ll find out soon\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA is back on NBC, and \u201cRoundball Rock\u201d is back with it. Along with Michael Jordan, Magic…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":370899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[178778,171,24491,157122,114854,178779,173,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-370898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-cfb-on-fs1","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-fs1","11":"tag-john-tesh","12":"tag-nba-on-nbc","13":"tag-roundball-rock","14":"tag-tv","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115529554595517299","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}