Turner Network Television

Here's rooting for a seven-game NBA Eastern Conference final series between Cleveland and Orlando. Not because the teams have played the best basketball ever. It's just that when the East is over, TNT's NBA coverage ends too. No more Reggie Miller pouncing on Charles Barkley's (oversized) body after Barkley had mocked Miller's (oversized) ears when Miller was a kid in Riverside. No more of the authority Doug Collins brings as analyst.

Steven Bochco, one of television's most successful producers but absent from prime time since the spring of 2006, will return this year with a new legal drama for TNT. The cable channel said Thursday it has ordered 10 episodes of "Raising the Bar," a series about lawyers who went to school together but now find themselves working on opposite sides of the aisle. It will star Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Gloria Reuben, Jane Kaczmarek, Teddy Sears and Melissa Sagemiller. Bochco, 64, who created the series with David Feige, previously produced "Hill Street Blues," "L.A.

Ray Romano and Mike Royce, partners in the Emmy-winning "Everybody Loves Raymond," will write and executive produce a pilot, "Men of a Certain Age," for TNT, the network has announced. Romano also will star in the project as a divorced father and one of three longtime friends approaching midlife. The project is the latest in TNT's new push to expand its weekday prime- time schedule with original scripted dramas. The cable network has green-lighted "Raising the Bar," a Steven Bochco project starring Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Gloria Reuben and Jane Kaczmarek, and "Truth in Advertising," a series by the team behind its biggest hit, "The Closer."

Walt Disney Co.'s ABC and ESPN and Time Warner Inc.'s TNT agreed Wednesday to pay the National Basketball Assn. $7.4 billion over eight years for rights to televise its games and, in one of the first deals of its kind, stream action on the Internet and mobile devices. The deal, which begins in 2008 and runs through the 2015-16 season, works out to an average of about $930 million a year. That's a 22% increase over the $765-million average under the current agreement, industry sources said.

ABC Sports bypassed the Clipper-Phoenix Sun series, but if TNT executives are disappointed they didn't get a Clipper-Laker matchup in the second round of the NBA playoffs, they weren't saying so Sunday. "While a 'Hallway Series' would have captured a great deal of attention locally, as well as nationally, the Clippers have great underdog appeal," TNT spokesman Jeff Pomeroy said.

Not only do hard-core and casual basketball fans watch TNT's studio show "Inside the NBA." So do the players, who aren't always pleased with what they hear and let their feelings be known, almost instantly. The Phoenix Suns' Raja Bell is the latest to vent -- \o7at halftime\f7. And that has helped make the show a much-talked-about hit, one regarded by many as the best sports show of its kind on television. It was Tuesday night, Game 4 of the Western Conference finals.

When TNT started calling itself the network that "knows drama" four years ago, it set a course that will culminate June 10 with the debut of "Into the West"-- a big, expensive original miniseries the network hopes will be the Great Buffalo of summer television. In six two-hour episodes, the multigenerational saga covers seven decades and follows two families, the wheel-making Wheelers who leave Wheelerton, Va.

TNT is off to a record pace in TV's summer ratings derby. According to figures from Nielsen Media Research, the cable network rounded up 7 million total viewers for Monday's premiere of "The Closer," with Kyra Sedgwick as an expert criminal interrogator. That's the best showing ever for any original series on basic cable. Meanwhile, TNT continues to corral viewers for "Into the West," a six-week miniseries from executive producer Steven Spielberg.

After the breast-baring finale of the Super Bowl halftime show, the NBA and broadcast partner TNT are considering implementing a delay system to avoid televising any unexpected incidents at the league's All-Star game on Feb. 15 at Staples Center.

Early indications are that Sunday night's NBA All-Star game drew more than 20 million viewers, making it the most-watched basketball game on cable television. TNT, televising an NBA All-Star game for the first time, reported an overnight cable rating of 9.8. Last year's All-Star game on NBC drew a 9.7 overnight rating for all television households, which translates to about 28 million viewers. NBC is in 19% more homes than TNT.