1) Apologies to our Canadian readers (again) as you will have no idea why we're writing this post. For those of us in the states we were again screwed by TV coverage. First it was preempting NBC coverage of an OT playoff game for a horse race, and tonight any US hockey fan who tuned to Versus expecting to see the NHL awards show live, were surprised to see some silly fight show on with a crawl message that the awards ceremony would be shown at 11:00 p.m.!
2) No advance notice or an explanation as to why this change was made. If you go to the Versus web site(link provided) all they say is NHL Awards show: AIRING TONIGHT AT 11PM ET (Originally scheduled for 7PM ET) Instead they showed, 'Fight Night'
3) WE can not think of a reasonable explanation. Unless it was due to technical problems, any other reason is infuriating to say the least! We can only speculate, but we have a suspicion that Versus made the decision because their well publicized fight night would get many more viewers than an end of the year NHL awards ceremony. Hell, the ratings for meaningful NHL playoff games were minuscule, how many folks would have tuned into to see the stars win a silly trophy? Another feather in the cap for Mr. Bettman and the fine job he is doing getting maximum exposure for the game in the U.S.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
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6 comments:
Perhaps it is time for you and other American hockey fans to realize that you are irrelevant. Ratings determine what gets put on the air. If people watched, it gets on the air. Bottom line is people in the US are not watching hockey.
1) The number of folks watching in the states is not what it once was, and you'd think it would be in the leagues interest to try to increase that number.
2) Thus far the last few years it seems Bettman/the NHL is going out of its way to further alienate the remaining US hockey fan
3) Giving us 2 lockouts. Then going with an obscure network to broadcast its games(OLN > Versus) Having playoff games preempted in over time. And last night announce the awards ceremony would be on at 7 only to change the start time at the last moment.
4) BTW, it didn't start till 11:10 p.m. Eastern time. Great job to try to piss off the folks who remain. So Shuck it becomes a viscous circle. Poor ratings- they give us a bad product-screw us with coverage= lower ratings, etc, etc.
1) As for the US not mattering; while it may be true that right now the 6 Canadian franchises account for an astounding 35-40% of ALL league revenue, a large part of that can be traced to the huge change in the exchange rate in the last 5 years
2) In 2002 a Canadian dollar could only buy one .65 cents in US currency. Since players are all paid in green backs, Canadian teams were at a great disadvantage. Thus the Canadian teams(other than Toronto) were compensated by the us teams much like revenue sharing is done now.
3) It got bad enough that 2 teams Quebec and Winnipeg left for greener pastures south of the border. Edmonton barely survived moving as well.
4) If that exchange rate even only slightly reverts back to what it was 2 years ago, teams up north will again be faced with a struggle to make ends meet. By then the US markets will also be failing due to previously referenced incompetence, and thus the whole league could be in jeopardy.
Actually it was contractual probelms with the CBC and Vs. From what I read Vs was planning on showing the CBC feed. The CBC then decided on tape-delaying the awards, which meant VS. was going to have to cut into their contractual requirement to air boxing. So Vs. coultd either cut out of the awards early, OR show them at 11 Eastern.
Not sure if this is exactly correct, but it's the gist of it... I think Mirtle's blog has a better and more in-depth explination, but I'm not sure.
Ignore my last post, apparently it was an even more reasonable explination than that
A kind of funny one too.
Regardless of the reason - whether a technical glitch, contractual obligations, whatever - it's another strike for Bettman. My explanation in this comment to Fischler's latest blog...
http://blogs.msg.com/the_maven/2007/06/good_bad_and_ug.html#comments
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