Posted on 05/12/2009 9:32:41 AM PDT by buccaneer81
Bob Hunter commentary: NHL hidden in plain sight on Versus Tuesday, May 12, 2009 3:09 AM By Bob Hunter THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Unless you know exactly where to look on your cable-TV lineup, it probably has been easy to miss much of the NHL's postseason.
Unless you know exactly where to look on your cable-TV lineup, it probably has been easy to miss much of the NHL's postseason.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
In the spring, I usually make a point of asking people if they are watching the NHL playoffs. For some reason, the negative responses always surprise me.
Last week, one conversation jumped from the Buckeyes to the Indians to the Cavs. After a friend had gushed about LeBron James and complained about the lack of suspense in Cavs playoff games against Detroit and Atlanta, I asked him if he had watched any of the NHL playoffs.
"I didn't know they were on," he said.
He might have been joking, but it wasn't easy to tell. The NHL playoffs weren't on his radar. He didn't once consider watching them. He gathered that the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins were involved, but he didn't know who they were playing or when.
A few days later, I told another guy how entertaining the NHL playoffs were, and he asked me which channel carried them. If my response had been in Swahili, he couldn't have looked more confused.
"What's Versus?" he said.
He wasn't joking. When I relayed this to one of my sports department colleagues, he had his own story to tell. He was at a friend's house where the kids tuned to the Penguins game after he told them it was on.
"We didn't know what Channel 70 was," one of them said.
None of these people are huge hockey fans, obviously, but maybe that's the point. At this rate, they aren't likely to be anytime soon. All might have loved the dazzling Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby show -- two highly skilled hockey giants who don't like each other is as good as it gets in sports. But only one of their games was on NBC -- at 1 p.m., when most of us aren't watching -- and the rest of that riveting Washington-Pittsburgh series has been on old Whatchamacallit, anonymous Channel 70.
If the games were on ESPN, there would be no discussion. All of the above probably would have clicked their way into an NHL game at some point, and might have even watched. They would also have been targets of the ESPN hype machine, which has no reason to hype the NHL now. Even if they weren't interested, they would know the games were on.
Last week, when the Chicago Tribune asked Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz about Chicago viewers who were having trouble finding his team's first postseason games in years, he pointed directly at Versus.
"A lot of people don't even realize that Versus exists," Wirtz said. "You just have to grin and bear it. It's a league-mandated decision."
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman took his league to Versus, then called the Outdoor Life Network, in 2005 because he didn't like the treatment it was getting on ESPN. At the time, his irritation was understandable, and OLN made a switch easy for him: It offered the NHL $72.5 million a year in a three-year deal that was extended last year.
But it's time to recognize this disaster for what it is. Versus is in 75 million households, compared to ESPN's 98 million. And, as noted, a good chunk of those Versus households don't even know it's there.
A few days ago, USA Today reported that Versus reached an average of 236,000 households during the regular season, off 43 percent from ESPN's last regular season (2003-04). Compared to ESPN's playoff ratings at this point that year, Versus is down 35 percent. For a league that wants to move into the American mainstream, this is a curious way to get there.
ESPN is reportedly interested in bringing the NHL back and it's time to move; Versus might be amenable to giving up its exclusivity now to lower its costs. When its deal with the NHL was first struck, OLN saw it as a steppingstone to contracts with other major sports, deals that might eventually make it an ESPN competitor.
That hasn't happened. Yesterday afternoon, while sports fans were watching ESPN's SportsCenter, Versus was airing a 30-minute infomercial for prostate relief pills.
It says a lot about how well this experiment has worked.
Bob Hunter is a sports columnist for The Dispatch.
bhunter@dispatch.com
You guys still can't have Rick Nash ;-) (Toronto sports media taunt us Blue Jackets fans about picking him up at the end of his contract.)
While I agree with many of the problems of being on VS his complaint is primarily based on a lie: NHL commissioner Gary Bettman took his league to Versus, then called the Outdoor Life Network, in 2005 because he didn’t like the treatment it was getting on ESPN.
Bettman didn’t go to OLN because he didn’t like the way ESPN was treating the league, ESPN opted out of their contract with the NHL, it was OLN or nothing. And to some level it’s been good for the league, for one thing OLN/ VS has been paying more than the contract ESPN opted out of, and they actually do put on supporting shows to help grow the audience. Slowly but surely VS is growing their audience and that will help the NHL. Meanwhile ESPN hasn’t made any kind of offer to bring the NHL back, so it’s still really VS or nothing.
Go Hurricanes!!! Game 6 tonight at RBC will rock, yay Carolina...
That’s what the NBC contract is, NBC pays nothing directly to the NHL, instead splitting the ad revenue. Unfortunately it’s only 20 odd games a year.
Absolutely. I'm a big Ray Whitney fan.
You do realize that picture is over a decade old and meanwhile fighting in the game keeps dropping.
Versus is owned by Comcast. You would think that Comcast then would feature Versus in a somewhat prominent location. You’d be wrong. On my box Versus is channel 126 near the local weather channels and CSPAN2.
I don’t know what the TV ratings are like, but hockey is HUGE down here in the Triangle. The ‘Canes are our only major-league professional team. This area is almost exclusively college sports-oriented (basketball, and to a lesser extent football), but the Hurricanes have won a lot of hearts. My boss’ll be at the RBC tonight for game 6!
}:-)4
ESPN basically told the NHL to go take a hike during the lockout. Even before that, they were treated like the poor step-child, relegated to ESPN2 so long as there was not a poker tournament or Australian Kickboxing scheduled.
Winning a cup will do that! My Habs have been 16 years now without one.
I'd love to see it, but what is Disney's incentive to sign back up for the NHL on ESPN? They cater to the hip-hop generation, and the NBA isn't going to be kicked out of prime time during the NBA playoffs for the NHL playoffs. I don't trust that Bettman is smart enough to expand TV viewership opportunities and television exposure.
Here's another example of Bettman's TV exposure idiocy. I'm in Omaha, 550+ miles and 8 hours away from Denver. A couple of years ago I went to order the Center Ice package so that I could get the Avs games after their owner backed out of Fox Sports RM and formed his own "Altitude" network. Guess what? Omaha is considered home team area for the Avs, so their games were blacked out on Center Ice subscriptions in Omaha. I'm closer to the NHL cities of St. Paul, St. Louis, and Chicago, not that those teams games should have been blacked out either. The only way to get the Avs games would have been to get a dish, which I didn't want to do. Oh, and neither of the 2 local cable companies carried Altitude.
I'd love to see Bettman replaced with a hockey guy - someone like Scotty Bowman or Sweet-Lou Lamoriello or Ken Holland (Detroit GM).
That should be the straw to break Bettman's back, but it won't be.
Holy cow, talk about nonstop action.
I've been to a minor league hocky game (Milw Admirals) and the guys in the minors are every bit as big as any in the NFL with one major difference: the NHL's players are tougher, meaner and in one helluva lot better condition than anyone we've seen on the gridiron -- by far.
Constant action and while on ICE SKATES!!
Unreal.
My bride & I wondered why the game's been so woefully ignored.
Then we realized who plays hockey.
Can't have real men who show their passion and love of a game like that, can we? And of course not to forget, they're nearly all the wrong color.
I've been getting them on Fox Sports South.
Go Canes!
Funny thing about the Pens/Caps — I’m getting the series on the local sports channel, and VS is blacked out, with no alternate channel for the Canes/Bruins (for dropping by during intermissions, at lest).
Hockey is just like basketball, except that men play hockey. :-)
That's how it was here in Columbus during the first round Jackets-Wings series.
True. Ty Cobb was possibly the meanest man in American sports history.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.