Childish and booooooring.
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
NHL ping.
What the puck?
I live near Indy; our cable provider does not carry Versus. Versus carries the IRL. We can’t see most of the races. My boys like hockey, but lament that they have to watch webcasts to actually see any. Sometimes NBC would rather show replays of last year’s snowboarding events than hockey.
I know Versus wants to become an alternative sports cable channel, but it’s a long flight of stairs. That’s my rant for the day.
From what I can tell, the NHL playoffs aren’t getting a 1.0 — http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/04/16/nhl-night-one-playoff-ratings-for-various-games-on-various-networks/16900
From what I can tell, it peaked at 0.4.
That’s understandable.
Versus needs to spend a buck or two on advertising. They do absolutely none in my area. And they're not in HD here, either.
If I was the hockey commissioner and trying to attract new fans I would essentially give the programming away to bigger networks to get more eyes on it. Not bury it away on a little-known network. Die-hard hockey fans will find it but few others. And hockey gets marginalized.
Ask anyone (for example Howard Stern) to have moved to satellite. Their listeners have fallen off a cliff and it is unlikely that someone will just dial on in. How many new listeners is Stern getting these days? The same thing will happen to the NHL - except that it started from a much weaker position.
At least the numbers, miniscule as they may be, are going up.
ESPN would double those numbers even in a bizarre series like Atlanta-Phoenix.
I know here it is.We get it in HD on our cable system and the games look great.
A Red Wings-Hawks Conference Final would be delicious.
I know here it is=I know where it is
the versus deal is a joke. pbr, irl, and bass fishing are the only things on that network most of the time, it shows a game a week during the season and then everyone’s supposed to remember that it exists come april. bettman is an idiot.
fire bettman, send phoenix, florida, la, and the islanders to canada. arizona doesn’t care about the coyotes, florida seems to forget it has a second team, la’s team is in anaheim, and the islanders are stuck in one of the worst facilities in all of professional sports AND they’re overshadowed by the Rangers and Devils.
get rid of the trapezoid, and stop hyping up crosby at the expense of every other player in the league.
if you’re going to partner up with NBC, get PRIME TIME games on the air. sunday afternoons during football season is not a way to get ratings.
i love doc emerick, but can’t they find someone else? i’m tired of them stealing my play-by-play guy for a game i’m not watching.
Right on, bro. And then a Wings/Pens rematch from last year.
The Versus deal has been bad, bad, bad for the NHL.
Back when ESPN had the contract, there were frequently showing 4-5 national games per week between ESPN and ESPN2, and they were wall-to-wall for playoff coverage, showing games simultaneously on the two channels when necessary.
I always had to search for games on Versus during the regular season, and half the playoff games aren’t on national TV. I’m sure Boston and Carolina fans loved the fact that they weren’t been shown at all for the first half of their series, due to the PIT-WAS marquee matchup (which has certainly lived up to its billing!).
I grew up outside Toronto (Detroit can call itself Hockey Town but Toronto is the real Hockey Town) where there was 2 seasons — hockey season and street hockey season when the snow melts. Hockey is on 4-5 nights of the week on free TV and on cable (CBC free and TSN on cable, plus Radio Canada — French CBC) from October to April. Excellent commentators who speak to a knowledgeable audience.
Leafs fans are like Chicago Cubs fans. Very loyal, very critical and always hopeful. Leafs last won the Stanley Cup in 1967 — the last year of the original 6, before expansion to 12 teams that year. Even though the Blue Jays have had good seasons and won the World Series back to back in ‘92 and ‘93 and probably would have had a shot in the strike-shortened ‘94, baseball fans in Toronto would mostly tell you they are hockey fans if prioritizing, then baseball, then football or another sport.
I have watched very little hockey lately especially since my local teams are out of the playoffs (Devils and Rangers). I am sure I would watch more hockey if ESPN still had NHL coverage. Bettman needs to rethink his TV strategy and maybe cut back on the money-losing teams like Phoenix and focus on getting the biggest audience possible for hockey games and playoffs.
A fantastic series. Lives up to the hype.
You want viewers on Versus? You need more Bobke on the coverage!
Fighting comprises 1% of the game. I'll take it any day over the trash talking and thuggery of the NBA.
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