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
Check out some of the Bruins-Canadiens bench clearers from the early 1970s. They were fantastic. I was going to give you a link, but YouTube is down right now.
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.
LMAO...amazes me how these cable networks do this all the time..7 hours of info-mercials. Insanity...even Comedy Central and F/X still after all of these years and the tons of available programming go to info-mercials.
I like Vs. but let’s get real...ESPN/ESPN 2 was indeed the best place for NHL to have ANY kind of life. I am not sure what Vs. will turn into when the NHL goes back.
Not so sure I agree on the Panthers thing there. In the 1990s I went to Panthers games all the time and it was always sold out...14,440 strong. When they moved to Sunrise it dipped because of ticket costs but it’s a bigger arena and they still attract 14k a game on average.
Rodeo, hunting and fishing, I imagine.
My bad - it was the Sunday Wings/Ducks game 5 4:00pm CT start that wasn’t shown on NBC because of TPC coverage.
Versus needs to make itself known. A few bucks spent on promotion would go a long way.
Since VESUS is owned by Comcast I would bet that it’s a problem on non-Comcast cable systems. ON my Comcast VS is on channel 44 right next to ESPN/2 on channels 46 and 47.
My basic Dish Package does not carry Versus so I do not see the playoffs unless it’s on NBC.
Probably 1 out of every 100 bench clearers had some real exciting fighting in them, I can remember a few. The other 99 though were 10 minute of 40 guys paired off and mostly not fighting, usually talking about a good place to go eat after the game.
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