Childish and booooooring.
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.
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.
I know here it is.We get it in HD on our cable system and the games look great.
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.
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.
You want viewers on Versus? You need more Bobke on the coverage!
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.
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.
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.
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 agree Bettman needs to go. I geuss that the NHL made a decision. Would they like to be the big fish in the small VERSUS pond or just another fish in the ESPN River. On VERSUS they can have a pre-game and post-game show while on ESPN the game ends and they immediately go to SportsCenter where they barely mention hockey.
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.
My basic Dish Package does not carry Versus so I do not see the playoffs unless it’s on NBC.