Great Moments in All-Star History: Hey, it’s An All-Star Game on NBC! What a Concept!

Hey hey, it’s Marv Albert calling hockey!  Marv and John Davidson and Bill Clement call the open of the NHL’s 1992 All-Star Game in Philly.  Cool opening feature.  Oh, and stay tuned for my thoughts on the NHL getting it’s All-Star Game on broadcast TV.

All-Star Musical Performers to Make You Drive Nail Through Skull

 

Pop-rockers Simple Plan

The NHL always has some high-profile musical guests to perform at it’s All-Star Weekend.  The Backstreet Boys sang the national anthem at the height of their popularity, to chuckles from some NHL players.  The Barenaked Ladies put on an awesome outdoor show in Minnesota in 2004.  Usher hosted a Jonas Brothers concert at last year’s game in Atlanta.

This year, the league hasn’t quite given their all in finding a popular musical act.  When I read “Montreal-based acts” in the headline for the performers, the idea of Arcade Fire giving the rocker-cred The Hives gave to last year’s game raced through my head.  But no, it will only be lame pop-punkers Simple Plan and some artsy stuff:

Great Moments in All-Star History: OK, Let’s Get the Owen Nolan Stuff Over With, Plus Other Great Stuff From 1997

Throughout today and tomorrow, we’ll be presenting you some great moments in the All-Star Game’s history on Television.

Strange.  Does anyone else think this is the last uniquely memorable moment from an All-Star Game?  Absolutely.  But there’s more from that game on FOX, check out this feature on Pavel Bure’s performance, with Dave Strader and Darren Pang calling the game on NHL Int’l:

Finally, Wayne Gretzky to Mario Lemieux, doesn’t get much better, does it?

VERSUS Pres. Jamie Davis Continues Assertiveness, Claims “No desire” to Share with ESPN

 

VERSUS President Jamie Davis

As Neil Best points out in his Watchdog blog, before Jamie Davis got to VERSUS, prior chieftons at the network seemed to be pretty open to ESPN getting back into hockey.  You always heard quotables like “We’re open to hearing from them” or “We’ll wait for them to contact us first”.  You didn’t really believe that TV executives talked like that, but it was nice to hear the idea that VERSUS was open to it.

Well, in our second post about the new VERSUS regime – headed by new President Jamie Davis – it is clear that this new gang in town has completely changed the way VERSUS is thinking:

Before Davis’ arrival, Versus usually left the door open a crack to the notion of at least talking to ESPN about subcontracting its exclusive cable rights, but Davis said: “No desire to do so.”

What’s Coming Up Today

Good morning, hope your Saturday’s started on a good note.  We’ll be a tad off rotation today.  Expect actual posts at 9:30, 11, 12:30, and 2.  But popping in throughout the day will be awesome videos of great moments in All-Star TV history.  It’ll all be capped off with our Superskills Liveblog at 7PM.  Won’t you join us?

French Website: Phoenix, Carolina Next in NHL All-Star Game Line

 

Phoenix was originally supposed to get the All-Star Game in 2006

 

 

Good morning folks, we open the day with some breaking news from RDS on the future of the All-Star Game (Translated Poorly):

According to the news obtained by RDS, the next game of the stars, in 2011, will take place at Phoenix. The next year, the annual game will not have place because of the Olympic Games to Vancouver. Afterward, the Hurricanes of the Caroline should be the next organizers of this encounter.

There you go.  Congrats to Phoenix, and the Hurricanes of the Caroline for getting the NHL’s mid-season showdown in 2011 and 2012.  Columbus, Ottawa, Washington, New Jersey and Pittsburgh should all be in line sometime after that.  But these are two solid choices to help the NHL grow the game in some non-traditional hockey markets.

We Interrupt This Day Off For Shocking News: The NHL Drew a 1.0 for an Indoor Game

We’ll this is unexpected.  Check out this news from SBD via Sports Media Watch:

Rangers/Penguins, NBC’s first Sunday afternoon NHL telecast of the season, drew a 1.0/2 final rating, up 25% from a 0.8/2 for the comparable Bruins/Rangers game last year. Excluding the two Winter Classics, the 1.0 is the highest rating for a regular season NHL telecast on NBC since regional coverage drew a 1.2 in March 2007.

Last season, none of NBC’s post-Winter Classic NHL telecasts drew a 1.0 rating.

So far this season, NBC is averaging a 1.8 rating for two NHL telecasts, up 20% from a 1.5 through two games last year.

Good news for NBC, who will likely see another ratings jump from Detroit-Pittsburgh in a couple weeks, which will blow Rangers-Montreal from last year out of the water.  The NHL keeps trending up on TV.

Since we have you for a moment, please join us tomorrow, starting at 9:30 AM for an All-Star Extravaganza (To Avoid Suspension From the NHL).  We’ll have All-Star themed posts and a ton of video from past All-Star games to get you ready for our Skills Competition Liveblog at 7PM (Unless some larger blog decides to do one, in which case were SOL and JWF). 

We Take it Back, One More Press Release: CBC’s All-Star Coverage Features Always Entertaining Bettman-MacLean Summit

 

Hockey’s brightest stars light up CBC’S HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA this weekend, as the best players in the game descend upon Montreal for the NHL’s All-Star celebration. The 2009 NHL All-Star Weekend on CBC gets underway on Saturday, January 24 at 6:30 p.m. ET with Scotiabank Hockey Tonight.

 

Hosted by Ron MacLean, Scotiabank Hockey Tonight features a special behind-the-scenes look at Washington Capitals luminary Alex Ovechkin. At 7 p.m. ET, CBC’S HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA presents the NHL All-Star Super Skills as hockey’s hottest players strut their stuff in an array of skills competitions. During the intermission of the NHL Super Skills competition, the NHL’s rookie and sophomore classes hit the ice for the NHL Young Stars Game.

To Finish Your Thursday, Sirius/XM’s All-Star Coverage

 

NEW YORK (January 22, 2009) – SIRIUS XM Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) announced today that it will offer hockey fans comprehensive coverage of 2009 NHL All-Star Weekend with live play-by-play of the NHL All-Star Game and the NHL Superskills Competition plus daily talk programming from Montreal, Quebec today, January 22 through Sunday, January 25 on NHL Home Ice, the only 24-hour radio channel dedicated to the NHL.

Highlights of the VERSUS NHL Conf. Call

Doc Emrick, Eddie Olczyk and Marc Fein, Executive VP of Programming Production & Business Operations of VERSUS all took in a conference call with some reporters on Wednesday.  Here are some of the key things they said:

Fein on VERSUS’ Recent Success: The NHL coming off a hugely successful winter classic we think is just terrific and with Versus our ratings are up in viewership almost 20% and overall last year Versus garnered the largest viewership gain overall among all cable sports networks in terms of households, viewers and key male demographics.

So with Hockey and everything else in the network really on the upswing with the winter classic and NHL it’s just a good time for the All-Star game to hit and as Katie mentioned we’re going to make a huge night on Sunday night out of it.

Mike Emrick on Montreal: But it’s the notion of how Montreal does everything. They do it with class and appreciation for the history of the game and I can’t wait to see what they’re going to do just before the game starts. I don’t know what the presentation of the anthem will be like I’m sure it will be dramatic. But I know one thing there will be 21,273 there, which will set a record for attendance for an All-Star game.