NY Islanders vs. Philadelphia, 7PM, VERSUS
Play by Play: Joe Beninati
Color: Eddie Olczyk
Reporter: Charissa Thompson
William Houston with his weekly numbers:
Hockey Night In Canada pre-game, Friday, (Canadiens 100th anniversary celebration), 1.203 million; Boston Bruins-Canadiens, 1.101 million.
Hockey Night pre-game, Saturday, 523,000; Toronto Maple Leafs-Bruins, 1.453 million (well below season average, probably because of no regional telecasts with the national game); Game 2, Calgary Flames-San Jose Sharks, 810,000.
It was more festivity drawn, but still, the Habs game didn’t do all that worse on an unfamiliar CBC hockey night than the Leafs did in the usual timeslot. Your ratings to date for HNIC are after the jump.
From Ed Sherman of Crain’s Chicago Business:
The bandwagon keeps getting bigger for the Blackhawks.
Saturday’s Hawks-Pittsburgh game on WGN-Ch. 9 did the highest rating for a regular-season game since 1989, with the exception of last year’s Winter Classic. WGN averaged a 3.2 rating for the entire game; 1 ratings point is worth more than 35,000 homes.
The rating nearly doubled to 5.7, as fans tuned in to watch the dramatic overtime victory. So it continues to be all good for the Hawks.
Right on, Chicago. The Hawks continue to struggle to compete with the Bulls in the local ratings race, but building an audience takes time. Intense games like the one in Pittsburgh on Saturday certainly can’t hurt in building the team’s ratings-base.
(NOTE: This will show up every Monday this week on Tuesday on Puck the Media. It’s something we did a couple of times last season. They were fairly popular, and people liked talking about them, so let’s try it on a more permanent basis this year, now that December is upon us.)
Playoff Matchups (If Season Ended Today):
Eastern Conference:
#8 Tampa Bay vs. #1 Washington
#7 Ottawa vs. #2 New Jersey
#6 Atlanta vs. #3 Boston
#5 Buffalo vs. #4 Pittsburgh
Western Conference
#8 Dallas vs. #1 San Jose
#7 Nashville vs. #2 Colorado
#6 Los Angeles vs. #3 Chicago
#5 Phoenix vs. #4 Calgary
U.S. Networks:
NBC: The Peacock is still in a bit of a tough spot here, with no definitive standout ratings winner of a series to obsess over for two weekends. Pittsburgh-Buffalo would almost definitely be taken, because of NBC’s love of the Penguins, and the fact that the Sabres are an insane local ratings draw.
The other game is where NBC needs to take a chance. I’m sorry, Washington fans, but this is not the year to gamble on Washington-Tampa. The fact is, Ovechkin still isn’t a big enough national attraction, sadly. So, why not see if Los Angeles-Chicago pushes the needle a bit. If either game of that series draws over a 1.0 final rating on NBC, they will have sold hockey fans (at least) on another team to follow. At the very least, establish the Hawks existence outside of the Red Wings.
VERSUS: VERSUS, however, would probably show as much of Pittsburgh-Buffalo and Washington-Tampa on alternating nights as they can. That’d probably be the Monday-Friday rotation, with Boston-Atlanta or New Jersey-Ottawa sneaking in on weekends.
As for the 10PM games, They’d likely alternate between the four series when each pair were on the west coast. Kings-Hawks will be shown when that series is out in LA, while Dallas-San Jose will be shown while those games are in the Bay Area. Phoenix-Calgary can be fairly flexible, and alternate with Nashville-Colorado when those games aren’t in the mountain time zone.
Canadian Networks:
CBC/TSN Draft:
1. (CBC) Ottawa/New Jersey
2. (CBC) Phoenix/Calgary
3. (TSN) Buffalo/Pittsburgh
4. (CBC) Tampa Bay/Washington
5. (TSN) Nashville/Colorado
6/7. (CBC/TSN Alternating) Dallas/San Jose and Los Angeles/Chicago
8. (TSN) Atlanta/Boston
CBC gets the first two picks, and there are only two Canadian teams (Ottawa and Calgary) so there you go. After that, it becomes a little sketchy, but TSN will bank on Crosby, while CBC pairs Ovechkin vs. Tampa with Phoenix/Calgary for doubleheaders. To ensure Canadian fans will see all the games (as was done last year), the networks will flip Dallas/San Jose and LA/Chicago at their convenience so they can use the 10PM potential games as doubleheaders.
New Jersey vs. Buffalo, 7PM, VERSUS
Play by Play: Mike Emrick
Color: Billy Jaffe
Reporter: Bob Harwood
We have open thread coming up in a little bit for tonight’s Devils-Sabres game on VERSUS. It’ll be a typical night on the network, though it isn’t a typical week. For the first time in it’s history, VERSUS is airing regular season hockey on three consecutive nights.
The closest VERSUS has come to this is during their incarnation as OLN in 2005-06, when they aired games on Monday & Tuesday, and then the Sunday right before the 2006 Olympics began, as sort of a send-off toward the games. There were also plans that season to do a three-night week, with games airing on a Sunday-Monday-Tuesday. But the game at the time was Dallas-Chicago, which wasn’t as appealing back then, so it was traded in for a doubleheader another time during the year.
It’ll be interesting to see if some extra people tune in this week, just out of the consistency of hockey being on one channel three nights in a row. People love to view out of habit, and that could give VERSUS an advantage here. Plus, people have not had a chance to see Colorado during their stunning early-season success, so catching them now, just before their likely fall out of the top 8, will probably catch some eyes.
All in all, I encourage you to tune into as many of these telecasts as you can. We all know VERSUS has it’s flaws when it comes to coverage and scheduling. But it’s your job to help them see what you want when it comes to broadcasting hockey. If you let them know there’s an audience for a third game each week, I think they won’t be able to ignore it.
This looks like it was done in the 1970’s. Which is an insult to the 1970’s. This was the feed used by the NHL for highlights of Saturday night’s Ottawa-Phoenix game. This was due to the game not being televised by either FS Arizona or… well who exactly should have picked up this game?
The answer is CBC. The network has aired up to three games regionally on various Saturdays this season, why was this game considered so inflexible to fit it’s schedule? The network got this very same matchup at 7PM last year and showed it regionally.
It’s something that’s been discussed a lot in the comments recently, CBC’s treatment of the west coast, and this sort of relates. This game could have been shown at 10PM as a regional feed for just Ottawa, and maybe gotten an okay number of viewers. But the CBC decided that Edmonton-Vancouver needed to be seen in the entire country. A rivalry, perhaps, but it can’t be ignored that CBC showed a game featuring two teams currently outside the playoff picture and didn’t air one with two teams that were.
Perhaps I don’t get Canadian TV enough to do this. Could it be done logically that an Edmonton and Calgary game could be shown at the same time? Can you split those two markets up well enough? It doesn’t matter, even if you couldn’t, you could show an Edmonton game and a Vancouver game at the same time. In a few months, CBC is airing Montreal-LA as the 10PM game. Why not, on some night next year, air a game like that and add in, say, a Minnesota-Vancouver game as a safety telecast, so that if the Habs are still not contending for a playoff spot, you at least have a dependable Northwest division battle to stablize the audience.
The fact is, it’s sad CBC bulks up it’s 7PM slot with so many games, when a Toronto game or a Montreal game alone can get 1.8-2 million viewers a week. Why not try and beef up the 10PM ratings with an additional game? Or, you know God forbid, show the Leafs at 10PM when they’re actually on the west coast? Put it in the too much sense folder, I say.
VERSUS has been doing the guest commentator thing on Hockey Central a lot lately, and it’s going to continue through December. Of course, seeing how Peter Laviolette ended up, they might not be too good a caliber of experts.
Your schedule of Hockey Central guest analysts is after the jump. Yes, Eddie Olczyk counts.
Toronto vs. Boston, 7PM, CBC Full Network/NHL Net
Play by Play: Jim Hughson
Color: Craig Simpson and Mike Milbury
Reporter: Elliotte Friedman
1st Intermission: Coach’s Corner with Ron MacLean and Don Cherry
2nd Intermission: Hotstove with Ron MacLean, Glenn Healy and Pierre Lebrun
Calgary vs. San Jose, 10PM, CBC Full Network
Play by Play: Mark Lee
Color: Kevin Weekes
Reporter: Scott Oake
Post-Game After Hours
On-Site: Scott Oake & Kevin Weekes
Studio: Ron MacLean, Glenn Healy, Kelly Hrudey and PJ Stock
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