Whoever Acquires NHL TV Rights Must Submit to a Weekly Doubleheader

 

I’m a big fan of a term in television called “block prgramming,” where networks put similar programming together for a night that will carry viewers from start to finish. NBC’s Thursday night comedy block, or Sunday night cartoons on FOX. Anything Adult Swim programs during the weeknights tends to fit that brand. CBS airing one crappy, faceless drama after another. People who like one of these shows tend to like all of them and watch all of them, keeping the tenuous grasp on viewers for hours.

Something I’ve noticed recently is that viewers are just as okay following this to the sports networks. College-aged viewers who watch NCAA Basketball don’t really care who’s playing, as long as there’s another game coming up next. The ESPN family of networks has at least 3-4 doubleheaders a week, and sometimes tripleheaders and quadrupleheaders on the weekends. If you look at the viewership figures for these games, they stay largely at the same level, capturing enough viewers to justify the exercise of programming 6-8 hours of hoops.

So why is it that the NHL On VERSUS has three doubleheaders all season?

There’s the obvious arguments here that far western teams don’t draw as well, they aren’t as recognizable to east coast viewers, that those on the east are already tired after three hours of hockey to begin with, and that, realistically, there are only eight NHL teams that  could host a game in the 10PM ET hour, and five of them are Canadian teams that don’t draw American viewers, or in the very least don’t have a local market to keep the numbers at an acceptable level. That it costs lots of money and man-power to get satellite trucks out to the west coast.

The thing is, I don’t care about that. I don’t like to look at things logically when I look at my dreams for how good hockey coverage can be. I want to see as much of it as I can, night after night. I want to see the Ducks and Kings and Coyotes and Sharks and Canucks. Most hockey fans, I bet, do too. The Pacific Division might send five teams to the playoffs this season. Why is that division only being represented five times in the final 32 VERSUS NHL broadcasts this season? In contrast, the Northeast Division – which has generally bit pretty terrible this season – will have nine games on VERSUS the rest of the way. Here’s the divisional breakdown for the final 32 NHL games on VERSUS in 2010-11:

• Central: 13
• Atlantic: 12
• Southeast: 10
• Northeast: 9
• Pacific: 5
• Northwest: 5

I certainly hope VERSUS plans to add 1 or 2 more games from the teams way out west, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening right now. When you add in all the exposure from NBC for the teams in the other four divisions, it looks even more lopsided. I’ve always been a guy who’s never felt like there should be equality as far as television goes – the teams that are good should be on as much as possible, and the ones that are awful should be Siberia as far as VERSUS is concerned. This, however, isn’t right to the really great hockey that’s being played in California, Arizona, BC, Alberta and Colorado every night.

This is why the NHL needs to make a deal with a TV network promising that one night a week will be a designated doubleheader. To make it more certain of decent ratings, be sure you get the schedule-makers to spread out when the popular teams from the east and central (Rangers, Detroit, Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington, you get it) make it out to the Pacific Time Zone. You can use Colorado as liberally as you want as well. Just make sure you give me one game at 10:00 PM ET per week in the next TV deal. I believe there’s only been something like 5-6 games televised on VERSUS in that hour the past three years. That is awful.

Look, again, I see the cost and ratings reasons for not doing games out west. Regardless, they still need to be done. We need to grow the followings for these teams so that when the come east to play Chicago or Minnesota or Detroit, the ratings aren’t some of the worst of the season for hockey. Also, it’ll provide a lot of help in speeding up the “getting to know you” process around playoff time when all you’ve been showing all year is Detroit and Chicago. While it may be a little weak at the start, guaranteeing LA and Anaheim and San Jose a game on national TV a week is good for business.

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Here’s Your Final Ratings Roundup on All-Star Game

A few more notes from our pals at PIFeedback.com:

• With an 0.66 rating among Adults 18-49, the game finished in a tie for 25th on cable that evening. It was #2 among sports programs on cable for the evening, behind the primetime coverage of the X Games on ESPN.
• The game scored better than ESPN’s afternoon X Games coverage, their 10:00 PM ET NBA broadcast (Utah vs. Golden State), and everything on ESPN2 Sunday (bowling, women’s college basketball, Australian Open reruns).
• The game was preceded by a rerun of NHL Overtime, which drew 166,000 viewers. That’s a series high for the typically low-rated late night hockey highlight show.
• In the demos, the NHL scored an 0.9 among Men 18-34, an 0.9 among Men 18-49, and a 1.0 among Men 25-54. All three were better than ESPN’s NBA game and afternoon coverage of the X Games, while the Men 25-54 rating beat the primetime coverage of the final night of the X Games on ESPN.

Final Rating For Flyers/Hawks Up From 2010

From Sports Media Watch:

NBC had a slight uptick in ratings for its first indoor NHL telecast of the season, at least compared to last year’s indoor opener.

The January 23 Flyers/Blackhawks NHL game on NBC earned a 0.8 final rating and 1.207 million viewers, up 14% in ratings and 21% in viewership from the network’s first non-Winter Classic game last year (CHI/DET: 0.7, 996K).

Last year’s Blackhawks/Red Wings game aired one week earlier in the year and faced direct competition from an NFL Divisional Round game on FOX.