Another broadcasting embarrassment for the NHL

They say you get what you pay for, so in the case of NHL hockey on NBC, it's safe to assume that the NHL isn't paying much. At least that's the impression you get, considering the way that NBC treated the NHL on Saturday.

Saturday's Buffalo - Ottawa game five showdown had the unfortunate nerve to go into overtime, a scenario that apparently did not fit into NBC's plans as the American network uncermeoniously dumped the Sabres and Sens for the ponies.

With the NHL on NBC apparently straying over its allotted time, the broadcast found itslef shuffled off to Versus, a move that it seems left more than a few hockey fans ditched just as the most exciting part of the playoff match was set to begin.

NBC chose to bail out on the hockey game because it was going to interfere in its pre Preakness horse race interviews and such. Not the actual race mind you just the preample to the ramble.

It's another mess for the NHL and it's every confusing approach to hockey broadcasting, it's bad enough that Canada which provides a fair advertising return for the offerings of the NHL has had to reschedule their viewing habits to keep NBC happy, but now even that seemingly wasn't enough.

In most professionally run sporting leagues, your highest profile games tend to be played in prime time, the audience theoretically is at its largest and thus your advertising revenue should likewise be more profitable.

For the NHL, prime time for a second round playoff showdown was 2 pm on a Saturday, 11 am if you're a hockey fan in BC. This despite the fact that NBC's nightime schedule on a Saturday night features programs that ran earlier in the week, Dateline and Law And Order episodes that are repeated for those that missed them.

Maybe the folks at Law and Order can investigate the problem and find out what happened in those last ten minutes of the hockey game, who knows, somebody may actually want to know how the game ended!

The abandoned game was given much attention overnight, some of which we provide below.

Heidi of Hockey
Sens Sabres snubbed by NBC
When bad things happen to good hockey games

Sports Illustrated's Allan Muir was quick to the word processor with a blistering examniation of the NHL's embarrassing day.

Pulling pucks for ponies
NBC's choice to abandon OT clincher embarrasses NHL
Posted: Sunday May 20, 2007 1:41AM;
Updated: Sunday May 20, 2007 1:41AM
Allan Muir
Sports Illustrated

No joke. I get a call this afternoon from a buddy of mine, livid about NBC's decision to dump overtime of the elimination game between Buffalo and Ottawa onto Versus.

"I can't believe it," he moaned. "They cut off the strongman competition I was watching for a stinkin' hockey game!"

I had to laugh. After the kick to the gut American fans got today, it's nice to know there's at least one sport lower on the broadcast totem pole.

Even blessed with that perspective, Saturday afternoon's channel-hopping debacle caused by NBC choosing the Preakness pre-race show over playoff OT wasn't easy for the league or its fans to stomach. And it's not just that NBC made the decision to cut away at the end of regulation. If the race was coming up, you'd have to begrudgingly understand the move. But there were 20 minutes left in the broadcast window when they made the call. So while Buffalo's season was coming to a jarring end over on Versus, NBC was in the midst of more than an hour's worth of pre-race blather.

At least some of us had access to Versus when the switch was made. I spent most of the extra frame on the phone with a Sabres fan stuck in a hotel room in California who was left in the lurch. No doubt there were tens of thousands of viewers just like him across the country. We'll know for sure when the ratings come out this week.

The disparity between those two numbers should open some eyes at NHL headquarters.
There's no way around it. This was an epic embarrassment for the league. A conference final elimination game dropped for talk about a horse that died last year and the weather at Pimlico.
Not that we shouldn't have seen this coming. The real surprise, given how common overtime is in the postseason, is that it took this long.

Just don't make out NBC as the villain here. While they could have held out for the extra 20 minutes, their position is defensible. After all, the Peacock Network pays a hefty sum for the rights to the highly rated Preakness. They simply share ad revenue for the rights to NHL games, and since there are no TV timeouts in OT, that's not a tough decision to make.

No, this one falls squarely on the sagging shoulders of the NHL. Instead of saving Saturday nights for Hockey Night In Canada, they've bent over backwards to provide NBC with the games it wants at the times it wants. And in giving NBC this game at this time with the hard deadline of the Preakness staring them in the face, they made the wrong decision.

Of course, this whole thing reminds me of something the commissioner told me just a couple weeks ago. I asked Gary Bettman about overtime games on NBC, and if there was any concern voiced by the network about the potential length of games.

"That's a discussion I've had with them," Bettman said, "so that's not an issue for the Finals."
Well, Gary, safe to say it's an issue now.

Hockey still a hard sell on a Sunday afternoon

NBC’s presentation of NHL hockey is getting some good reviews on content, as the American network takes a good run at providing a well rounded package of information about the game that few in the USA seem to understand or dare we say it, care about.

From the on line pre game show, to the numerous between period features, the network to its credit isn’t skimping on the presentation, even if the numbers don’t exactly dictate a full effort.

William Houston’s figures in Monday’s Globe and Mail, portray a television broadcast that is still struggling to find an audience, from his on line column comes this paragraph that explains the rock and a hard place, that the folks at 30 Rock’s sports department find themselves in this season.

“NBC's National Hockey League broadcast last Sunday was whacked by golf and basketball. NBC (Colorado-Dallas, New Jersey-Tampa Bay, Chicago-Columbus) earned only a 0.9 overnight rating (percentage of households tuned in), its lowest rating of the season. In the same time slot, the Los Angeles Lakers-Cleveland Cavaliers game on ABC earned a 3.1 rating, as did CBS's final-round coverage of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.”

Less than one percent is not the kind of numbers that you can rush out and sell to an advertising community, which of course is how the NHL hopes to make money off of the deal with NBC which saw no real cash change hands for broadcast rights or any such thing.

The NHL won’t be able to blame their television partner on the slim pickins’ thus far, NBC has done a fair amount of promotion and features the sport as part of it’s impressive on line presence.

From the Bellowing Moose (an unnamed observer who apparently doesn’t pull punches, if Moose actually throw punches, perhaps the Moose is the new torch carrier for NBC's former explainer Peter Puck). There is the Countdown to face off items and a home page on the massive NBC sports link which provides more than enough hockey information for both the casual and the passionate hockey fan.

It’s been a steady on air presentation so far, Brett Hull and Ray Ferraro add some fire to the topics of the day, Bill Clement does an admirable job of handling the circus and Pierre McGuire brings us more of that Inside information that we’ve come to trust from his TSN appearances.

For the most part the match ups have been fairly entertaining, though you might never know that the league has teams above the 49th parallel by watching the NBC show, rarely do you hear of, let alone see any of the Canadian teams during the broadcasts.

Which probably makes sense from an NBC point of view since they are trying to build American markets, though we wonder what kind of ratings their broadcasts get in Canada, we would hazard a guess that if the Canadian cable and satellite viewers were tabulated into the ratings figures, things might be tracking a little more positive for the network.

It was expected that it would take some time to build an audience after hockey’s sabbatical during the strike/lock out days. NBC had to wait for the league to come back to work before they could showcase their new product, the climb to decent numbers seems to be harder than first thought and is taking its time.

Hockey fans across North America can only hope that patience is the word at NBC headquarters, the on air product is top end, the games pretty good as well, now all that’s left to do is find somebody to sit down and watch a game or two!

A little network exposure to the south

Finally there will be no complaints that someone couldn’t get the game, the NHL returns to mainstream American network television on Saturday, as NBC begins its coverage of the NHL for 2007.

Puck drop is 11 am precisely, no time for chit chat, just drop the puck and go. In an unusual experiment, NBC will air its pre-game show on broadband over the internet from 10:30 to 11, during the half hour of internet TV, on NHL on NBC Countdown to Faceoff, hockey fans can learn all about what Bill Clement, Ray Ferraro and Brett Hull have to offer providing their internet stream stays strong. it's available at NBCSports.com.

As for the hockey, there will be two games featured on Saturday, the national game featuring the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers and a secondary game which pits the LA Kings up against the St. Louis Blues. Depending on your cable or satellite situation you could get one or both.

The return of the NHL to NBC this year is a much welcome situation for the league, which has suffered some pretty tough questioning from fans over the less than desired deal signed with Versus, a lesser known and lesser viewed cable option to ESPN. By appearing on network television again, the NHL can at least try and get it’s product out to a wider audience.

NBC has expanded its regular-season NHL coverage from six weeks to nine weeks, the most regular-season NHL games on network television since 1998-99. After Saturday, the coverage will move to Sundays, which is actually a good thing for the NHL, as the NFL will be winding down and they can avoid the prospect of having to challenge college basketball for viewers.

The NBC pre game offering will be entertaining one would think as Brett Hull is considered one of the most outspoken characters in hockey, expect him to show no mercy with his comments and appeal to those who want the unsanitized inside scoop.

He tends to shoot from the lip, much like a certain Canadian TV icon known for his high collars and colourful suits. On some days, the internet show may end up being more entertaining than the actual on air product. Let’s hope that the You Tube nation has their video capture cards installed and ready to serve up a steady diet of Hulls thoughts.