NHL Lockout Sinks Canadian TV Ratings, Annoys Petulant Network Execs

Start the telethon and schedule the bake sale. Canada's TV networks need your help.

Channels that usually broadcast NHL games and highlights are losing a bundle during the lockout. It apparently never occured to them to reduce their dependence on hockey revenue, even though everyone could see this shutdown coming for several years.

Television is the all-powerful god of sport, so we should all be losing sleep. And Canadian hockey fans are expected to shoulder their share of the blame. According to one whining television exec, Canadians aren't real hockey fans at all.

"The television picture is starting to look a little frightening" according to an article in Saturday's Toronto Globe and Mail. Audiences have "plummeted" at the three sports networks, while Saturday night numbers at the CBC are down 50 per cent without Hockey Night in Canada.

Minor pro and junior games are no substitute.

"The biggest myth in this country is that Canadians are dyed-in-the-wool hockey fans," an anonymous network exec tells Globe columnist William Houston. "That's a lie. They don't watch juniors. They don't attend junior games to a great degree. They don't watch the [American Hockey League], and you could say they don't watch NHL games involving U.S. teams. Just ask TSN about their numbers when the Leafs aren't playing."

"They will watch the home team in great numbers, they will watch the Stanley Cup playoffs and they will watch Team Canada. What they won't do is watch anything with a puck and a stick."

For those who don't read the Globe and Mail, Houston specializes in sports broadcasting and sports media issues. He never questions the sacred TV agenda: ratings and ad revenue tell us all we need to know, not just about television, but about the universe.

TV wonks can count. They know how many people are watching their shows. But when they try to explain why, it's just guesswork. Yet Houston routinely quotes network geeks as if they were avatars of Great Truth About Sport.

The Leafs, the playoffs and Team Canada are the biggest TV draws for Canadian sports fans. Is this news to anyone? Other NHL teams, minor pro teams and junior hockey draw mostly regional audiences. Any surprises there?

The added comment that people "don't attend junior games to a great degree" is wrong to a great degree. But how would TV Man know? I suspect these people never leave their network bunkers long enough to experience anything outside their own little virtual world.

Canadians don't care about hockey! Just look at our ratings! Case closed!

Any suggestion that the real world might be a little more complex is unthinkable.