Hockey Played “Old School”

Hockey is my sport of choice to watch once the temperatures fall below a certain point that causes discomfort and freezing of body parts. Of course growing up in Chicago we always had the Blackhawks to watch and cheer for, despite their constant disappointment via a deficit of championships.

Yet there we were religiously going out every night to the flooded area of the park and play until time to go home and sleep. In act one year when the teachers were on strike (they seemed to always strike in early January almost as if extending their Christmas vacation) we played from early morning until late at night and I got frostbite on my toes. Still it didn't bother me as I just became a goalie while wearing rubber boots after that for the rest of the season while mending. Ah the joys and fond memories of youth.

Yet here it is January 2008 and the NHL is putting on an outside game between real professional teams! I am of course referring to the game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Buffalo Sabres played in Ralph Wilson Stadium and televised on NBC. Yes it was a sight to see as Buffalo was enduring one of their typical January snow storms at the same time. It did provide for an interesting game and also triggered memories of times past.

It was of course a Marketing ploy and a good one at that as they did garner a lot of interest, over 71,000 paid to see the game live and braved the elements, and it did great ratings on TV. Now some might remember a couple of years ago that hockey was shown regularly on ESPN and ABC (both being Disney Corp properties) until the players were “Locked Out” for a year by management and they didn't play for a season. Of course at the time the interest in the US seemed to be waning, as the league kept expanding into “Non-Traditional Markets”. These included a couple of teams in Florida, one in Atlanta, and Phoenix.

This strike caused ESPN to cancel their contract and when the NHL tried to come back , only NBC came calling to give them a TV contract. NBC-Universal proceeded to exile the NHL to their sports station Outdoor Life Network (OLN). This of course had the sportswriters and commentators laughing and making fun out of this move as most people never heard of OLN. In fact most of the programming on OLN consisted of Bike Races like the “Tour De France” and Bull Riding. Of course us die hards found the station and enjoyed our Hockey. Though OLN and the NHL did a weird thing. They put the games on Monday and Tuesday nights. On ESPN they were on Wednesday and Thursday nights and that is what we were used to. On top of that NBC Universal didn't really market the games very much. It was as if they were ashamed to admit that they showed them.

Last year OLN changed it's name to Versus and still shows the NHL. Still the marketing of the NHL is very weak and even something as special as an outside game received very little notice. In fact during the Sunday Night Football game on NBC, they mentioned the game, but not the time! Even though the anchor, Bob Costas, was presenting the game. Talk about bad marketing, it is no wonder that they suffer at the ratings game. Even their best regular show (30 Rock) is flailing away because of their poor marketing. Hey NBC you've got intelligent wonderful exciting programming, yet you fail to let anyone know!

Hockey is a wonderful and exciting game, and it deserves better. Between the NHL and NBC they need lots of help getting the word out that it is being shown. It is a Catch-22 where they promote because they don't think enough people are watching, yet people don't know to watch because they don't promote. Instead they try to promote copy-cat, me-too types of shows that nobody really watches and yet they keep dumbing down to get a certain demographic that doesn't seem to be able to comprehend the brilliance and intricacies of intelligent programming (but that is another article).

Such a shame that the suits just don't get it and don't realize what a goldmine they are sitting on because of their short-sightedness and total lack of vision.

Hey NBC Universal, promote the intelligent stuff and the ratings will come back, keep marketing the crap and stay a “me-too, copy-cat network”.

Mahalo.