On audiences, McKenzie and Zed

For years, the sports television industry complained that the system of measuring audiences was unfairly depressing the viewership level of its product.

  It turns out the industry was right.

  In an important  TV development, the new measurement devise called the Portable People Meter (PPM) has increased sports viewership as much as 100 per cent in some cases.

  After PPMs were introduced by BBM-Nielsen in September, TSN’s CFL audiences almost doubled from July and August. This jump was attributable in part to the increased interest in football in the fall and the fact the two holiday doubleheaders on Labour Day and Thanksgiving pushed up the average.

   Still, taking into account those factors, TSN estimates its CFL viewership is up at least 40 per cent. Audiences for NHL hockey have risen 60 per cent.

   At the CBC, Hockey Night In Canada’s 7 p.m. ET game has been pulling in huge audiences. Last weekend, it drew a whopping 2.3 million viewers for the Toronto Maple Leafs-Vancouver Canucks national telecast which was packaged with the regional telecasts, New York Rangers-Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins-Ottawa Senators.

    These were three attractive match-ups, with the Toronto-Vancouver game, in particular, drawing from Canada’s two largest English language markets. Still, last year at this time, with similar games, Hockey Night was producing audiences of only 1.3 million.

  A few days ago, Rogers Sportsnet sent out a release stating that its audiences for baseball’s divisional playoffs were up 71 per cent. For the two League Championship Series, the numbers increased 31 per cent.

   Why is the PPM system measuring audiences so much larger?

   For starters, it’s gleaning information from a larger sample group of households, 10,000 compared to the previous 5,000.

   But, most important, the new procedure is more accurate.

  Each members of the sample household wears a portable devise, like a pager, that records what they are watching and where.

    It’s a passive method. They don’t need to do anything. In the old system, meters were attached to the television and members of the household were required to input into the meter who and how many were watching a show. Often, they didn’t bother.

 For example, dad is viewing a football game. His 10-year-old son finishes his homework and watches the fourth quarter. Mom comes in later to wait for the news.

   By the old meter system, mom and the son would have needed to punch in their names when they started watching, but probably wouldn’t have. Since the audience is measured on a minute by minute basis, that was a big loss.

   In the new system, which is triggered by the TV’s audio on the pager devise, their involvement is automatically recorded.

     Now, none of this would matter if audience figures for all TV programs and genres — dramas, reality shows, etc. — were increasing at the same rate as sports.

   But they’re not. The programs showing the biggest increases are live sports and children’s shows. And that’s because these shows are often watched in groups.

   Said one sports marketing executive, “People get together to watch sports, but they don’t get together to watch 24.”

   Kids will gather after school to sit in front of the TV.  A guy will take a case of beer over to a friend’s place to watch a hockey game with a group.

  In the past, this group viewing would not have been measured. Now it is because the guy with the beer or one of the kids may be wearing a portable PPM devise.

  Group viewing will increase even more for major sporting events and that’s when the registered audiences should get even larger, TSN’s president Phil King said.

  “You’re going to see some unbelievable numbers coming out of the Grey Cup, the Super Bowl, the juniors (world junior championship) and the Olympics,” he said. “You’ll be seeing press releases coming out about all-time highs.”

   It’s important to know, however, that the new system does not measure out-of-home watching in sports bars and restaurants. That’s because the PPM devise is triggered by the TV’s audio, and, in most bars and restaurants, the audio is turned down.

   The exception will be the World Cup next summer when the fanatics are in the bars screaming for their favourite team. You can be sure the TV audio will be turned up full blast for those games.

  “I think you will see World Cup figures go through the roof, just because of the way it’s being monitored,” said a sports executive.

   Will all this translate into more advertising revenue for sports programming? In the long run, yes, but as one sports executive said, the well is pretty much dry at this point, given the tough economic times.

  “You can’t charge more when no one has more,” he said.

 Voice in the wilderness

 TSN’s Bob McMcKenzie is truly unique among hockey commentators. That’s because he is pretty much alone in believing the NHL should crack down on predatory head shots.

   In the world of NHL commentary, this represents radical, even revolutionary thinking. We know this, because when an incident occurs, such as the Mike Richards hit on David Booth last weekend, the knuckleheads and Neanderthals come out of the woodwork to remind us that hockey TV commentary is over-populated by a fringe group of loons, most of them ex-jocks who have taken too many hits to the head themselves, and seem to believe that anything that doesn’t kill you is “a good hockey hit.”

  But let’s not place all the blame on the TV guys. The NHL, which is so out of touch with reality as to be laughable (except this isn’t a laughing matter), judged the  Richards hit to be within the rules, despite the fact Richards was assessed a five minute major and game misconduct.

   Never mind that the Philadelphia Flyers captain blind-sided Booth from the side and behind, and that the  Florida Panthers forward didn’t have the puck. As far as the league was concerned, a suspension wasn’t warranted. Booth suffered a concussion, was carried off the ice on a stretcher and spent the night in hospital.

  As the New York Times noted, many of the crackpots  like to blame the victim in these cases.   Blogger Barry Petchesky at Deadspin.com wrote, “None of this would have happened if Booth hadn’t had his head down — that’s a youth hockey mistake.”

     TSN’s Craig MacTavish, if you can believe it, called it  “a very innocent play.”   Watters invoked the slippery slope theory by warning that a crackdown on head shots would “ruin our game.”  In other words, if you outlaw head shots, aggressive play will disappear.

    McKenzie alluded to this theory on Team990 radio in Montreal this week.

  “If you dare question this hit in the NHL, then I guess you’re in favour of no hitting in the game,” he said sarcastically.

    The NFL has tough rules against fouling the quarterback, but is doing fine at the gate and on TV, although the effect of concussions on NFL players is under scrutiny. McKenzie made note of that on Wednesday night during TSN’s hockey telecast.

  “I know that U.S. Congress is giving the NFL a hard time about its dealing with head shots,” he said. “The NHL should be thankful Congress doesn’t know they exist.”

   That’s an important point.  Hockey is a fringe sport in the United States and is rejected by a growing number of Canadian sports fans partly because of the weirdness of a game that allows predatory attacks to the head. Would you want your son playing a game in which head shots are deemed at the highest level to be just fine? And if he does get clobbered from behind, he’s to blame? 

Scooper’s at it again

  Nice to see that Zed over at the competition is keeping up with the news. He finally got around to reporting Al Strachan’s departure from Hockey Night In Canada. It’s been – what? — more than a week? But, hey, better late than never. Now, he’s reporting that the proposed Olympic channel is having difficulty. Another hot-off-presses report, aside from the fact the story appeared in Truth and Rumours two weeks go.