Media pushed NHL and general managers to move on head shots

  Weren’t you warmed by the courage and vision displayed the NHL general managers this week?

  I mean, think about it. After months of soul searching, these people concluded that blind-side head shots — like the attack by Matt Cooke on Marc Savard — are illegal.

   And, at the referee’s discretion, these infractions are — wait for it — deserving of a penalty.

   We knew this would be a difficult decision for the general managers when George McPhee of the Washington Capitals said earlier this week: “It’s such a difficult subject and it’s hard to define exactly what we want to do.”

   Oh, yes, it was a real puzzler all right.

   My sense of this is that neither the general managers, certainly not the NHL and most certainly not vice-president Colin Campbell, the guy who suspends players, wanted anything to do with this.

   Some NHL players are beginning to speak out now, but for months they’ve parroted the league’s line: We don’t want to take the physicality out of the game (Ottawa’s Jason Spezza this week). Or, you have to be aware of who’s on the ice. Or, well, it was a tough hit, but it was a good hockey play, too.

   No, what was needed to bring a degree of sanity to the NHL’s thought process was the media, or at least some in the media. Stu Hackel, who blogs for The New York Times, has been writing about head hits for a long time. Damien Cox of The Toronto Star has as well. TSN’s Bob McKenzie has done some good work on it.

  On a few occasions, McKenzie has vented on this subject, but he also chooses his words carefully. He was on the AM 640 Toronto’s Leafs Lunch this week, during which he went out of his way to explain that it’s much more important to protect junior age and youth hockey players from attacks to the head than it is the pros, who are well paid adults well aware of the hazards in their line of work.

  He also reported that if the league moved to hand out significant suspensions to these offenders, it is unlikely it would increase the punishment for repeat offenders. He didn’t explain why the NHL is against doing this, but it’s easy to guess: Because it makes sense. In the real world, repeat offenders are punished accordingly, but not in the world of the NHL.

  That’s why real blame for the problem of head shots and concussions belongs to the league, specifically Campbell, and not to the perpetrators. More than three years ago, Colby Armstrong hit Trevor Letowski from behind, ramming his shoulder into his head. Letowski, concussed, was carried off the ice on a stretcher. Armstrong received nothing.

   If Campbell had moved on this problem even as recently as a year ago, he would have made progress.

   Consider a head shot by Cooke delivered on Artem Ansimov in November. Campbell suspended Cooke for two games. Because Cooke was a repeat offender, the league also took some money away from him.

   But, what if, as a repeat offender, Cooke had been given a 15 or 20 game suspension? What if he was looking at a 30 or 40 game suspension for his next attack? Would he have even thought about targeting Savard’s head?

  Campbell and the league, terrified of taking the “physicality” out of the game, have showed no courage on this issue. Now that the general managers have acknowledged that blind-sided hits are a bad thing, there’s no indication the league will show any more courage in punishing the offenders.

Yahoo and CBC team up

Yahoo! Canada will begin streaming the CBC’s Hockey Night In Canada on Saturday, March 13.

   Yahoo and the CBC this week announced the partnership, which runs through the end of the 2009-10 season including the playoffs.

  In a release, Gina Cothey, director, audience, for Yahoo! Canada said: “It’s no secret Canadians love hockey, and as part of the company’s focus on delivering ‘wow’ consumer experiences, Yahoo! Canada wanted to make the experience of watching games even better. Hockey fans can watch their favourite teams in action and catch up on all the news and analysis from the hockey world just by visiting Yahoo! Canada. CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada is an important part of Canadian culture, and Yahoo! Canada is excited to partner with the CBC to offer NHL fans this unique online viewing experience.”
  Scott Moore, the head of CBC Sports said: “CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada is pleased to be working with Yahoo! Canada on this initiative. Yahoo! Canada provides a unique platform for CBC to extend the best in CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada programming to Canadians. In addition to our complete line-up at CBCSports.ca, we’re ensuring that Canadians can experience Canada’s number one weekly sports program whenever and wherever they choose.”

No suspension for Cooke

 It you needed further evidence of the NHL irresonsibility regarding head shots, the league has decided not to suspend Matt Cooke. On Leafs Lunch, Bill Watters said the league’s credibility “just went out the window.” I’d say Colin Campbell should have been removed from his job years ago. Here’s the hit on Savard:

MacLean came to praise CTV’s Olympic coverage, not bury it

  When a lowly media columnist states an opinion, you can give it the level of importance you think it deserves.

   But, when a TV star critiques the work of a colleague working at another network, that’s news.

  Why? Because, as a broadcast journalist pointed out to me, “There’s an unwritten rule in media. You don’t mention the competition, and you especially don’t praise the competition.”

  Rules and conventions, of course, mean little Ron MacLean. So, there he was, the main guy at CBC Sports, the host of Hockey Night In Canada, praising CTV’s Olympic coverage and, in particular, the work of James Duthie, who was afternoon co-host and anchor of the men’s hockey coverage. “You amaze me,” was MacLean’s comment on Duthie’s work.

  Does The Globe and Mail give kudos to The Toronto Star? Would a sports columnist at one newspaper throw a bouquet at a colleague working for another newspaper? Not likely.

   Or, as a broadcast journalist asked, “Have you ever seen Peter Mansbridge come on the air and say, ‘What a great job CTV did covering the Federal Budget’? Have you ever heard Lloyd Robertson say, ‘Terry Milewski did a super job for CBC covering Parliament today’?

  So, what was MacLean up to? Well, he’s unpredictable. We know that. By mentioning Duthie and nobody else involved in the CTV Olympic coverage, was there some hidden meaning to it all? My sense of it was his praise of CTV was sincere, although the CBC would probably prefer he hadn’t said anything. He mentioned Duthie, probably because, as a hockey guy, he is MacLean’s counterpart at CTV owned TSN.

  Actually, I’m wrong about the CBC’s reaction to MacLean’s praise of CTV and Duthie. Scott Moore, the head of CBC Sports as well as as media sales and marketing for the network,  said he liked it. 

    ”I thought it was very classy of Ron,”  Moore said. “Ron sort of feels he’s above the competitive fray for whatever reason. He feels he can say that sort of stuff and people accept it from him.”

     On the same broadcast, Don Cherry noted that he had been honoured last week by the Boston Bruins and had dropped the puck before their game against the Toronto Maple Leafs, televised by TSN. Did TSN mention Cherry’s involvement during the broadcast? No. That’s the norm.

  Still with Cherry, he resumed his feud with Dick Pound on Saturday’s Coach’s Corner, referring to Pound as a freeloader. This was in reference to Pound handing out medals to the women hockey players at the Vancouver Olympic. The feud, of course, goes back to Pound stating a large number of NHL were receiving “pharmaceutical assistance,” a claim that angered Cherry.

  The New York Post reports that Academy Awards officials nixed several Tiger Woods jokes that had been written for co-hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. They were deemed “too rude.”

  Will the success of the Vancouver Olympic hockey tournament move NHL ratings in the United States? Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News reports that the Pittsburgh Penguins played the New York Rangers last Thursday for which MSG earned a .96 rating (percentage of MSG’s potential viewing households tuned in). On the same day, in the afternoon, a Mets-Cardinals grapefruit league game on Sportsnet New York earned a 1.13 rating. No Olympic buzz.

Weekend audiences

 Hockey

Vancouver Canucks-Chicago Blackhawks, Friday, Sportsnet Pacific, 389,000.

 Hockey Night in Canada pre-game, Saturday, CBC, 793,000.

Toronto Maple Leafs-Ottawa Senators, Saturday, CBC, 1.812 million.

Montreal Canadiens-Los Angeles Kings, Saturday, CBC, 793,000.

 Leafs-Philadelphia Flyers, Sunday, Sportsnet Ontario, 478,000.

 Calgary Flames-Minnesota Wild, Sunday, Sportsnet West, 146,000.

Canucks-Nashville Predators, Sunday, Sportsnet Pacific, 321,000.

 New Jersey Devils-Edmonton Oilers, Sunday, Sportsnet West, 133,000.

Curling

 Tim Hortons Brier, Saturday afternoon, TSN, 773,000

 Brier, Saturday, prime time, TSN, 705,000.

 Brier, Sunday morning, TSN, 599,000.

 Brier, Sunday afternoon, TSN, 597,000.

 Brier, Sunday prime time, TSN, 846,000.

 Auto racing

 NASCAR Sprint Cup Kobalt Tools 500, TSN2, 312,000.

 Basketball

 Toronto Raptors-New York Knicks, Friday, TSN, 322,000.

 Raptors-Philadelphia 76ers, Sunday, CBC: 218,000.

 Alpine skiing

World Cup, women’s downhill, Saturday, CBC, 71,000.

 World Cup, men’s downhill, Saturday, CBC, 57,000.

CTV’s Olympic audience projections plummeted in Quebec

   The final audience results for Vancouver Olympic television coverage are  in.  And the news for the CTV-Rogers consortium is good.

  CTV, along with its affiliated Olympic channels, exceeded most of the viewership projections given to advertisers – with one major exception.

  In the province of Quebec, the forecast that CTV-Rogers presented to advertisers for Olympic programming on the Quebec broadcast network, V, fell well short.

   V’s average prime time audience of 564,000 was a whopping 44 per cent below the 1.011 million that CTV-Rogers anticipated.

  V, formerly Television Quartre-Saisons, failed to meet the audience forecasts given to advertisers in any of the time slots. V was 45 per cent under for the Olympic afternoon estimate. The weekend audiences were down 30 to 33 per cent.

  What happened? Well, perhaps V did not under-perform. It’s possible, maybe even likely, that CTV-Rogers, when putting together its projections, over-rated Quebec interest in a Winter Games, which were, after all, thousands of kilometers away and over the mountains to a region where a French Canadian athlete didn’t even make the short list of four for the cauldron lighting ceremony at BC Place. And where the head of VANOC struggled mightily to put together three words of French in his closing address.

   Yes, the people at Olympic rights holding CTVglobmedia, which included The Globe and Mail, and CTV’s consortium partner, Rogers, had been giddy with excitement for months over the domestic Games. But perhaps the thrill  failed to resonate quite as much in Quebec.

   RDS, the French language sports cable channel, exceeded the forecast that CTV gave advertisers, but its projected numbers were smaller than those assigned to V, which reaches a larger Quebec audience. For example, RDS’s prime time average was pegged at only 154,000. It averaged 427,000.

   Overall, the Olympic audiences for CTV and its affiliated channels were excellent.   For CTV, the prime time estimate was 3.499 million. It achieved 4.163 million.

   The prime time forecast for TSN was 599,000. It averaged 1.077 million. Rogers Sportsnet’s prime time projection was 503,000. Its average was 935,000.

  CTV did fall short in Olympic Pacific Prime time (midnight to 2 a.m. ET). CTV projected 2.397 million for its main network and got only 1.017 million. Why? Viewers in the East were asleep. In the West, the audience had watched the live telecasts earlier.

Sidney Crosby led all Olympic athletes in online discussion during the Olympics, Adweek reported on Thursday. He finished ahead of  high profile U.S. athletes Apolo Anton, Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller. 

TSN did well with its NHL trade deadline coverage on Wednesday despite the absence of big deals. It averaged 184,000 viewers over 10 hours (8 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET), more than doubling Sportsnet’s audience of 85,000 (8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.). That’s Hockey drew 384,000 followed by the Vancouver Canucks-Detroit Red Wings telecast, which pulled a large 865,000. TSN.ca enjoyed its fourth busiest day ever. It had 12.8 million page views, more than four times the daily average.

 The good news for Sportsnet with its deadline coverage was its audience increase from last year. It’s 85,000 audience was up 19 per cent from 2009. TSN’s audience was flat with last year. Sportsnet also had 200,000 streams of its telecast compared with TSN’s 100,000.

The application by Rogers for a  national sports channel was approved by the CRTC this week. In its application, Rogers said the channel will air NHL games involving Canadian teams. Rogers doesn’t have a national cable TV deal with the NHL. It has regional agreements will five of the six NHL teams.  Therefore, the NHL games carried on the national feed would be blacked out in all regions except the one in which the Canadian team is playing.  Insiders don’t expect the national channel to launch  for several years.

TV insiders are giving TSN’s James Duthie high marks for his work at Vancouver, where he doubled as CTV afternoon co-host and men’s hockey anchor. They liked his interviewing skills, humour and easy style. One said he felt Duthie could move out of sports to something in news or entertainment.

 As I reported at Yahoo Canada! on Monday, CTV pulled Brian Williams and Lloyd Robertson off the Vancouver Olympic closing ceremonies and gave the co-hosting assignments to Duthie and Lisa LaFlamme. My guess is CTV was unhappy with Williams and Robertson on the opening ceremony. Williams’ minimalist approach didn’t work. Sometimes less isn’t more.

Look for TSN to announce a fairly significant soccer property acquisition sometime in the next few weeks. TSN2 is expected to announce new programming as well.

At the Toronto Star, Chris Zelkovich seemed a little confused about the cost of a 30-second commercial airing during the gold medal game in Olympic men’s hockey. He suggested the ask would be $300,000, then quoted “advertising sources” as saying the price was actually $240,000.

  People I talked to in advertising have no idea what Chris was talking about. As I reported on this website Feb. 25, the price for a 30-second spot on the men’s semi-final, Canada-Slovakia, was $215,000, up from the standard Olympic price time rate of $90,000. CTV was asking $365,000 for an ad running during the men’s hockey gold medal game.

TRADE DEADLINE TALK: The topsy-turvy world of the Leafs

   A slow morning at the NHL trade deadline made for all talk and no action, or little anyway, for TSN and Rogers Sportsnet.

  To fill time, the networks hooked up with hockey personalities, and it worked out pretty well. Sportsnet had a conversation with Gary Roberts, the fitness guru and former NHL star. TSN did a remote with Sidney Crosby, who talked about the Olympics and the acquisition of Toronto Maple Leaf forward Alexei Ponikarvosky.

    On the scoop ledger, it was even during the morning. Sportsnet first reported the Derek Morris trade to Phoenix from Boston. TSN countered with the Martin Skouda deal to New Jersey from Toronto, and also the Dennis Seidenberg trade to Boston from Florida. Sportsnet had the Aaron Ward trade to Anaheim from Carolina.

   Guest analysts included Mike Peca and Mike Keenan for TSN, and Marty McSorley for Sportsnet. TSN assembled its Reporters panel of Dave Hodge with Damien Cox, Mike Farber and Steve Simmons.

   It’s always an education to hear Cox talk hockey and assert his approval of Toronto Maple Leaf general manager Brian Burke. He’s been a Burke supporter from the get-go, enthusing about the talent the Leafs have on the farm and rating the Phil Kessel trade as brilliant.

  Based on what Kessel has done with the Leafs, and showed at the Olympic tournament, that assessment doesn’t square with the real world. Truth is, the Kessel trade, for two first round picks, plus a second, going to Boston, was a reckless, irresponsible decision that has set back the team’s development for years.

   Still, Cox yesterday continued to express support for Burke’s “blueprint” for success, arguing Kessel could develop into a star. As for the loss of the two first rounders, he said the Leafs just need to compensate by acquiring draft picks from other teams. True, but they won’t be first rounders. They got a fifth for Skoula.

    The TSN panel – in fact, nobody in the Toronto sports media that I’ve heard, with the exception of perhaps Bill Watters  – did not take Burke to task for the insanity of the Kessel trade.

  Simmons did make a valid observation about the upside-down world of Leaf decision making. He noted that a year ago the Leafs, well out of the playoffs, could have played out their losing hand and finished low enough to draft very high.

  Instead, they  went out and acquired goalie Martin Gerber, who won some games. So, instead of finishing  in the top three or four, the Leafs drafted seventh and took Nazem Kadri, who is no sure thing by any means.

   What if, instead, the Leafs had continued on their road to mediocrity and  drafted third? That gets them Matt Duchene, and the rebuilding begins in earnest.

    Fast forward to this season when it makes sense to the Leafs to try to win a few games to keep Boston from picking in the top three. What does Burke do? He cleans house – Pierre McGuire described the talent up front as an AHL lineup — thus basically ensuring Boston will pick in the top two or three, perhaps even No.1 overall.  That’s the Leaf blueprint for success.

UPDATE: Slow day at the deadline. Minor deals. No big names. Hockey fans are still withdrawing from the intensity and high level of play at the Olympic tournament. My guess is the audiences figures for both networks will be below average.

Olympic hockey final produces record Canadian audience

The Olympic hockey gold medal thriller on Sunday pulled in a record television audience in Canada.

  A total of 16.6 million viewers watched Canada’s 3-2 overtime win against the United States, the largest viewership ever for a telecast on Canadian television.

  That audience figure represents the combined total of viewers on nine channels, including the main CTV network, where the majority watched the game. Included among the nine channels were the affiliated French Olympic outlets as well as the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and the Rogers Omni ethnic channels.

   It’s an impressive audience, but not a surprise given the hockey rivalry between Canada and the United States, and the quality of the game. Canada took a 2-0 lead, but the Americans narrowed it to 2-1 and then scored in the final seconds of regulation time to sent it into overtime where Sidney Crosby got the winner .

  CTV reports that 80 per cent of Canadians (26.5 million) watched some part of the game.

  CTV also had a big number for the closing ceremonies. A total of 14.3 million watched, making it the second most viewed telecast of CTV’s Vancouver Olympic coverage.

   In the United States,  NBC earned a 17.6 overnight rating (percentage of potential households tuned in) for the Canada-U.S. game. That’s the largest rating ever for a hockey game televised in the United States. 

   That rating, SportsBusiness Daily reports,  represents a 45 per cent increase over the rating for 2002 Salt Lake final also between Canada and United States.

   It also ranks third highest among NFL regular season telecasts in 2009. It’s also higher than the rating for a World Series game dating back to 2004 and every NBA Finals game since 1998.

  SportsBusiness Daily suggests the rating will make it difficult for the NHL to discontinue participating in the Winter Olympics.

 Hope Prime Minister Stephen Harper sends CTV a thank-you note for at least trying to raise his image from that of the robot-that-walks-like-a-man to something a little closer to normal. CTV gave Harper more face time at the Olympics than most of the Canadian athletes.

  There were the shots of Stephen at the venues; in deep conversations, presumably about hockey, with Wayne Gretzky; and also the prime time interview with host Brian Williams on Saturday, clips from which, as I mention in Yahoo, could be used by Harper in election campaign ads.

   To be fair, Williams did press him on the future funding of Canadian athletes. Harper tried to slip by that stickler by saying he fully supported increased sponsorship, meaning the private sector. And public money? Harper mumbled something about that, too.

   Meanwhile, Jack Layton, leader of the federal NDP, tried to bask in the glow of the Olympic hoopla by finding his way to Gretzky’s restaurant in Toronto where CTV had a camera installed at the bar. Jack was able to get himself a spot right at the front.

   During the men’s hockey gold medal game, CTV went to the crowd scene at Gretzky’s several times, but not once did anyone at the network mention that the bald guy closest to the camera was the leader of the NDP.

 Here’s my Yahoo column on CTV’s final Sunday of coverage. I thought the flag waving was excessive.

 NBC made another in a long line of poor programming decisions on Sunday when it ended its coverage of the closing ceremony at 10:30 p.m. ET to go to something called The Marriage Ref.

  VANOC head John Furlong’s pathetic attempt to say a few lines of French during his speech at the closing ceremonies was an embarrassment.

 Here is a thank you note to Canada from Brian Williams, the NBC Brian, who, of course, was at the Olympics. Kind of nice: