Man, in the U.S. fans are getting short-changed and have been for years by NHL hockey on the likes of OLN, ESPN, and NBC.

If you had two TVs next to each other with the same game: one feed from the CBC in Canada (and even  TSN) and one feed from one of the network whore-houses in the U.S., you’d notice that you’re seeing much less hockey on the U.S. feed. Way less. Not to mention that the U.S. can’t compete with the production of the Canadians. That is likely because instead of concentrating on hockey, the U.S. feeds concentrate on commercials.

There are approximately 25 more commercials on a U.S. feed compared to a CBC broadcast during a game. Plus the intermissions are packed with commercials in the U.S. There are some ads on the Canadian feeds, but they are dwarfed by the quantity in the U.S. Guys like Bill Clement would be stammering and studdering to fill the time in if he were on the air in Canada because he wouldn’t have all those ads to save his boring ass.

One thing that seems insignificant, but really isn’t when you see it enough especially in the playoffs, is in Canada they broadcast the entire national anthem(s) and follow it up by staying with the feed until the face off. In the U.S. the anthem(s) is replaced by commercials and they cut to the game just seconds before the puck drops. Likewise for commercial breaks in general: Canada cuts back to the game early, while the U.S. waits until the puck leaves the refs hand in the face-off circle to come back and many times misses the face off and joins the play in progress.

The point? Hockey on TV in Canada is better for many reasons but primarily because it’s about hockey and seeing much more of the game.

One of the reasons that ratings in the U.S. might be so damn lousy for the NHL is that the broadcasts seem to largely have little to do with the game itself - but plugging corporate products instead. In the U.S., if you weren’t a hockey fan and turned on a game, it would be hard to tell whether you are watching a show about TV commercials with occasional breaks of ice hockey in between, or an actual hockey game itself.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 20th, 2006 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Bully's Perspective. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.