I talked with Coach Don yesterday who helps keep Bully grounded, as best as he or any referee can, but we struck up an interesting conversation that while the NHL is beating their chest about rink attendance numbers, very little is said about TV ratings. More importantly: Have the fans that tuned the NHL out of their routine after a year without hockey, have these fans come back to the game for the playoffs? If not, has any “new blood” replaced them?

After doing some research and talking to some hockey folks in the know, the answers look to be a double no.

After going over notes from a chat with Barry Melrose yesterday, it seems evident that the NHL and national TV deals appear short lived.

Barry can’t understand why ratings on OLN are what they are (and I will get to the numbers in a minute) given that hockey, especially playoff hockey, is such a great product. I get the feeling that Barry believes if fans can’t stay glued to the sport with all these OT games this spring, the Lord only knows what it will take to make them watch.

First off, Barry is a Canadian and he played and coached the sport and makes his living from the NHL and other facets of the game. Nothing wrong with any of that. Canadians though have no TV ratings problems up north and the CBC is under no pressure whatsoever to kick ass in the ratings. They are government-owned.

In the states, the games on TV have been watered down with too many commercials and very little entertainment from a production standpoint. It’s the same faces and voices bringing us the games from the booth. Normally, no big deal. Guys like Al Michaels can do any sport and every sport and we dig listening to him. But if you look at a lot of the booth guys: Emrick for example, is a whinny-voiced guy that likely you’d enjoy plowing over at a men’s league game or a celebrity BBQ. Pierre McGuire? How many guys named Pierre have ever been liked or revered in any regard on US TV? None. And this wimp is no exception. Emrick whines and we can accept it because he’s a domestic whiner. But McGuire is a Canuck. We don’t like imported whiners and wimps. We have enough pussies here to go around, but thanks anyway.

We need more guys like John Davidson, who we conject has banged more broads than he’s done hockey games. Men like that stuff, knowing that a man’s man is bringing you the game. One more thing JD does that makes him, as D.C. Dave has put it “The Madden of Ice Hockey,” is that JD talks about the players. He gives good details about the players.

Coach Don points out that this is what sets the US and Canada TV feeds apart: in Canada they talk ABOUT the players. They know the players and they know the fans. And the production reflects that and embraces and conveys all that.

In the US, they talk about the owners and pan the GM’s box for reaction, etc. To me, I don’t care how Bob Clarke or John Muckler reacts during a game. Did they fucking pay to be there? No. If their team is getting smoked, how do you think GMs are going to react? Plus they know they are likely being filmed anyway so a genuine reaction is never seen. They cry in their popcorn and grimace. I want to see a real man whose team just got laughed out of the playoffs kick a trash can 25 feet, flip over a tray of cold cuts, and arm-tackle the first corporate sissy that gives him a dirty look. Show me the bench. Show me an angry or happy fan. Give 20 seconds of face-time to the drunk guy whose bucking for a smackdown: what the hell. Get a mic down in the stands and ask a fan wht he thinks about how the team is playing. Bleep him or her if you have to. That’s more entertaining. That’s real. Mic up the bench areas and bleep the “Fucks” and “Pussies.” We can figure it out. Showcase the game’s emotion. It is its greatest strength but it is watered down and sanitized and hidden in the hopes of attracting a greater audience that we all have been waiting for since 1992 …

The numbers don’t lie. People are not watching the new NHL. OLN, in the first year of a two-year contract with the NHL, is averaging a minuscule 0.45 rating — just more than 300,000 households nationally — through four weeks of post-season hockey. NBC’s draw has been equally disappointing, averaging 1.1, down 21 percent from the numbers ABC posted with its weekend games two years ago, before the NHL’s yearlong lockout.

Plus, when is the last time you caught a hockey highlight on ESPN that wasn’t relegated to the back, back part of Sportscenter’s hour?

So the real question is: where are all these millions of alleged people and new fans that love the new NHL? They likely only really exist and thrive in the minds of corporate marketers and spinsters and the journalists too lazy to research the numbers themselves so instead just regurgitate what they are fed by these high-priced hypesters … like all good, lazy journalist robots do.

All the cash laid out for the fancy My NHL ad campaign produced by Ken Rosen hasn’t worked one bit. The answer is clear why the ads have failed to attract lost and new viewers. It’s rooted in the NHL’s approach to the sport in general which is mirrored in Rosen’s commercials: The majority of the ads don’t talk about, involve, include any real players or fans. Instead, we are forced to watch paid actors, acting out some fantasy about how tough the game is. Even the fans are fake. We’re supposed to believe through this multi-million $$ ad campaign, that the game is tough but … where’s the blood, the missing teeth, the anger and competitiveness and more importantly: the emotion of the game? Fake people can’t convey these things. This isn’t Mister Rogers. No other major sport uses actors to promote and portray the sport to the public. We want genuine emotion. Our lives are too busy and complicated to stomach a corporate-concocted soap opera about the NHL.

Get real and give us real … or keep fading away.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 at 9:01 am 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.