Televisions Impact On the NHL1917-2014

Televisions Impact On the NHL1917-2014

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51917-2014

The National Hockey League (NHL) is different from other professional sports franchises in America as it has teams in both the United States and Canada. This is most obvious when attending a game and both the Star Spangled Banner and O Canada may be sung. This difference also shows up in the way the games are televised and radio broadcast. The expansion of the NHL teams and their fan base are directly related to the expansion of the games being broadcast on radio and television.

The NHL was established in 1917 with Canadian teams. The Boston Bruins became the first American team in 1924. The first radio broadcast was in Pittsburgh, PA in 1921. The first game to be covered was in Toronto starting March 4, 1923. These were tests and were experimental in practice. As time went on the Toronto Maple Leafs became the first team to regularly broadcast their games, although radio coverage was not welcomed by all. The owners of the Original Six (Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Toronto, New York, Montreal) did not favor the change and were skeptical of radio broadcasts. One of the fears the owners had was that radio would drive down attendance of hockey games.

Broadcasting in sports is very important. Sports have become a major source of entertainment and communal bonding for Americans since the 1920s (Wenner, 55). Radio allows people to connect with teams and their favorite players and know results real time. It also added a sense of drama. Radio conveyed the excitement people would feel if they attended the game in person (Sarver, 20). Previously the score sheet would have given away the score and the major events of the game. Now people could listen as everything unfolded and the outcome was unknown. Radio also had reach that newspapers did not have. This brought a game such as hockey to hundreds more people who could never see a game. Now they could still experience it thanks to radio.

When the Toronto Maple Leaf Gardens was opened during 1931, Conn Smythe the owner of the Maple Leafs planned to broadcast all the home games. The broadcasts sponsored by General Motors of Canada would lay the ground work for CBCs Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC). Broadcasts were sponsored by General Motors of Canada, and broadcasts attracted more than

one million listeners throughout Canada and the United States. (Sarver, 29). Montreal was the next to broadcast their games in both French and English. The 1934 playoffs had a huge audience in Canada. The Canadian broadcasts were also popular in northern American cities like Boston and Chicago that had NHL teams.

During the 1930s and 1940s American teams such as the Boston Bruins and Chicago Blackhawks also started to use radio (Sarver, 30). Hockey was not broadcast on national radio though like it was in Canada. It wasnt until 1981 that the Stanley Cup Finals were on the radio nationally in the United States. Mostly games aired in towns that had teams.

The fear that radio would stop fans from attending games was unfounded. The Hockey Data Base website has a series of graphs of the estimated per game average of games from 1926-27 through 1952 when the first games were televised (Figure 1.1).

Radio was becoming a success with Hockey fans. These original broadcasts did help the National Hockey League, as radio helped spread hockey in both the countries by introducing people to the game. The NHL became more reputable of an organization became of these official broadcasts which helped put distance between them and other hockey leagues. As you can from the estimated attendance number though the sport was more popular in Canada then the United States.

While radio was an important step for the NHL and how games were covered so was television. The first game televised was between the New York Rangers and Montreal Canadians in 1946 on February 25th. Also worth noting is that it was only the second indoor sporting event broadcast. The game which was carried by NBC was limited to the New York area and to the people who could afford a television. (Kreiser, 133) Soon the Rangers became the first NHL team to have their home games televised. When more people started to be able afford television CBS wanted to add more material and they did. They wanted to fill Saturday afternoon by televising hockey games during the winter coast to coast. (Kreiser, 133). Again the New York Rangers were the first to be a part of this event. They hosted and beat the Chicago Blackhawks on Jan 5th 1957. CBS carried hockey coverage for the next ten years, becoming the first US network to air an NHL Game of the Week. (Kreiser, 133) CBS was replaced by NBC in the 70s after they dropped broadcasting hockey games. During the sixties the sport was doing well, NHL arenas were nearly selling out and were up there with the MLB with

Team year attendance

Montreal Canadiens 1926-27 8,409Montreal Canadiens 1952-53 13,221Toronto Maple Leafs 1926-27 4,500Toronto Maple Leafs 1952-53 13,221Detroit Cougars 1926-27 2,182Detroit Red Wings 1952-53 12,362Chicago Blackhawks 1926-27 3,318Chicago Blackhawks 1952-53 11,925

New York Rangers 1926-27 7,091New York Rangers 1952-53 8,727Boston Bruins 1926-27 6,045Boston Bruins 1952-53 8,438

Figure 1.1

1917-2014

6 7Televisions Impact On the NHL 1917-2014

filling to capacity with between 95-96 percent. Even the owner of the owner of the Boston Celtics had something to say about the sports popularity.

The Bruins open the door and the Boston Garden fills up every night they play said Auerbach We keep winning titles and have to hustle and scratch to draw a sellout crowd. (Bass, 20)

Hockey was a regional club and the owner Campbell did not want to sponsor a team that would not draw any attention. Hockey was not having a problem of selling tickets but it was having a place to expand to. Television was that place, Campbell argued that there were no tickets to sell so television was the only way to secure additional revenue. NBC did a horrid job of covering the game and eventually enough interest was lost in the sport that NBC also stopped covering it. The sport was lost in the late 70s and through the 80s even when the American hockey teams wanted to start televising their games again the owners of the Canadian hockey teams tried to block the deal.(Harvey, 145) It wasnt until the 1990s that Fox and ABC got back into coverage. Now Americans make up 24% of the league. Percentage of American players has risen considerably during the last decade. At the beginning of Millennium the share of players from United States was 15%. Ten years later it has increased to almost 25%. (Quanthockey) The largest complaint with Hockey being televised in the US is that the puck is to small to follow. This problem led FOX to try to include a pucktracker that would glow on screen when the puck was shot at a particular speed. It didnt work out and the idea was eventually scrapped.

Hockey is like the NFL in that it is embraced as the nations identity although its not. Hockey Night in Canada would help this by using narrative templates. While in Canada CBC would launch its first broadcast of a game in 1952. In preparation for the televising of hockey in Canada, an experimental video transmission of a Memorial Cup hockey game from Maple Leaf Gardens in April of 1952 took place. This telecast was a closed circuit viewing for the benefit of executives from CBC, Imperial Oil and the MacLarens advertising agency and all were impressed by Foster Hewitts call of the game. (patskou)

Television still had the same problem that radio had when it was introduced; the owners looked down on it, and did not favor the switch. They were worried about the compet it ion between senior hockey leagues and the want communit ies had to use the sport to increase the look of their cit ies. (McConnell, 2). The president Campbell also thought television

would do the game an injustice and couldnt capture the entire game because of the field of view.

CBC got the rights to Saturday nights and would broadcast only until the first period ended. Despite the fear Hockey Night in Canada would go on to be one of Canadas top watched shows. Montreal had the best ratings which were 77%. Late in the 50s they began to change format and see what they could do to improve on the work of George Retzlaff and Gerald Renaud. Who pioneered how most of the way we watch the sport today. long time executive producer of HNIC Ralph Mellanby maintained that many if the procedures pioneered by the early producers were still in use because they just could not be improved upon(patskou). They changed the way intermissions were done and started the first highlight system. They also had another breakthrough when they discovered how to do replays. There were two new technical advances introduced in the 1964-65 playoffs. Although a process called hot processing was developed in the mid-50s for instant replay, it wasnt until 1965 that Ty Lemberg, a Retzlaff staffer from CBC Sports, developed a workable technique that enabled replays to become a regular, and very popular feature(Patksou). Similar to American broadcasts the CBC saw an increase in views when they expanded coast to coast for live broadcast. Although still the owners were skeptical about money and wanted to make the most of it, people say Vancouver was postponed to till the 70s because the other Canadian owners of Montreal and Toronto did not want to split the revenue. (Harvey, 145).

A scary time for the CSN was when Imperial oil left the show after being a sponsor for forty years. They had been there from the start and it caused a lot of money problems for CSN. They lost $3.5 million in sponsorship money (Patksou). Then in the 67 the league had another expansion forming such teams as the Penguins and Flyers. The full year of 1968 was the first year that Hockey Night in Canada would broadcast the full game. CBC would later become very important to Canada and the game.

What the CBC does has itself become an important part of Canadian identity and desire (Cormack, 4)

Hockey Night in Canada plays off a lot of nationalistic trends and uses what it can to pull heartstrings to draw interest, such as playing off the French versus English rift that exists to bring the two closer, and nostalgia. Which explains the desire to keep the sport as classic as possible. Both collective memory and nationalism exist within Canadian hockey, allowing Canadians to express

8 9Televisions Impact On the NHL 1917-2014

before the lockout ESPN lost about half of the income of previous years. A major problem for the league was its deteriorating television situation. In late May 2005, ESPN declined to exercise its $60 million option for broadcast rights for the 2005-2006 season.( Staudohar, 6) ESPN after the season was only offering to pay $30 million after the lockout season. Bettman didnt take this well and said

I think they thought they could do it. They took us for granted, or either they didnt value us the same way we thought we should be valued (Gatehouse)

This problem was even worse for when the contract expired, no one wanted to have a deal with the NHL. The NHL grundgenly signed a two year deal the OLN for $69 million though it reached about 30 million fewer homes than the NHLs old partner ESPN. OLN was owned by Comcast and was later branded Versus.

Although just before the lockout hockey viewers took a hit. The NHL has been able to recover. People were concerned that the missed season would bottom out the league, especially because of the lost ESPN deal. NBC signed a ten year deal with the NHL to rights to have the rights to broadcast one hundred regular season games and every Stanley Cup playoff game. The NHL also inked a similar deal with Rodgers for the Canadian market which ends the long run that CBC has had. Rodgers and the NHL reached a 12 year deal for 5.232 billion (Canadian) this is one of the biggest rights deals for Canada and the biggest for the NHL. While the NHL was struggling in America before the lockout it has been getting performance from games because of a solid broadcasting deal. The NHL has started the Winter Classic which in a few short years since the opening in Buffalo has become a huge spectacle. The most recent Winter Classic between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Redwings was the most viewed game in the NHL. An average of 8.234 million viewers tuned in, in America, which had an overnight rating of 2.5 that was even higher than a prime time game between the Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins who clocked in at 2.3. The Canadian audience was slightly bigger coming in at 8.75 million Canadians. NBC is seeing success, and has enjoyed its most watched season ever. NBCSN recorded its most-watched full regular season ever, averaging 351,000 viewers over 88 telecasts, up six percent compared to the last full regular season in 2011-12 (332,000). The previous record for a full regular season was set during the 2010-11 season (348,000 average viewers over 52 telecasts). NBCSN began

their nationalism through hockey. (Poniatowski, 46) Hockey is branded with objects and symbols that candaians use to express national identity like holidays, festivals and the flag. Even in books for hockey novels the measure of success is if they made it on Hockey Night in Canada. The CBC gathered together various figures, events, and other historically signifigant aspects of hockey to produce a peoples history in effect, it used hockey for nation-building purposes. (Cormack)

Hockey Night in Canada became a weekly tradition for entire families all around Canada after 1931. In hockeys quest to be kept traditional HNIC didnt try to add new features to the game they instead updated what was there. They played off sounds, emotions and the fans. The personalities they hired were also relatively more toned down and able to connect with the viewers. (McConell, 7)

Televesion the United States has been different than Canada since several different Networks had the contract to carry the games over the years. Some did a better job than others and this affected viewership. Most games were only viewed locally with only the Stanley Cup being televised nationally.

In 2004 the first cancellation of an entire season in professional sports occurred wiping away the 2004-2005 season. It isnt new for leagues to have a lockout but the war of this scale hasnt happened before. The future of the league is threatened by the frequent wrangling over money and power. Unless a more cooperative model of negotiations is developed, the NHL could continue to recede from publice view and lose its standing as a major professional sport (Staudohar, 1). The hockey lockout started for a variety reasons but the chief cause was out of control spending on salaries. In 1996 the average salary was under one million. In 1997 the average saw a 19.4 percent increase going above a million. Salaries were outpacing revenue streams and the NHL says it lost 1.8 billion.

The difference between Canada and America was shown again. Canadian teams have to compete with American teams but they dont earn as much, unlike US teams teams in Canada have to pay for their own arenas and there are also higher taxes for corporations in Canada. (Staudohar, 3). While hockey does have its fans it still receives less revenue than the other big sports, football, baseball, and basketball. The NHL before the lockout was in a 5 year deal with Walt Disney Company to show games on ESPN. The viewers kept getting lower and the revenue came with it. With a lockout seeming imminent companies were worried about signing another big deal then in the seasons

10 11Televisions Impact On the NHL 1917-2014

televising the NHL with the 2005-06 season. Last years lockout-shortened season averaged 392,000 on NBCSN.(NBC)

They have seen an 11% increase in viewers since their last full season. According to USA hockey membership of youth hockey leagues has gone up by 68, 202 players since the 2004-2005 lockout.

Although Hockey remains inferior in amount of viewers to other American sports, it is growing, and is becoming more approachable by broadcasters. Before the lockout no one wanted anything to do with the league. When the rights to broadcasting came up for bidding in 2011 there were companies who fought to get it. Even ESPN made an offer to get back into the fold, but NBC gave the NHL an offer for the most lucrative offer in league history and Bettman took it. (Gatehouse)

Hockey is special because it has to worry about two national markets. Between Canada and the United States of America the NHL has to worry about a number of issues mediating between the two similar but different countries. They have to account for differences in currency which effects the spending cap but it also changes how the games are televised. The hockey atmosphere has thrived in Canada for years but has struggled for a while In America. The infamous lockout of the 2004-2005 season has had a lot of impact on the National Hockey League more than any other event. (Rosen)

Lets go Pens.

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