The CBC gets a haircut, Part II

In light of last week's sports cuts at the CBC, two more questions have been raised. Okay, I raised them, but others may have been thinking about them.

Here's one: Considering that the public network is supposed to pay special attention to underserved (amateur) sports, why did Hockey Night In Canada emerge basically unscathed, except for maybe a three-jacket limit for Don Cherry? The other is: What's the status of the proposed CBC digital sports channel, CBC SportsPlus?

As always, I aim to supply answers to my own questions.

On the first point, CBC Sports boss Scott Moore says the fat has already been cut at HNIC through travel reductions and behind-the-scenes stuff. In fact, he says HNIC came in under budget after trimming.

But what about all those regional telecasts on Saturday nights? Surely, they don't help the bottom line considering how much they add to costs.

Well, Moore says, in fact they do add to the bottom line. ``The regional broadcasts have added from 100,000 to 300,000 viewers a night," he says. ``Without the extra Montreal Canadiens games, we would have less revenue because of lower ratings."

As for the planned digital channel, which was to show a variety of Canadian sports including a lot of amateur stuff, Moore says it's been on hold since the fall awating further decisions from the CRTC. That's the same thing the Canadian Olympic Committee has done with its channel application.

But CBC's plan is to launch some version of the channel by the summer of 2010, preferably before the World Cup so it will have somewhere to put all those games.

"We are still hoping to find a workable business plan and we still hope that we find a way to launch a service by World Cup next year," he says. "It may not be as ambitious as we initially had planned, but we think it’s important."

How it plans to do that is a mystery. If amateur sports coverage has been cut to deal with a budget shortfall, how do you justify spending more money on a channel that's destined to lose money for at least five years? Supposedly, CBC has a plan on that one.

Comments

[Josh]

A case could also be made that the regional HNIC telecasts fit with the CBC's mandate, and that viewers in the eastern half of the country weren't exactly well-served by the steady diet of Leafs, Leafs and more Leafs they received for a couple of decades or so.

[Andrew Bucholtz]

I'm very interested to see what happens with CBC SportsPlus: talked with Moore about it twice last year and how it might relate to university sports coverage (http://www.queensjournal.ca/story/2008-03-28/sports/cis-may-gain-tv-coverage/ and http://www.queensjournal.ca/story/2008-09-12/sports/cis-media-coverage-could-take-off/). CIS content could work well from a cost perspective on one front, as rights fees are usually minimal to non-existent, but if material like the CONCACAF Champions League and alpine skiing is seen as too niche-focused, that probably doesn't bode well for university sports.

(By the way, Chris, do you have any idea as to why the CONCACAF games were axed while the regular TFC ones were retained? I haven't seen the numbers, but my understanding was that the CBC drew more viewers for the Vancouver-Toronto and Toronto-Montreal games than their regular TFC broadcasts.)

[Chris Zelkovich]

Andrew,
My understanding is that Toronto FC survived because its deal runs past 2010. The same goes for the Raptors.

[Denise]

Yeah, those HNIC travel cutbacks have really taken hold. Guess that's why they fly Jim Hughson in from Vancouver every week and Craig Simpson from Edmonton to do the eastern-based games, rather then having them do the games out west.