Networks play nice and viewers win
Let's hope the Great Hockey Game Swap sets a precedent.
In one of the most unusual broadcasting deals of all time, CBC and TSN traded hockey games last week, mainly to solve a couple of conflicts. Regardless of the reason, it served viewers very well.
TSN was planning to show the Boston-Carolina game while moving the Anaheim-Detroit match to TSN2. But it moved the latter to CBC, which had a bunch of reruns no hockey that night. That meant not only a big audience for CBC but a lot of satisfied Rogers customers, who still can't get TSN2 until a deal is announced. (That should be any day now. I'm told Rogers has actually cleared space for the channel.)
In return for that Friday night surprise, CBC gave TSN its May 11 broadcast of the Pittsburgh-Washington game.
It happened, basically, because of conflicts. While TSN had its Friday logjam, CBC was facing a potential nightmare on May 11 because Game 6 of the Washington-Pittsburgh and Vancouver-Chicago series were both scheduled for that night. Assuming both series were still going, CBC would have had to either split the broadcast to different regions or start showing the Pittsburgh game and leave it to show the Vancouver match. Both solutions would have sparked a march of torch-and-pitchfork-carrying hockey fans along Front St.
So the swap served everybody -- and mostly the viewers. Too often, viewers end up missing out because one network won't shop its excess games to its competitors. Even if it does, the competition won't play ball for fear of helping their rivals.
See what happens when everybody plays nice?
The other oddity in this deal was that TSN ended up with the smaller audience on Friday. Maybe it will make that up next week.
It was a weekend of oddities. NBC scored a 1.4 rating for Saturday's Washington-Pittsburgh game, up 40 per cent from the comparable game last spring. Sunday's ratings aren't available yet, but a triple overtime thriller should score better than normal.
Speaking of scoring better than normal, Toronto FC did just that Saturday.
Maybe it was having hockey as a lead-in, or maybe it was the thirst for a winning team here but Toronto FC pulled in its biggest audience of the season Saturday. Its 1-1 draw with Columbus attracted an average audience of 261,000 on CBC. Overall this year, TFC is averaging 178,000 viewers on the public network, a vast improvement over 2008.
Here are the top-rated sports events of the past weekend, according to BBM Nielsen Media Research overnight ratings.
1. Hockey, Blackhawks at Canucks, Saturday, CBC: 1,879,000
2. Hockey, Hurricanes at Bruins, Sunday, TSN: 805,000
3. Hockey, Ducks at Red Wings, Friday, CBC: 746,000
4. Hockey, Penguins at Capitals, Saturday, CBC: 632,000*
5. Hockey Night In Canada pre-game show, Saturday, CBC: 574,000
6. Hockey, Ducks at Red Wings, Sunday, TSN: 567,000*
7. Hockey, Hurricanes at Bruins, Friday, TSN: 514,000
8. Baseball, Orioles at Blue Jays, Sunday, Sportsnet: 340,000
9. Soccer, Columbus at Toronto FC, Saturday, CBC: 261,000
10. Baseball, Orioles at Blue Jays, Saturday, Sportsnet: 255,000
* NBC's Canadian audiences not calculated
Hey, check out Chris using the "passive/aggressive strikeout insult" meme! And using it properly!
Attaboy, Chris, you're going to nail this blogging thing yet!
Posted by: Down Goes Brown | 05/04/2009 at 07:48 PM
Not sure how much of a boost triple overtime would give NBC. There are reports of at least two affiliates dumping out of the game to show local news.
Posted by: JP | 05/04/2009 at 09:06 PM
Good numbers for Toronto FC. Too bad they couldn't keep the win streak going
Posted by: John | 05/04/2009 at 09:19 PM
Chris...not sure how to contact you outside of one of your entries but I'll try here.
My question is: What the heck is going on with the Fan590 over night? For years, I've been enjoying the ESPN Overnight coverage, then they switched to FoxSports (for money reasons as you discussed earlier) but now, show replays from earlier in the day?? Odd. I assume it's simply money crunching but maybe's there's something more to it. Is there?
Hello Whitby Chris,
ESPN raised the rates and the FAN refused to pay.
The replays, as I understand it, are because there were complaints about the Fox stuff.
Posted by: Chris in Whitby | 05/05/2009 at 01:20 PM
Chris, since you have blogged about it, what was the ratings for the CFL draft?
Posted by: cathy | 05/05/2009 at 02:26 PM
Great news about TFC! It's about time Canada caught up witht he rest of the world.
Posted by: DOM8 | 05/05/2009 at 04:11 PM
fan590 program guy discussed it on the air about 2 weeks ago: espn let go because they wanted to jack up their fees; dropped fox for the time being because content wasn't suitable as it was too much man talk (women, sex, jokes etc..) rather than sports talk; fox is looking into possible content changes.
Posted by: cathy | 05/05/2009 at 04:12 PM
Chris in Whitby:
Nelson Millman appeared on Bob Macowan's show a couple of weeks ago to clarify the situation. They switched to Fox, were not happy with the programming, specifically some of the over the edge, risque content which had little to do with sports. They expressed their concerns, and will be revisiting Fox sports. In the meantime, they air the reruns to fill programming.
Posted by: Clarkie 90210 | 05/05/2009 at 04:25 PM
ESPN wanted too much money for overnight programming (according to FAN 590 program director Nelson Millman) so they switched to Fox...........apparently they gave Fox a try for a few weeks but they didn't like the programming very much so they have now decided to go with FAN 590 reruns from the previous day
Posted by: Mike S | 05/05/2009 at 05:21 PM
ahhh...it was a questionable content issue. I only listened to the Fox show a couple times and can easily understand why it's no longer on the Fan...thanks for all your responses.
Posted by: Chris in Whitby | 05/07/2009 at 11:08 AM