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October 20, 2004
Dan Brown
CBC News Online
If the NHL lockout drags on, one thing's for sure: Anne Marie Myers' house
is going to sparkle.
Myers - a single mother in Chatham, Ont. - is accustomed to spending
Saturday nights watching Hockey Night in Canada. But with the league
officially in limbo, and the CBC's most-watched program on an indefinite
hiatus along with it, Myers is going to have to figure out a new weekend
ritual.
"Now I think I'm basically going to clean house, maybe go to the gym and
work out, and then go to bed," she says over the phone.
Had the season started as scheduled, Myers would be tuning in to Hockey
Night in Canada at 7 p.m. every Saturday, then staying up as late as 1 a.m.
to see her beloved Edmonton Oilers in action. Whichever side you blame in
the labour dispute, the unavoidable fact is that she now has a six-hour hole
to fill. That's a lot of house cleaning.
According to the CBC, Hockey Night in Canada typically draws an audience of
1.2 million people on Saturdays. So with the negotiations between the
National Hockey League's players and owners at a standstill, the logical
question becomes: what are all those viewers going to watch instead of
hockey? Are they even going to watch TV?
These aren't theoretical matters. Myers, for instance, is faced with the
prospect of finding new ways to keep her two children, who are with her
every other weekend and who are rabid hockey fans, entertained. She's not
looking forward to hearing the refrain that every parent dreads: "Mom, I'm
bored."
And Myers isn't alone. A cultural institution since it was first broadcast
on radio in 1933, Hockey Night in Canada has been a TV mainstay since 1952
and is today one of those rare programs that still appeals to a wide
cross-section of the population. Where it once attracted only male viewers,
it now draws eyeballs from many different demographics. "It's not a niche
program. It's a mass program," explains Jeff Berry, general manager of the
Vancouver office of OMD Canada, a national media company.
"[The absence of Hockey Night in Canada is] a crippling blow to a country
when one in 30 people has to find something new to do on Saturday night,"
adds Jim Boone, the co-founder of the National Hockey League Fans'
Association, a group born in 1998 that represents 25,000 hockey enthusiasts.
For those who live and breathe hockey, the solution seems simple enough: the
substitute for no NHL hockey is a different kind of hockey.
Jason Kay is the editor of the Hockey News. His rough estimate is that
between one-third and one-half of the Hockey Night audience is made up of
staunch fans who will watch only hockey on a Saturday night. To help them,
his newspaper is providing a section that details the American Hockey League
TV schedule and gives information on university and regional leagues. "There
are a lot of local deals out there," Kay says.
Kay doesn't believe that this will be the option of choice for the majority
of CBC viewers, however. "You gotta be a real die-hard and really love the
game to tune in on a regular basis" to AHL or college hockey, he says. In
his view, those broadcasters that can provide easy-to-relate-to games with
high production values will get the most viewers. In other words, they must
offer hockey programming above the level of "Joe with his camera on
community access."
Berry doesn't see any specialty channels that are in a position to take
advantage of the situation, that are poised to steal viewers away from the
nation's public broadcaster while the NHL languishes.
"I don't think any particular station or any particular program is going to
capture a dominant share of those viewers. It's going to go all over the
place," he says.
According to Boone, the economics of specialty broadcasting - which relies
on inexpensive programming - works against a creative solution, like beaming
in games from Europe. In other words, no channel is willing to make the
necessary investment. "They're too cheap," Boone says of the all-sports
networks. (Executives at TSN and Sportsnet could not be reached for comment
on this article.)
Some ardent fans are turning off their TV sets and heading to the local
rink. Rob Matic is a fan of the Ontario Hockey League's London Knights who
shares two season tickets with a friend. "I've arranged to get the
Saturday-night tickets for sure, because I need my hockey fix," he says.
Matic plans to use his hockey budget to follow the Knights around the
province. He has already been to a game in Sarnia, and another road trip to
Owen Sound is in the works. But he admits it's not a perfect solution.
"It's always better to experience the game in the arena than watching it on
TV," Matic says. "Is it a good enough substitute? No, I don't think so. I
still love the NHL, no question about it."
There's also a chance that, in the short run at least, the Hockey Night in
Canada audience will spill over to other professional sports. Nancy Lee, the
executive director of CBC-TV's sports operation, feels that sports lovers in
Canada may pay more attention to the World Series this fall because there's
no hockey. "I think baseball will get more viewers watching than they did in
the past," she says.
Sue Hains is a hockey fan in Kingston, Ont. One viewing option for her
during the lockout is the Sportsnet rebroadcasts of English Premier League
soccer games. A follower of Arsenal, she says the choice comes down to
soccer or no TV at all: "If there's no good game on that I want to see from
the EPL, I'd probably spend my time reading 'cause I've got a ton of books
that I haven't read."
Hockey Night in Canada personality Ron MacLean. MacLean has been drafted to
host CBC's Movie Night in Canada.
The CBC, for its part, is trying to keep a grip on Saturday-night viewers
with Movie Night in Canada, a triple bill of feature films hosted by Hockey
Night in Canada personality Ron MacLean. Lee says MacLean made sense as the
host because Canadians are used to seeing him on the CBC on that night of
the week. The strategy also appears designed to remind viewers that, when
the lockout ends, Hockey Night will return - MacLean's first outing on the
new show had him broadcasting rinkside from Dave Andreychuk Mountain Arena
in Hamilton, Ont., rhyming off the stats of director Steven Spielberg with
the same acuity he reserves for discussions of the NHL's elite.
There appears to be no consensus on the wisdom of temporarily reassigning
MacLean. Some, like Myers, see virtue in the idea: "I think it would attract
a lot of fans because he has a lot of fans." Matic, on the other hand, is
not at all interested. "If I want to watch a movie, I can go rent one or
watch the movie channel or something like that," he says.
"It's a completely different type of programming," echoes Berry.
That said, Movie Night in Canada had an impressive debut on Oct. 16. On the
first Saturday night of the NHL regular season, the second movie of the
triple bill - Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark - drew 1.105 million
viewers, according to CBC spokesperson Ruth-Ellen Soles. That figure is on
par with the number of viewers who dial up the first Hockey Night in Canada
game each Saturday evening.
Many hockey fans believe CBC's Making the Cut is the logical substitute for
Hockey Night in Canada during the NHL lockout.
As for what would make a better replacement, ask a thousand hockey fans and
you'll get a thousand answers. Many mention the CBC's hockey-reality
offering, Making the Cut, as a logical substitute, although Myers would like
to see the series modified so that out-of-work NHLers could be included in
the storyline. "I don't think it would hurt if they had some NHL players on
that show, somehow giving them pointers, something. 'Cause that would
definitely attract fans," she says.
Boone's suggestion is for the CBC to reach into its vault and rebroadcast
classic games from the past, like the last 10 deciding Stanley Cup games won
by Canadian teams. "To see Gretzky again, would be just the cat's ass," he
enthuses.
Matic approves of the vintage-programming strategy, with one proviso: he
would like to see classic games that have never been rebroadcast before. "A
lot of the games are the same old, same old, same old," he says, adding that
one possible alternative may be to highlight defunct teams, like the
California Golden Seals (classic games are already a part of the TSN
schedule, although not on Saturday nights).
And despite the current uncertainty, Hockey Night in Canada's future seems
assured. Lee says the CBC has done research that shows a "healthy" number of
viewers will return to the program when the lockout ends (as happened in
1994, when the season was abbreviated), and ardent viewers say they will
definitely pick up where the league left off.
Hains, who's been watching the show since 1960, is typical. "I doubt they'd
lose me," she says. "I went through 1994, and I still watch it."
(NHLFA Note: The fans interviewed for this story are NHLFA Members.)
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