Hockey Night in Canada is taking its popular brand to satellite radio where it will launch a talk show in time for the start of the NHL season, sources said this week.
Scott Moore, the head of CBC Sports, refused comment, except to say: "We're always looking for ways to leverage the top sports brand on Canadian television. We think it's been underutilized."
The cross-promoting would involve the Hockey Night radio show and Saturday night TV doubleheader as well as other CBC Sports telecasts.
Moore would not say which satellite company will carry HNIC Radio, but it's expected to be Sirius Canada. The CBC has a 40-per-cent ownership stake in Sirius, with another 40 per cent held by Standard Broadcasting and 20 per cent belonging to Sirius in the United States.
One of the hosts of HNIC Radio is expected to be Hockey Night reporter Elliotte Friedman, who started in radio with the Fan 590 in Toronto and still occasionally fills in as a co-host.
The launch of HNIC Radio would, in a way, take the Hockey Night brand full circle.
It began on radio in the 1930s, when Foster Hewitt's broadcasts from Maple Leaf Gardens were transmitted across the country. Hockey Night moved to television in 1952.
Athletics on TV
Track and field aficionados have a right to feel underserved by television, but the CBC has hung an open-for-business sign by streaming coverage of the world championships from Osaka. The online telecasts, from the host broadcaster, are live and begin at 6:30 a.m. (EDT). Video on demand is also available.
Should the telecasts be on television? Yes. But early morning sports is a difficult fit for CBC Television, a full-service network that has commitments to news and children's programming, Scott Moore said.
The CBC is providing afternoon telecasts of the event on Saturdays and Sundays. Announcer Don Wittman and analyst Michael Smith, the former decathlete, call the action. Aside from Wittman and Smith rating as possibly the dullest broadcast team in sports, they're also calling the events off a monitor.
Moore said there were several reasons for keeping them home.
"It was a combination of the bottom line, ratings and what the story lines were," he said. "If we had enough compelling Canadian story lines, I think we definitely would have been there. That was part of the decision-making process. We're committed to track and field, but we want to spend our money wisely and go to the events that matter the most."
Juniors online
The audience for TSN's telecast of the Super Series opener on Monday wasn't available from Nielsen yesterday.
The live stream of the telecast on a shared TSN-Rogers Sportsnet website had 20,500 views. (Coverage of the Super Series is a TSN-Sportsnet co-production.)
The series opener aired live at 9 a.m. (EDT) on Monday. By 4 p.m. on Tuesday, video-on-demand had been accessed 25,090 times.
These online figures surpassed those for each of the 2007 men's world hockey championship telecasts and three of the 2007 world junior telecasts — Canada-Slovakia, Germany-U.S. and U.S.-Slovakia.
Readers have asked about access to the Super Series telecasts outside Canada. TV and broadband coverage is limited to Canada and Russia. There wasn't much interest in other countries. Had the NHL Network been up and running in the United States, it would have been a good platform for the games.
Mellow Mac: Pierre McGuire's game analysis during the first game of the Super Series was uncharacteristically low-key — more understated than the usual high-energy NHL performances we hear on TSN and NBC. What happened? McGuire and play-by-play announcer Peter Loubardias worked from a broadcast booth at Ufa in Russia that was sealed off from the spectators. They couldn't hear the crowd noise.
During the NHL season, McGuire works almost exclusively between the benches at ice level amid the din of the spectators. In that environment, he has to crank it up.
The second game of the series is on Sportsnet, today at 9 a.m. (EDT).
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