The National Hockey League playoff schedule, which has been criticized in Canada, has sparked a dispute between the two television rights holders.
The CBC sought a clarification on federal broadcasting rules this week in an attempt to block TSN from airing a split telecast of the Tampa Bay Lightning-New Jersey Devils series and the Anaheim Mighty Ducks-Dallas Stars series on Thursday night. The CBC, which was denied a Canadian playoff match-up on the Thursday schedule by the NHL, wanted to air one of the two U.S. games.
"We were ready, willing and able to produce one of the Thursday games," a CBC spokesman confirmed yesterday.
However, TSN went ahead and aired the Lightning-Devils in the Ottawa-East region of the country and the Ducks-Stars in Ontario-West. Digital subscribers had the option of choosing between either game, which were carried on TSN and its secondary digital channel.
The CBC's chief concern, apparently, was TSN carrying both games in the same market digitally. Nancy Lee, the head of CBC Sports, said the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission confirmed to her that dual broadcasts are not allowed.
TSN, which owns the rights to the U.S. match-ups, was willing to give one of the Thursday games to the CBC, but wanted something in return -- one of the two Canadian match-ups, the Ottawa Senators at the Philadelphia Flyers or the Vancouver Canucks at the Minnesota Wild, when both games air early in prime time next Tuesday.
The CBC felt that handing over a Canadian game to TSN in return for a U.S. match-up was an unfair trade.
However, from the perspective of the Canadian hockey fans, the move would have been applauded. Viewers across the country would have been able to see games on Thursday and also the two Canadian match-ups next Tuesday. As it is, for Tuesday, the CBC's Hockey Night in Canada will air a split telecast: the West will see Vancouver-Minnesota; the East will get Ottawa-Philadelphia.
"I can understand why the CBC didn't want to hand over a Canadian game to TSN," a source said. "But for the fans, it would have been very positive. There are plenty of Canucks fans in the East who won't see the game next Tuesday. Flyers and Senators fans in the West are in the same boat."
The CBC's dispute with TSN is just one of many examples of the problems caused by this year's playoff schedule. In the first round, the CBC was dealt a handful of conflicting Canadian games and only two Saturday prime-time games.
In the second round, Hockey Night has been shut out of the traditional Saturday time slot entirely. That's because the league is doing everything it can to accommodate ABC Sports, which wants the Saturday games played in the afternoon.
The CBC's ratings show that the switch from Saturday prime time to Saturday at 3 p.m. EDT is causing the network to lose several hundred thousand viewers.
For example, Game 5 of the Flyers-Toronto Maple Leafs series, played this past Saturday afternoon, produced an audience of 1.666 million. Arguably, a prime-time telecast would have drawn something closer to 2 million. (Game 6 pulled in more than 3 million.)
The NHL favours ABC Sports because the ABC-ESPN partnership pays the league more than twice as much as the CBC does for rights. In addition, the league is eager for ABC to renew its contract when the current deal expires at the end of next season.
Trouble with Harry
The betting here is that Hockey Night analyst Harry Neale will be more effective calling the Senators-Flyers series than he was with the Flyers and the Leafs.
Neale works on virtually every game that the Leafs play, on regional telecasts with Joe Bowen or on Hockey Night with Bob Cole. That's the problem. He's too close to the team and too friendly with coach Pat Quinn, with whom he has a postgame show on Leafs TV called Pat's Perspective.
Neale's wit and sense of humour are his strengths. If he worked within the framework of a TSN broadcast, which provides plenty of analysis from Dave Hodge, Bob McKenzie and a guest expert, in addition to the broadcast team, Neale's reluctance to comment on the Leafs would not jump out as a glaring weakness.
But the lack of chemistry between Cole and Neale, combined with Hockey Night providing hardly any analysis other than Don Cherry's Coach's Corner, produces an inferior product in terms of telling the viewer what's happening on the ice, why it's happening and what needs to be done to fix a problem.
The answer is to assign Neale to a playoff series other than one involving the Leafs.