Since I grew up in the northeast, I must admit that I never cared about the sports world being so biased towards the east coast… until I moved to California. Then, I realized that although some sports definitely alter their schedules a bit for the east coast (Monday Night Football would clearly not be as late if they only cared about the east coast viewers), most things in sports are centered on the east coast. Whenever I see a game time, I automatically subtract 3 hours. It’s just the way things go out here.
Clearly, when the national broadcast schedules were released for hockey, I knew there would be more games with east coast teams than west coast teams, but the bottom 10 for US nationally televised games (all with zero or one game) has only two teams from the eastern conference and the top 10 for US nationally televised games (with 5-9 games) has only 3 western conference teams.
Calgary, Edmonton, and Los Angeles have no games that are nationally televised in the US. Clearly, Calgary and Edmonton have a lot of games that will be on CBC and TSN. The Kings have three games that will be nationally televised in Canada and none in the US. I certainly wouldn’t argue that the Kings deserve more air time than they’re getting. They were just barely the 29th team in the league last season. However, using that same argument, why is Tampa Bay going to be on national television in the US 4 times?
I understand that the big hockey markets (like New York, Boston, Minnesota, Detroit, etc.) come first. However, how can the NHL grow the sport in other markets if they only show teams from the cities where they already have good ratings?
It also makes sense for the NHL to make sure their stars (Sidney Crosby & Alexander Ovechkin) get more air time so fans can enjoy their amazing moves. However, there are great players all around the league that the NHL has not decided are worth their time. It’s no wonder that people in the northeast end up thinking that the Kings would be willing to trade Kopitar for whatever horrible player they’re trying to get rid of at the time. No one without the Center Ice package can see him play for more than one or two games a year (depending on how many times their local team plays the Kings).
I have Center Ice, so the schedule doesn’t affect me much personally, but I would like to see a more even distribution of games. I realize that the NBC games have not been decided, for the most part, but I can’t see them picking the teams at the bottom of the list of nationally televised games any more than Versus did.
Ratings are everything in TV, but it seems like a catch 22. Without good ratings, they won’t televise your team nationally. Without televising your team nationally, they’ll never get good ratings. Teams like the Islanders who are in a city with a big market, but still not on national TV much (4 games in the US, 1 in Canada) must feel really left out. I know the Rangers are more popular (all my friends in NYC are Rangers fans if they like a team in the NY/NJ area), but the Islanders have a big following, too.
The other truly shocking thing about the national TV schedule in the US is that neither NBC or Versus are showing the games on October 4th. The first two games in the NHL season will only be shown nationally by CBC. All I can say is that I hope Center Ice is set up to start on time without problems this season. The NHL seems to have issues getting Center Ice set up with each provider every year and if it’s not set up to start games on October 4th, no one in the US will be able to see the first two games of the hockey season unless they have Canadian DirecTV.
Training camps are only about three weeks away. Thank goodness the Olympics were around to distract us for a while.
Kat
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