There are two bits of information in this report by Sports Business Journal this morning, and both of them are guaranteed to drive purists into a Tortorellian fit of rage. The more benign of the two is that the NHL plans on placing Stanley Cup Playoffs logos inside each of the blue lines during the postseason, in the area where those "Thank You, Fans!" messages were placed after they stole a season from us. There will also be an NHL logo on the ice behind each net. As far as changes go, this one is more irksome than offensive. I'd actually like to see more art on the ice during a game -- as a Devils fan, perhaps a giant arrow that points to the opposing net to help on the power play.
The second bit of news ... well, it's a little more controversial I imagine: The NHL plans on selling "virtual advertising" on the glass above the ice. From SBJ:
The virtual advertising plan, which still has to be approved by Commissioner Gary Bettman and team owners, is patterned after the same type of advertising behind home plate during televised baseball games. Hockey's version will superimpose ads on the glass above dasherboards that protect spectators. The ads, which will not be visible in the arena, will not affect camera angles or live TV shots.
The case for NBC renewal is to maintain a relationship with the NHL and keep hockey on the network as a lead-up to coverage of the Winter Olympics hockey tournament in 2010.
The argument against includes low ratings. NBC's numbers at this point last season weren't good. After two games, the average was 1.1 (percentage of the potential household tuned in). After two games this season, not counting the Buffalo outdoor game, the average has dropped to a remarkably poor 0.8. NBC isn't losing money in its profit-sharing deal with the NHL, but it could be earning more by airing something else on Sunday afternoons.
Houston theorizes that NBC's withdrawal from hockey could hasten the League's return to ESPN, but Versus will have more to say about that decision than anyone else since it has U.S. cable exclusivity for the NHL. I'm still thinking one of Houston's previous reports that had all three networks sharing coverage will come to pass; because I believe a return to ESPN is basically a foregone conclusion, and because Bettman and the League understand the prestige and symbolic value of a broadcast network deal -- as poor as the ratings have been.
NBC exceeded audience expectations for its coverage of the Buffalo outdoor game on New Year's Day by earning a 2.4 overnight rating (percentage of the potential U.S. audience tuned in).
Sources said an American network has not produced an audience of that size for an NHL regular season game since the Fox Sports telecasts in the 1990s.
So there you have it: In order for the NHL to succeed on television, it either needs a glow puck or a snow puck. Meanwhile, the local ratings in Buffalo were interesting, according to the Buffalo News:
The rating peaked at 43.1 at 4:30 p.m., shortly before the Pens' Sidney Crosby scored the game-winning goal in a shootout. It averaged a 37.4 rating from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and a 40.5 rating from 4 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. The high ratings are impressive, but not even close to the 46.9 rating that the Buffalo Bills had for a late-season game with the Cleveland Browns that had playoff implications. Somewhat surprisingly, CBC's coverage of the Winter Classic didn't register enough of a rating to register here.
No word yet on how the Winter Classic fared against competition from college football games -- or how "The Music of Seal on Ice" built off of the Classic's massive lead-in.
Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.
(An virtual recreation of an actual conversation that occurred on the morning of Jan. 1, 2008, in a cluttered post-party living room somewhere in Maryland.)
"What are you putting on now? Not that 'Twilight Zone' marathon again."
"Nope. A little thing called 'The Winter Classic.' Pittsburgh and Buffalo are playing a hockey game in a football stadium today. It's going to be awesome."
"Give me the remote, I'll find something to ... wait, WTF? There's, like, 100,000 people there, it's snowing like hell and Bob Costas is standing in front of a hockey rink."
"I told you it'd be cool. I mean, not as cool as watching Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve..."
"Actually, Greg, the word is cruel. You've been doing the same Tom Carvel impression every year since Dick Clark came back from the stroke. Hey, who's this Crosby guy they keep showing?"
And with that, a grand experiment began: Using an outdoor game to attempt to sell hockey to a gaggle of 20-something females with a self-confessed puck allergy.
(Coming Up Next: Big Time Hollywood Stars at the Winter Classic, Scandalous and Hilarious Puck Headlines, Tonight's Must-See Games, a Great Little Bud Light Tribute to Hockey and Some Guy Who's Convinced the Winter Classic was Fixed.)
As we all know by now, 2007 was not a good year for Notre Dame football. The Irish finished 3-9, lost to Navy, were shut out at home by USC, put together one of the worst offenses in college football history and otherwise stunk up the joint. For this, their home broadcasts on NBC took a hyuuuuuuge ratings hit and it's costing the network money money money (money!).
Already, NBC has had to adjust its advertising pricing strategy. This fall the ratings on Irish games fell 40% from last year and are now half of their 2005 levels. NBC has had to give loads of free ads (known as make-goods) to companies like Allstate and Procter & Gamble to justify the $55,000-to-$80,000 rates for a 30-second ad it negotiated before the season started. Media buyers will demand better rates for the 2008-09 season.
"Those ratings will be a delicate negotiating point for NBC going forward," says Sam Sussman, sports director at media buying agency Starcom MediaVest.
Keep in mind that the BCS already renegotiated with Notre Dame several years ago for a lower payout than the Irish had been used to. Notre Dame is still a marketing giant and cash cow so these aren't dire straits, but their leverage has been compromised of late as the football program struggles to achieve the sustained success it last saw in the late 80's and early 90's.
In the meantime, the Irish haters can have fun comparing the school's 50% drop in Nielsen ratings since 2005 (3.6 then, 1.8 now). Sorry, No Photos
Other than the fact that it's an ongoing negotiation, I have no idea why the NHL is being so damn coy about what's possibly the worst-kept secret in sports television: That the League will be back on ESPN in some capacity next season. Even Bristol has been quick to silence any chatter about it, as John Buccigross found out earlier this season. Maybe neither side wants to be the one to break it to hockey fans that the NHL will be relegated to the ESPN2 ghetto, where it will battle for airtime against Men's Trickshot Billiards and reruns of "Madden Nation" ... both of which could likely grab a larger audience on a Thursday night than a Ducks/Coyotes game.
William Houston of The Globe and Mail writes that Versus -- which has rights to NHL games through 2011 -- is amenable to ESPN re-entering the picture, joining the Dennis Miller/Buck-Hunting Network and NBC as a broadcast partner. Three national networks covering one professional league isn't all that rare in the current sports television landscape; but three different networks airing parts of that league's championship round? Houston prognosticates:
The TV schedule for the Stanley Cup final in 2009 could be structured in a way that relieves NBC of some of the prime-time burden. Versus could carry the first three games. ESPN would come in for the fourth and fifth, if necessary. If the series went six and seven games, they could go to NBC.
Currently, NBC is contracted to cover Games 3-7 of the Finals, with the appetizers airing on Versus. Game 1 of the Finals last season between Anaheim and Ottawa earned a 0.72 cable rating and was watched by 523,000 U.S. households, down 18 percent from the previous season's Finals coverage on OLN. The television plan detailed above would do little to buck that trend; in fact, it creates more questions than it answers.
NHL on NBC vets Doc Emrick, Eddie Olczyk and producer Sam Flood were joined by newbies "Mad" Mike Milbury and Costas, whose focus is clearly on making a game between what are currently two non-playoff teams into something transcendent, saying that "you don't have to be somebody who follows the NHL day in and day out to enjoy it as an event."
Being that this is a large-scale sporting event with an opportunity for some NBC cross-promotion, someone asked Flood if there would be an NBC celebrity component at the Winter Classic, and specifically about arguably the network's biggest prime-time star and most prominent Canadian, Howie "Deal or No Deal" Mandel. "In terms of Howie Mandel, no plans at this time to have him at the game site. Remember, Jan. 1 is a different kind of day to have these celebs in different locations," said Flood.
Having Mandel at the game, or on any hockey telecast, would obviously be a coup based on his current popularity and general appeal; but it would also be the safe, obvious play. If NBC and the NHL really wanted to create some buzz, they should draft some of the network's stars whose hockey credentials are a little less established. Who isn't tuning in to the Winter Classic pregame show to hear Tracy Morgan of "30 Rock" do five minutes on hockey? Of course, the probability of getting Tracy Morgan to Buffalo, NY on New Year's Day afternoon for a hockey game is about the same as the probability that Jamie-Lynn Spears was going to save it 'til marriage. Some other points of interest from the conference call...
I'm on the fence as far as mixing Costas with hockey. As the NHL points out, he's got a history with the sport, serving as the play-by-play commentator for the Syracuse Blazers of the old Eastern Hockey League in 1973-74 and also occasionally filling in for Dan Kelly on KMOX's St. Louis Blues radiocasts near the end of the decade and into the 1980s. But that deadpan, sanctimonious act he's known for is the last thing an NHL broadcast needs -- they're usually more arid than diet rice cakes to begin with -- and he won't have the supporting cast he has on NBC Sunday Night Football in America to liven things up. I know I'm in the minority on this, but I didn't mind Chris Berman leading the round table during the Stanley Cup Finals a few years back; I'd rather listen to Fred Flintstone talk puck than a buttoned-up baseball nerd.
Yet what Costas can do, better than nearly any of his peers, is make you care about what you're about to see. He's brilliant at identifying plot lines, major themes and general drama, chewing it up and regurgitating it back in a way in which everyone from the die-hards to the casual fans can appreciate it. To that end, he might be perfect for hockey: Someone who can sell the game's incredible storylines and compelling conflicts in concise, populist terms. Take a look at this dissection of Bode Miller's Olympic flop as an example of his deft touch on a sport that's not in his heavy rotation:
I was thrilled when I learned that Keith Olbermann had been added to the NBC Sunday night NFL broadcast team because I think Olbermann is smart, funny and insightful. But Olbermann had the first of his regular Sunday night commentaries yesterday, and it was none of those things. Awful Announcing supplies the video:
Olbermann gets it wrong from the very start, by referring to the people who have spoken out against Michael Vick as "those who hate Michael Vick," as if wanting to see criminals held accountable for the crimes they commit is tantamount to hatred. He then proceeds to name other NFL players (Pacman Jones, Lawrence Phillips, Ray Lewis, Leonard Little) whose misdeeds haven't generated the kind of public outrage that Vick's misdeeds have, conveniently forgetting to mention that none of those players are anywhere near as famous as Vick.
Oh, and the "He is Michael Vick, not Michael Victim" line? Lame. Please, Keith. You're better than this.
There are two bits of information in this report by Sports Business Journal this morning, and both of them are guaranteed to drive purists into a Tortorellian fit of rage. The more benign of the two is that the NHL plans on placing Stanley Cup Playoffs logos inside each of the blue lines during the postseason, in the area where those "Thank You, Fans!" messages were placed after they stole a season from us. There will also be an NHL logo on the ice behind each net. As far as changes go, this one is more irksome than offensive. I'd actually like to see more art on the ice during a game -- as a Devils fan, perhaps a giant arrow that points to the opposing net to help on the power play.
There seems to be a 
William Houston of the Globe & Mail reports Wednesday that 
William Houston of the Globe and Mail 
As we all know by now, 2007 was not a good year for Notre Dame football. The Irish finished 3-9, lost to Navy, were shut out at home by USC, put together 
Other than the fact that it's an ongoing negotiation, 
The hype machine for the 
