Comments on: Does Hockey Really Need TV?

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:35:10 +0000

I agree with all points made, dmg. The ironic thing is ESPN’s decline coincided with the NHL lock-out. During that winter of ’04-’05, you could see Sportscenter stretching to find new ways to fill the time normally devoted to NHL broadcasts and highlights. So they began to embrace the PTI-like “yakking” throughout all programming, at the cost of straight news and highlights. Of course, with no hockey to yak about, it was permanently removed from the ESPN conversation (if you can call it that).
In 1995, you turned on Sportscenter for highlights and got them for about 85% of the program. Now I’d be shocked if that number was even %50.

By: pucksandbooks

pucksandbooks — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:08:46 +0000

I couldn’t agree with you, more, dmg, and your comparison of ESPN with MTV is spot on. I told Comcast’s Lisa Hillary this past season that I’d allow her to leave the Caps’ beat at Comcast for a gig at the NHL Network, but that were her departure for ESPN, our friendship would end. I think she understood.

By: dmg

dmg — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:53:22 +0000

The lack of coverage on ESPN hasn’t been nearly as important as people made it out to be (and some still make it out to be), in my opinion because no one takes ESPN seriously anymore.
To me, ESPN is a bit like MTV. They started out with a real focus on sports/music, but as time progressed they became more concerned with the celebrity culture surrounding sports/music than sports/music itself (though MTV is the epitome of horrible TV now, but that’s another issue). Whereas ESPN used to have highlight packages or live events on most of the time, they now just pay lip service to that and instead focus of stupid things like the ‘Budweiser Hot Seat’ (in which no hard questions are actually asked), ‘The Ultimate Highlight’ (which is just a cross promotion with Gatorade and the music industry) and the absurd ‘Who’s More Now?’ segment. Plus, they do absurd things like blow up Steve Phillips’ already inflated ego by letting him pretend he’s the GM of the Yankees and Red Sox and holding horrible mock press conferences where the other members of Baseball Tonight lob him questions.
The ironic thing is that hockey is experiencing more growth than any of the other major sports in the United States (I believe that the NFL is growing steadily, MLB is growth pretty well and the NBA is stagnating or losing a little popularity, but I may be wrong) and ESPN is starting to give it more coverage, pulling Don Cherry and, for the first time I can recall, airing World Championship highlights.