Televisions Impact On the NHL

1917-2014

Televisions Impact On the NHL

1917-2014

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1917-2014 5

1917-2014
The National Hockey League (NHL) is different from other professional
sports franchises in America as it has teams in both the United States and
Canada. This is most obvious when attending a game and both the Star
Spangled Banner and O Canada may be sung. This difference also shows
up in the way the games are televised and radio broadcast. The expansion of
the NHL teams and their fan base are directly related to the expansion of the
games being broadcast on radio and television.
The NHL was established in 1917 with Canadian teams. The Boston Bruins
became the first American team in 1924. The first radio broadcast was in
Pittsburgh, PA in 1921. The first game to be covered was in Toronto starting
March 4, 1923. These were tests and were experimental in practice. As time
went on the Toronto Maple Leafs became the first team to regularly broadcast
their games, although radio coverage was not welcomed by all. The owners of
the Original Six (Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Toronto, New York, Montreal) did
not favor the change and were skeptical of radio broadcasts. One of the fears
the owners had was that radio would drive down attendance of hockey games.
Broadcasting in sports is very important. Sports have become a major
source of entertainment and communal bonding for Americans since the
1920s (Wenner, 55). Radio allows people to connect with teams and their
favorite players and know results real time. It also added a sense of drama.
Radio conveyed the excitement people would feel if they attended the
game in person (Sarver, 20). Previously the score sheet would have given
away the score and the major events of the game. Now people could listen
as everything unfolded and the outcome was unknown. Radio also had
reach that newspapers did not have. This brought a game such as hockey
to hundreds more people who could never see a game. Now they could still
experience it thanks to radio.
When the Toronto Maple Leaf Gardens was opened during 1931, Conn
Smythe the owner of the Maple Leafs planned to broadcast all the home
games. The broadcasts sponsored by General Motors of Canada would lay the
ground work for CBCs Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC). Broadcasts were
sponsored by General Motors of Canada, and broadcasts attracted more than

Team

year

attendance

Montreal Canadiens
Montreal Canadiens
Toronto Maple Leafs
Toronto Maple Leafs
Detroit Cougars
Detroit Red Wings
Chicago Blackhawks
Chicago Blackhawks

1926-27
1952-53
1926-27
1952-53
1926-27
1952-53
1926-27
1952-53

8,409
13,221
4,500
13,221
2,182
12,362
3,318
11,925

New York Rangers

New York Rangers
Boston Bruins
Boston Bruins

1926-27
1952-53
1926-27
1952-53

7,091
8,727
6,045
8,438

Figure 1.1

one million listeners throughout Canada and the United States. (Sarver, 29).
Montreal was the next to broadcast their games in both French and English.
The 1934 playoffs had a huge audience in Canada. The Canadian broadcasts
were also popular in northern American cities like Boston and Chicago that
had NHL teams.
During the 1930s and 1940s American teams such as the Boston Bruins and
Chicago Blackhawks also started to use radio (Sarver, 30). Hockey was not
broadcast on national radio though like it was in Canada. It wasnt until 1981
that the Stanley Cup Finals were on the radio nationally in the United States.
Mostly games aired in towns that had teams.
The fear that radio would stop fans from attending games was unfounded.
The Hockey Data Base website has a series of graphs of the estimated per
game average of games from 1926-27 through 1952 when the first games were
televised (Figure 1.1).
Radio was becoming a success with Hockey fans. These original broadcasts
did help the National Hockey League, as radio helped spread hockey in both
the countries by introducing people to the game. The NHL became more
reputable of an organization became of these official broadcasts which helped
put distance between them and other hockey leagues. As you can from the
estimated attendance number though the sport was more popular in Canada
then the United States.
While radio was an important step for the NHL and how games were
covered so was television. The first game televised was between the New
York Rangers and Montreal Canadians in 1946 on February 25th. Also worth
noting is that it was only the second indoor sporting event broadcast. The
game which was carried by NBC was limited to the New York area and to
the people who could afford a television. (Kreiser, 133) Soon the Rangers
became the first NHL team to have their home games televised. When more
people started to be able afford television CBS wanted to add more material
and they did. They wanted to fill Saturday afternoon by televising hockey
games during the winter coast to coast. (Kreiser, 133). Again the New York
Rangers were the first to be a part of this event. They hosted and beat the
Chicago Blackhawks on Jan 5th 1957. CBS carried hockey coverage for the
next ten years, becoming the first US network to air an NHL Game of the
Week. (Kreiser, 133) CBS was replaced by NBC in the 70s after they dropped
broadcasting hockey games. During the sixties the sport was doing well,
NHL arenas were nearly selling out and were up there with the MLB with

6 Televisions Impact On the NHL

1917-2014 7

filling to capacity with between 95-96 percent. Even the owner of the owner
of the Boston Celtics had something to say about the sports popularity.

would do the game an injustice and couldnt capture the entire game because
of the field of view.

The Bruins open the door and the B

oston Garden fills up
every night they play said Auerbach We keep winning titles
and have to hustle and scratch to draw a sellout crowd.
(Bass, 20)

CBC got the rights to Saturday nights and would broadcast only until the
first period ended. Despite the fear Hockey Night in Canada would go on to
be one of Canadas top watched shows. Montreal had the best ratings which
were 77%. Late in the 50s they began to change format and see what they
could do to improve on the work of George Retzlaff and Gerald Renaud.
Who pioneered how most of the way we watch the sport today. long time
executive producer of HNIC Ralph Mellanby maintained that many if the
procedures pioneered by the early producers were still in use because they just
could not be improved upon(patskou). They changed the way intermissions
were done and started the first highlight system. They also had another
breakthrough when they discovered how to do replays. There were two new
technical advances introduced in the 1964-65 playoffs. Although a process
called hot processing was developed in the mid-50s for instant replay,
it wasnt until 1965 that Ty Lemberg, a Retzlaff staffer from CBC Sports,
developed a workable technique that enabled replays to become a regular, and
very popular feature(Patksou). Similar to American broadcasts the CBC saw
an increase in views when they expanded coast to coast for live broadcast.
Although still the owners were skeptical about money and wanted to make
the most of it, people say Vancouver was postponed to till the 70s because
the other Canadian owners of Montreal and Toronto did not
want to split the revenue. (Harvey, 145).

Hockey was a regional club and the owner Campbell did not want to sponsor
a team that would not draw any attention. Hockey was not having a problem
of selling tickets but it was having a place to expand to. Television was that
place, Campbell argued that there were no tickets to sell so television was
the only way to secure additional revenue. NBC did a horrid job of covering
the game and eventually enough interest was lost in the sport that NBC
also stopped covering it. The sport was lost in the late 70s and through
the 80s even when the American hockey teams wanted to start televising
their games again the owners of the Canadian hockey teams tried to block
the deal.(Harvey, 145) It wasnt until the 1990s that Fox and ABC got back
into coverage. Now Americans make up 24% of the league. Percentage
of American players has risen considerably during the last decade. At the
beginning of Millennium the share of players from United States was 15%.
Ten years later it has increased to almost 25%. (Quanthockey) The largest
complaint with Hockey being televised in the US is that the puck is to small
to follow. This problem led FOX to try to include a pucktracker that would
glow on screen when the puck was shot at a particular speed. It didnt work
out and the idea was eventually scrapped.
Hockey is like the NFL in that it is embraced as the nations identity although
its not. Hockey Night in Canada would help this by using narrative templates.
While in Canada CBC would launch its first broadcast of a game in 1952. In
preparation for the televising of hockey in Canada, an experimental video
transmission of a Memorial Cup hockey game from Maple Leaf Gardens in
April of 1952 took place. This telecast was a closed circuit viewing for the
benefit of executives from CBC, Imperial Oil and the MacLarens advertising
agency and all were impressed by Foster Hewitts call of the game. (patskou)
Television still had the same problem that radio had when it was introduced;
the owners looked down on it, and did not favor the switch. They were
worried about the competition between senior hockey leagues and
the want communities had to use the sport to increase the look of
their cities. (McConnell, 2). The president Campbell also thought television

A scary time for the CSN was when Imperial oil left the show after being a
sponsor for forty years. They had been there from the start and it caused a
lot of money problems for CSN. They lost $3.5 million in sponsorship money
(Patksou). Then in the 67 the league had another expansion forming such
teams as the Penguins and Flyers. The full year of 1968 was the first year that
Hockey Night in Canada would broadcast the full game. CBC would later
become very important to Canada and the game.

What the CBC does has itself become an important part of

Canadian identity and desire (Cormack, 4)
Hockey Night in Canada plays off a lot of nationalistic trends and uses what it
can to pull heartstrings to draw interest, such as playing off the French versus
English rift that exists to bring the two closer, and nostalgia. Which explains
the desire to keep the sport as classic as possible. Both collective memory
and nationalism exist within Canadian hockey, allowing Canadians to express

8 Televisions Impact On the NHL

their nationalism through hockey. (Poniatowski, 46) Hockey is branded

with objects and symbols that candaians use to express national identity like
holidays, festivals and the flag. Even in books for hockey novels the measure
of success is if they made it on Hockey Night in Canada. The CBC gathered
together various figures, events, and other historically signifigant aspects of
hockey to produce a peoples history in effect, it used hockey for nationbuilding purposes. (Cormack)
Hockey Night in Canada became a weekly tradition for entire families all
around Canada after 1931. In hockeys quest to be kept traditional HNIC
didnt try to add new features to the game they instead updated what was
there. They played off sounds, emotions and the fans. The personalities they
hired were also relatively more toned down and able to connect with
the viewers. (McConell, 7)
Televesion the United States has been different than Canada since several
different Networks had the contract to carry the games over the years. Some
did a better job than others and this affected viewership. Most games were
only viewed locally with only the Stanley Cup being televised nationally.
In 2004 the first cancellation of an entire season in professional sports
occurred wiping away the 2004-2005 season. It isnt new for leagues to have
a lockout but the war of this scale hasnt happened before. The future of
the league is threatened by the frequent wrangling over money and power.
Unless a more cooperative model of negotiations is developed, the NHL
could continue to recede from publice view and lose its standing as a major
professional sport (Staudohar, 1). The hockey lockout started for a variety
reasons but the chief cause was out of control spending on salaries. In 1996
the average salary was under one million. In 1997 the average saw a 19.4
percent increase going above a million. Salaries were outpacing revenue
streams and the NHL says it lost 1.8 billion.
The difference between Canada and America was shown again. Canadian
teams have to compete with American teams but they dont earn as much,
unlike US teams teams in Canada have to pay for their own arenas and there
are also higher taxes for corporations in Canada. (Staudohar, 3). While hockey
does have its fans it still receives less revenue than the other big sports,
football, baseball, and basketball. The NHL before the lockout was in a 5 year
deal with Walt Disney Company to show games on ESPN. The viewers kept
getting lower and the revenue came with it. With a lockout seeming imminent
companies were worried about signing another big deal then in the seasons

1917-2014 9

before the lockout ESPN lost about half of the income of previous years. A
major problem for the league was its deteriorating television situation. In late
May 2005, ESPN declined to exercise its $60 million option for broadcast
rights for the 2005-2006 season.( Staudohar, 6) ESPN after the season was
only offering to pay $30 million after the lockout season. Bettman didnt take
this well and said

I think they thought they could do it. They took us for granted,
or either they didnt value us the same way we thought we
should be valued (Gatehouse)
This problem was even worse for when the contract expired, no one wanted
to have a deal with the NHL. The NHL grundgenly signed a two year deal
the OLN for $69 million though it reached about 30 million fewer homes
than the NHLs old partner ESPN. OLN was owned by Comcast and was
later branded Versus.
Although just before the lockout hockey viewers took a hit. The NHL has
been able to recover. People were concerned that the missed season would
bottom out the league, especially because of the lost ESPN deal. NBC signed
a ten year deal with the NHL to rights to have the rights to broadcast one
hundred regular season games and every Stanley Cup playoff game. The
NHL also inked a similar deal with Rodgers for the Canadian market which
ends the long run that CBC has had. Rodgers and the NHL reached a 12
year deal for 5.232 billion (Canadian) this is one of the biggest rights deals
for Canada and the biggest for the NHL. While the NHL was struggling
in America before the lockout it has been getting performance from games
because of a solid broadcasting deal. The NHL has started the Winter Classic
which in a few short years since the opening in Buffalo has become a huge
spectacle. The most recent Winter Classic between the Toronto Maple Leafs
and Detroit Redwings was the most viewed game in the NHL. An average
of 8.234 million viewers tuned in, in America, which had an overnight rating
of 2.5 that was even higher than a prime time game between the Washington
Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins who clocked in at 2.3. The Canadian
audience was slightly bigger coming in at 8.75 million Canadians. NBC is
seeing success, and has enjoyed its most watched season ever. NBCSN
recorded its most-watched full regular season ever, averaging 351,000 viewers
over 88 telecasts, up six percent compared to the last full regular season in
2011-12 (332,000). The previous record for a full regular season was set during
the 2010-11 season (348,000 average viewers over 52 telecasts). NBCSN began

10 Televisions Impact On the NHL

1917-2014 11

televising the NHL with the 2005-06 season. Last years lockout-shortened
season averaged 392,000 on NBCSN.(NBC)
They have seen an 11% increase in viewers since their last full season.
According to USA hockey membership of youth hockey leagues has gone up
by 68, 202 players since the 2004-2005 lockout.
Although Hockey remains inferior in amount of viewers to other American
sports, it is growing, and is becoming more approachable by broadcasters.
Before the lockout no one wanted anything to do with the league. When the
rights to broadcasting came up for bidding in 2011 there were companies
who fought to get it. Even ESPN made an offer to get back into the fold, but
NBC gave the NHL an offer for the most lucrative offer in league history and
Bettman took it. (Gatehouse)
Hockey is special because it has to worry about two national markets.
Between Canada and the United States of America the NHL has to worry
about a number of issues mediating between the two similar but different
countries. They have to account for differences in currency which effects the
spending cap but it also changes how the games are televised. The hockey
atmosphere has thrived in Canada for years but has struggled for a while In
America. The infamous lockout of the 2004-2005 season has had a lot of
impact on the National Hockey League more than any other event. (Rosen)

Lets go Pens.

12 Televisions Impact On the NHL

Sources 13

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