Miss Japan vs. The Anaheim Ducks. Miss Japan wins the title of Miss Universe on NBC, better ratings and a pretty nifty crown. The Ducks win Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals on Versus (formerly OLN) and approval from such “celebrities” as Sasha Cohen, Cuba Cooding, Jr and some dude from “Heroes.” Ding ding, Round I goes to Miss Japan.I was pretty angry last night to realize that the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals was on Versus instead of NBC. I hadn’t checked the schedule of games, so imagine my surprise when instead of seeing Dany Heatley faceoff against Teemu Selanne, I see Miss Korea and Miss Japan going to head to head in an evening gown competition. Don’t get me wrong, pageants are fine. To each their own, I say. But the NHL has to realize that they are slowly becoming the red headed step child of the sporting world. When more people tune in to see Miss USA fall on her rear in high heels, you know there is a problem.
Gary Bettman seems content on keeping the fan base minimal and expanding the league to cities where hockey will never survive. A red flag should have been raised when teams like the Predators had superb seasons and a measly turn out at games. Even with the sale of the team to a new owner and Bettman’s promise that the team will not leave Nashville, it’s hard to imagine that a city like Québec won’t be joining the league soon. Imagine how many people in Québec would turn out to see the Predators? It seems a waste to keep them where they aren’t appreciated.
But back to the subject of the league’s PR movement. They tried those crazy gladiator commercials last year and all they did was anger women’s right’s groups. They had some pretty funny commercials this year with some of their league super stars doing things “regular” people do, but when the commercials have limited playing time on stations OTHER than Versus, then you’d have to say that campaign has failed. To make matters worse, Versus isn’t even available in many parts of the country, so some people probably don’t even realize that there still is a hockey league and there is this thing called the Stanley Cup Finals.
The worse slap in the face to the league was NBC’s decision to stop broadcasting Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals when it headed to overtime and turn over to the Preakness pre-game show. Granted, I know there are a lot of horse racing fans who were probably jumping with nerves to hear the latest update on Barbaro memorials and which horse didn’t want to eat its carrot that morning, but there were many hockey fans left in the dark because they didn’t have Versus to turn to. Would NBC have done that if they were broadcasting a NFL game? Only if they wanted a bunch of football fans burning their building down, would they. Instead, they once again slap the few NHL fans left in the face and forced us to find alternate ways of watching the end of the game.
How long can this last? How long can the few fans left find alternate ways of watching their team? Hockey isn’t football. It doesn’t have the universal appeal of football. It’s a sport you’re either born into watching or you slowly pick up as the years go by. That is, only in cities where hockey is a staple. Hockey won’t die out in cities like Detroit and Philadelphia, no matter how low attendance dips. However, hockey is on life support in other cities and it’s sad to think that there are people in the front office who don’t seem to realize how much harm they are doing to the sport and to the league.
I have a slight sense of hope that the sport I love can turn things around. The NBA seemed to do so and so did Major League Baseball, but these are leagues that like to show off their players so that fans can be “fans” of players. The NHL needs to start doing something like that. Until they stop letting people like Sidney Crosby give all the right answers, the league is going to maintain the team oriented approach instead of a star approach. Crosby is a great player, but he is notorious for saying all the right things. Give me drama! Yell at someone! Call them a fool! For Pete’s sake, call someone a diver! Say something quotable!!! If it can’t be Crosby, then find someone else. Add some spice to this league. If Terrell Owens could skate, I would suggest drafting him.
I know I’ll tune into Game 2 on Wednesday and I know the hard core fans will also. We’ll switch between NBC, Versus and NHL.com whenever necessary. We’ll continue to beg for some spice to our league, but we’ll sit by content when they continue to hand us bland players and bland commentaries. But the league should realize this, the hardcore fans can’t carry the league and the hardcore fans are slowly becoming fewer and far between. Until the league breathes some life into this sport, we fans will have no choice but to remove it from life support. Perhaps it will pull a miracle, or perhaps it will slowly die out. It’s in the league’s hands.
6 replies on “Miss Universe over the Cup Finals? Somewhere- Lord Stanley Rolls Over in His Grave”
history Game 1 and 2 of the Stanley Cup finals have been on cable for as long as I can remember. ESPN always did games 1 and 2 and ABC 3-7 when they had the contracts. Versus now does 1 and 2 while NBC does 3-7. The point of your article is moot. NBC does not have the rights to broadcast that game.
Second, for the game a week ago, there was no backup for the horse racing coverage. NBC was the only network that had the rights for the horse racing. NBC could preempt the hockey to versus. They had to make a decision immediately. It would have been worse if NBC kept it on and the game was still going and during action, they switched to the horse racing. They made the decision during intermission and everyone had 20 minutes to make the changeover to versus. The fact that people are complain is bogus.
Anyway, similar situation a few years ago:
CBS affiliate in Denver switched from the final round of the PGA Championship to televise the pregame show for the Denver Broncos’ PRESEASON GAME, leaving nowhere for the final 6 holes of the PGA Championship to be shown. Additionally, the announcers stated “for those who want to see the golf, tough, it’s football season.”
Anyway, that was wrong because A. they switched during action, not an intermission and B. there was no other channel to watch the action on.
Here, NBC changed on an intermission with the programming going to another network.
However, you forget that Versus had to preempt yachting. Additionally, TBS preempted Family Guy earlier in the NBA playoffs when a TNT game ran late and the 2nd game of the double-header was starting, leaving me nowhere to watch Family Guy.
My point is, this happens all the time. Grow up and get your facts straight.
Thank you Thanks for your “help” with correcting my information. This is the first article I’ve written in awhile and it’s great to see how “supportive” some of the people can be on here with correcting information that might or migth not be wrong. I’ll continue to “grow up” as you say, because I’ve set my new goal in life. I want to be the next resident asshole of sportscolumn.com just like you.
sorry sorry about that. I was drunk last night. Didn’t mean to be so rude.
thank you Thanks for apologizing. I must say, you write pretty well when drunk!
agreed on I definetly agree with you on the point you made about hockey being in cities that don’t care. Nashville is definetly one and another one would have to be Columbus. Bettman gets credit for being creative with expansion teams, but put an NHL team somewhere where it will be appreciated and people will actually go.
haha I wasn’t too drunk, and it took a lot of backspacing. I’m still OCD when drunk. My points don’t make any sense, but at least everything’s spelled correctly.
But Games 1 and 2 are always on Versus.
Anyway, yeah, sorry.