How Rogers Is Ruining Hockey for an Entire Generation of Canadians

The only good news is it's not too late to fix it.

As we approach the end of the second year of the historic 12-year, 5.2 billion dollar deal between the NHL and Rogers/Quebecor for TV rights in Canada, one has to look back at how Rogers is stacking up compared to the good old days of hockey before “The Deal”. Long story short: unlike their fancy new set, it ain’t pretty.

First of all, "The Deal" didn’t start off well: many Canadians felt concern that hockey would move away from what has traditionally been successful: Saturday night and playoff games available on CBC (available to all) and move towards Rogers-based pay channels (available to some). Public opinion polls like the one below had about 50% of Canadians not supporting the new NHL-Rogers deal.

To appease the crowd, from the beginning Rogers and CBC embarked in a bizarre partnership: CBC would still showcase Saturday night games as before, but Rogers would choose the lineup, produce and reap any advertising revenue from the games. This arrangement is good for the first four years of the 12-year term of “The Deal”, and it’s not sure if it will be renewed. To be honest, it’s hard to see what was in this deal for the CBC besides not having to bother airing programming that competed against Saturday night hockey. It has yet to be seen whether this will be a long-term arrangement or a simple intermediate step to alleviate the transition to a soon-to-be full Rogers offering (similar to the Saturday night French language hockey simulcasts between RDS and the SRC from 2002 to 2004).

For Rogers, year one of “The Deal” ended with lower ratings than expected. Instead of increasing by 20% as projected, ratings stagnated, and then dwindled. Ad rates were dropped this year after Rogers failed to hit its audience targets last season, but there was hope of a bounceback. Yet as this month closes out and with no Canadian teams in the playoff picture, it’s hard to stay optimistic if you’re expecting a sophomore windfall of good news at the Rogers camp.

So what’s that you say? NHL hockey ratings are down? In Canada?? It almost sounds unheard of…. Impossible! Yet it’s true. So besides the prospect of no Canadian teams in the playoffs for the first time in 40 years, how and what did Rogers do to screw up a Canadian golden goose of TV success so royally? Let’s take a look below at some key mishaps:

Dude, where’s my team?

The most maligned aspect of Rogers’ bungling treatment of Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday is the so-called flex-scheduling. Flex scheduling has caused some bizarre scenarios these past two seasons including hockey games being shown on non-sports channel FX, Citytv and CBC simulcasting the exact same game and prominent Canadian teams being used as bait on the subscription-only SportsNet family instead of CBC or Citytv, where most hockey fans expect to find a Saturday night game. What’s worse of all is fans have no idea on what channel their team is playing until they’ve scoured through the program guide and it usually involves subscribing to multiple Rogers pay channels to ensure you will see all games of your favorite team (hello Winnipeg Jets and Ottawa Senators fans). If getting more Rogers channels into the TV packages of Canadians was the plan, it’s backfiring miserably and at the expense of the NHL.

Ratings are down across the board for most NHL games, and Rogers seems oblivious as they blame everyone else: from (a) the way ratings are calculated to (z) the poor play of the hockey teams themselves. What is more alarming is that with this new flex schedule format the numbers are showing Canadians are watching less NHL hockey. What’s worse than just the numbers? It's what they mean is actually going on in the households of Canadians, namely: a whole new generation is following hockey rather than watching it.

When growing up, everyone would tune into CBC on Saturday night to watch their local team. It was automatic. The day after or on Monday morning at school/work, no matter who you talked to, they had seen the game and would discuss every highlight, lowlight and controversial call with you. That has changed drastically in the past two years. Looking at my own children this season and last, they simply have tuned out the Saturday night holy tradition of having HNIC on CBC tuned in on the TV. We don’t have all the necessary SportsNet channels in our household and have no plan on getting them. Instead, my children are learning to follow hockey live (on social media) rather than watch it on TV. They watch almost-live videos posted via their team’s websites and fanbase social media accounts of key plays. There are dozens of in-game commentaries being uploaded in discussion forums accessible from their smartphones. And for live-play-by-play, they’re happy having the radio on the background while they play Xbox. Rogers isn’t just ruining watching hockey for me and my old fogies, they’re changing it for an entire new generation of Canadians growing up.

How to fix it:

Rogers needs to realize that Canadian don’t simply like watching NHL hockey; they like watching their local NHL teams. So the first thing to do is ensure each local CBC TV affiliate shows their local team via a simulcast of the game's SportsNet feed. Canadians expect to tune into their local CBC station on Saturday night and see their local hockey team hitting the ice. People in Montreal have no interest in seeing the Leafs take on the Blue Jackets. Ottawa and Winnipeg have had hardly any exposure on the national networks this year. Asking fans to scour for their team on B-rate channels like SN360 is ridiculous for a Saturday night game. Simulcast the local teams on their respective CBC affiliate and people will tune in.

As for Citytv and their 7PM Saturday night game, there’s no clear answer on this one. Citytv could drop the game altogether and bring back the Sunday night game (see Hometown Hockey below), or they could show a national interest game that does not involve Canadian teams but would still be worthy to watch (think Stamkos, Crosby, Toews). At least this way if there is a blowout on CBC or if the local game isn’t interesting, the causal hockey fan has a channel to flip to.   

The Sunday Night Hockey Game

Hometown Hockey debuted on Citytv in the first season of the Rogers deal. A nationally televised Sunday night hockey game came as a pleasant surprise to many Canadians, especially given the community feel given to the night as the Rogers mobile broadcast studio visited communities from coast to coast, marked with festivities and much fanfare. Rogers finally got something right and many felt a new family and community-oriented Canadian hockey tradition was starting. Don't get me wrong; I liked it and watched it with my family - when it was on Citytv.

So for season two, what did Rogers do? Sunday night's Hometown Hockey was moved from Citytv to Sportsnet in hopes of boosting ratings and subscribers to the pay channel. Instead, the opposite occurred with a 30 percent drop in viewers from its inaugural year. Rumour is now the very concept of a Hometown Hockey game on Sunday nights is in jeopardy.

How to fix it:

Easy solution is to move the game back to Citytv where the formula worked before, or even CBC for that matter. If Rogers is serious about building a new hockey tradition, you don’t put something like that on a pay-only channel. The viewers have spoken, will Rogers listen?

Marquee Games like The Winter Classic

The Bridgestone Winter Classic this year was a marquee event for the NHL in Canada and for NHL Canadian sports coverage: it had a coveted timeslot at 1PM on New Year’s Day, when everybody is either together with family or nursing a hangover in front of the TV after lunch. On top of that, a perfect original six matchup for hockey fans north of the border: the Boston Bruins took on their dreaded rivals the Montreal Canadiens, teams with enormous history and a rabid fan base to match. The last time a Winter Classic US/Canada original six confrontation happened in 2014 with Toronto taking on Detroit, CBC set records with almost 4 million viewers, the highest ever for a non-playoff game. An easy ratings homerun for Rogers, right? Wrong.

So what exactly did Rogers do to bungle what should have been an easy Canadian ratings slam-dunk? Well, instead of broadcasting the outdoor game on CBC as done in the past (and as per Hockey Night in Canada tradition dating back to the first Heritage Classic outdoor game in Edmonton), for the first time ever it parked the game on Sportsnet. Problem is, not everybody has Sportsnet in their TV package and no one in their right mind would subscribe to watch for just one marquee game, meaning casual holiday-season TV sports viewers in Canada couldn’t just flip channels and tune in. On top of that, someone at Rogers head office failed to realize (or chose to ignore) that NBC in the US was broadcasting the game, meaning people with even the most basic of cable package (or people with an over-the-air antenna within range of the US border like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal) could watch the game anyways. The results were disastrous.

Sportsnet did not yet disclose its ratings for the 2016 Winter Classic but the silence and lack of this type of disclosure says a lot (had it been a large number it would have been plastered over every Rogers press release). Pundits are saying it was nowhere close to the record set in 2014 aired on CBC, perhaps as much as 40% lower than the 2014 figures, indicative by the numbers south of border for NBC which weren’t very encouraging to say the least. (Remember, ratings for Canadian viewers do not count in NBC totals).

Worse than failing to live up to the pre-hockey-deal 2014 ratings bonanza, Rogers missed a golden chance to showcase the Sportnet brand and its NHL broadcast team to a holiday-time national audience on CBC, full of casual viewers (and potential new customers). Instead, they drew harsh criticism on how an American network aired “Canada’s game” while Rogers failed to do the same using CBC or Citytv. *Facepalm*

How to fix it:

Rogers, what were you thinking??? This one was so easy we're even surprised you blew it. Marquee games belong on CBC where all of Canada can watch. The good news is by doing this, you get an invaluable chance to show off to casual and potential new hockey fans what makes you great for watching NHL hockey. Also, while people are tuned in on CBC, you get to plug any other Rogers programming or products, get in-game viewers to check out your website and social media accounts and then drive post-game viewers to your other networks. Duh!!!

French Language Coverage

While Rogers’ SportsNet covers English-language NHL programming, partner Quebecor’s TVA network took the reigns over from Bellmedia rival RDS … sort of. While Quebecor put all its eggs in the basket of making TVASports the official NHL francophone broadcaster, it made its first mistake by losing regional broadcast rights back to RDS in its primary market of Quebec for the only two teams with a considerable francophone backing, being the Montreal Canadiens and the Ottawa Senators. This meant the network would only air maximum one game per week of these teams, and would have to wait until the playoffs (if any) to gain a ratings monopoly. Oops.

At the launch of "The Deal", Francophone audience expectations were set sky high when it was shown that there would be hockey games on Francophone network TVA as well (see graphic below). However, with regional rights lost, the big-ticket Saturday game was forced to pay-only TVASports to drive subscribers to the sagging sports network, and two years later not a single NHL game has been shown on the TVA network. What was worse for fans was that although the Saturday night Francophone games were available nationally,  fans outside of the region trying to watch the weekday games lost out as the games were blacked out on the rival network (rights were only regional).

As the final part of this bungling hat-trick of TVASports’ new reign as an NHL broadcaster, it assembled a team of B-list TV personalities from the incumbent RDS network and brought in less-known former hockey players as colour commentators. It then tried to pass this lacklustre and inexperienced team off as a high end sports commentary crew, and then brought rival TV service providers such as Bell to arbitration (such as below in May 2015) to raise retransmission fees or face having the network pulled from their subscribers. 

The results so far have not been encouraging. TVASports’ growing pains continued well into its second season of “The Deal” and an unimpressed and impatient paying public poked cruel fun at the network’s hockey coverage, making it an inside joke in many Quebec homes. The culmination of this perception happened during the most-watched New Year’s Eve francophone comedy show “Bye-Bye 2015” which referred to the network as a “type of RDS that had its oxygen supply cut off during birth” and seared the network’s credibility with the following imitation skit:

To this day, TVASports continues to fall short of its rating targets. What’s more troublesome is it is unable to convert its captive Saturday night hockey audience into a solid viewer base for its pre and post-game shows. As for the quality of the broadcast, the network has yet to land a bona fide renown broadcasting personality and remains plagued with everything from amateurish spelling mistakes to embarrassing graphical errors...

How to fix it:

A TVA simulcast on Saturday nights (as originally proposed) may have been the missed opportunity here for TVASports. By putting Saturday night hockey games back on network TV, Quebecor would have probably been hailed as heroes by the general francophone public, returning Saturday night hockey to the people after years of a cable-only RDS monopoly. True, due to the bad negotiating for regional nights of weekday games, the Saturday night TVA showcase would have severely dented any ratings TVAsports would have had, but those ratings were up for debate anyways as many Francophones have shown that rather than sign up for TVAsports they have resorted to watch the game in English while muted with Francophone radio commentary.

The missed opportunity lies in what could have been: the exposure the network would have had. A captive audience for DVR-proof programing on a nationally broadcast TV network for three hours is a priceless self-promotion prospect that could have driven traffic to Quebecor websites, social media, discussion forums, and showcased other TVAsports programming to an audience of potential customers. Also, by being available freely, people would have been more forgiving to any growing pains as they would not be directly paying for the product. With Quebecor eventually looking to bring another NHL team to francophone Quebec City, one Saturday night regular season game on TVA would have been laying the foundation for a whole new generation of Francophones nationwide to become accustomed to the TVAsports product.

Will NHL hockey ever be shown on TVA? Je ne retiendrais pas mon souffle.

Conclusion

Rogers (and to a certain extent Quebecor) has assumed and taken for granted that the NHL is a cash cow in Canada. They overpaid for hockey in a badly-advised long-term deal, and now will hold hockey ransom and expect Canadians to pay for it through their cable bill. But will they really learn through these first two years that people aren’t fools; and can they make the changes to return NHL hockey to all Canadians?

Besides fixing “The Deal”, there is one final area of concern and that is the future popularity of hockey in this country. As a new generation grows up learning to “follow” hockey rather than watch it due to the bungling of Rogers, the questions must be asked: how long will the NHL let this go on? Ratings are down in Canada for two years straight. Will the decline and drought last another year? Two years? Five years? How much longer before a growing number of Canadians switch from being rabid fans that watch every game from pre-season onwards to casual viewers that only watch the playoffs and a handful of regular season games? How long can TV ratings slump until this starts affecting NHL merchandising and ticket sales?

Now remember this final point: whoever tells you the business case for hockey on CBC (or any other national network) doesn’t work anymore in today’s economy is a pure fool. The NHL is to Canada what the NFL is to the United States. It’s interesting to see the success and profitability of the NFL isn’t related to cable-only TV access. 

-An editorial from Your Average Joe

Shame on you CBC

CBC drops the ball on over-the-air DTV

I will always remember June 2011 as being one filled with potential for Canada. The Vancouver Canucks were on the verge of bringing the Stanley Cup back to Canadian soil and in many markets Canadians were watching the games for free in HD on the CBC’s test DTV broadcast setups. The promise of OTA DTV was getting me impatiently optimistic for September when the digital transition would finally hit across the board in Canada. Unfortunately, just like the Canucks fell short in their quest for hockey’s holy grail, we are months into the Canadian DTV revolution and there are still plenty of key players in the TV industry coming up short as well.

Let’s ignore about the lack of clear communication of the transition, the remapped spectrum, misplaced broadcast towers and the fact that certain analog stations got extensions (not only leaving certain towns in the TV stone age but in some cases causing interference for the reception of other DTV signals). In my book, the biggest disappointment by far has been the CBC.

In its proud history, the CBC has always been at the forefront of television technology for Canadians including creation of the first TV stations in Canada, the first colour broadcasts and use of satellites for a nationwide TV feed. So why is it dragging its feet for OTA DTV?

The CBC (and SRC for French Canadians) is the flagship television network for Canada. It is our face and foothold in the television world, it belongs to us as it is subsidized by our tax dollars and has been ensuring Canadian programming earns its rightful place on the airwaves to showcase our homegrown talent. As unfortunate it is to admit, it has dropped the ball on a national level when it came to the DTV transition.

What went wrong?

The CBC’s first bad move was the reduction in picture quality. While the network blew us away with 1080i HDTV during its test run all summer long, it dropped to 720p only a few weeks after the digital transition. While some may argue that the progressive scan isn’t that much of drop in quality from the interlaced format, fact of the matter is that picture just doesn’t look as crisp as it once did on the bigger screen televisions. The reason for the downgrade? At the request of the cable and satellite companies picking up the feeds, the network agreed to downgrade to spare bandwidth, completely to the detriment of the over-the-air audience. So yes ladies and gentlemen, Canada’s flagship network isn’t even broadcasting at full HD potential.

While people with smaller screens may not care as much about the small reduction in picture quality, there are other issues that can’t be ignored. Various users across the country were plagued with signal dropouts or poor reception from transmitters that even to this date are not yet operating at full power. Also forget about program info and on-screen guide functionality – most CBC stations are still not sending any of that useful PSIP data yet, so good luck trying to figure out what’s on when ... let alone trying to find / record your favorite show automatically with a OTA DVR or PC setup.

What really gets your Average Joe frustrated was the potential that was within reach with the CBC. Long criticized as having insufficient, uninteresting programming options and being a burden on the taxpayers, the CBC should have been at the forefront of the push to allow the CRTC to permit multicasting in Canada (multicasting = using unused DTV bandwidth for broadcasting subchannels like 4.2, 4.3, etc from the main channel 4.1).

PBS in the United States makes optimal use of multicasting (i.e. multiple broadcasting using DTV). Most stations have 2 or more subchannels, an excellent example that the CBC should push for from the CRTC here north of the border.

Multicasting for the CBC could have mirrored the success of PBS south of the border. Most PBS stations added 2 or more subchannels to increase programming options for its viewers and of course generate additional revenue from advertising fees from the extra feeds. Remember, multicasting uses the same transmitter and antenna so only minimal equipment upgrades in the studio are required meaning minimal cost... in restaurant terms: same kitchen, more menu items.

So what could be put on a CBC subchannel?

If they did not want to expend too much effort, CBC could easily make a “CBC Two” subchannel by simply mish-mashing and recycling versions of its popular shows (ex: Dragon’s Den, Little Mosque, Love Hate and Propaganda), then add in hourly CBC News updates as well as select programming from the pay-TV only Bold and Documentary channels. Double-dipping by time-shifting other popular shows (Coronation Street) to later in primetime from the main channel could also be advantageous in attracting more viewers as well. As an alternate to non-sports fanatics, while Hockey Night in Canada would be playing on the primary channel, CBC2 could showcase comedy specials or some of those Canadian films that seem to always win at the Golden Globes or Oscars but never make it to the screen where I can actually watch them. Weekend or daytime timeslots could promote children’s programming for a longer period of time, or even air retro CBC children’s shows (c’mon, who doesn’t remember Cyril Sneer on “The Raccoons”?).

In areas served by only English CBC programming where there is enough of a potential francophone audience, the SRC could also be run as a subchannel. If the CBC wanted to go further, they could also add in a “CBC Three” which could have specialized local programming in certain areas (such as aboriginal or other cultural programming) and they could fill off-hours with revenue-generating TV shopping programs promoting Canadian artisans and other homegrown products. Audio-only subchannels could be added as well to expand the coverage of CBC Radio One and CBC Radio Two.

What could be: Average Joe’s ideal DTV setup for CBC national broadcasters.

Conclusion

CBC should be taking a leadership role in the DTV revolution in the interest of all Canadians. They should be getting the most they can out of their shiny new tax-dollar funded transmitters and provide program guide info and stable HD images. Multicasting technology is now a reality and if it means challenging the CRTC and Industry Canada to allow for it, well, so be it. A multicasting format as suggested above will not only guarantee the survival of the CBC for many years to come and reduce the tax burden on the public, but it will provide better programming selection and variety for all Canadians. The CBC belongs to us and the heads at the CRTC and CBC cannot be allowed to ignored this fact.

Don’t forget this is the very same CRTC and Industry Canada that suggested to consumers switching to cable or satellite service as one of the options to mitigating the digital transition. There were no “converter coupons” handed out either like in the US. There are heavy restrictions imposed on Netflix, TiVo and other TV over IP. The problem here is not everyone has this luxury in Canada to pay through the nose for television, which seems somewhat unclear to the CRTC and IC.

While there are many consumers using OTA out of choice, there are also many Canadians that use it as their only option for television programming. Average Joe knows of families on tight budgets, elderly people who are not technologically inclined and single parents whose kids look forward to their Saturday night “treat” of watching hockey. These people have limited resources at their disposal, no fancy antenna setups, no high speed internet – most have just a generic name brand TV and an indoor antenna and rely only on local Canadian programming. Having a CBC that fulfills everything that is technologically possible thanks to DTV would benefit these people, and as being a taxpayer-funded organization representing all Canadians, I see no excuse to not demand that it does.

Shame on you CBC.

A Look at the Canadian "Public Service” TV Announcements of the Digital Transition

But who exactly are they really serving?

Despite the unfortunate media apathy around the digital transition, chances are you’ve at least started to see spots on the major networks about the upcoming analog Armageddon. These so-called public service announcements are to inform OTA TV viewers of the pening changes.

In all honesty, I like public service announcements. They let you know what’s happening, for what reason and what to do if it affects you. For example, a recent PSA in the local newspaper described some changes by the city water works in my area. In the humble opinion of your Average Joe here, it had all the key elements essential to a clear and concise public service announcement. It stated that our water main was being replaced on a certain date (notification) in order to improve water pressure in our area and replace the aging pipes (reason), thus reducing the risk of a break and to update to the latest materials (benefit). It told us to expect no water service for a period of time (information) and to run the taps once the water was back on (action).

That, my friends, is the form that I would normally expect from a PSA: tell people what’s happening, when it's happening, why it’s happening, how it affects them, and last but not least what they need to know and do about it.

When I finally saw the PSA’s from the three largest national networks concerning the DTV transition, I was disappointed with what I found.

While all three networks notified viewers of the change, there was no talk of the reason for the change and the benefits from it. Without reasons or benefits, changes are sometimes perceived as a burden. Someone who has no idea why the digital transition is being done could easily be confused, even think that they are being suckered into paying for a converter box to compensate for something the broadcaster is doing or the government is imposing on them.

Why not give the reason and the benefits? People can keep their analog TVs and benefit from the more robust signal and new on-screen program info. Owners of HDTVs can look forward to this as well and the availability of HD programming and new functionalities with modern day devices such as TiVos and DVRs.

Second, I was appalled to see the blatant advertising going on – suggesting subscription to a satellite or cable service as a way to prepare for the digital transition. True, technically this is an option as the DTV transition is transparent to pay subscribers, but this is like bringing your car into the garage to have the radio antenna fixed and the guy suggests signing up to satellite radio instead. It's an obvious attempt to upsell, not to help you with the issue at hand. The CTV and Global PSAs go one step further by actually advertising the pay TV services provided by their parent companies on both the TV spot, the 1-8XX number and the website. All this in a so-called public service announcement? Not impressed at all.

Call the toll free numbers or visit the website and the advertising for pay TV services is always there.

Kudos though on CBC for at least specifying that a converter box is easy to install and affordable. Of course, CTV referred their viewers to their parent company’s retail chain to buy the converter box.

Have a look at the following TV spots (barely considered as PSAs in my opinion) from the three major networks. Can you spot the blatant advertising and lack of info?

Global TV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcb8u9thpq0

CTV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shVnHUcYs68

CBC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7B0SMzjdx8

So remember that example of the PSA I gave about the water works at the beginning of this post? Well, this is like a PSA that tells you they are digging everything up to change the water pipe, but hey, why are you drinking tap water? If you drank bottled water you wouldn’t be affected and by the way Perrier is on sale at Loblaws. Oh yeah and you may want to run the taps or something if you really want to go back to drinking tap water when we’re done.


Well then Average Joe, if you’re so smart, why don’t you make a PSA that’s better than the network ones?

After fuming over the lack of info and the almost deliberate hood-winking of consumers from these PSAs, I decided to make my own! Here is a sample PSA put together by myself in the span of about 30 minutes with my crude computer and graphic skills. The entire PSA would run for less than a minute, which seems reasonable considering the analog transition is about a month away. Here are the screen captures with the captions just below.

If you receive your TV programming “over the air” via an exterior or rabbit ear antenna, this message applies to you.

Your current analog broadcast service is being upgraded to digital television (DTV). Industry Canada has mandated Canadian over-the-air broadcasters to cease analog broadcasts effective September 1st, 2011.

This change is necessary in order for you to enjoy the full potential of modern-day HDTV technology via your antenna TV, including

- 1080i HD picture and 5.1 surround sound
- Easier and improved antenna reception
- On-screen program info and guides
- Compatibility with modern devices such as PVR / DVRs

As well as the potential for future digital programming options and features

To ensure you are ready to receive the new DTV signal, check your current TV for a digital tuner. If you have purchased a new TV in Canada within the past 3 years your TV will most likely already be DTV compatible. To check your equipment for compatibility, look for the DTV logo on your TV or on documentation provided with your TV.

If your TV is not DTV capable, you will need to install a digital-to-analog converter box by September 1st. These boxes are easy to install and can be purchased inexpensively from most local electronics or hardware stores.

On September 1st, be prepared for the new and bright future of over-the-air digital television! If you subscribe to pay TV services such as cable, satellite, or TV-over-internet, you will not be affected by these changes.

Conclusion

OK, so it’s clear we can’t rely on the big networks to help us navigate through the digital transition. But surely the retail market is willing to help us out, right? YOUR Average Joe is going undercover on the next installment of Revenge of the Rabbit Ears so be sure to check back soon and see what we find!