The odd duck in the CBC lineup

Ain Toronto t the CBC’s downtown Toronto studios this week, in a presentation on the broadcaster’s upcoming schedule designed to impress potential advertisers, they promoted PyeongChang 2018 with a sizzle reel of highlights.

There were the slo-mo shots of speedskaters bending into a turn, freestylers flipping through the air and many shots of Canadian medallists celebrating and beaming and wiping away tears, all of it accompanied by soaring music, softening even the jaded cranks in the room. (Points to self.) In an inspired touch, the music was overtaken for just a second near the end by the “tink” of a puck hitting the post — that moment at the end of the women’s gold-medal game when the United States looked like it was about to score into an empty net. Tink. Cut to the Canadians scoring the winner and end scene.

The Olympic reel had a notable absence for obvious reasons. No Sidney Crosby or Carey Price or Jonathan Toews. But the lack of NHL players in the CBC’s Olympic promos happen to make a useful parallel when one considers the changes at CBC Sports: there’s no NHL there, either. And as the national broadcaster spent so much time in its presentation touting its importance to Canadians and the unimpeachable goodness of its public airwaves, it’s worth wondering: just how much longer are you going to let them be annexed by Rogers, anyway?

It has now been threeplus years since Rogers Communications stunned hockey in this country by spending $5.2 billion to buy national broadcast rights for the NHL for a dozen years. It was primarily about striking a blow in the TSN-Sportsnet wars, but the weirdest part of the deal was the part where the public broadcaster would let Rogers use its main network to keep showing hockey games on Saturday nights and in the playoffs, even though the private company would produce the programming, sell all the advertising and keep all the revenue. We’ll get back to that part shortly.

In the ensuing years, CBC Sports has pivoted into a focus on “high-performance” sport. This includes the Olympics through 2024 and year-round programming like Road to the Olympic Games, but the broadcaster announced this week that it also bought the rights for the next world aquatics championships, world gymnastic championships and the IAAF worlds.