RDS delighted hockey’s finally back
But timing of NHL’S return is not ideal
It will come as no surprise to you to learn that RDS president Gerry Frappier and the network’s hockey play-byplay man, Pierre Houde, are super happy that NHL hockey is coming back real soon.
But you may well be surprised to learn that the province’s leading Frenchlanguage sports TV network would likely have done better financially if the entire season had been scorched. In a lengthy chat Wednesday afternoon on the hockey set at RDS’s headquarters at the corner of René Lévesque Blvd. and Papineau, Frappier said starting hockey back in mid-January is far from ideal for RDS.
“The timing, frankly, could not have been worse,” said Frappier, who has run RDS since 1999. “To have a truncated season return in the middle of January is just about the worst-case scenario for a broadcaster. Your national advertisers may hang on to their money for a while but they will not in all cases hang on to 100 cents on the dollar once it gets past Christmas. So in some cases the national advertisers will not have the same money to re-invest in hockey when we come back.
“The second reason is that in the course of an 82-game schedule, not every game is in the same period of time that has the same commercial value to advertisers. Games in November and December have a lot more value than games in January or February because of the Christmas/consumer shopping window. The last thing is that when you have a truncated season, typically the league compresses the schedule to try to maximize the amount of games it can possible get in the time they have left. So you’ll now have more inventory of games at a period of time that’s not optimal from a selling standpoint and it does force even the most loyal fans to have to watch a lot of hockey. And not everyone is going to have the time to do that.”
But don’t think for a second that Frappier and his colleagues at RDS would’ve liked to lose an entire season. He’s happy that it looks like the puck will drop a week Saturday with the Habs and the Leafs facing off.
“This is a way better situation than if there had been a cancellation of the season,” he said. “We could’ve maybe had a better financial picture if, say, hockey had not come back, but that’s short-term thinking. You damage the game and you’re invested in this game for the long-term.”
Frappier says hockey is a “loss leader” for networks like RDS and TSN. It’s high-cost programming that pulls in viewers but actually does not generate a profit for the networks if you just look at the advertising the games bring in. But, again, that’s short-term thinking—fact is the NHL generates subscribers and their fees are a huge part of RDS’s financial picture.
The network has around 2.5 million subscribers in Quebec and a market share of between six and seven per cent, far ahead of any of the specialty channel competition here.
But its Achilles heel is that it’s so Habs-centric. So when Les Boys are not on the ice, viewers turn off. Frappier estimates they lost about 50 per cent of their audience in the fall due to the lockout. Even poor play from Montreal’s favourite professional sports team hurts the network’s popularity. With the Canadiens delivering one of their worst performances in history last season, game ratings nosedived by 20 per cent.
In the fall, with no Habs games, RDS’s hockey staff focused on other projects. They aired old games, butteredup with new play-by-play by Houde and between-periods interviews with key players in the games, and the network also commissioned a documentary series, L’Ultime classement, which ranks Canadiens greats.
The series, hosted by Houde, premieres Monday night, with the first two episodes airing at 8:30 p.m.
Houde had fun doing the vintage games and collaborating on the documentary. But the seasoned play-by-play guy — who figures he’s called around 2,500 hockey games since joining the network in September, 1989 — is ready and raring to get back into the booth at hockey arenas around the continent.
“There’s nothing that can compare to that,” Houde said. “Calling a hockey game live is what I like to do. That’s what turns me on.”
There has been a lot of talk about fan anger following the lengthy lockout, but Houde and Frappier don’t believe that will impact on folks’ enthusiasm for the Habs.
“I can’t tell you if there are going to be no-shows at the Bell Centre for the first game, or people with signs outside,” Houde said. “But I’ll make you a bet that we’ll be close to one million viewers that first night.”
“If the Habs come out in the first 10 games and go seven and three, no one will be talking about the lockout,” he added.