How to thaw Ice Age
Making the NHL more viewer friendly in U.S. deemed most important to success of new TV contract Some see hope for the league breaking out of its status as a third-tier sport, by Chris Zelkovich
When the NHL and its new American cable broadcaster announced their deal last month, they spoke glowingly of a brave new world that included a more exciting game, more access to players and bold ventures in television broadcasting. That knowing laughter you might have heard in the background came from Ralph Mellanby. The former executive producer of Hockey Night In Canada and a hockey producer for three American networks can be excused if he says he’s heard it all before. He has — 27 years ago to be exact.
In 1978, John Ziegler, commissioner of the NHL at the time, asked Mellanby to form a committee to recommend ways to improve TV ratings in the U. S. What Mellanby and company came up with back when long sideburns were stylish the first time looks an awful lot like what the NHL is peddling more than a quarter of a century later.
“ We proposed shootouts, removal of centre red line, change on the fly only, widening the blue lines,” Mellanby said from his Atlanta home. “ Our feeling was that to enhance the game for television, you had to have a better product on the ice.
“ Here we are 27 years later and they’re finally getting around to doing it.” The NHL’s plans to re- establish the game in the U. S. and start to gain respectable, or at least not embarrassing, TV ratings is meeting with mixed reviews from TV people on both sides of the border. Some see hope that the NHL has finally gotten serious about television in an effort to break out of its position as a third- tier sport sharing air time with the likes of taped curling and dog shows. Others wonder why it took the league so long.
“I’m encouraged,” said Fox Sports Net senior vice-president and executive producer Doug Sellars, a CBC alumnus. “ We’ve heard a lot of this before . . . maybe now we’ll finally get the changes we’ve been looking for. The league seems to be more co- operative, but until we drop the puck on Oct. 5, we’ll have to wait and see.”
Leafs TV head John Shannon, who has produced hockey on both sides of the border, welcomes the changes, but says one thing is for sure: this is no quick fix. “ This will take five years,” he said. “ It’s going to take a lot of trial and error, with a lot of hard work and co- operation from the players and teams.”
For its part, the NHL is hanging its hopes on rule changes that will make the game faster and broadcasts that will bring viewers closer to the action. “The challenge is clearly to make fans understand and feel good about the fact that . . . they’re coming back to a game that will be as entertaining as possible, that’s going to give them the ability to get closer to it than ever and . . . that every team can be competitive,” said Ed Horne, president of NHL Enterprises.
“ Through technology, through player involvement and participation we’re going to give our fans that opportunity to get more access to the game.
“ Greater use of mikes on players and coaches; more cameras that will bring people closer to the ice.”
That’s all well and good, but will that really make a difference in TV ratings that are among the lowest on American television?
Mellanby isn’t sure.
“ Mikes on the players, that’s just cosmetics,” he said. “ They’ve got to get serious about committing to television.”
Schedules need to be tailored to television’s needs, he said, and the NHL must follow the leads of the NFL and NBA in gearing its product toward those at home.
Sellars agrees.
“ We’ve been fighting for some time to get standardization in camera positions in the U. S.,” he said. “ We’d love to have the low centre- ice position they have at the Air Canada Centre, but that means taking out seats and they’re not willing to do it.” As a result, many U. S. broadcasts lack the kind of up- close feeling Canadian viewers get. In some cases, it’s more of an outofarena experience. The teams should not control that, he said.
“ The league has to step in and say this is the way it should be done,” Sellars said. “ That’s the way the NBA does it and they’ve come back strong.”
Sellars uses NASCAR as an example of putting its stars in the spotlight.
“ Two minutes before a guy gets into his car and risks his life he’s giving a live interview,” Sellars said. “ On a game day, we can’t even speak to a goaltender.
“ The NHL has to address that.”
Consultant Neal Pilson, former head of CBS Sports and an unabashed hockey fan, believes that the new deal with Comcast’s Outdoor Life Network, combined with changes in the game, will be enough to give the NHL a good television base.
“ The NHL is going to be the anchor franchise to grow Outdoor Life,” Pilson said. “ Comcast is a major player in communications and television and I think they’re going to give the league a lot more promotion and support than ESPN was able to.
“ Combined with some of the changes in the game . . . hockey is going to go very quickly to the ratings levels it had before the lockout. Much faster than baseball.” But even restoring its mediocre ratings will be enough of a challenge considering that OLN’s subscriber base is 20 million smaller than ESPN’s. The league needs to improve ratings enough to at least start getting rights fees for its national network deal. Horne said the league has many TV enhancements in the works.
It will continue to test the railcam, which follows the players up the ice and gives a better sense of the game’s speed. Players and coaches will be miked and a goalie- cam will be tried.
“ You now have the sensation of seeing the play at ice level, having a puck come at you at 90 m. p. h.,” Pilson said. “ It gives you the kind of thing that other sports have had success with, like the in- car cameras on NASCAR.” Some of the rule changes could help attract new fans. While it’s debatable whether the league is serious about reducing the obstruction that slows games to a crawl and turns the game’s best players into faceless pluggers, one rule alone could have a big impact:
“ Shootouts will be a lot of fun,” said Sellars, who is fighting to get cameras on the ice during shootouts.
“ The shootout will do for hockey what the buzzer- beater has done for the NBA,” Shannon said.
“ That’s going to sell the game. We’ll guarantee people a win and it will simplify things for people in the newsrooms who aren’t sure what to show. Now they’ll know to show the winning goal, especially if it’s a shootout goal.
“ The NHL and the teams can buy all the ad time they want, but it’s the marketing by osmosis on the sportscasts that the NHL needs. You need people at the water cooler talking about the highlights.” There is one problem there, though. The main purveyor of sports highlights south of the border, ESPN, no longer has an interest in promoting hockey. Those shootout highlights will have to be awfully good to get airtime on Sports Center.
While Pilson points out that the NHL is actually a successful regional sport, the Red Wings outdraw both the NBA Pistons and baseball Tigers in Detroit, he wonders if the league isn’t fighting a losing battle in trying to establish a national presence.
“ Hockey’s real problem in the U. S. has nothing to do with camera angles or more player access,” he said. ‘‘ It’s that so few Americans have played the game and have no appreciation of the skill levels and the degree of difficulty.”