The NHL is setting records for attendance this season, and most observers agree the game is as entertaining as at any time in the last decade. But television, particularly national television, continues to be a struggle for the league.
NBC received high marks for production and some novel elements in its first four NHL telecasts, but it posted the same tepid 1.1 household rating that ABC averaged for the season two years ago.
The network then chose not to cover hockey in its prime-time Olympic broadcasts, not even as news or features.
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The NHL’s move to NBC and OLN
hasn’t boosted its numbers. |
Despite the lack of prime-time exposure, the gold-medal game did an impressive 2.5 on a Sunday morning, following a 2.9 rating for the bronze-medal game the afternoon before.
Locally, ratings are up 4 percent on average on FSN affiliates, from a 0.80 average to a 0.83.
But on national cable, the move from ESPN to OLN has sent ratings to a new low, and now that OLN has been shut out of its bid for NFL rights, it’s hard to say if OLN will ever be a popular destination for sports viewers.
OLN is averaging 122,000 households and a 0.19 rating through 40 games this season. That’s 75 percent off ESPN’s average households at the same point last season and a 64 percent slide in ratings.
League officials have tried to compare OLN ratings to the similar 0.22 on ESPN2 games through this point in the last NHL season. But games on ESPN2 — as the league often pointed out back then — were blacked out in teams’ home markets, lowering ratings considerably.
About a third, or 32.7 percent, of OLN’s audience for hockey games has come from the competing teams’ home markets, which would have been blacked out on ESPN2. Subtract that and you end up with a little more than 81,000 households and a 0.13 rating. So in a real “apples to apples” vs. ESPN2, NHL ratings are off 41 percent and households are down 58 percent. Hardly comparable.
When the two-year, $135 million deal with OLN was announced, league officials noted that ratings would probably be soft in this transition year but rebound when OLN has a schedule catered to its needs next season and an “exclusive window,” meaning the only hockey games played in any city every Monday night.
To the league’s credit, it appears to be putting a never-before-seen emphasis on marketing itself and creating the best possible television product. Last week the league hired sports producer John Shannon for the newly created position of senior vice president of broadcasting. Shannon spent six years as producer of “Hockey Night in Canada” on CBC, and most recently was executive producer at Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment and its Leafs TV network. Adam Acone, vice president of broadcasting, will report to Shannon, who will report to executive vice president of media Doug Perlman.
EURO-SLAM: Once with dreams of making “SlamBall” a prime-time staple with franchises selling for $5 million or more, Tollin/Robbins is now taking the unique sport on the road, to Europe.
The sport, which combines elements of football, basketball, hockey and gymnastics, will make its way to arenas in Milan and Bologna, Italy, in late April, promoted by Tollin/Robbins former corporate parent Clear Channel Entertainment in conjunction with European companies. Television production crews are already lined up, and Clear Channel is expected to make deals to put SlamBall on TV there.
Originally filmed at a studio for TV, SlamBall debuted on Viacom’s TNN (now Spike TV) in 2002 and came back in 2003. The plan was to take the sport to U.S. arenas and sell franchises, something Tollin/Robbins principal Mike Tollin and the sport’s inventor, Mason Gordon, say they’d still like to do.
Andy Bernstein can be reached at abernstein@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
