TV’s trade deadline coverage a pointless attempt to stay relevant

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This article was published 28/02/2017 (3461 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are a lot of worthwhile hockey-related subjects Sportsnet could devote 13½ hours of coverage to Wednesday.

They could, for instance, spend that time on an exploration of the war Gary Bettman and the NHL have recently declared on the scientists doing important and groundbreaking work studying the link between concussions and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a link which the NHL is now alone among major professional sports leagues in denying.

I’d watch that.

Or Sportsnet could devote Wednesday to covering the class-action lawsuit junior hockey players have filed against the Canadian Hockey League, alleging they’ve been treated as slave labour for decades and demanding millions of dollars in compensation from teams they say have turned big profits by exploiting kids.

Talk about a courtroom drama. I’d definitely watch that.

Or here’s an idea: Sportsnet could focus all those hours of coverage Wednesday on why the NHL drug-testing program has only caught four drug cheats in the last 10 years (MLB has caught 35 in the same period) and why it continues to allow — among other semi-trailer sized loopholes — up to two weeks for players to respond to a demand for an off-season random drug test.

Two weeks. Keith Richards could get clean in two weeks.

I’d make a bowl of popcorn and settle in under a blanket to watch Sportsnet dissect that issue.

But no, instead of any of that, Sportsnet is devoting 13½ hours of valuable coast-to-coast coverage Wednesday across all of its platforms — TV, radio and digital — to an NHL trading deadline that promises to do for crickets and tumbleweeds what Sunday night’s Oscar debacle did for Ernst and Young (and every other major accounting firm not named PricewaterhouseCoopers).

We’ll get to the why in a minute (spoiler alert: TV networks are bleeding subscribers by the millions and so they have become shameless shills for the last property they have remaining that anyone still cares to watch — live sports.)

Every pundit in country to weigh in

But I digress. Leaving aside “why?” for the moment, I wanted to know “how?” — as in: how is it even possible Sportsnet can devote 13½ hours of coverage to an NHL trade deadline day when most of the major trade targets have already been traded: (in random order) Martin Hanzal, Kevin Shattenkirk, Jordie Benn, Brian Boyle, Ben Bishop, Alex Burrows, Patrick Eaves…?

Who’s left? Thirteen-and-a-half hours on Matt Duchene? That will have people glued to their seats — in the Duchene household.

I received a release from Sportsnet last week detailing their deadline-day coverage. It’s going to be quite, well, something.

For starters, there will be what they are calling a “Main Panel” and a “News Breaker Panel,” which they assure me are very definitely not the same thing.

Then there will be ‘Strategy Room’ where still more talking heads will “examine the news of the day and potential moves teams could be making.” Again, this will very definitely not be exactly what they will also be talking about all day on the “Main Panel” and the “News Breaker Panel.”

On top of that, the network is bringing in Adam Oates to do what they’re calling “Player Analysis”; Ilya Bryzgalov to talk about what it’s like being traded on the deadline; another guy just examining any junior players who get moved; and a couple of NHL GMs who will do sit-down interviews with the network. (NHL GMs do sit down interviews? Like, they answer questions from individual media and everything? What a concept.)

If all that sounds remarkably like watching paint dry, you will find no relief over at TSN, where the live coverage will begin at 7 a.m. CT, continue right up until the 2 p.m. CT deadline and then no doubt continue for hours more afterward — on radio and TV, natch — as every pundit in the country weighs in on what it all means.

More important date: American Thanksgiving

Spoiler alert (2): it means next to nothing. The day that really matters in the NHL isn’t trade deadline day, it’s American Thanksgiving — the day by which your team better be in a playoff position or your post-season chances fall off a cliff.

One study found since the NHL expanded to 30 teams in 2000, 78 per cent of the teams that were in a playoff position at Thanksgiving went on to qualify for the post-season.

That leaves very little room for everyone else, of course, and it strongly suggests if you’re throwing Hail Marys on deadline day hoping a trade is the magic elixir that gets your team to the playoffs, you’re doing it very, very wrong.

Now, it’s possible, I suppose, this will be the year some team makes a major move on deadline day that actually does prove to be season-defining. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen: Butch Goring to the New York Islanders, Ray Bourque to the Colorado Avalanche and Marian Hossa to the Pittsburgh Penguins all happened at the deadline for instance.

But even more common is the deadline deal that goes very, very bad. There is nothing like the sound of a ticking clock to encourage poor decision-making: the Calgary Flames trade Brett Hull for Rob Ramage and Rick Walmsley; the Pittsburgh Penguins trade Markus Naslund for someone named Alex Stojanov; the L.A. Kings trade the draft pick that became Phil Housley for Jerry Korab; and so on; and so on; and so on.

With those debacles as a backdrop, it’s little wonder NHL GMs have long since learned, with some very rare exceptions, the best thing you can do for your team on deadline day is absolutely nothing.

Ratings slump

That harsh reality has done nothing to quell the enthusiasm of this country’s sports networks to try and artificially manufacture interest in deadline day in hopes of creating a buzz that will drive ratings through the end of the regular season and into the playoffs.

Good luck. Hockey ratings declined in each of the first two seasons of a 12-year $5.2 billion broadcasting deal that Sportsnet cut with the NHL. And while Sportsnet’s ratings have improved this season — right alongside the play of Canada’s NHL teams — they are still not nearly what they used to be when CBC had a virtual stranglehold on this country’s national obsession.

The Internet has fractured everything, including people’s viewing habits, and the days of monster 30 shares for Hockey Night in Canada are long gone and not coming back.

And no one — not even the multibillion-dollar behemoth that is the NFL — is immune. After years of growth, NFL ratings in 2016 were down eight per cent.

That sound? It’s a bubble popping.

Ponder this number as you’re watching 13½ hours of middle-aged men talk about nothing on Sportsnet Wednesday — the average American under the age of 30 watches almost 50 per cent less traditional TV Wednesday than they did in 2010, according to a study by the folks at Amazon.

While you’re pondering what that means — to networks, to sports leagues and to the multimillionaire players whose personal yachts depend on the bubble staying aloft — consider this: the Oscars broadcast Sunday night was the second lowest-rated Oscars since 1974, despite an exceptional year in film-making and all kinds of compelling storylines, not the least of which was race.

When not even Emma Stone in a plunging neckline or Ryan Gosling in a perfectly tailored Gucci can convince people to turn on the TV, do you really think Elliotte Friedman is going to save the day?

Look, you don’t have to tell a guy working for a newspaper about the havoc the Internet has wreaked on business models. We’re all doing more with less and it’s a daily struggle.

There are important stories that still need to be covered, and throwing 13½ hours at deadline day isn’t coverage, it’s a waste of increasingly scarce resources and the dying gasps of a legacy media outfit trying in vain to reclaim the past.

 

email: paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek