Winnipeg’s whiteout creates a media moment

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This article was published 12/04/2018 (2762 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg’s first whiteout Wednesday night was a small-scale media event — something that’s a bit of a rarity in this increasingly fractured media environment.

On Wednesday, thousands of Winnipeggers flocked downtown to watch their beloved Jets play Game 1 in the best-of-seven Western Conference playoff series against the Minnesota Wild. For those watching downtown and for those watching at home, the game was a form of a high holiday of the television hockey ritual. The community of Winnipeg stood united as one to watch its team.

Communications researchers Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz introduced the term “media event” in 1992, when they published their seminal book on the topic, Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. They discussed how the world is transfixed during the shared ritual of watching contests such as the Olympics, conquests such as the television coverage of Desert Storm and coronations such as the doomed marriage of Prince Charles to Lady Diana.

With the increasing fragmentation of television audiences, which began with the VCR and then was exacerbated by PVRs, multi-tiered cable and streaming services such as Netflix and Crave, it’s increasingly difficult to have an audience sit still long enough to watch anything on television. When they do, it’s really special.

But that’s hockey. And more importantly, that’s hockey in Winnipeg.

I remember teaching my first year at the University of Winnipeg in 2005, after moving here from Alberta, and hearing a student tell me he would never forget the day he heard the first version of the Jets was leaving the city. I came to realize the loss of the NHL franchise was viewed as a defeat for this city on a very personal level. The return of NHL hockey in 2011 meant Winnipeg was really “back in the bigs.”

There is a cultural need for Winnipeg to celebrate its hockey team. For Winnipeg, the need to prove we’re economically competitive enough to sustain a hockey franchise has been like a scar on our collective identity. As Benedict Anderson has put it, hockey is a cultural activity in which Canadians imagine their community. Without the NHL, many felt we were a town you just flew over on your way to somewhere more interesting.

“When Canadians write about hockey, they write more about themselves than about the game,” social scientist Philip Moore says. That’s certainly true for Winnipeg. Our downtown celebration is steeped in nostalgia, underpinned by memories of the old Winnipeg Arena and birth of the whiteout on April 16, 1987.

For many of the fans, hockey reminds them of early morning practices, weekend tournaments with friends or cold, crisp nights spent skating on outdoor rinks under starry Prairie skies.

In light of the tragedy in Humboldt, we also have the additional heartache of remembering the lost lives of the players and the families forever affected. No doubt, they were part of the collective remembrance on Wednesday, as well — a remembrance tinged with sorrow at the edges.

Politically, how the Winnipeg Jets perform in the playoffs can revive this city’s consciousness — and if incumbent Mayor Brian Bowman is wise, it’s something his campaign team is taking note of already. A city that feels revitalized because its hockey team is doing well will start to feel revitalized in other ways. Bowman can build on that in his campaign messaging come September. It could be a shot in the arm his lacklustre first term in office needs.

Those local good feelings are no doubt tempered by the fact Winnipeg’s playoff whiteout won’t be seen on CBC, long the showcase for Hockey Night in Canada. Rogers, which owns the national broadcast rights to NHL hockey in Canada, has opted to consign the Winnipeg-Minnesota series to its specialty sports property, Sportsnet, while giving full (and free) CBC coverage to the Toronto-Boston matchup.

And that’s a shame. While the Toronto Maple Leafs may have more viewers than the Jets — which translates into higher CBC ratings and therefore more money for Rogers — the Winnipeg Jets’ fans don’t take their team for granted. They won’t want to risk losing the NHL again. The last time hurt too much.

Shannon Sampert is an associate professor in the department of political science at the University of Winnipeg.

s.sampert@uwinnipeg.ca Twitter: @paulysigh