WildBill said:
NHL Attendence up TV ratings down
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Hockey on TV plays shorthanded
Dec. 12, 2005
<!-- BYLINE|NoColumnName|Norman Chad|--><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=150 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=colbyline align=left width=140>[FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica]Norman Chad
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(This is the Norman Chad who does poker on ESPN)
The NHL took a year off - to work out some labor-management issues, to change a rule or two and to find a new cable TV partner - and, upon its return, two sets of reality are abundantly clear:
1. More people than ever are going to the games.
2. Fewer people than ever are watching the games.
The NHL broke records for attendance in the season's first two months. Scoring is up, the overtime shootout is popular and the two-line pass is being celebrated as the greatest invention since the carpool lane. Eight of 30 NHL teams have sold out every game, with 24 franchises even or ahead of their 2003-'04 gate averages.
Alas, while the turnstiles click at most NHL arenas, TV remotes still click to other channels during most NHL games.
In its last season of televising the NHL, ESPN2 did a 0.2 rating for 50 games and ESPN did a 0.5 rating for 20 games. During the lost 2004-'05 NHL season, ESPN found it could draw larger audiences replacing the games with, well, almost anything.
"Ah, who's laughing at taped billiards and taped poker now?"
OLN - the NHL's new national cable carrier - is averaging about half of ESPN2's hockey numbers.
This is a polite way of saying that OLN is often getting a 0.1 rating.
(If it's really, really cold outside and Tavis Smiley doesn't have a really, really good guest on PBS, sometimes OLN gets a 0.2 rating.)
Let me put it to you this way: Howard Stern could point a Polaroid at his right armpit and get a 0.1 rating.
Anyway, it had been a long time since I had watched the NHL, so I decided I'd give it another shot. First I had to find OLN; if I were a fan of "Expedition Safari," I would've known exactly where it was. It turns out to be Channel 608 on my DirecTV right next to ESPNU!
The two games I watched were quite good, but the same problem arose that I always bring up to the disgust of hockey aficionados: You all have one intermission too many. Maybe two 15-minute breaks are fine for beer sales at the arena but, from the comfort of our couches, it gives us one extra chance to surf away to other programming.
I did exactly that, wandering away from the Islanders-Blues game and, by the time I wandered back, "Hunting With Hank" was starting on OLN. Well, at least I got to see a shootout there.
