What Balanced Schedule?
(x-posted to A View from the Cheap Seats)
With all four major networks releasing their broadcast schedules yesterday, I thought it would be fun to look at how each team is represented from coast to coast...fun being a relative term as I've basically just run out of things to talk about.
It is, overall, a slightly more balanced schedule than last season, but again that's a relative term.
A few things jump out at me right away - first of all, obviously, is the prevalence of Penguins games. I get that Sidney Crosby is the anointed one, the holy spirit, the second coming, whatever you want to call it. But this is also a team whose greatest achievement in the last five or six years is not getting swept in the first round of last year's playoffs. Do we really have to see them 35 times? That's behind only Toronto and Montreal, whose numbers are artificially inflated because they obviously dominate CBC broadcasts.
Think of this fact: the Penguins appear on CBC 7 times (same with the Rangers); that's more than Boston, Buffalo, Colorado and Minnesota, each of whom is actually in a division with three other Canadian teams. They appear on TSN 13 times; that's more than Ottawa and Toronto combined.
Does anyone else find that strange?
My second issue - Detroit. They are, for whatever reason, the Pittsburgh of the Western Conference. They're not young or exciting, but they apparently have a lot of fans. And it is because of them that some teams even get on TV. Just go back to Nashville, whose 3 games are the fewest in the league - 2 of those games are against the Wings. Columbus and St. Louis each have 4 games, tied for second fewest, and they also have 2 apiece versus Detroit.
I understand the limitations of marketing in these so-called "non-hockey towns". I get that your ratings are theoretically higher when, say, the Rangers, Penguins or Red Wings are playing versus when Tampa Bay or Phoenix is playing. But that still doesn't completely excuse the totally unbalanced menu we're being given this year. If that's the case, explain the 11 games going to New Jersey (3 against the Pens, by the way); give me a reason for 9 games for the Islanders. Detroit may call itself "HockeyTown" but Minnesota is and always will be the State of Hockey...and the Wild has only 7.
Buffalo, a team that has reached the Eastern Conference finals 2 years in a row, has 19 - that's the fewest in a division whose other teams haven't made a playoff splash in years. Carolina and Tampa? 7 games, and those are two of your last three Stanley Cup Champs. Ottawa was a Finalist this year and yet they have only 1 game in the States.
Oh, yeah, and that reminds me, what about those 2007 Cup Champs? 10 games. 10.
Way to go, NHL.
If you're a numbers geek like me, enjoy:
Atlantic Division - 103
NJD VS 3; NBC 1; CBC 3; TSN 4 = 11 (3 vs Pit)
NYI VS 5; NBC 0; CBC 1; TSN 3 = 9 (2 vs Pit)
NYR VS 8; NBC 8; CBC 7; TSN 5 = 28 (7 vs Pit)
PHI VS 8; NBC 4; CBC 3; TSN 5 = 20 (6 vs Pit)
PIT VS 8; NBC 7; CBC 7; TSN 13 = 35
Central Division - 42
CHI VS 2; NBC 2; CBC 3; TSN 2 = 9 (1 vs Det)
CBJ VS 1; NBC 1; CBC 1; TSN 1 = 4 (2 vs Det)
DET VS 8; NBC 7; CBC 3; TSN 4 = 22
NSH VS 1; NBC 2; CBC 0; TSN 0 = 3 (2 vs Det)
STL VS 3; NBC 0; CBC 1; TSN 0 = 4 (2 vs Det)
Northeast Division - 144
BOS VS 6; NBC 4; CBC 5; TSN 9 = 24 (1 vs Pit)
BUF VS 7; NBC 3; CBC 2; TSN 7 = 19 (1 vs Pit)
MON VS 5; NBC 1; CBC 17; TSN 13 = 36 (2 vs Pit)
OTT VS 1; NBC 0; CBC 20; TSN 6 = 27 (2 vs Pit)
TOR VS 3; NBC 0; CBC 28; TSN 7 = 38 (2 vs Pit)
Northwest Division - 88
CGY VS 1; NBC 0; CBC 14; TSN 6 = 21 (1 vs Det)
COL VS 8; NBC 1; CBC 3; TSN 8 = 20 (2 vs Det)
EDM VS 1; NBC 0; CBC 13; TSN 5 = 19 (1 vs Pit)
MIN VS 3; NBC 0; CBC 1; TSN 3 = 7 (1 vs Pit)
VAN VS 2; NBC 0; CBC 14; TSN 5 = 21 (1 vs Pit, 2 vs Det)
Southeast Division - 44
ATL VS 4; NBC 1; CBC 2; TSN 3 = 10 (2 vs Pit)
CAR VS 5; NBC 0; CBC 1; TSN 1 = 7
FLA VS 1; NBC 0; CBC 2; TSN 3 = 6
TB VS 2; NBC 0; CBC 2; TSN 3 = 7
WSH VS 4; NBC 3; CBC 2; TSN 5 = 14 (2 vs Pit)
Pacific Division - 38
ANA VS 4; NBC 2; CBC 2; TSN 2 = 10 (1 vs Det)
DAL VS 4; NBC 2; CBC 2; TSN 2 = 10 (1 vs Det)
LA VS 1; NBC 0; CBC 3; TSN 2 = 6 (1 vs Det)
PHO VS 1; NBC 0; CBC 5; TSN 0 = 6
SJ VS 2; NBC 1; CBC 1; TSN 2 = 6 (1 vs Pit)
8 brilliant comment(s):
Washington (bottom feeder last year) is deserving of twice as many games as Tampa and Florida? Thanks for putting the numbers together. I wanted to see this, but not do the actual math :)
You're forgetting a HUGE selling point on airing Detroit games: Its the only Western Conference team to be on Eastern time, except maybe Columbus (who is god awful anyways). Go back and check how many of those Wings games are home games, that's one of the big things. This allows the national networks to televise Western Conference teams without having to do it at 10:30 at night, when only west coasters (which the MSM doesn't care about) and hockey nuts (which the MSM doesn't care about) are watching. If Detroit sucked, I guarantee you, you'd see far less Western Conference teams televised nationally, for that reason.
Not only that, but the Red Wings are a perenially good team (so they're unlikely to have a poor season and leave a network airing games between terrible teams), and they're also from a big market and have one of the largest national followings of any NHL team. Detroit may be bleeding population terribly, but all those people relocating are still Wings fans, and once they're out of the range of Fox Sports Detroit, their only way to watch the Wings is the national games on Versus and such.
Also, how exactly did you figure the NBC games? NBC is using flex scheduling this year, to avoid having such riveting matchups as NYI versus Boston, so the NBC schedule is mostly up in the air, though there are some weeks where they're committed to one game, or the decision for which game to air is a no-brainer.
Good breakdown of the scheduling though, as mentioned, I was curious about this, but not enough to do the math.
Yeah, I get that certain teams have larger markets even outside the original city and I understand the whole timing argument...it's still annoying, though.
For the NBC games I just counted the number of potential games that could be aired according to the schedule. So some of those numbers are obviously a little higher, especially the Caps who could potentially be on 3 times but will probably get only 1 because the other two are up against Penguins games...thus my point about Penguin overload.
If we gave prizes for well-thought out and logical comments we'd have to send swag Joe's way. Thanks for the insight...and come round more often.
I gotta figure that even if Detroit were a small market team, they'd still get a lot of those same dates, because of the Eastern Timezone factor. If you look further out west, you'll see that the only other comparable market sizes that field NHL teams are Chicago, Los Angeles area, and you could probably argue Dallas, Colorado, and San Jose too. The other considerations after the timezone would have to be market size, and how dependably you can rely on a team to not stink it up. You can see how that quickly begins to narrow down the selection process. It's not fair, but it is totally understandable.
It also explains why the Southeast Division gets shafted on TV appearances:
1) None of the teams can be trusted not to totally shit the bed.
2) Your teams are restricted to one time zone, with 12 others. That leaves you only the 7:30 timeslot, with a lot more competition for it.
3) Your competition for those timeslots includes a lot of bigger markets on the northern half of the East Coast, as well as a lot of teams who can be trusted not to screw it up.
Part of this can be attributed to the NHL's unbalanced schedule. Every Eastern Conference team will each play what, 72 games against Eastern Conference opponents, right? That's all Eastern Timezone. Then of the 10 against a Western Division, half of those are at home, so that makes 77 games in the Eastern Timezone, for all 15 teams, and thats not considering Detroit and Columbus. Now obviously, a lot of those games overlap, but you can still see how cutthroat the competition is for the limited number of time slots. I won't do the math, but the discrepancy between the number of games being played in EST and PST (central and mountain get even further shafted, because they're not very conducive to doubleheaders) is easy to imagine. Just another thing wrong with the NHL's terrible scheduling system.
What is the really big problem with the frequency of nationally televised games is the fact that there are so many games contending for so few time slots. Because there are so few time slots, smaller markets or teams that could possibly flop are seen as a risk by the networks. This is primarily because Versus, the primary national carrier in the US, only carriers NHL hockey 1-2 nights a week. I don't know the actual numbers, but I find it seriously hard to believe that Lacrosse, "World Extreme Cagefighting", Hunting, or Bull Riding are seriously drawing better primetime ratings than the NHL. Even if Versus only aired 1 more night of prime time hockey a week, you'd increase the amount of available slots for games to be put in by nearly 50% in the States. Not only that, but airing more hockey would likely increase the network's profile, getting it on to more cable companies, because if you're only missing 1-2 games a week, no one is crying, but as that number goes up, people want it more and more.
I wonder if Eastern Conference teams couldn't work with Versus themselves to create more timeslots. Say Carolina goes to Versus and says, "Hey, we'll start a game against Tampa Bay at 5:30 PM, if you'll air it". Versus then says "Yeah, sure" and then airs a 5:30 game between CAR and TB. The viewing audience isn't tremendously different between 5:30 and 7:30, so this seems a minor consideration, to get CAR and TB an extra nationally televised game. Not only that, but doing such a thing then allows Versus to go to a Western Team and say "Hey, change your 8:30 or 9:30 (EST) start to 9:00, and we'll put you on national TV as part of a doubleheader". Thus, two games can be aired where one or none were before, because of a little cooperation between the teams and Versus. Doing this sort of thing to add a third night of hockey coverage to Versus would hugely increase the number of televised games, which is good for all 4 teams involved, the NHL in general, and Versus, unless it really does get better ratings from bull fighting than ice hockey.
Heh, that was big enough to be an entire blog post all on its own, hmm? And thank you for the compliment, Jennifer!
HEY!!!!! CapsChick likes A Prayer for Owen Meany!
*High Five* for good taste!
This may be spiltting hairs, but not all teams have 7:30 puck drop for home games. Carolina, for example, starts at 7:00 except for a rare Sunday matinee and the traditional 8:00 start on New Year's Eve. Other teams, especially on the weekends, might have an 8:00 start.
Your point remains, though. There are too many games competing for basically one time slot.
Also, in answer to Joe's comment, I think it isn't so much that Detroit is a perennial contender. I think it's purely about brand name. If you look at Major League Baseball, the Yankees are always going to be on television because of their brand name, whether they are good or bad. If you look at College Football, Notre Dame will always be on television whether they are good or bad, and they'll always be able to sign contracts with major networks because of their brand name. None of this has anything to do with the quality of the product. It has everything to do with the name recognition of the product.
This may seem like a shortsighted way for the networks to go about things, but it's probably the best way to bring in casual or new fans. With a brand name team like the Red Wings, or with a household name like Sidney Crosby. Tough luck for the Phoenix Coyotes of the world.
It also helps if the owner of your team is also the owner of a cable network that happens to have broadcasting rights to NHL games.
*high fives* Such a great book...
Anyways. Right. Hockey. Joe, you make some excellent points and I think my disgust probably has less to do with actual logic (for a change) and really boils down to my own inherent bias against both the Penguins and the Red Wings...and the Rangers. And Flyers.
I do wonder about your suggestion to switch games to 5:30 - they may increase the number of games aired but I think it would be detrimental to ticket sales, the only semi-strong thing the NHL has going. People here in DC already have enough trouble getting to games @ 7:00 judging by the large numbers trickling in well into the first period. Moving it back to 5:30 or 5:00, unless on a Saturday or Sunday, would make it harder for people to get to games after work.
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