NCHC Announces "Television" Deal
by WCHBlog on Jan 31, 2012 11:01 AM PST
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PrintThe NCHC announced today that a minimum of 18 conference games and the league playoff semifinals and finals will appear on the CBS Sports Network.
My first question: Is that even a real station, or is CBS Sports Network one of those myths like Union being a good hockey team or women's hockey that everybody just believes because they have no evidence to the contrary? If it is in fact real, this seems like a mutually beneficial deal for the two sides. For example, when CBSSSNBYOB decides to rebrand itself again because nobody watches them, the NCHC knows where they can get a new banner to announce it quick and for cheap.
But I guess this is what it was all for. From the beginning, I've said this transition in college hockey is all about weighing what is being gained against what is being lost, and the shiny new TV deal was the keystone of what this new conference was supposed to gain. The venerable institutions of the WCHA and CCHA were destroyed for 18 games--much less if you cancel out the games those teams already have on CBSSNSNSSNABBQ this year--on a television network whose station number you probably couldn't guess if I spotted you 50 stations in either direction. As with every other announcement from the league, the gains are underwhelming at best.
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Funny how someone who pretends to be somewhat knowledgable about college hockey makes ridiculous remarks about a stations existence when it for years has covered games from across the country and throughout the country, unlike NESN and fox sports montana which are primarily only available in local markets. Get your head out of your ass
by GoSkinsGo on Jan 31, 2012 9:24 PM PST via mobile reply actions
I think I cracked a rib reading this!
Now, that’s funny!
That's what college hockey is all about
It’s not an athletic event where a group of students from one school plays a game against rivals from across the river with members of the student body, alumni and interested observers in attendance. It’s a marketing opportunity, an entertainment option for couch-shackled potato chip destruction machines, an extended free development camp for professional leagues in towns nobody wants to visit like Bridgeport, Oklahoma City and Rochester.
I think we get it Chris. You are not happy with the NCHC.
A couple of points though. First, I don’t believe the WCHA has been, or will be, destroyed. It will be different, but will still exist. The CCHA will be dissolved.
Second, major media empires aren’t exactly lining up to broadcast college hockey. We can mock the secondary nature of the broadcast company (or location of the channels in your lineup, if you prefer) all we want, but the day isn’t going to come when ESPN or the major networks fork over big dollars to broadcast a few college games.
Third, what steps did the “venerable” WCHA, or CCHA for that matter, take to procure conference television broadcast contracts for it’s conference? We can badmouth the nature of the deal, but at least the effort was put in. Remember, the leadership of the current WCHA is the group who said they were “reserving comment until an appropriate time” when they learned the conference was breaking up.
Thus far about the only television exposure we’ve seen out west has been arranged by individual teams making individual deals, like those made by MN with FSN and the UND and DU deals with FCS. Candidly, having everyone go their own way has never been a good situation, even though this new deal will likely result in a significant drop off in the number of games I’ll get to watch UND play on tv.
