Friday, June 06, 2008

CBC Sports out of tune

There's already a group on Facebook called Keep The Hockey Night In Canada Theme Song.

If you hurry, you can be one of the first 100 members. No word on whether this gets you a free tote bag.
Follow-up, June 6: Check William Houston's column at globesports.com:
When Hockey Night's 2007-08 postmortem takes place, (CBC Sports boss Scott) Moore would do well to look at the show's 18-per-cent decline in its 7 p.m. (Eastern) regular-season audience on Saturdays.

"He might wonder if the show is adequately covering hockey's leading players and telling stories that reflect today's game. Or are the subjects limited to the likes, dislikes, and grievances of (Ron) MacLean and (Don) Cherry, the two most influential and powerful people on the show?
What was that about the talent being bigger than the production? (Granted, Houston is under the same corporate umbrella as TSN, you can't lose sight of that, but he's not saying anything a lot of people aren't saying privately. Granted, the Leafs were lousy again, so that's part of the 18% drop.)

Tom Benjamin, incidentally, had an alternative take on Houston earlier in the week:

"I think it is a good thing that the Globe pays a media critic. However, I think
that Houston himself has some sort of grudge against Hockey Night in Canada and
Don Cherry. Does Houston ever criticise anyone else?"
Who knows what goes on. It can be pretty cutthroat among the big-city journalists and people do hold grudges.

Incidentally, while we were talking about what to talk about on today's edition of Offsides (4 p.m. Eastern, CFRC 101.9 FM in the Kingston area, cfrc.ca everywhere else), Michael Grobe mentioned an article in the Kingston Whig-Standard that had a great suggestion about Dunh-Da-Dunh-Gate. TSN should pull a Michael Jackson and snap up the rights to Dolores Claman's theme.

Wouldn't that be a laff riot.

3 comments:

Robert C. said...

This HNIC song thing will get bigger and bigger till they bring it back. Soon as I heard it I thought these groups would pop up, but not this fast.
As for the coverage I preferred CBC because I couldn't stand the NBC 'Nothing But Crosby' stuff. TSN was just as bad, saw a few minutes after Game 5 and talking about him instead of Fleury.
I did notice on post game of Game 6 the Pittsburgh fans chanting 'Fleury' and even 'Gary'. Hmmm, Houston seemed to miss that. :)

Anonymous said...

Canadian SAT question Don Cherry::Sidney Crosby as William Houston::Don Cherry.

I don't take Houston seriously as a sports critic but the Crosby hype is absurd on TSN and NBC. CBC does a much better job at looking at the big picture of things. GOod on them. Houston needs to get over it.

sager said...

Ron and Don might have spent more time talking about Gary Roberts than he got in ice time during some games ... there has to be a happy medium.