Just crazy enough to work...

The best TV writer in the country, Bill Brioux had a wrote a great piece over the weekend on the effort to save CHCH in Hamilton, whose branding has been muddied by all that E! pap.

It kind of ties in with some topics covered previously and the reason why there was a one-day lag getting into it, namely broadcast and blog commitments to Streaming Sports Network Canada at the CIS Final 8 here in Ottawa. This kind of jumped out:

"CHCH's Live@5:30 co-host Donna Skelly – one of the few local personalities left – thinks it's time the community stood up and took back their station. She is spearheading a group that is hoping to buy back CHCH and return it to its roots while at the same time.

" 'We are going to focus on local, period,' says Skelly, taking courage from a local news commitment declared recently by the Rogers'-owned City stations. She sees opportunities, for example, to hype local sports teams on TV and then stream full games on a web platform."(Emphasis mine.)

Skelly's push to return CHCH to its roots, frankly, is awesome. The urgent feeling that if the business models don't change, then local storytelling will be imperiled, seems to be at the heart of the matter. It's the same for people who work in print, it's the same for at the local affiliates across in Canada who have had to suffer because Canadian private networks, according to Brioux, spent more than a half-billion dollars last year importing U.S. comedies and dramas everyone can see already on American stations. (Seriously, who cares if you watch 30 Rock on Citytv or NBC?)

Anyone interested in this probably should peruse this post from Clay Shirky gradual disappearance of newspapers before going any farther.

"When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won't break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

"There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie."

Shirky adds, "We’re collectively living through 1500, when it’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it." The feeling on this end, as an eternally glass half-full guy, is that it is a positive step when you have someone who was once old media, such as Ms. Skelly, talking about streaming local teams' games on your station's website.

All the best to those trying to restore CHCH to a modicum of its bygone glory. In retrospect, those days in the 1970s and '80s when CHCH

You don't have to have grown up in the 519/905 area code to know that back in the day, CHCH was legen, wait for it, dary for its local programming. Reviving the era when a hometown TV station produced some its own shows, such as The Hilarious House of Frightenstein, Smith and Smith and The Red Green Show seems like a gilded age. It could be kitschy, cheesy, hokey (remember You Can't Do That On Television?), but in retrospect, it seems legen, wait for it, dary. It could be a real boon for sports coverage, too. At least a conversation is underway.

(By the way, you have not lived until you've watched Red Green use his lawnmover to make coffee.)




(Apologies for only getting this up this morning; needed a few hours to deglaze after commentating eight basketball games in three days. Thanks again to Bengt Neathery, Matt Copeland, Sarah Miller, Mark Masters, Chris Messina, Alison Sandor and Joe Fishman from SSN Canada for having me.)

Previous
How to save the newspaper ... (Feb. 27, 2009)

Related:
Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable (Clay Shirky)
Will townsfolk save House of Frightenstein?; Rallies for local owners start as corporate debt threatens CHCH (Bill Brioux, Toronto Star

How to save the newspaper ...

Something similiar to Mark Cuban's crazy idea to save the newspaper industry is being put into action, and it's topical with the San Fran Chronicle in trouble and the Rocky Mountain News having gone nips-up.

"NEW YORK (Reuters) – Cablevision Systems Corp plans to charge online readers of its Newsday newspaper, a move that would make it one of the first large U.S. papers to reverse a trend toward free Web readership.

The paper said in a statement late on Thursday that it is in the process of transforming the site into a locally focused cable service."

The debate really is about saving reporting as a profession, or at least as a vocation. Whether people get news from a dead tree-derived product which is dated within a day is secondary.

That might explain why there is some appeal to Cuban's notion that newspapers should be partnering up with Big Cable (a whole different can of worms). Presumably, in his model, a BellExpressVu subscribers in Canada, for a few cents a month, would get exclusive access to what on the Globe & Mail's website. It beats the hell out what seems to be prevailing in the newspaper industry of late, not that anyone reading this needs any reminder.

As Cuban puts it:

" ... newspapers ... should be knocking on the doors of cable and satellite providers offering their subscribers exclusive access to the online versions of their newspapers. That's right, the New York Times should be going to CableVision, Time Warner, Comcast, Charter, Directv, Verizon, ATT, Echostar et al, and offer to each that for 25 cents per month for those subscribers in the New York area, and for 5 cents per month for those outside the immediate NYC area, their subscribers will get exclusive access to the NY Times Online. Non-subscribers will get what Wall Street Journal non-subscribers get today, access to some content, but not the most timely or valuable content.

"If the Times can convince these operators that their subscribers will find value in exclusive access to the content, particularly if they can become part of their basic or near basic service, then all of a sudden, the NY Times and any other newspaper finds themselves with a recurring source of revenue that can turn into real money, while at the same time offering differentiated value for the video distributors.

"On a macro basis, I don't think its inconceivable that within a few years more than a material percentage of subscribers would support an additional $2 per month for unlimited access on all platforms, to all newspapers across the country. If it's 50pct (of the approximate 100 million U.S. cable subscribers) at $2, that's $100 million per month in new revenue for the industry. That's a billion dollars that matters. Plus advertising."

Yours truly has no special expertise in how this could all be matched up. Hear me out on account of livelihoods hanging in the balance, although frankly, many people working at newspapers will not be missed (and there's always one more than everyone thinks, Sager).

Cuban had mixed feedback, as you would expect with an idea which stands to work for the benefit of Big Cable. (Adrian Dater, the Denver Post and ESPN.com hockey writer who's suddenly got less competition on the Colorado Avalanche beat thanks to the Rocky Mountain News' demise, left a very positive comment, by the way. No scribe worth her/his notepad wants less competition. You want more. It means more people to lift the good stuff from.)

At least Cuban is talking about a new business model and how to get cash coming in. It beats the continual, numbing slash-and-burn which has been a huge downer for hundred of journos across Ontario over the past few months. It also beats the arterioschlerosis which has been taking place in the media in Canada, where embracing technology hasn't come with an accompanying attitude adjustment, namely that we don't have all the answers.

I never had any status to begin with, so it wasn't hard to give that up. I realized it was better to ask Pete Toms about anything in Ottawa that encompassed the economy, sports and municipal politics than open a newspaper or turn on a 6 p.m. newscast. Sorry, but Pete just knows it cold.

People still want to be informed and want to read quality stuff. The challenge is bringing in money so it's affordable to produce. It is better when someone is being compensated for their work. The most expensive thing in the world is cheap labour, or at least that's why my dad probably mused whenever he had me with him on a job site.

Having news content synched up with a cable company, provided there was still competition in the marketplace, has a lot of potential. Cuban noted the local paper's website needs to becomea kind of content aggregator, something a writer named Morgan Warstler pointed out recently (it was linked in Cuban's comments section).

"Here’s the plan:

1. Google will license all US newswires with (the Associated Press wire service's) explicit support (they'll help cajole the other newswires), and will alter Google News to display only the headlines, not the abstracts. They will do this for a song, but they will have NO rights to publish any of the articles.
2. Current syndication contracts will be abandoned by newspapers.
3. Readers and bloggers will now have via Google News ALL the headlines and a 'proxied local link' to all the stories.
4. Here’s the rub. Every single paper in America at their website will have (granted to them via Google's master license) every single article carried on the wires. (Ed.'s note: Which means the editors at your local former fishwrap aren't just cutting-and-pasting stuff from Reuters and The Canadian Press. Instead, they're helping make that local story sing.)
   

A localization proxy server will ensure that every link you click at Google News, or from your favorite blogger… you’ll read the article at your local paper's web site. Newspaper sites themselves will enforce this 'read local' policy by automatically re-directing non-local IPs back to the proxy."

Any talk about going hyperlocal segues right into sports coverage. A big reason this site has carved out its tiny little niche is that it is Canadian in focus without saturation hockey coverage, which is well beyond self-parody in this country. All hockey, all the time, works in the short run since it brings in the most eyeballs, which serves the needs of advertisers, but at some point it just becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Meantime, there are only so many people who want to hear about the high school basketball playoffs, the local CIS football team or the an analysis of Roy Halladay's last five starts, based on Pitch FX data. It is a bit chicken-and-egg. Do people not care or is the problem that not enough people are out there trying to make it interesting and easily relatable?

The university sports example is a convenient one, since it's a niche audience. Rogers Community in Ottawa does a good job with Gee-Gees football and the university basketball team, along with junior hockey's 67's, but it is labour intensive and they can only do so many games. They can also only show one game at a time. Webcasters such as Streaming Sports Network Canada have the advantage of being able to host numerous webcasts at once; three people and a camera at centre court or centre ice is all it takes to air a game. The equipment is getting better all the time.

Rogers has 2.3 million cable subscribers in Canada. Using Cuban's $2/month model, an extra toonie is $4.6 million a month, more than $50 million per year. That would represent a huge windfall in the fourth-largest market in the country. Imagine what could be done to make news and sports coverage more hyperlocal.

Imagine if all of that was synched up and available on a newspaper's website. The game report, the informed analysis, video of the post-game press conference, an archive of the broadcast. The colour commentator might end up writing the game story. It's multitasking. It's modern.

In the sports example, the emphasis would be on what the best journalism does, which is telling people what it was like, not just what happened. The by-the-numbers gamers with the vanilla coach and player quotes everyone has read 1,000 times before no longer serves this end. The gamer, as it's called in the newsroom, has been dying probably since about 1960, especially when there's Nate Silver to do the vivisection in real time and Kissing Suzy Kolber (or KurtenBlog) to do it in a humourous, jocular way. It beats reading about someone changing his daughter's diaper, that's for sure.

Understandably, there are questions questions about media concentration, checks and balances; that won't go away. This is about good storytelling and a younger generation, guys in their early 20s such as Bucholtz and Kinger, or people slightly older such as Duane who realize the old model is dead, having the chance to be rewarded for the ability to tell a story well, instead of being blocked by Boomer hubris.

Cuban's idea might be pie-in-the-sky. It is not perfect. But it beats accepting that we should all chase after the same nickel, which used to be a quarter.

Related:
Cablevision planning to shake up newspaper industry? (Neil Best, Newsday)

CIS Corner: Ravens likely to get No. 1 spot back

Notes on our athletes/teams of interest From The 613...

HOOPS

Ravens: Carleton, with a pair of 20-plus-point wins at home this weekend, could return to No. 1 in the CIS Top Ten since UBC No. 1 UBC was upset 76-73 by an unheralded Regina team in what Leader-Post scribe Tim Switzer called, "probably the most entertaining basketball game I have ever seen live."

It is just a number. Carleton, by its standards, is not all there yet, but it put McMaster away early with a savvy veteran performance by the law firm of Doornekamp, Turnbull, McCleery and Saunders. It easily could have been a bigger spread than 25 points (74-49). Aaron Doornekamp had 19 points and 11 rebounds; Rob Saunders (12 points, all off threes, and nine boards) was one board away from one of the stealthiest double-doubles in modern stat-keeping history.

There is a soft spot for the Ravens women's team, which after Saturday's 49-48 loss to McMaster, has lost three games by a total of nine points. (Their two wins were by a total of three.) The nature of their team seems to dictate that every game is going to be a grind.

Gee-Gees: The U of O, a fun team to watch, won both its games. A worrisome note was that Nemanja Baletic left the game vs. Lakehead after getting poked in the eye (one hopes it was just a precaution). Only five other players (presumably all five starters) scored in the 80-67 win over Lakehead.

Golden Gaels: It ended up being a split (win over Guelph, loss at Brock, which is 8-0 vs. CIS foes despite losing everything from the national championship team except Owen White and their lucky tub of garlic).

Mitch Leger had a 25-point night vs. Brock. Queen's (2-2 in the OUA) finishes out the pre-Christmas sked with a McMaster-Lakehead road trip and a Western-Windsor homestand. It would be nice to see them be 5-3 at the break.

HOCKEY

Our own Andrew Bucholtz did a liveblog of Queen's 3-0 loss to McGill, its second to the Red guys in eight days. Here's a quick rundown of the conference standings, games played and point totals:

1. UTQR: 22 (12)
2. Toronto: 12 (11)
3. Carleton: 13 (9)
4. Ottawa 12 (11)
5. Queen's 12 (13)
6. Concordia 11 (11)
7. RMC 8 (12)
8. McGill 7 (8)
9. Ryerson 5 (10)

Queen's is not in an enviable position since everyone else in the East has games in hand.

Carleton, in contrast, plays one of its games in hand today against McGill (3 p.m., ssncanada.ca).

That is all for now. Please visit The CIS Blog during Semi-Final Sunday.

CIS Corner: Sacobie back in saddle for GGs

Notes on our teams of interest from The 613 ...

Gee-Gees: Josh Sacobie "does not have a broken bone in his non-throwing arm and ... is expected to practise Tuesday," according to U of O sports information.

It's a spot of good news for the Gee-Gees, but there's a lot more oowies to be healed up before Saturday's home game vs. Laurier (1 p.m., The Score, SSN Canada). A healthy Sacobie ought to help them out get in fighting trim before the playoffs.

Remember, yes, they are 3-2 and first place is out of reach. This isn't the Little Sisters of the Poor — there's still a lot of talent on that team.

Across the river: Kingston's own Cory Greenwood, a linebacker, had 9½ tackles and a sack for the Concordia Stingers in their 21-12 loss to No. 1 Laval on Sunday

South of the border: The Rice Owls are in that post where Out of Left Field obsessively overthinks its choice of NCAA football team.

Rice starts Scott Mitchell of Manotick at left tackle and Montrealer Arnaud Gascon-Nadon, or AGN, as they call him. Gascon-Nadon, a freshman starter at defensive end, had an interception return for a touchdown in Rice's 77-20 win over North Texas, while Mitchell helped the Owls score touchdowns on their first six possessions.

Another bit of Canadians/NCAA news that might have to be followed up — Ottawa native John Delahunt, is apparently moving up on the depth chart for the No. 24 UConn Huskies, as Desmond Connor reported in the Hartford Courant:

"Well, Yianni (Apostolakos) will be No. 2 (behind Martin Bedard), and then we'll have John Delahunt. We'll get him some work this week too. But we've worked three tight ends. Yianni's been up practicing, and Martin, and John Delahunt would move in to get some practice reps now.

Ravens: Carleton's 3-2 exhibition win over Lakehead has been covered off at The CIS Blog.

Again, not unlike the Queen's Football Gaels, it's not even Oct. 1. Lakehead is far from a fully formed team and Carleton had played the previous weekend. Alex Archibald and Jordan Wakefield combined to stop 34-of-36 shots on Saturday against the Thunderwolves. This might be a notebook column on this week's Ottawa Sun schools sports page.

(Lakehead also has the best-named player in hockey, amateur or pro, Kalvin Sagert.)

CIS Corner: Raven about the Ugly American

Notes on our teams of interest from The 613...

Ravens: For reasons that remain unclear, the fine folks down in Kansas Jayhawks country still remain traumatized by Henk Doornekamp's (Aaron's proud pops) voice ringing in their ears -- three weeks after the fact.

It's unclear whether this is really even something to get offended by; besides, where to start? We do have someone who was, after all, a guest in a foreign country referring to 19,000-seat Scotiabank Place as a "gym." He describe the atmosphere as "quiet," which it wasn't -- maybe it was compared to a Kansas-Mizzou game at Allen Fieldhouse in February, but compared to, about 180 arenas in NCAA Division 1, it was plenty loud. There's a declaration that, "An obnoxious crowd at a Canadian college basketball game seems as hard to imagine as a martini stand at a NASCAR race" -- play to stereotypes, much? -- and last but not least, a claim that Carleton officials said Mr. Doornekamp "is always obnoxious at the games."

Gee, it would be nice to know how Carleton people actually phrased their explanation.

Henk Doornekamp is a highly involved fan, but he has life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- that's a good slogan, is any country using it? -- on his side.

That being said, it was just such a completely misleading expression of a great night in CIS. Someone in the Ottawa media should fire back at the punk, just to show Canadians aren't always so passive.

All that can be said here is that "obnoxious" is about the last adjective that should be applied to the elder Doornekamp. The Kingston bias is cheerfully acknowledged. Speaking as someone who's seen Carleton play in person a dozen times over the past two years, Mr. Doornekamp is supporting his son.

Having a media credential doesn't give anyone the right to judge him for that, not after the thousands of hours he's put into being there for all of his now adult children. It's a family matter so long as it doesn't detract from anyone else's good time (who knows, maybe it enhanced it). Besides, Mr. Doornekamp doesn't seem to get after players. He usually zeroes in on refs and opposing coaches, who are in those positions because they are mature adults who know it comes with the territory.

Kansas coach Bill Self, showing that the bigger they are, the nicer they are, even laughed it off. He said he appreciated that the heckling helped "create an environment honestly where guys felt like there was some pressure to perform."

Anyway, it is just mind-boggling why someone would take potshots at an opposing player's dad, three weeks after the game. This misportrayal also characterizes Henk Doornekamp as a dead ringer for the actor who plays Buddy Garrity on Friday Night Lights (right in photo, obviously).

That is so far off the mark. Remember, that's an expert opinion coming from someone who is a court-certified expert on the FNL franchise (it's bound to come into play in a really high-profile criminal trial at some point, because once it gets cancelled, many of its fans might go a little crazy).

Carleton, at least not in any official capacity, can't really respond.

They would make themselves look like the rubes. It does fairly demand that someone fire a broadside in return. You listening, you kids at the Charlatan? This is a more valuable lesson than anything you'll learn in the J-school.

One other Ravens note: The hockey team plays UNB in its exhibition opener tonight.

Gee-Gees: The game notes for Saturday's tilt vs. Waterloo list the following injuries for the Ottawa: Ivan Birungi (ankle), fellow receivers Ezra Millington (ankle) and Marc-Andre St-Hilaire (chest) and cornerback Ugo Levesque (knee).

That could make four receivers not dressing or limited on Saturday. Ron Kelly is a maybe, also with a gimpy ankle. That is not helping Ottawa find its form, especially in that passing game that only failed them in the opener and in the closer of the 2007 season. Th

Streaming Sports Network Canada will have the call of the women's hockey Gee-Gees exhibition game on Saturday.

Golden Gaels: Our king of Kings will be teeing up the Queen's-U of T football game later today on Offsides (4 p.m., cfrc.ca), with scarcely little help from a rather grumpy guest.

It is odd how Queen's is sort of following along the same path as it did in 2007. Just as they year, they had an easy win at home over a school from Waterloo, followed by a game at Toronto and then, cue the ominous Peter Bretter score,* a showdown at home against Western. In this case, Toronto has more fight in it than last season and the Western game isn't an elimination game.

The big theme for the Gaels seems to be one of maturity after having a little of too-much, too-soon syndrome in '07. There's optimism that based on the way they've played the second half of their past two games, they've conquered any self-doubts.

Not to look past U of T, but there's a good chance of having three 7-1 teams in the OUA (Queen's beats Western, but Ottawa beats Queen's and they all win out). That would mean having a crazy kooky points-for and against scenerio to determine who gets the byes in the semi-finals. It could happen.

(* It's not as gratuitous a Judd Apatow reference as you might think. A friend figures that Kristen Bell must have spent some time on the Queen's and/or Western campus as research for the titular rule in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.)

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

More coverage of CIS sports on the way?

It's looking like CIS fans may be able to access more game broadcasts, interviews, highlights and other content than ever before in the near future. For this piece in today's Queen's Journal, I spoke with John Levy, chairman and CEO of Score Media, Bengt Neathery, president of Streaming Sports Network Canada and Scott Moore, executive director of CBC Sports about their plans to expand their coverage of CIS sports. After the jump, some selected quotes from each on their networks' goals and some analysis of what this could mean for CIS.

Name:John Levy

Position: Chairman and CEO, Score Media

His CIS goals: Expand The Score's CIS coverage through additional live broadcasts, but especially through highlights, reporting pieces and Internet coverage. Levy wants to meld CIS coverage with The Score's other content as well: the example he quoted was basketball, where they have NBA, March Madness and CIS rights, and they want to try to attract fans of each to the other shows. He also envisions a country-wide network of contributors on campus, possibly through blogs, reporting or submitted pieces. He's a big fan of CIS sports because they appeal to The Score's target demographics of younger sports fans.

Selected quotes:

- "It’s a great product for us. We’ve been building it for the last number of years, and we continue to be excited to provide that level of programming at the university level. … We have an extreme interest in doing as much as we can at the university level. That’s a big draw for us."

- “A lot of what we do isn’t just broadcasting the games. ... Our network is more about the stories around the games, and universities are a hub for sports activity. … We want to plug into that more directly. I’d love to have reporters feeding into our network from every university across the country.”

Analysis: Levy seems very interested in expanding The Score's CIS coverage, and the online elements he proposed sound particularly strong. His network's done well in the past with their blogs and podcasts, bringing in people that you wouldn't normally see or hear at a lot of mainstream media outlets (such as the Drunk Jays Fans). The highlights he mentioned also sound like a great idea, and sports information directors across the country really should look into packaging and sending off highlights whenever possible. It would probably take quite a bit of time and money, but the potential exposure is huge: you can reach a whole new audience that won't tune in for a full game. The next logical step for The Score in terms of full-game coverage would probably be showing some regular-season basketball games in the lead-up to the Final 8 to build interest. As Levy said, "The more we show, the bigger we can grow the audience." He mentioned that there are some technical and scheduling issues still to overcome with regular-season basketball, but my guess is that you may see some of those games at some point soon.

Name:Bengt Neathery

Position: President, Streaming Sports Network Canada

His CIS goals: Make SSN more of a national network, bringing in game coverage from universities across the country. SSN is also launching a new-look website this coming week, and they're encouraging schools to contribute full games, highlights, interviews and the like. This makes a lot of sense in my mind: there's plenty of people who don't have time to watch a full game, but are interested in the post-game interviews or the highlights, and SSN is wise to show those as separate clips on their website. Neathery said they plan to show show anywhere from 400 to 750 full games live this year in a variety of sports, which is very impressive. Similar to The Score, they're also looking to expand their roster of contributors to include people from schools across the country and bring in a blog system. At the moment, much of the content is provided by the schools' athletic departments, but I got the impression from Neathery that he's open to having students on campus contribute as well.

Selected quotes:

- “We have a video upload system, an image upload system so schools can take control of their own content. ... A coach or a sports manager or whoever it happens to be can upload their own interviews that they want to do, or pictures of players in action, whatever it happens to be, and that will be reflected on the SSN site as well to give more of a homegrown community feel to it.”

- “Basically, it’s going to be an easier way for different people who know the CIS or the different sports to make comments or do regular reporting for the site. ... On a national level, we should be able to bring people in, bring the content in from any city anywhere and make it simple. We’re using technology to overcome some of the barriers we have in a country of this size.”

- “Right now, we do subsidize universities for their sport streaming program, so whereas it might cost about $4,000 or $4,500 to actually do the streaming, we subsidize about 80 per cent of it, so the actual cost to the school is only about $750. ... Any school that wants to get in, even if they don’t have the capacity to live-broadcast their games, we’d of course be willing to have them create stories, do videos and send them up to us, and obviously the more of them that do that, the easier it is for us. We’d like to see a broadcasting unit, if you will, at each school that is sustainable, sustained by advertising and sponsorship at each school so the product is consistently coming out.”

Analysis: Neathery's plans for SSN are very ambitious, but they certainly sound impressive. I approve of their plan to focus on bringing in as many schools as possible through subsidies at the start: that will give them national content, which should in turn lead to profitable advertising deals and sustainable broadcasting. Queen's would do well to jump on this train (and they may yet). In my mind, a key thing for SSN will be making sure that they have voices outside athletic departments as well: department-supplied content is great, but it's important that there are different perspectives displayed. The blog system would be a good way to do this. SSN is also launching a weekly magazine/highlights show, CIS in Motion: I watched the first episode the other day, and it looks pretty good. It's a promising concept as well, so it will be interesting to see where they take it.

Name: Scott Moore

Position: Executive director, CBC Sports

His CIS goals: Moore doesn't have any concrete plans for CIS content yet, but with the approval of their new sports channel, CBC SportsPlus, it is an area they're looking at as a potential source of content.

Key quotes:

- “We feel that Canada’s athletes, both amateur and professional, are underserved. ... I think CIS sport is something that’s under-televised at the moment, underserved perhaps, and it would be an area that we would be perhaps be interested in.”

- “We haven’t really started talking with rights-holders yet. ... We’ll start that process probably in the next month or two. First, you need to make sure that you’re going to have carriage with the cable channels, the CDUs (cable distribution undertakings), and then if you can get that, you want to be able to tell them that you’re going to have great content.”

Analysis: Obviously, Moore couldn't commit to very much, as the new channel is still in its infancy (their application was only approved in August). Still, he seemed enthusiastic about the idea of CIS content, and it would make a lot of sense for them. The CRTC mandated [William Houston, The Globe and Mail] that the channel show at least 30 per cent amateur content per week, and at least 80 per cent Canadian content per year. According to my understanding, CIS sports would qualify as both amateur and Canadian. The CIS is also one of the highest-quality sources of amateur sport in Canada, especially in more mainstream sports like basketball and football. There's also a ton of product available, given the sheer volume of schools, so it likely wouldn't be too hard for CBC to snap some of it up.

Overall analysis: This has to be a positive development for CIS fans, as they may be able to see a lot more of their favourite teams if these initiatives pay off. Streaming Sports Network especially could be fantastic for university alumni in other cities, as their alma mater's athletic departments would now (at least to my understanding) be able to upload any game they were able to videotape, as well as highlights and interviews. The Score's enhanced web content could become a go-to destination for CIS opinions and information, and CBC SportsPlus could give CIS sports some major television exposure. It's looking like a good time to be a CIS fan.

(Cross-posted to The CIS Blog).