The 2013-14 Colorado Avalanche. A bright, up and coming young
team with budding stars such as Ryan O’Reilly, Matt Duchene, Tyson Barrie,
Semyon Varlamov, and Gabe “don’t call me Gabriel” Landeskog. The team also
features recent 1st overall pick Nathan MacKinnon and probably
Olympic backup Semyon Varlamov. Behind the bench is former NHL Superstar
Patrick Roy and up in the press box is Joe Sakic. So what does this team get
for having such an exciting team with unlimited potential? 3 lousy games on the
NBC Sports Network, that’s what! Yes three. And one of them doesn’t really
count because it’s against the Penguins in Pittsburgh. I bet the Hartford Whalers
even have one of those games aired on NBC this year.
So did the Avs get the shaft again this year? Of course they
did. When this team starts tearing it up a month into the season and the hockey
world figures out what an exciting team this is to watch, the execs at NBC are
going to be kicking themselves for letting America watch the Dallas Stars (5
games), Sharks (5), Devils (7!!!?) and
Wild (12 *faints*) more. Now, blame the “East Coast Bias” on this, but we have
a different theory up our sleeves, and guess what! We’re about to share it with
you. The real reason why the Avs don’t get a lick of TV time compared to other
teams? Because they don’t have Sidney Crosby (18 games aired), and Alexander
Ovechkin (13), because they haven’t won the cup in the last 5 years (CHI:17,
LA: 9, BOS: 14, DET: 14), and because they aren’t the New York Rangers (18).
Come on NBC. Gettin’ tired of your…stuff.
So what does this say about the decision makers at the
glorious NBC Sports Network? It says this: they think we Americans are just a
bunch of mindless robots that only want to watch the players and teams that the
NHL shamelessly markets the death out of. But what if a hardcore hockey fan
likes the New York Islanders? Do you think he is going to want to watch the
Rangers, Bruins, Penguins, and Red Wings all the time? No. Do you think a
Hurricanes fan wants to watch the Penguins, Devils, Capitals, and Flyers (19!!)
while their team only plays once in front of the entire country? No. And why do
we Avs faithful want to watch the Red Wings, Stars, Devils, Hawks, and Blues
(13) all the time? We don’t.
So NBC has proven one of two things: they don’t care about
the fans of 28 other teams in the league (yes NBC, there ARE other teams) and
just want to make money, and/or they think we will just tune in on a Sunday evening
to one of the 6000 Bruins/Pens games instead of flipping to Altitude to watch
the Avs, or bumming a stream off the internet.
Well, sorry NBC. I think we speak for a lot of hockey fans
in America, and even Canada, when we say you can take your 8 teams (Pens,
Hawks, Bruins, Rangers, Kings, Wings, Flyers, Caps) and shove it. Yea, we’re
going to watch those games because we are hockey fans and they are exciting.
But stop giving the fans of the other teams the middle finger. There is more to
this sport than making as much money as possible.
Actually, on second thought....this might not be a bad thing....
i'll let you guess where the 8 biggest US television markets are. As for your 'more to the sport than money' line. While that may be true for some fans, for NBC it is a BUSINESS and they lost half a season of potential income last year. They're going to go to the teams and the markets that give you the most viewers and hence the most $$.
ReplyDeleteYep, its unfortunate
ReplyDelete