Hockey Night in Canada

La SoirÃ©e du hockey

In parallel with CBC, TÃ©lÃ©vision de Radio-Canada aired La SoirÃ©e du hockey, featuring Montreal Canadiens games on Saturday evenings in French. In the past the SRC had aired Quebec Nordiques and Ottawa Senators games occasionally during the regular season if the Canadiens were not playing that night as well as the Stanley Cup Finals, regardless of participating teams.

Beginning with the 2002-03 season, RDS secured exclusive French language rights to the NHL. The deal, reached with the Canadiens and not directly with the league, was meant to ensure a consistent home for all Canadiens games, whereas, as a general-interest network, Radio-Canada could not give up so much airtime to Canadiens games. The announcement drew the ire of, among others, then-Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, who suggested that the network would somehow be violating its conditions of licence by not airing LSDH. In reality there is no specific regulatory requirement that the CBC's networks carry the NHL, nor that there be parity between the two networks' carriage thereof.

During the years that SRC carried "La Soiree du Hockey", play-by-play men included Rene Lecavlier (as beloved in French-speaking Canada as Foster Hewitt was in English-speaking Canada), Richard Garneau, and Claude Quenneville.

Radio-Canada soon reached an agreement to produce the Saturday night games, to remain branded La SoirÃ©e du Hockey, to be simulcast on both SRC and RDS. However, for reasons that are unclear, that agreement was terminated after the 2004 playoffs. [1] Nonetheless, the RDS-produced replacement, Le Hockey du samedi soir, is simulcast on Radio-Canada outside Quebec, where RDS has limited distribution.

Style

Announcers

Hockey Night in Canada made its debut on CRBC radio in 1933 (renamed CBC in 1936), with television broadcasts beginning in 1952, upon the launch of television broadcasting in Canada . After missing the cancelled 2004â€"05 season, it returned on October 8, 2005.

Dave Hodge and Howie Meeker in the classic Hockey Night in Canada jackets.

The legendary Foster Hewitt, who had developed a style that welcomed Canadians to the radio broadcast each week, had to prove his radio style could also work in the new medium of television. His move from radio to television was successful and Hewitt continued to work in television for many years, including the famed 1972 "Summit Series" between a team representing Canada (an NHL all-star team) and the Soviet National Team. This style of play-by-play announcers in hockey broadcasting really hasn't changed between radio and TV, as broadcasters still describe the action as if viewers cannot see what is on the screen they're watching. He was followed (in no particular order) by Danny Gallivan, Dick Irvin, Jr., Bob Cole, and Hewitt's son, Bill Hewitt. Previous show hosts included Wes McKnight, Ward Cornell, Jack Dennett, Ted Darling and Dave Hodge. The show's current host is Ron MacLean.

Theme song

The famous theme song, The Hockey Theme, was written in 1968 by Dolores Claman and has been referred to as Canada's second national anthem. The theme was updated in 1988 when the show was retitled Molson Hockey Night in Canada on CBC. In 1998, the theme was again updated, when Labatt became the main sponsor, and the show was back to being called Hockey Night in Canada, even though the announcers always tacked on "brought to you by Labatt Blue" afterwards (La SoirÃ©e du hockey continued to use the Molson theme up until its discontinuation in 2004). Other theme updates occurred in 2000 and 2001, but a new theme similar to the Molson theme was brought back at the start of the 2004 playoffs, although it was only used during the opening (around this time, there was no title sponsor).

In November 2004, Dolores Claman and her publisher initiated legal action against CBC for breach of copyright, alleging, among other things, that the theme was used on other CBC programs, and used on broadcasts outside Canada, without consent. The case is ongoing. [2]

Criticism

Don Cherry, host of "Coach's Corner"

Programming Choices

Critics of what the show chooses to program allege that the Eastern broadcast in particular favours teams from Ontario, especially the Toronto Maple Leafs (leading to the derogatory nickname "Hockey Night in Toronto"). These critics note that Leafs games are often aired too often across the network, usually to the detriment of the Ottawa Senators and Montreal Canadiens, whose fans sometimes don't see a Saturday-night game of their team. Some fans in southwest Ontario also seek Detroit Red Wings games, as FSN Detroit is not available on cable. The CBC has responded by saying that scheduling Leafs games across so much of the network makes sense considering budget cutbacks and what they claim to be "the massive national popularity of the Maple Leafs". The Toronto games are seen as making more money for the English-language network, as Montreal is mainly francophone and Canadiens-oriented, while the Senators, despite having a growing, albeit young fanbase, are situated in a smaller city from which the national newspapers and TV stations do not originate. The Windsor/Sarnia area likewise may simply not have a large enough population to justify Red Wings coverage during the regular season, although CBC does sometimes split its feed during the playoffs to make Red Wings games available (including the 2006 first-round series against Edmonton). An incident of this nature that drew particular ire was when CBC refused to air the jersey retirement ceremony for Canadiens legend and credited slapshot inventor Bernard "Boom Boom" Geoffrion in English, despite months of advance notice; the impact was compounded because Geoffrion had died suddenly the day prior to the ceremony .

Also, viewers wishing to watch the second game of the double-header complain that they have sometimes been forced to view the first game's feed until its conclusion, as CBC rarely splits its feed for Western viewers. This is rarely a concern anymore as regular-season games almost never go past 10:08 p.m. ET (7:08 p.m. PT) because of the introduction of hurry-up faceoffs. In the past, especially late in the season if the second game had no playoff implications, the CBC would slowly wrap up the first game(s) including interviews and analysis, as well as take multiple commercial breaks, before finally joining the second game in progress, even in the Western NHL markets.

In addition, with the CBC having exclusive English-language broadcast rights to NHL games in Canada on Saturdays, critics say that it abuses this power by refusing to air games regionally - showing the entire country the Leafs game and excluding the local team's game in their home market without allowing local or regional broadcasters such as Rogers Sportsnet the ability to show the local team's games. All Canadiens games air in French on RDS without restriction. However, TSN has similar English-language exclusivity on some weeknights. CBC does offer regional coverage during the playoffs. The CBC has also taken criticism from Western-based hockey fans for refusing to broadcast the second game of the doubleheader in HDTV. As such, usually only the 7 p.m. games (usually involving the Leafs) and the Stanley Cup Finals were shown in the higher-resolution format during the 2005-2006 season, and sometimes CBC would not show either game in high definition.

Critics of what the CBC chooses to program around the show allege that live hockey action at the beginning of the second or third periods is too often truncated. They charge that this is due to two factors: the intermission show running too long, and the CBC's refusal to pull promos for other shows even when there isn't enough time to show both the promos and the start of the period.

Content

Criticism of the show's content often focuses around Don Cherry, who has made several controversial statements during his live on-air segments. He has been accused of racism towards European-born players, problematic because the broadcasts air live in Europe, and French-Canadians, and is often seen as an advocate of the old-school rough style of hockey frowned upon both by some hockey fans (including NHL administrators) and many of their TV partners. Despite these controversies, Cherry's popularity among Canadians endures.

The show's hardly-veiled bias towards Canadian teams draws some criticism, especially from American regions near the Canadian border that receive CBC telecasts, as well as American customers with the NHL Center Ice pay-per-view package. Supporters are quick to point out that the show is a Canadian show on a Canadian network, that bias towards the country's teams is therefore appropriate and should be expected, and claim that a similar bias is present in reverse on American networks' telecasts involving Canadian teams (especially in baseball and basketball). Opponents claim that coverage should be more neutral toward the competing teams, as they believe most American broadcasters practice even when Canadian-based teams are involved.

The Future

CBC's contract with the NHL to broadcast the Hockey Night In Canada package will expire following the conclusion of the 2007-2008 season. In the past, the CBC would have been considered a shoo-in to renew the rights, but this time, things could be different.

Private network CTV recently outbid the CBC for Canadian television rights to the 2010 and 2012 Olympics and the major television package for curling, joining forces with sister company TSN to outbid the CBC. There is much speculation that CTV/TSN will not only make a combined bid for both the national over-the-air and cable television rights to the NHL in Canada, but make such a huge bid for the over-the-air portion of the deal that the CBC will not be able to match it. Should the NHL and the Canadian Football League both join the Olympics and curling at CTV/TSN, it would leave the CBC without any major sports events and put the future of the network's sports division into question. However, such a move would be considered extremely controversial as over-the-air coverage of the NHL would be reduced due to the priorities that CTV has with airing American programs.

Programs with similar titles

The American television network NBC has recently announced that its new Sunday night NFL pregame show, beginning in 2006, would be called Football Night in America, which is basically a takeoff of the Hockey Night in Canada name. NBC had previously, along with ABC, televised Major League Baseball games under the name Baseball Night in America.

There is also a Boston-based company called Hockey Night In Boston, which covers high-school hockey and conducts a summer tournament for players who will be eligible to play high-school hockey the following season. Hockey Night In Boston began in the early 1970's as a series of radio broadcasts of local high-school hockey games in the Boston area.

External links

*Official Website
*Museum of Broadcast Communications
*Jump the Shark
*Hockey Night in Canada theme's official website
*Original version of The Hockey Theme

Previous logos

Image:Hockey Night in Canada (1952).jpg|First television intro (you can see Foster Hewitt in the Background) (1952)Image:Hockey Night in Canada (1960s).JPGImage:Hnic old.jpgImage:Hockey Night in Canada (1970s).JPG|1970s early electronic animation intro Image:HNIC 1985.png|A Hockey Night in Canada logo used around 1985Image:Hockey Night in Canada (1980s).JPG|1980s 3D introImage:Hockey Night.jpgImage:Molson Hockey Night early 90s.JPG|Early 1990s logoImage:HNIC1995.PNG|Logo used from 1995 to 1997Image:Molson Hockey Night.jpg|Logo from the 1997-1998 season

Hockey Night in Canada: Encyclopedia BETA

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