For those of you wondering when Québec solidaire would sell out to the lowest common denominator: They’ve added “bring hockey games back to Radio-Canada” to their platform.
As for their argument that so many people don’t have access to RDS, I’d point out that only 13% of households with televisions in Canada don’t have cable or satellite service, and that number is going down. It’s not trivial, but it’s not that big either.
The Globe and Mail, at the end of a longer article on a possible new TV channel for CBC Sports, reports that the audience for Hockey Night in Canada actually went up last weekend when they telecasted the Habs game nationally instead of the Leafs, in every region except British Columbia. The increase is modest, and it doesn’t include Ontario (because they still got the Leafs game), where almost half the audience resides.
Still, a ratings increase speaks to CBC’s bottom line, so expect more nationally-telecast Habs games in the future.
The other part of the Globe article says the CBC is in the initial thinking phase of a new amateur sport TV specialty channel. They aren’t even close to going to the CRTC yet, so this is still a long ways off. It might also conflict with the Canadian Olympic Committee, which is also thinking of an amateur sport channel. (UPDATE: The Globe discusses some of the hurdles such a channel might face in getting regulatory approval)
Meanwhile, the CBC has applied to the CRTC for a license amendment allowing CBC Newsworld to setup an HD channel. It’s unlikely to face any opposition, so we could see CBC Newsworld HD within the next few months.
The Globe and Mail (or at least columnist William Houston) seems to have joined the expanding chorus of people who think that Hockey Night in Canada should drop the Toronto Maple Leafs as its default team, since it’s second-last in the Eastern conference and playoff prospects look weak.
It’s sort of a chicken-and-egg situation with the CBC and Toronto. They show the Leafs nationwide because the Leafs have the stronger fan base. But the Leafs’ fan base is largely a result of national telecasts.
I’m not in a position to say what team fans in Winnipeg, Halifax or other non-NHL towns should be watching, but I think the CBC should at least concentrate first on making sure NHL cities can watch their home teams — particularly Ottawa and Montreal. Sometimes the CBC splits its network up so that happens, but it should be for every Saturday where two Canadian teams are playing.
It’s not like cost is such a huge issue — HNIC is a huge money-maker for the CBC. And even then, I don’t care too much about the quality of the broadcast. Hell, they could simulcast RDS unedited and I’m sure cable-less Montreal fans would be perfectly fine with that.
Houston’s right: Ottawa is the dominant Canadian team at the moment, and it’s going to go much further toward a Stanley Cup this year than Toronto could ever hope to go. At some point CBC is going to have to make the switch.
UPDATE: Wow, it actually worked this time. That was fast.
For those of you who might have wondered if the Canadiens’ winning record and flurry of 5-goal games might cause financial hardship for the Cage aux Sports’s five goals = eight free wings promotion, never fear: they’re swimming in profits, according to their first quarter report (though that only covers until the end of November).
The Montreal Canadiens, preparing to celebrate their 100th birthday, are redeveloping an area outside the Bell Centre, calling it “Centennial Plaza,” adding some statues and selling bricks.
The bricks, a seemingly a propos metaphor for the team currently (overpriced dead weight that people step on, defined only by the stubbornly unending support by Montreal hockey fans), are being sold at between $175 and $800 apiece (depending on size and location) to raise money for … uhh … the Montreal Canadiens. (With “a portion of the proceeds” going to the Canadiens Alumni Association.)
Some might call it a transparent money grab, but the hard-core fans will eat it up. After all, it’s a chance to be a part of Canadiens history and have your name be forever etched on a brick that you own, on the walkway to the greatest hockey arena in the world.
Provided, of course, your definition of “you own” is “remains the sole property of the Club de hockey Canadien, Inc.” and your definition of “forever” doesn’t last longer than five years.
The terms and conditions of the sale provide you no right to ownership, gives complete veto power to the club over the text you use, makes absolutely no guarantee to keep the plaza beyond 2013, and for that matter doesn’t even guarantee you that they’ll build it where they say they will.
I also note that the website is entirely silent about any obligation to maintain your brick, even for those five years. So if someone sticks gum in it, or scratches it, or takes a jackhammer to it, it’s entirely unclear who will pay the bill to have it replaced.
But hey, who am I to stand between them and your money?
The Gazette’s Habs Inside/Out blog (which is liveblogging the game going on right now) has undergone an overhaul, switching from Movable Type to Drupal. Among the sweet stuff coming in as a result are user registration, comment threading, comment rating, avatars, comment preview, and those annoying social bookmarking links on each post.
The design still needs some ironing out, so expect the look to change slightly (hopefully including getting rid of that awful sea-green). I also noted that “associate blogger” Kevin Mio has been promoted to having his picture on the homepage again.
The backend of the site, administered by techies John MacFarlane and Dru Oja Jay, is separate from the CanWest online canada.com nightmare, and that’s a good part of why it’s so successful.
Guy Bertrand, the lovable lawyer and rabble-rouser, has finally shown his face in front of The Commission, and shown what a hero he is by clearing up once and for all what the greatest threat is to the French language and Québécois culture:
You see, because the Finnish player who happens to be the captain of the Montreal Canadiens has trouble with his third language, he’s violating our rights by not allowing hockey fans to be served in French.
When Koivu is inevitably found guilty in a court of law for crimes against humanity, should we subject him to lethal injection, the electric chair or just force him to be a panelist on Tout le monde en parle?
UPDATE (Nov. 1): Gazette letter-writers come to their captain’s defence and let Bertrand have it. La Presse’s André Pratte points out that anglophones, not francophones, are in linguistic danger in Quebec, and François Gagnon has some good insight into the matter.
According to the very scientific method of a poll on a blog, the Canadiens logo beat out the 29 other NHL teams logos in a head-to-head competition to win the title of NHL’s best current team logo. (I guess there really is a website for everything online, even one devoted to NHL team logos.)
Also be sure to check out this gallery of Habs logo and uniform concepts, including some disturbingly sacrilegious massacres of our dear CH.
RDS’s HD channel launched today with the first regular-season game of the Canadiens (we won, by the way). The network plans over 1,000 hours of HD programming in the first year (an average of 3 hours a day for us idiots who can’t do basic math), including full HD coverage of the entire Habs season and playoffs.
The channel is available on:
Jacques Demers: Coach, analyst, motivational speaker, superhero crime-fighter.
Is there anything this guy can’t do?
(via sam)
The Hamilton Bulldogs, the Canadiens’ AHL farm team, has won the league championship Calder Cup. This thanks to goaltending phenomenon Carey Price, who brought the team that wasn’t expected to win its first playoff round all the way to the big prize.
No crying Finns though.
So could Price’s unexpected awesomeness perform miracles to the Habs next year?
Isn’t this about the worst time to profile a bar, mentioning how great it is to watch Canadiens hockey games there?
There’s nothing quite like it. After 120 minutes (the equivalent of two full games) of play, and five hours of real time, the players are far too exhausted to make hard shots, race for the puck, or even stand up straight.
Tonight, the Vancouver Canucks (with former Hab Yan Bulis) beat the Dallas Stars (with former Hab Mike Ribeiro) 5-4 in fourth overtime, two minutes short of becoming the fifth-longest game in NHL history.
Funny enough, while it easily set a new record for Vancouver, Dallas had a longer game which went into fifth overtime in 2003.
Now, of course, the best thing to do is look at the game’s stats. It was quite a night for Vancouver’s Roberto Luongo — his much-anticipated first NHL playoff game had him see 78 shots on goal, at least 36 of them consecutive saves.
But the real star of the night, of course, was Vancouver’s #18, defenceman Rory Fitzpatrick. The almost-all-star didn’t have any goals, any assists or even any shots, but I was cheering for him the entire night. After all, he was drafted by the Canadiens. And if we can’t make the playoffs, at least we can be confident we planted the seeds of other playoff dreams.
Throughout the night I noticed that the TV people are still kinda flying by the seat of their pants on all this. Somewhere in the third overtime, my CBC signal lost its video feed for about 15 minutes (the audio was fine). No problem, I switched to RDS, who were in turn taking their feed from Versus in the U.S.
But then RDS lots its Versus feed. To their credit, they quickly replaced it with a backup feed of some sort and got back on track. The only problem was that this feed had the Versus play-by-play. They had to keep that audio so you could hear the crowd, but lower the levels so the RDS French play-by-play would drown out the English version.
Eventually, CBC regained its video feed, but then the audio got replaced by some guys doing analysis of the Eastern conference. I started wondering why everything was going so badly until I tuned to TSN and saw the country music station instead. It was then I figured the problem was probably with Videotron.
Don’t they know better than to have problems in triple overtime?
Remember kids, be careful when burning things in effigy. Habs T-shirts are quite flammable.