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105.9 The X To Give Penguins Their Own HD2 Channel!

Dave Ramsey was profiled on "60 Minutes." Does this mean he's bigger than Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity?

Danica Patrick does more ads than almost every athlete you can name. Does this mean that Indy Car racing is more popular than NASCAR?

The thing is I keep hearing how much more popular the NBA is than the NHL- how the south doesn't care about the NHL and such.

Point taken, but does flyover country really care about the NBA?

When the NBA and the NHL went head-to-head on the networks this year, I believe the NBA got four million more viewers. It was something like 10 million to six million.

I also think CBS won the time slot overall- though not in the 18-49 demo.

And when the NHL and NBA were on networks last year, with the "can't be more glamourous Lakers-Celtics matchup," the ratings were about the same- a four million advantage. So there's the answer to your trademark wet blanket.

I'm not debating the NBA is more popular nationwide. We live in a country where basketball hoops in driveways are more numerous than hockey rinks in the suburbs and frozen ponds.

I am saying that I, for one, am sick and tired of how the NBA is played out to be so much more popular than the NHL. For as many handicaps as the NHL has, and for as fashionable as it is to bash it outside of Pittsburgh, to be this competitive is, in my book, a positive.

And, of course, locally there is no comparison.

I chalk it up to having superior taste than the rest of the country.
 
The NHL is making progress, but still trying to recover from the Stanley Cup Finals a few years ago on ABC pulling a 1 rating. As a comparison, Spongebob Squarepants got a 3.

ESPN also didn't want it anymore because everything else they showed, college hoops, poker, whatever, got higher numbers. It takes time to rebuild from a scenario like that.
 
Do you think that time has passed?

If not, how much longer?

Something I've been discussing, while I realize Versus doesn't have the coverage of ESPN, I think in the long run it may actually help the NHL to be on Versus.

My reasoning is that Versus isn't Sportschannel, the northeastern network John Zeigler agreed to have carry his league's games during Mario Lemieux's prime. It's on all the Comcasts of the world.

If the NHL went back to ESPN, we could expect it to be slotted behind everything, and I mean everything, else again- including poker. But Versus makes hockey their primary sport.

As the network grows, so will the NHL. But ESPN will never make the NHL it's primary tenant.
 
Gary Bettman specifically said that when they couse Versus (then OLN) that they wanted to be on a network where they were the most important thing. They just need more households, plus they aren't on in a lot opf hotels and places like that. That doesn't impact ratings as much as it does perception.
 
The Versus/NBC deal goes for another two years. ESPN wanted NHL games for free.

What ESPN doesn't tell you is that televised poker is now nothing more than an infomercial. Most of the ads outside of the gambling industry are bonuses.
 
And, of course, ESPN wastes no expense putting down hockey whenever they can.

You don't hear it from ESPN 1250 much, of course, but certainly Colin Cowherd and the slotting of the sport (and time given it) on Sportscenter is proof of this. Their ombudsman has even written about how Sportscenter coverage reflects what sports ESPN has contracts with.

What blew me up was earlier when Rachel Nichols did a commentary earlier this year on "The Sports Reporters" where she began her take with "If you're watching hockey and the ratings show you haven't . . ."

And then the Stanley Cup wins its time slot in four of the five games shown and is competitive with the NBA.

Hockey might not be as popular as baseball and football. It probably never will be in the USA. But the same thing could be said about every other sport from basketball to boxing, and they don't receive such put downs from "The Mothership."
 
Every game of the Stanley Cup finals beat everything ESPN put up against it handily.

Trust me the idiots in Bristol would take a 61 share in a top 25 market, if they could ever get. Some of what we are hearing out of their mouthpieces is sour grapes.
 
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