I imagine that this deal, like all national TV deals will be evenly split among the 30 teams?
I've always had a problem with that, as, the Canadian deal has always been very restrictive to Canadian teams (who lose the ability to sell local broadcast rights to Saturday night games) yet, no additional compensation is provided to the Canadian teams to compensate for that loss.
I'd like to see that changed, but, I doubt that Bell Globemedia is going to pay that kind of money without having exclusive coverage rights.
As a side point to that, with respect to whatever games aren't covered on the "national" HNIC game that in theory would appear on CTV, could the other games not appear on TSN, RDS or TSN2 (if it gets approval) at the same time?
Obviously Toronto is the "national" game based on viewership, and CTV/TSN won't change that, even if their broadcasting team is less biased overall. Obviously if CBC, as a national broadcaster, puts overall revenue above even coverage for all teams, a private company will do so as well. But instead of having no local deal for a team like Ottawa, who basically don't appear on Saturday night, could TSN/CTV not put the Ottawa game on TSN and furthermore the Montreal game on RDS, while playing the Toronto game on CTV to the "national" audience? It maximizes viewership and therefore revenue, it would be included in the rights anyways, and from a PR perspective would be great, which is at least somewhat important if the tradition of HNIC on CBC is going to die.
The western games could have a similar structure, a rotating national game, or Vancouver taking on the 'Toronto' role for the late game, with TSN and/or TSN2 taking the Edmonton/Calgary games if there are three total. The only preliminary issue that I can see with such a plan, is that it could require as many as six broadcasting teams if all six teams are playing different opponents. I guess local broadcasting teams could be used in that instance.
I don't know enough about the business of sports broadcasting, the rights package or the plan of Bell Globemedia to know if this plan is realistic or likely, but it's enough for me to throw my support behind them. The quality of the HNIC product can only improve in any number of ways, and as long as CTV is covering the "national" game, the only legitimate downside is that it breaks "tradition". Too bad, so sad.