I think it's overall a better thing for the game to keep it out of the media. I think that it hurts the game more financially when the die hard hockey fan hears that no progress was made so often in a confrontation of millionairs vs billionairs. As it has been all along during Bettmans tenure, the goal has been to market the game to the average sports fan. Because hockey has been so forgotten even as games were being played, the NHL wants to keep the average fan (we'll call the average sports fan the american sports fan) somewhat informed of what was happening, purely so that the average joe wouldn't forget about the league.
TSN reports every little thing that happens in regards to the negotiations. Canadians love to stay on top of this news, just as some Americans like myself "enjoy" to. The average sports fan in america goes to espn.com, not tsn.ca for there sports news. ESPN and TSN obviously have different ways of handling hockey news. I believe that TSN is optimistic and will report something even if it is a rumor. ESPN on the other hand, will come out with hockey news a day later then TSN, making sure it is more concrete (not to mention the fact that they have 2 people working on NHL news probably). The thing I hate about ESPN is that there audience is basketball and football loving sports fans (many of whom make fun of the NHL), and you can tell ESPN knows this with there negative headlines, polls that are set up to show that "no one cares about hockey."
I believe the NHL's immediate goal in the beginning, citing the fact that this was long term, was to keep the average sports fan informed so they wouldn't forget about the game. I think they all realized that this technique backfired on them when they found that the real hockey fans--those who go to TSN--were being killed by all the optimism than no progress etc. It was like riding a rollercoaster if you went to TSN everyday. IMO, The league kept the world involved in the talks as much as they did so ESPN--the more concrete and less in terms of quantity hockey news--would keep the average fan from forgetting that the league even existed (literally speaking)
Now that they have decided to keep things more quiet, it's questionable if the average sports fan will remember the NHL.
From this one can probably say that either the NHL has given up on the average sports fan (and will work on it when the games come back)--or they realized that there killing the real hockey ones