Just got around to reading your most recent article, and am writing to express my thanks for fighting the good fight for hockey fans like myself, even if your words will [continue to] fall on deaf ears.
"But "SportsCenter" is also supposed to be news-driven, which means the actuality of the day or week takes precedence over the maybe of next fall. On some days, hockey is bigger news than football. It would be refreshing to see it played that way, if only just once, if only to reclaim a bit of that pre-Disney innocence."
This quote from the final paragraph of your article sums up perfectly how I (and many others) have all but been resigned to the fact that hockey is the annoying step-child that ESPN would love to ignore, but still has to give a little attention to (heck, Cowlishaw gets a 'mute' just about any time he brings up hockey on ATH; Jeremy Roenick was on PTI weeks ago pleading for more hockey discussion... Wilbon and Kornheiser agreed they should cover it more, but have maybe mentioned it 5 times since.)
"We found that in March 2004, hockey accounted for 20 percent of the Top Ten highlights. In March 2007, the percentage was 18 percent."
Please feel free to tell Mr. Lazarus that 8-second highlight clips don't count as "hockey coverage." Almost every goal in a hockey game is infinitely more exciting than sitting through 10-15 minutes of Kiper/Mortensen/McShay discussing who NFL team(s) will be drafting in 3 weeks.
They can tell us it's a "perceived" conflict of interest all day long, but don't insult my intelligence. I know where the money is, but I also know that ESPN has a journalistic responsibility as a 'news' network to be fair (as you also touched on.) Hockey doesn't get its fair shake at coverage on ESPN because business decisions have been made to push the sports that line ESPN's pockets, and quotes from various Vice-Presidents/Talking Heads won't convince me otherwise; of course they're going to tell me there's rhyme to their [flawed] reason. I'd have no problem with this if it were an independent entity, but when it calls itself the 'World-Wide Leader in Sports', just be honest with us and add '- That We Have Vested Interest In' to that title so I can flip over to FSN for balanced coverage.