ESPN still hears it about hockey...

xDerekRx

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dabid

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Feb 6, 2006
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Pregame and postgame shows like the former "NHL 2Night" are called "shoulder programming," and they tend to be part of a rights package.
They were showing "NBA 2Night" before they had NBA rights.
 

puck57

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Dec 21, 2004
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Overall some good general observations and more objective as well. The bottom line is $$$ and ESPN promotes what they show and in the short term hockey will be on the outside looking in. Keep an eye on how Crosby in particular is promoted and how the Pens do as far as garnering national attention and down the road ESPN may follow suit as when Wayne went to LA- might be similiar to how ESPN picked up hockey coverage as Wayne started to play south of Canada. Should be interesting about five years from now just how big in marketing Crosby will become which could catch the network's attention.
 

jacK

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Sep 18, 2005
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i followed up w/ an email/comment to the ombuds(wo)man (apologies for the length, and believe me i could've made it longer):

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.
i'd encourage everyone to send your own message/comment, she's listening and that's more than we've gotten for years from ESPN.
 

Transported Upstater

Guest
Haha, yeah it is...Stuart Scott drives me crazy

Did you ever see the SNL Skit with Ray Romano and Tim Meadows where they do a Sports Center duo?

"He goes happy go-jacky on the big white guy like a donkey eating a waffle!
Sweet sassy molassy, get out the checkbook and pay grandma for the rub down!"
:biglaugh:
 

Silver

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Did you ever see the SNL Skit with Ray Romano and Tim Meadows where they do a Sports Center duo?

"He goes happy go-jacky on the big white guy like a donkey eating a waffle!
Sweet sassy molassy, get out the checkbook and pay grandma for the rub down!"
:biglaugh:

Romano: "Jeremy Roenick scores, and celebrates like a slave that made it to the north!"

The look and reaction from Tim Meadows is priceless.

It's not the same as a video, but here's a link to a transcript:

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/98/98osportscenter.phtml

NBC seems to have made sure that all their SNL clips are removed from YouTube.

edit: There's also a line about there about someone shooting the puck into Peter Skudra's pooper. Again, the response from Tim Meadows was priceless.
 
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edmontonoilers89

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Romano: "Jeremy Roenick scores, and celebrates like a slave that made it to the north!"

The look and reaction from Tim Meadows is priceless.

It's not the same as a video, but here's a link to a transcript:

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/98/98osportscenter.phtml

NBC seems to have made sure that all their SNL clips are removed from YouTube.

edit: There's also a line about there about someone shooting the puck into Peter Skudra's pooper. Again, the response from Tim Meadows was priceless.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=874598365
 

danno2530

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Great article. This hit it on the head for me:

If you chip five minutes off "SportsCenter" here and there for a sponsored segment, another five minutes here and there for recycled portions of shoulder programming and more minutes for teasers leading up to those segments, there often seems to be nothing left for news of sports other than those for which ESPN holds rights. Nobody needs marching orders. The formula itself is skewed toward the sports that pay their way.

This absolutely infuriates me. ESPN's audience is not made up entirely of "the casual sports fan". It's us diehards and I think most of us could completely care less about garbage like that.

Even forgetting about hockey for a second..I just want more highlights in general. And maybe an actual full-screen recap of a game instead of the little bug at the bottom. ESPN has become crap in the last 5 or 6 years and it's nice to see that someone working there has the honesty to (in part) admit that.
 

jkrdevil

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Apr 24, 2006
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Apparently Michigan is playing the role of Pittsburgh, and UND suddenly became the Coyotes. :confused:

That's because NBC didn't have the NHL rights then and thus couldn't use NHL footage without paying for it so they used the cheaper college footage. In order to hide that and get the reaction for the sketch they put it in the small box. If you remember NBC had the NBA rights then so they were able to use it for the sketch. That footage probably came from NBC aired games. It's the same reason why a lot commercials and movies and such use USFL footage for football.
 
Aug 2, 2005
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Great article. This hit it on the head for me:



This absolutely infuriates me. ESPN's audience is not made up entirely of "the casual sports fan". It's us diehards and I think most of us could completely care less about garbage like that.

Even forgetting about hockey for a second..I just want more highlights in general. And maybe an actual full-screen recap of a game instead of the little bug at the bottom. ESPN has become crap in the last 5 or 6 years and it's nice to see that someone working there has the honesty to (in part) admit that.

You don't like them showing clips from ABC's, DISNEY owned, Dancing With the Stars? Shame on you.
 

mucker*

Guest
Well that is a great article.
It's not just the lack of NHL highlights that has turned me off ESPN.

They used to be a network that showed sports news, highlights, and analysis.
Today not only do they pass this and the NHL over for other sports, but it's about promoting themselves and competing with NFL Network.

You don't get scores, highlights, and insight about the game, you get gossip about McNabb, Nascar, AFL highlights.

My question, when did Disney take over ESPN and is this why not just the NHL but overall ESPN has become more about promoting and creating hype than reporting?

I HATE the teasers of "WHY this" "Stay Tuned" "Our Six Pack" it's total hype.
They didn't used to be this way.
 

BackToTheBrierePatch

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Feb 19, 2003
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Pretty much sums up Sportscenter and hockey there. The highlights are in tiny windows and aren't even of the teams they were talking about.

its even worse on the radio. ever listen to espn radio and when they have their "sportscenter"? they give all the NBA, MLB scores, the NFL news, the golf news ect and completly cut out the hockey scores half the time and when they do they might give you 2 or 3 scores out of the 12 games that night. Are they that ****ing bitter that they dont televise hockey anymore? The idiots had there chance and they passed, so screw em, they rather show the ******* hotdog eating contests or the ****ing ro-sham-bo or whatever the hell they call it championships next month.
But of course if a vicious hit happened in hockey they would show that as one of the top stories of the day. They love focusing on the negative part of the game.
Yeah lets show poker from 1995 instead of hockey. what the **** ever.
ESPN is a 2nd rate network, end of story.
 

mucker*

Guest
its even worse on the radio. ever listen to espn radio and when they have their "sportscenter"? they give all the NBA, MLB scores, the NFL news, the golf news ect and completly cut out the hockey scores half the time and when they do they might give you 2 or 3 scores out of the 12 games that night. Are they that ****ing bitter that they dont televise hockey anymore? The idiots had there chance and they passed, so screw em, they rather show the ******* hotdog eating contests or the ****ing ro-sham-bo or whatever the hell they call it championships next month.
But of course if a vicious hit happened in hockey they would show that as one of the top stories of the day. They love focusing on the negative part of the game.
Yeah lets show poker from 1995 instead of hockey. what the **** ever.
ESPN is a 2nd rate network, end of story.
This is why I don't watch ESPN aside from BBTN and during NFL Season.
If we get NHL Network I'm set.

It still would be nice to have a comprehensive show that gives me all the sports news, and it would add some meaning to share it with the nation, public, as online or in single sports programs like NHL Network don't have that level of broad recognition, but whatever.

I'm not sitting through NBA, and now AFL (minor league football), Auto Racing, and May NFL gossip.
 

zestystrat

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While I don’t have the ratings info in front of me to back it up, my guess is that regional sports networks are gaining speed and are eating away at ESPN’s ratings for SC. There are now more places to see highlights and SC is far from the only game in town anymore.

As a result they have had to add sponsored segments and move towards the “Entertainment Tonight” side of “Journalism”.

Just a guess on my part.
 

puck57

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Dec 21, 2004
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While I don’t have the ratings info in front of me to back it up, my guess is that regional sports networks are gaining speed and are eating away at ESPN’s ratings for SC. There are now more places to see highlights and SC is far from the only game in town anymore.

As a result they have had to add sponsored segments and move towards the “Entertainment Tonight†side of “Journalismâ€.

Just a guess on my part.

As far as the entertainment part- I think that phase has leveled out somewhat with ESPN- they fired the guy who was in charge of programming a little while back and he was the one who really started all those movies and other fluffy things like that and I think they see it is not as popular as they hoped. This guy was also the one who really hated hockey and made no secrets about it as well- I believe he was Mark Schperio- don't know if I spelled the last name correct however.
 

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