CBC Canuck Coverage Biased and Bland
May 2, 2009, by Homme De Sept-Iles
Vancouver versus Chicago (Game Two)
The CBC comfort-food approach to hockey telecasting is unappealing, amateurish and hopelessly biased.
Within one minute of tuning in to the Vancouver-Chicago pre-game “analysis” I am shown video footage demonstrating Evgeni Malkin’s unacceptable sense of urgency on line changes.
I wonder how many critiques of Crosby’s game I’ll hear about in this series. Will that ratio be greater than complaints about Malkin? Malkin, it might be remembered, is the league-leader in total points and one of three finalists for the Hart Trophy awarded to the league’s most valuable player.
Crosby is not one of those three players. Even the media is realising he isn’t sainted. And that he may not be the next Wayne Gretzky. He may not even be the next Paul Kariya. Do the old-schoolers at the CBC truly believe that today’s viewer really cares if his team has enough Canadians? Instead of catering to the outgoing 50+ year-old viewer, the broadcaster should consider selling the game to its 15-and-under category. These are your future season-ticket holders. And they all seem to know that Ovechkin and Malkin are better than Crosby and the other over-hyped Canadians in the game.
The NBA learned (grudgingly) that they needed to learn how to sell (interact with, respect, and for some, tolerate) the black athlete. Plenty of young people are comfortable saying that their favourite player is black. Michael Jordan, Lebron James and Kevin Garnett fans abound. As the generations evolve, Canadian viewers are going to have an even easier time pulling on those jerseys featuring such hard-to-prounounce names like Sundin, Kovalev, Semin and Koivu.
They’re cool. And the kids know it. In under-reporting or minimizing Swedish, Russian or Finnish players’ exploits, the CBC is only cementing their reputation as plodding, stodgy and resistant dullards with yet another generation of sports fans. (For me the dullards included Leif Pettersen, Pat Marsden and, even then, Don Cherry) They did have Dave Hodge, one of the cooler guys but they fired him. Good one.
With regard to the television feed, why are game feeds sold exclusively? The feed should be sold to multiple broadcasters and let the best man win. Viewers could see and hear the difference in quality. CBC would finally lose its place as a sports broadcaster. And be forced to improve. Believe me, say what you will about budgets, they can improve. We get few new stat types, even less understanding of the technical aspects of the game and are left with the usual cliches and explanations (the team won because they hustled harder). Only Kelly Hrudey seems to rise above the pack with his erudite and deeply observant comments.
Just six minutes more of home-cooked hockey-lovin’ (in the guise of fireside player chats, moribund comments and mounds of personal conjecture) and I have muted the telecast.
The last thing I hear is a Chicago player saying “I don’t believe in stats.”
Thank goodness I do. Otherwise I might not know what time the game starts. Isn’t time a stat? Oh, wait. That’s not a stat.
Is it.
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