William Houston reported the other day that the long-anticipated CBC Sports Plus digital sports channel not only won't be launching this year, it may not launch at all. Houston cites carriage issues as one of the major problems, which makes sense considering the difficulties TSN ran into trying to get Rogers to carry TSN2 (and TSN2 had much more high-demand programming when it started than CBC Sports Plus was anticipated to have).
This is disappointing news for Canadian sports fans as a whole, as more channels tend to mean more sports events are available. However, it may be particularly damaging to CIS fans hoping to see more televised university sports content. I've been following the CBC Sports Plus saga for several years now, and first spoke to CBC Sports head Scott Moore on the subject for a Queen's Journal piece on CIS TV coverage in March 2008. At that time, he seemed quite optimistic that the CIS might have a plcae on the new channel, commenting, "I think it’s a great product that’s underexposed at the moment."
In September 2008, I took another look at the channel (see the factbox at the bottom of the page) and some other university sports initiatives, including some of The Score's new initiatives and Streaming Sports Network's expansion of its coverage. The other two networks were already in existence and thus had much firmer ideas about their coverage of CIS events, but Moore still sounded very positive about CBC Sports Plus and the chance to televise amateur sports content such as CIS sports. As I mentioned in my CIS Blog companion piece, CIS made a lot of sense for CBC, as the CRTC mandated them to carry at least 30 per cent amateur content per week and 80 per cent amateur content per year. CIS sports fit both of those criteria very nicely, and the timing of many CIS games on weeknights and weekend evenings would have been perfect, seeing as much of the other potential amateur content (skiing, curling, swimming, etc) generally takes place on weekend mornings.
The really disappointing thing about this is that it seems the Canadian Olympic Committee's proposed amateur sports network (which I also wrote about in the first piece) is also dead in the water; its website hasn't been updated in over a year. Both networks seemed quite promising and very interested in televising CIS content, and their interest alone might have convinced the other existing networks to see CIS programming as more valuable. Even the success of one of them could have made a substantial difference given the amounts of amateur sports content they were talking about carrying. For the moment, though, it looks like the status quo will prevail.
There is some reason for hope, though. Houston's report makes it clear that CBC Sports Plus hasn't been officially written off yet, and it could still launch in the future. If the CBC is able to acquire some high-end sports properties (more NHL content, some Blue Jays games, more soccer and basketball), they could be in a stronger position to force cable companies like Rogers to carry a new channel. Alternatively, Rogers Sportsnet's ratings could improve to the point where Rogers is no longer terrified of upstarts cutting in. There's also the chance that the CBC and cable companies might be able to come to a reasonable deal that would permit the channel to launch. It's not dead yet, it's just resting!
[Cross-posted to The CIS Blog]
Showing posts with label CBC Sports Plus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CBC Sports Plus. Show all posts
Friday, January 22, 2010
Monday, November 24, 2008
Grey Cup numbers not so gloomy
Two stories on the Globe and Mail's website only hours apart give rather different takes on this year's Grey Cup viewership. The headline for the story from The Canadian Press is "Cup audience increases five per cent", while the headline for William Houston's column is "Small audience tunes in to Grey Cup Game" (game really shouldn't be capitalized, but so be it). The ledes are also rather different, as shown below:
CP: "An average of 3.65 million people tuned in to watch the first-ever Grey Cup broadcast on TSN and RDS on Sunday, according to numbers released by the network. The total audience for Calgary's win over Montreal in the 96th Grey Cup represented a five per cent increase over the viewership for last year's game, which Saskatchewan won over Winnipeg. That game was aired on CBC."
Houston: "TSN's first Grey Cup telecast drew one of the lowest television audiences in the history of the CFL championship game. The 2.439 million people who watched the Calgary Stampeders' win over the Montreal Alouettes is the Cup's second-worst TV audience since 1989. It was down 27 per cent from the CBC's 3.337 million a year ago for Winnipeg Blue Bombers-Saskatchewan Roughriders. The only audience worse was the CBC's 1.628 million for a Blue Bomber rout of the Edmonton Eskimos in 1990."
Why the discrepancy? Houston is only looking at the TSN numbers here. Later on in the column, he mentions the 1.215 million who watched on RDS, and as he begrudgingly admits, "Taken together, the TSN-RDS audience, the total Canadian viewership, was 3.615 million, slightly more than the combined CBC-RDS audience of 3.539 million in 2007. Last year, RDS drew only 200,000 for Bombers-Roughriders."
I don't see how Houston can argue that the RDS results shouldn't be included and that this was one of the worst-watched games in history. With Montreal involved, there were obviously a large amount of people who would watch the RDS feed. RDS is under the same CTVglobemedia corporate umbrella as TSN, they use the same (ESPN-style) interface for their SportsCentre shows, and they're pretty much just French-language TSN. The CFL deal is with TSN and RDS, so good ratings on RDS help quite a lot. CFL commissioner Mark Cohon and TSN president Phil King both talked about the two as a single entity for purposes of audience ratings in the CP story, and both were quite positive. As King told Houston, "It doesn't really matter from TSN's point of view what the mix is." Houston doesn't seem to agree, but I don't get his arguement: do the RDS viewers not count just because they happen to speak French?
Houston's arguments as to why TSN got lower numbers mostly fall flat. Part of his rationale is the same over-the-air versus cable drum he's been beating for a while now (see this doom-and-gloom column on the playoff matches), which doesn't make a lot of sense any more. Yes, the CBC theoretically has a distribution of 12 million to TSN's 9 million. However, most of the people who still don't have TSN are hardly ardent sports fans or ardent CFL fans, especially considering that TSN was airing every CFL game this year. My own family back in B.C., usually well behind the trend in television, made the jump to TSN this year largely based on their CFL coverage, and I'd venture that most CFL fans did the same. TSN is in most basic cable packages, and there are not all that many people who still rely on over-the-air TV; I'd guess that a large part of that seemingly-imposing 3 million gap is households who rarely watch TV and probably wouldn't be tuning in regardless.
I also don't buy his argument that the playoff hit was due to those games being on Saturday instead of Sunday. There are a lot of people in this country, especially younger demographics, who are fans of both the CFL and the NFL, and those numbers are likely increasing with the Bills-Toronto situation. It doesn't seem logical to suggest that a CFL game would automatically do better if you put it head-to-head with the full slate of Sunday afternoon NFL telecasts. There's much less competition Saturday, with the CFL only really up against Canadian and American college football (both of which draw considerably less viewers than the NFL).
Moreover, obviously there are going to be less English-language viewers for a Montreal-Calgary game than a Saskatchewan-Winnipeg game. Whatever the Grey Cup matchup, you'll always get a good deal of your audience from both local markets (and their provinces), with a smaller portion being the diehard fans like myself who will watch the game regardless of who's in it. All that's really happened here is that one of the local markets is French-speaking instead of English-speaking, so they tuned in to the RDS feed instead of the TSN one. TSN is not a weaker channel; in fact, on the sports landscape, it's much more impressive than CBC at the moment (although CBC SportsPlus might change that around eventually).
Overall, I'd argue that these ratings are good news for both the league and TSN/RDS. It doesn't matter how many watched the game in English and how many watched it in French. This certainly isn't the "second-worst TV audience since 1989", and there are plenty of francophone viewers who will back me on that one. Houston should broaden his horizons; it's the game that matters, not the language.
CP: "An average of 3.65 million people tuned in to watch the first-ever Grey Cup broadcast on TSN and RDS on Sunday, according to numbers released by the network. The total audience for Calgary's win over Montreal in the 96th Grey Cup represented a five per cent increase over the viewership for last year's game, which Saskatchewan won over Winnipeg. That game was aired on CBC."
Houston: "TSN's first Grey Cup telecast drew one of the lowest television audiences in the history of the CFL championship game. The 2.439 million people who watched the Calgary Stampeders' win over the Montreal Alouettes is the Cup's second-worst TV audience since 1989. It was down 27 per cent from the CBC's 3.337 million a year ago for Winnipeg Blue Bombers-Saskatchewan Roughriders. The only audience worse was the CBC's 1.628 million for a Blue Bomber rout of the Edmonton Eskimos in 1990."
Why the discrepancy? Houston is only looking at the TSN numbers here. Later on in the column, he mentions the 1.215 million who watched on RDS, and as he begrudgingly admits, "Taken together, the TSN-RDS audience, the total Canadian viewership, was 3.615 million, slightly more than the combined CBC-RDS audience of 3.539 million in 2007. Last year, RDS drew only 200,000 for Bombers-Roughriders."
I don't see how Houston can argue that the RDS results shouldn't be included and that this was one of the worst-watched games in history. With Montreal involved, there were obviously a large amount of people who would watch the RDS feed. RDS is under the same CTVglobemedia corporate umbrella as TSN, they use the same (ESPN-style) interface for their SportsCentre shows, and they're pretty much just French-language TSN. The CFL deal is with TSN and RDS, so good ratings on RDS help quite a lot. CFL commissioner Mark Cohon and TSN president Phil King both talked about the two as a single entity for purposes of audience ratings in the CP story, and both were quite positive. As King told Houston, "It doesn't really matter from TSN's point of view what the mix is." Houston doesn't seem to agree, but I don't get his arguement: do the RDS viewers not count just because they happen to speak French?
Houston's arguments as to why TSN got lower numbers mostly fall flat. Part of his rationale is the same over-the-air versus cable drum he's been beating for a while now (see this doom-and-gloom column on the playoff matches), which doesn't make a lot of sense any more. Yes, the CBC theoretically has a distribution of 12 million to TSN's 9 million. However, most of the people who still don't have TSN are hardly ardent sports fans or ardent CFL fans, especially considering that TSN was airing every CFL game this year. My own family back in B.C., usually well behind the trend in television, made the jump to TSN this year largely based on their CFL coverage, and I'd venture that most CFL fans did the same. TSN is in most basic cable packages, and there are not all that many people who still rely on over-the-air TV; I'd guess that a large part of that seemingly-imposing 3 million gap is households who rarely watch TV and probably wouldn't be tuning in regardless.
I also don't buy his argument that the playoff hit was due to those games being on Saturday instead of Sunday. There are a lot of people in this country, especially younger demographics, who are fans of both the CFL and the NFL, and those numbers are likely increasing with the Bills-Toronto situation. It doesn't seem logical to suggest that a CFL game would automatically do better if you put it head-to-head with the full slate of Sunday afternoon NFL telecasts. There's much less competition Saturday, with the CFL only really up against Canadian and American college football (both of which draw considerably less viewers than the NFL).
Moreover, obviously there are going to be less English-language viewers for a Montreal-Calgary game than a Saskatchewan-Winnipeg game. Whatever the Grey Cup matchup, you'll always get a good deal of your audience from both local markets (and their provinces), with a smaller portion being the diehard fans like myself who will watch the game regardless of who's in it. All that's really happened here is that one of the local markets is French-speaking instead of English-speaking, so they tuned in to the RDS feed instead of the TSN one. TSN is not a weaker channel; in fact, on the sports landscape, it's much more impressive than CBC at the moment (although CBC SportsPlus might change that around eventually).
Overall, I'd argue that these ratings are good news for both the league and TSN/RDS. It doesn't matter how many watched the game in English and how many watched it in French. This certainly isn't the "second-worst TV audience since 1989", and there are plenty of francophone viewers who will back me on that one. Houston should broaden his horizons; it's the game that matters, not the language.
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