Sporting Madness

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 thin...

Seeing as I'm spending so much time writing for other sites and publications these days, which means this blog doesn't get updated as often as I liked, I figured I'd bring in a new feature and rework an old one. I'll try to do a Bucholtz Roundup post every week with links to some of the pieces I've written (for any readers who want to see what else I'm doing and why I don't have much time to write here). To keep it from getting too self-promotional, I also plan to include a Best of the Intertubes section, where I highlight some of the most interesting pieces I've seen over the last week (it's pretty much the old Links of the Day, but that never turned out to be daily and I like this title better). Collectively, I'll call the combined post the Intertubes Roundup. Here's the first one. Bucholtz Roundup: Out of Left Field / The CIS Blog : - "More coverage of CIS Sports on the way?": This is a piece based off of the feature I wrote ...

Photo: For Hockey Night in Canada, the song doesn't remain the same. (Photo from The Globe and Mail ) CTV announced today [ tsn.ca ] that they've acquired the rights to the popular "Hockey Theme", better known as the opening soundtrack to the CBC's Hockey Night in Canada , "in perpetuity." This comes shortly after the CBC's last-ditch attempt to bring in Gord Kirke as a mediator (as if he didn't have enough on his plate with the Leafs' GM search). There are several intersting aspects to this move. First, it draws a hell of a lot of attention to TSN's new six-year deal with the league, and with every one of their games now featuring at least one Canadian team, the case can be made that their "Hockey lives here" slogan is becoming more and more accurate. It continues their attempt to look more like the first line instead of the grinders and checkers. It also should bring a fair bit of public goodwill to their side: just look at ...

I've been meaning to put this up for a while, but just didn't have the time. A couple weeks ago, I wrote a story for the Journal about two new proposed TV networks the CRTC is looking at. The first application is an initiative of the Canadian Olympic Committee, which wants to launch English and French channels focusing on amateur sports, called the Canadian Amateur Sports Network and Réseau des sports amateur canadiens respectively. The second application is from the CBC for its own sports channel, which would also include an amateur sports component. Scott Moore, the executive director of CBC Sports, told me that their application proposed 35 per cent amateur content. Both applications are currently before the CRTC, and should soon enter the "gazetting" period, where the public and other companies can intervene for or against the new channels. These applications are interesting because they may very well lead to more televised coverage of CIS sports. CIS Director o...