What If the CW Televised NHL Games

[TMC]

http://puckthemedia.wordpress.com/2009/0...twork/#more-718

Chances are, you’re probably laughing already at this first concept. But chuckle all you want, The NHL on The CW is the proposal - of the four I’m submitting to you, the puckhead - I’m the most confident in, and were I given my choice, would go as far as advising the league to seek out.

The CW contains a small, cult audience of shows with younger viewers that the league desperately wants to get it’s advertising hands on. The CW needs to boost it’s profile among the major networks (if you can call it one) and also, conveniently, does not broadcast on Saturday nights.

Think about it… and… there it is! You know what I’m thinking, it’s that The CW and the NHL partner up for Hockey Night in America. Seven hours of hockey airing live every Saturday night on The CW. With little competition from the other networks, and the correct promotional campaign (The CW has ties to CBS and it’s stable of networks) who’s to say the NHL can’t carve out a niche for itself on Saturdays. Here’s how you do it:

Pre-Game Show: Every night at 6:30 PM, host John Buccigross hosts a 30-minute program that shows off what this new, youthful breed of NHLer is doing. Free of boring in-game analysis, what it will do is teach the game to a new generation of kids, introduce stars to the people and be inoffensive enough to the hardcore fan that it will make everyone in the mood for hockey on Saturday night.

Game Coverage: Now, as NBC Sports’ NHL producer Sam Flood said the year before the NHL stopped regionalizing games, “You have to regionalize hockey” to make it work. That’s why I say we show four games a week, mixed in between 7 and 10 PM, and obviously featuring the biggest market teams. For example, this Saturday would look like this:

7:00 PM
Boston vs. Washington OR
Chicago vs. St. Louis OR
Anaheim vs. Minnesota

10:00 PM
Detroit vs. San Jose

It’d obviously look different from week-to-week, but you get the point here. The entire eastern seaboard will get Caps-Bruins, while the rest of the country would receive a mix of Ducks-Wild and Blackhawks-Blues, with everyone uniting for Wings-Sharks at 10PM.

Personalities: We love Mike Emrick and Dave Strader and the great voices of hockey. But if we’re going CW, we’re going a little younger. John Forslund will be the #1 play-by-play voice of The NHL On CW, with Jeremy Roenick starting his retirement at the top of the analyst spectrum. LA Kings in-game host Heidi Androl will be the ice-level reporter. The rest of your announce teams for The NHL On CW:

#2 - Randy Hahn, Jim Dowd and Dan Moriarty
#3 - Judd Sirott, Eddie Olczyk and Bob Harwood
#4 - Chris Cuthbert, Billy Jaffe and Lindsay Soto

Who else? Well, the studio show throughout the night will once again be anchored by John Buccigross. His co-horts at the desk will be Ray Ferraro along with Pierre McGuire and a rotating cast of… GASP! BLOGGERS! Dun duh dunnnnnn! Greg Wyshynski, Eric McErlain, John Press, David Pagnotta and others rotate in, giving a hipper, less “good ol’ boys club” view of the league. I think that would provide a new spin that’d appeal to almost everyone the NHL is seeking with this deal.

Playoffs and Finals: The CW will air playoff games on Saturday afternoons and nights, as well as Sunday afternoons. They will air an entire Conference Final series (It’ll flip between East and West each year) and air the weekend games of the other Conference Final. They will air the entire Stanley Cup Finals in primetime, though weeknight games will begin at 7:30 PM, unless one of the teams is located in the mountain and pacific timezone.

I think this could easily be a success. The CW would be able to call itself a top-flight network, as it’s now broadcasting on seven night. The NHL gets to keep saying the finals are on broadcast TV, a key point in keeping the critics from placing it in with MLS and the WNBA, and putting it with the big four where everyone keeps claiming it belongs.

While we're talking about the CW:
Fire Dawn Ostroff!

[MrCleveland]

That would also help-out The CW.

WBNX (Cleveland's Affiliate) will be playing Columbus Blue Jackets games and this may do well because WBNX used to play Cleveland Lumberjacks games when there was an International League.

[Mikado]

I dont know what the CW is, but, here in Canada, you could telecast hockey on the shopping channel and find an audience