[Maritime Q-Scout]

The biggest problem with showing NCAA, CIS, CHL, etc is the fact that it's expensive to show with low ratings.

You have to pay for the entire production crew, plus the guys calling the game, and travel to BFN.

Those sports are best covered by the regional stations (like Eastlink, or Rogers Cable) due to the ease of getting volunteers, lower wages for the crew, getting relatively no-names to call the events. And the guys calling the game often know more about what's going on than the major network crew, as they're "closer to the action" sort of speak. Dan Robertson and Paul MacDonald forgot more about the Acadie-Bathurt Titan and Cape Breton Screaming Eagles than Mike Toth or John Druce will ever know. I don't mean that as a knock against Toth or Druce, just that their platform is much different.

To further put that in perspective, in 2002 the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles faced off against CHL leading Acadie-Bathurst Titan on a national broadcast. Later that year in the playoffs the Eagles squared off against the Halifax Mooseheads in the second round of the playoffs on Eastlink Television, the local cable provider throughout most of Nova Scotia and PEI. The game on Eastlink (shown only in parts of NS and PEI, and only to homes that have Eastlink cable, not Star-Choice, Bell-ExpressVu, or another cable provider) outdrew the SportsNet broadcast.

So why would national stations put the money into regional sports? It's not cost effective, espeically when they can pay peanuts for poker, or loop their highlight shows (I know I hate Saturdays as the SportsCentre loop stops at 11am rather than 1pm AST).

So look forward to more SportsCentre, poker, and tape-delayed games from overseas. Not that I'm complaining mind you (well I am about the poker, but love the ability to show more live sports, and the hopes of tape-delay from overseas)