Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
Ian Busby who's been around the Calgary media landscape in various different capacities. Rogers sucks.
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I see this as a reflection of the state of the game, and the world. The current cable model with intermissions, commercials, and talking heads is dead.
I grew up with Ed Whalen, 2&7 and 66CFR for my Flames coverage. It was great. They talked Calgary Flames. I loved it.
But 10 years ago I got rid of Cable when the NHL went on strike. I saved $1100 dollars that year and didn’t miss it. When the NHL resumed I got the NHL streaming package.
The one thing that bugged me? TV commercials. When you don’t have traditional “TV” you don’t have commercials. So to try to watch something with them is like hammering nails into your eyeballs every 10 min. So you start doing the old “tape delay” watching with a buffer and catching up to live late in the third.
Pretty quickly you realize you also don’t need to hear the latest Maple Leaf practice report, Cherry’s ramblings, or the gushing about the Oilers either. So you skip that too.
Eventually you reach a point where I am now. If a broadcast was offered with NOTHING but the game audio and a camera pointed at the rink during breaks in play, I would buy it.
I’d pay EXTRA for it!
Where does that leave the current broadcaster? With a dwindling cable base, reduced ad revenue and expensive onscreen talent that nobody under 30 watches.
I also don’t feel bad for SN. I can watch every team. I can see how slipshod and second rate Rogers is in comparison to a lot of broadcasts. From lack of HD, desynced audio, amateur color broadcasters... it’s undeserving of the Calgary market.
The days of a captive audience are ending. You can’t show the same commercial 50 times a night and expect your audience to take it. You also can’t “black out” games. It simply doesn’t exist anymore.
Times have changed. Evolve or die.
Honestly, I kinda hope they die so a new model that’s friendlier to the fan can take their place. Like the Athletic. Better for the great writers, better for fans.