Good News and Bad at NBC

NBC posted some impressive numbers for a U.S. hockey broadcaster over the weekend, earning 1.6 overnight ratings for both its Flyers-Bruins telecast on Saturday and Canadiens-Penguins game on Sunday. With the exception of the outdoor Winter Classic, this weekend’s numbers represent the largest audiences for NBC this season . . . which must make the network’s upcoming hockey hiatus all the more frustrating for those trying to grow the game south of the border.

There will be no hockey on NBC this upcoming weekend because the network is committed to The Players Championship (golf) on both Saturday and Sunday beginning at 2 o’clock for five hours each day. Now, far be it for me to tell network executives how to optimize their schedules, but couldn’t they have arranged to broadcast a hockey game at noon and commence golf coverage at 2:30? Wouldn’t that have made more sense than having a two hour hole for network affiliates to plug with local and paid programming? And wouldn’t continued hockey coverage help nurture the growing ratings that NBC has enjoyed this post-season?

To make matters worse, the network will again be absent from the hockey scene the following Saturday, this time because of the Preakness Stakes (horse racing). NBC’s pre-race coverage begins at 4:30 – why the network couldn’t schedule a game earlier in the day is beyond logic. Instead, hockey fans in the U.S. will have to wait until Sunday, May 16 to get their next dose of NHL action on over-the-air television. By that time, the casual hockey viewer who has contributed to NBC’s recent ratings run will have moved on to something else and a number of valuable U.S. hockey markets for the broadcaster will have seen their teams eliminated from the playoffs. Not a good combination. But then again, as history has shown time after time, neither necessarily is hockey and U.S. television.

TONIGHT'S GAMES:
Penguins at Canadiens - Game 3, 7 p.m. (CBC)/(RDS)
Sharks at Red Wings - Game 3, 7:30 p.m. (TSN)