Tonight’s National Hockey League All Star Game will get lower ratings than the MLS Cup. That is a guarantee, and a rather safe one at that.
The decision to play the All Star Game in the middle of the week in January was asinine. Even more asinine is the fact that the game is airing on Versus, a network with very limited distribution.
The move of NHL games to Versus was understandable in some respects. ESPN had no respect for the NHL, not even willing to pay 60 million dollars to keep the sport. Still, even if it was understandable to move games to Versus, it was pure idiocy to move marquee events to the little known, little watched channel. The NHL All Star Game could have stayed on broadcast television. The only other major sport NBC has is the NFL — the network could have easily picked up the game, keeping viewership at least at some slightly respectable level. The last NHL All Star Game on broadcast TV (2004) drew 2.6 million viewers for ABC.
Even if the All Star Game had to air on Versus, there’s no reason why it couldn’t have aired this Sunday, when neither the NFL nor the NBA were airing games in prime time. In fact, the only sports competition for the NHL this Sunday would have been the Winter X Games on ESPN, which most sports fans couldn’t care less about.
Playing on a Wednesday night is a mistake on many levels. For one thing, ESPN is airing college basketball right now (7 PM ET) and will be airing a Houston Rockets/San Antonio Spurs game at 9:00. More ominously, FOX is airing American Idol, which drew over 30 million viewers in two airings last week (about thirty times as many people as will be watching tonight’s NHL All Star Game). Finally, it is a school night. There are not many young kids who will be allowed to stay up past ten o’clock on a Wednesday night in the middle of winter. Major League Baseball can afford to play their All Star Game on a Tuesday night because its July, and the NBA and NFL play their respective All Star Games on weekends.
The last thing the NHL needs is more humiliation. The league is the most insulted of all the sports — even more than the NBA, a league that is most sportswriters’ punching bag. Ratings continue to fall, both in the U.S. and in Canada, and when the ratings for the All Star Game come out, every hockey hating writer in the country will have a field day.
