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Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC) is a popular television broadcast of National Hockey League games in Canada. It is produced by the CBC. It consistently remains one of the highest-rated Canadian programs on television. The intermission highlight on HNIC is Coach's Corner which is a show that features Don Cherry and Ron MacLean.

Hockey Night in Canada airs regular season NHL games on the English network of the CBC every Saturday evening. Consecutive games are broadcast live beginning with the early game at 7 p.m. ET (4 p.m. PT); the second contest begins after 10 p.m. ET (7 p.m. PT). A French version, La Soirée du hockey, aired until 2004 on Radio-Canada.

As recently as the 1990's, there was only one game televised each Saturday night in any particular locality. Until 1968, regular season games were not broadacst in their entirety. During the 1950's, HNIC would come on the air at 9 p.m. ET, with the game joined in progress early in the second period. In the early 1960's, the broadcast time was moved to 8:30 p.m. ET, which allowed the game to be joined in progress mid-way through the first period. Starting in the fall of 1968, regular-season games were shown in their entirety.

Format

Regular season

CBC's Hockey Night in Canada coverage typically begins 30 minutes prior to the opening faceoff of the first game with the pregame show called Saturday Night. Ron MacLean hosts the program and Elliotte Friedman hosts a segment called The Headliner which is a weekly feature that examines a range of issues usually with the NHL's head office.

Game one of the Saturday night double-header typically originates in Eastern Canada, beginning at 7 p.m. ET (4 p.m. PT). This game almost always features the Toronto Maple Leafs, but could have other Canadian teams, usually the Ottawa Senators or Montreal Canadiens, for regional coverage. Ron MacLean hosts the entire evening broadcast, usually from the arena of the featured game. Play-by-play is provided by veteran Bob Cole, who started broadcasting NHL games on radio in 1969. Game analyst Harry Neale joined Cole in the broadcast booth in 1985. At the end of the first period, MacLean hosts Coach's Corner, featuring the show's star and former NHL Coach of the Year, Don Cherry. On Coach's Corner, Don Cherry, also known as "Grapes", examines the game so far, as well as give tips on the various points of hockey, with Ron MacLean being Cherry's foil. There are some times in which Cherry tends to be controversial; for example in 2003, Cherry stated that the majority of player wearing facial protection in the NHL are Quebecers and Europeans (though, ironically, a study done by a lawyer confirmed Cherry's assertion). In any case, this controversy led to Coach's Corner being put on a seven-second delay for the rest of the season by the CBC, even though most francophones in Quebec did not know he said it. The seven-second delay has been subsequently removed from the broadcast.

CBC also opted not to place on its website a segment where Cherry and MacLean debated the Iraq War shortly after it began in 2003.

This segment, the highest-rated spot on Canadian television, is followed by a second feature that changes from season-to-season, currently being called Up to the Minute and showing scores of other games. There are also interviews with players in between periods with them brandishing a towel with the HNIC logo on it.

During the second intermission, MacLean hosts the Satellite Hotstove, a feature that uses hockey journalists from across North America to debate and speculate on issues facing hockey. One regular on the Hotstove is John Davidson, a former U.S.-based hockey commentator who usually participates from an American city (mainly New York). He has since become president of the St. Louis Blues, so in all likelyhood he will no longer be a regular participart. Eric Duhatschek and Pierre LeBrun are also regulars. During non-Saturday playoff games, After 40 Minutes, which normally features MacLean interviewing league or team officials, airs instead.

Following the "three stars" selection of the first game and time pending, MacLean and Cherry return to give updates on scores and highlights from around the league. They also conduct interviews with players and provide a preview of the upcoming game.

Barring a shootout, the second game airs at 10 p.m. ET (7 p.m. PT) featuring one of the three teams from Western Canada (the Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, or Vancouver Canucks). Since hurry-up faceoffs were introduced, it is extremely rare that a regular season game runs longer than three hours and every double-header game is seen in its entirety. Because of financial strains caused by the show's hiatus during the 2004-05 NHL lockout, Chris Cuthbert, who some hockey fans saw as the heir apparent to Bob Cole, was fired and Bell Globemedia hired Cuthbert in 2005 to work for TSN. CBC announced the new lead broadcaster for the second half of the double-header in 2005-2006 would be Jim Hughson, a Rogers Sportsnet veteran and Vancouver Canucks commentator. Mark Lee or Don Wittman handles the play-by-play when CBC broadcasts more than two games in a night (or weekend, during the playoffs).

After the first period of the second game, a regular feature entitled Behind the Mask is usually shown, with former NHL goaltender Kelly Hrudey (often joined by Scott Oake) going over certain plays he noticed in the night's games. Hrudey frequently uses a Telestrator to illustrate his points.

The broadcast will also originate from a U.S. city playing host to a Canadian team. This is more common with the second, Western game, because the Toronto Maple Leafs are almost always at home on Saturday nights, or playing at Ottawa or Montreal. Only once (in 1994) has the CBC scheduled to broadcast a regular-season game featuring two American teams, but it has been forced to show a few more over the years due to labour issues.

Beginning with the 2000-01 season, the CBC launched After Hours, a program that follows the Saturday night HNIC broadcast. It recaps the night's NHL coverage with hosts Scott Oake and Kelly Hrudey. The wrap-up usually includes a guest appearance by an NHL player or coach. Hrudey frequently joins MacLean and Cherry for selected broadcasts.

Playoffs

CBC also provides extensive Stanley Cup playoff coverage every spring with a focus on Canadian teams. Many of the playoff games, regardless of the day of the week, are aired, giving the CBC an unusual program schedule from early April through early June. This means CBC generally ends its regularly scheduled broadcast season earlier than other Canadian and American broadcasters. All playoff games involving Canadian teams are aired by the CBC, though not always on a national basis.

During the first intermission of playoff broadcasts, the feature alternates between Don Cherry's Coach's Corner and Kelly Hrudey's Behind the Mask. Hrudey, a former NHL goaltender, joined the CBC for the 1998-99 season. As a former player, Hrudey provides unique perspectives on today's NHL and gives the viewer an inside look at the game from another angle. Cherry provides features during Toronto Maple Leaf games or other Canadian teams still in the playoffs.

For the 2006 playoffs, each Canadian team (Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa) were assigned their own play-by-play callers and colour commentators. They are:

The 2006 second round coverage features Cole and Neale reunited for the Ottawa-Buffalo series, and Hughson and Millen calling the Edmonton - San Jose series.

The third round coverage features Cole and Neale calling the Anaheim-Edmonton series, as well as the Stanley Cup Finals. Hughson and Millen called selected Carolina-Buffalo games, with the remainder of the series airing on TSN.

Hockey Day in Canada

Hockey Day in Canada is an annual special broadcast to celebrate the game in Canada that includes features all afternoon, leading up to a tripleheader of NHL action featuring the six Canadian teams (Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs and Vancouver Canucks). Lead commentators, Don Cherry and Ron MacLean broadcast from a remote area. The broadcast includes live broadcast segments from smaller communities right across the country and features panel discussions on issues facing "Canada's game" at both the minor and pro levels. The day is usually in mid-February, but was broadcast in early January in 2002 and 2006 due to the 2002 Winter Olympics and 2006 Winter Olympics, respectively.

Hockey Day in Canada has also featured special events, such as world-record all-night pick-up hockey games from Red Deer AB (in 2001) and Windsor NS (2002). Viewers got to see the games after the CBC ended regular programming for the night, without commentary.

Hockey Day in Canada has fast become a tradition among Canadian hockey fans, taking on the role of an unofficial holiday. In some communities, such as the case with 2006's location, Stephenville, Newfoundland, it is said that Hockey Day is "bigger than Santa."

Hockey Day in Canada broadcast locations

In January 2005, due to the NHL labour dispute, the CBC discontinued the broadcast and rival TSN aired a rival broadcast, Hockey Lives Here: Canada's Game, based from the World Pond Hockey championships in Plaster Rock, New Brunswick. The 2006 return of Hockey Day in Canada was based out of Stephenville, Newfoundland and Labrador on January 7, 2006. The 2007 event will be held on January 13, 2007 in Nelson, British Columbia.

Movie Night in Canada

During the 2004-2005 NHL lockout, the CBC replaced Hockey Night in Canada with a triple-feature of movies, mostly of the Hollywood variety. (The Saturday Night pregame was replaced with repeats of The Red Green Show.) However, as a reminder to viewers that Saturday night was supposed to be Hockey Night, Ron MacLean hosted the movies from various hockey venues throughout Canada, under the title Movie Night in Canada, where Ron would dispense some facts about the film and, of course, hockey, during the commercial breaks. The venues were usually those of CHL teams. This went on during what was supposed to be the NHL's 2004-2005 season, and ended when the season was "over", just in time for CBC's regular summertime lineup- usually even more Hollywood movies or CFL games- to begin. The ratings for the early movie were actually not much lower than for comparable hockey games the previous year.

A labor deal was reached in time to contest the 2005-06 NHL season. Ironically, CBC's own on-air talent was locked out during the summer of 2005, nearly missing the start of the hockey season.

HNIC in the USA

During the era that HNIC was on radio, it was broadcast over several powerful CBC stations whose nighttime signals reached much of the northern United States. As a result, the games had a following throughout the northern U.S., and especially so in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and New York, the four U.S. cities that had NHL teams at the time. This has waned thanks to the expansion of local team TV coverage on regional sports networks.

NHL Center Ice offers Hockey Night in Canada at the same time as the CBC broadcast, airing the entire program from the Saturday Night pregame show through the HNIC After Hours postgame show. Europe's North American Sports Network also offers the broadcast in its entirety.

Additionally, U.S. cable television outlets near the international border (notably major markets such as Detroit, Buffalo, and Seattle) typically carry a nearby CBC affiliate on their systems (though some cable systems in Michigan carry the distant CBMT from Montreal). Seattle's NBC affiliate even shunted some 2006 playoff coverage to a sister station, apparently because it thought most fans preferred the CBC broadcast, while non-hockey fans would rather watch local news. And according to CBC's website, its signal can be acquired using some US satellites as far south as New York City.

During the 2006 playoffs, the cable television channel OLN simulcasted CBC's coverage of some selected games, generally first and second round games from Western Canada, instead of using their own crews and announcers.

La Soirée du hockey

In parallel with CBC, Télévision de Radio-Canada aired La Soirée du hockey, featuring Montreal Canadiens games on Saturday evenings in French. In the past the SRC had aired Quebec Nordiques and Ottawa Senators games occasionally during the regular season if the Canadiens were not playing that night as well as the Stanley Cup Finals, regardless of participating teams.

Beginning with the 2002-03 season, RDS secured exclusive French language rights to the NHL. The deal, reached with the Canadiens and not directly with the league, was meant to ensure a consistent home for all Canadiens games, whereas, as a general-interest network, Radio-Canada could not give up so much airtime to Canadiens games. The announcement drew the ire of, among others, then-Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, who suggested that the network would somehow be violating its conditions of licence by not airing LSDH. In reality there is no specific regulatory requirement that the CBC's networks carry the NHL, nor that there be parity between the two networks' carriage thereof.

During the years that SRC carried "La Soiree du Hockey", play-by-play men included Rene Lecavlier (as beloved in French-speaking Canada as Foster Hewitt was in English-speaking Canada), Richard Garneau, and Claude Quenneville.

Radio-Canada soon reached an agreement to produce the Saturday night games, to remain branded La Soirée du Hockey, to be simulcast on both SRC and RDS. However, for reasons that are unclear, that agreement was terminated after the 2004 playoffs. * Nonetheless, the RDS-produced replacement, Le Hockey du samedi soir, is simulcast on Radio-Canada outside Quebec, where RDS has limited distribution.

Style

Announcers

Hockey Night in Canada made its debut on CRBC radio in 1933 (renamed CBC in 1936), with television broadcasts beginning in 1952, upon the launch of television broadcasting in Canada . After missing the cancelled 2004–05 season, it returned on October 8, 2005.

The legendary Foster Hewitt, who had developed a style that welcomed Canadians to the radio broadcast each week, had to prove his radio style could also work in the new medium of television. His move from radio to television was successful and Hewitt continued to work in television for many years, including the famed 1972 "Summit Series" between a team representing Canada (an NHL all-star team) and the Soviet National Team. This style of play-by-play announcers in hockey broadcasting really hasn't changed between radio and TV, as broadcasters still describe the action as if viewers cannot see what is on the screen they're watching. He was followed (in no particular order) by Danny Gallivan, Dick Irvin, Jr., Bob Cole, and Hewitt's son, Bill Hewitt. Previous show hosts included Wes McKnight, Ward Cornell, Jack Dennett, Ted Darling and Dave Hodge. The show's current host is Ron MacLean.

Theme song

The famous theme song, The Hockey Theme, was written in 1968 by Dolores Claman and has been referred to as Canada's second national anthem. The theme was updated in 1988 when the show was retitled Molson Hockey Night in Canada on CBC. In 1998, the theme was again updated, when Labatt became the main sponsor, and the show was back to being called Hockey Night in Canada, even though the announcers always tacked on "brought to you by Labatt Blue" afterwards (La Soirée du hockey continued to use the Molson theme up until its discontinuation in 2004). Other theme updates occurred in 2000 and 2001, but a new theme similar to the Molson theme was brought back at the start of the 2004 playoffs, although it was only used during the opening (around this time, there was no title sponsor).

In November 2004, Dolores Claman and her publisher initiated legal action against CBC for breach of copyright, alleging, among other things, that the theme was used on other CBC programs, and used on broadcasts outside Canada, without consent. The case is ongoing. *

Criticism

Programming Choices

Critics of what the show chooses to program allege that the Eastern broadcast in particular favours teams from Ontario, especially the Toronto Maple Leafs (leading to the derogatory nickname "Hockey Night in Toronto"). These critics note that Leafs games are often aired too often across the network, usually to the detriment of the Ottawa Senators and Montreal Canadiens, whose fans sometimes don't see a Saturday-night game of their team. The CBC has responded by saying that scheduling Leafs games across so much of the network makes sense considering budget cutbacks and what they claim to be "the massive national popularity of the Maple Leafs". The Toronto games are seen as making more money for the English-language network, as Montreal is mainly francophone and Canadiens-oriented, while the Senators, despite having a growing, albeit young fanbase, are situated in a smaller city from which the national newspapers and TV stations do not originate. An incident of this nature that drew particular ire was when CBC refused to air the jersey retirement ceremony for Canadiens legend and credited slapshot inventor Bernard "Boom Boom" Geoffrion in English, despite months of advance notice; the impact was compounded because Geoffrion had died suddenly the day prior to the ceremony .

Also, viewers wishing to watch the second game of the double-header complain that they have sometimes been forced to view the first game's feed until its conclusion, as CBC rarely splits its feed for Western viewers. This is rarely a concern anymore as regular-season games almost never go past 10:08 p.m. ET (7:08 p.m. PT) because of the introduction of hurry-up faceoffs. In the past, especially late in the season if the second game had no playoff implications, the CBC would slowly wrap up the first game(s) including interviews and analysis, as well as take multiple commercial breaks, before finally joining the second game in progress, even in the Western NHL markets.

In addition, with the CBC having exclusive English-language broadcast rights to NHL games in Canada on Saturdays, critics say that it abuses this power by refusing to air games regionally - showing the entire country the Leafs game and excluding the local team's game in their home market without allowing local or regional broadcasters such as Rogers Sportsnet the ability to show the local team's games. All Canadiens games air in French on RDS without restriction. However, TSN has similar English-language exclusivity on some weeknights. The CBC has also taken criticism from Western-based hockey fans for refusing to broadcast the second game of the doubleheader in HDTV. As such, usually only the 7 p.m. games (usually involving the Leafs) were shown in the higher-resolution format during the 2005-2006 season, and sometimes CBC would not show either game in high definition.

Critics of what the CBC chooses to program around the show allege that live hockey action at the beginning of the second or third periods is too often truncated. They charge that this is due to two factors: the intermission show running too long, and the CBC's refusal to pull promos for other shows even when there isn't enough time to show both the promos and the start of the period.

Content

Criticism of the show's content often focuses around Don Cherry, who has made several controversial statements during his live on-air segments. He has been accused of racism towards European-born players, problematic because the broadcasts air live in Europe, and French-Canadians, and is often seen as an advocate of the old-school rough style of hockey frowned upon both by some hockey fans (including NHL administrators) and many of their TV partners. Despite these controversies, Cherry's popularity among Canadians endures.

The show's hardly-veiled bias towards Canadian teams draws some criticism, especially from American regions near the Canadian border that receive CBC telecasts, as well as American customers with the NHL Center Ice pay-per-view package. Supporters are quick to point out that the show is a Canadian show on a Canadian network, that bias towards the country's teams is therefore appropriate and should be expected, and claim that a similar bias is present in reverse on American networks' telecasts involving Canadian teams (especially in baseball and basketball). Opponents claim that coverage should be more neutral toward the competing teams, as they believe most American broadcasters practice even when Canadian-based teams are involved.

The Future

CBC's contract with the NHL to broadcast the Hockey Night In Canada package will expire following the conclusion of the 2007-2008 season. In the past, the CBC would have been considered a shoo-in to renew the rights, but this time, things could be different.

Private network CTV recently outbid the CBC for Canadian television rights to the 2010 and 2012 Olympics and the major television package for curling, joining forces with sister company TSN to outbid the CBC. There is much speculation that CTV/TSN will not only make a combined bid for both the national over-the-air and cable television rights to the NHL in Canada, but make such a huge bid for the over-the-air portion of the deal that the CBC will not be able to match it. Should the NHL and the Canadian Football League both join the Olympics and curling at CTV/TSN, it would leave the CBC without any major sports events and put the future of the network's sports division into question.

Programs with similar titles

The American television network NBC has recently announced that its new Sunday night NFL pregame show, beginning in 2006, would be called Football Night in America, which is basically a takeoff of the Hockey Night in Canada name. NBC had previously, along with ABC, televised Major League Baseball games under the name Baseball Night in America.

There is also a Boston-based company called Hockey Night In Boston, which covers high-school hockey and conducts a summer tournament for players who will be eligible to play high-school hockey the following season. Hockey Night In Boston began in the early 1970's as a series of radio broadcasts of local high-school hockey games in the Boston area.

External links

Further reading

Previous logos

Image:Hockey Night in Canada (1952).jpg|First television intro (you can see Foster Hewitt in the Background) (1952) Image:Hockey Night in Canada (1960s).JPG Image:Hnic old.jpg Image:Hockey Night in Canada (1970s).JPG|1970s early electronic animation intro Image:Hockey Night in Canada (1980s).JPG|1980s 3D intro Image:Hockey Night.jpg Image:Molson Hockey Night early 90s.JPG|Early 1990s logo Image:Molson Hockey Night.jpg|Logo from the 1997-1998 season

CBC network shows | Gemini Award winners | National Hockey League media | Sports television series in Canada | Canadian culture | Culture of Quebec

La Soirée du hockey | Hockey Night in Canada

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Hockey Night in Canada".

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