It's Just Business, Right?

The announcement today was certainly a long-time coming, but it was still unexpected in its arrival. The costs of broadcasting NHL hockey have risen beyond any sort of comprehensible amount of money that you and I will ever know, and CBC's involvement in the game that they helped to popularize, to curate, and to advance was already done outside of a sublicensing agreement from Rogers Sportsnet that was, at best, a charitable offering to keep the public broadcaster involved. Yes, the CBC showed games on their network, but their involvement in making the game better through Hockey Night in Canada was already dead.

Today, the final nail in the coffin was hammered home as Sportsnet and CBC announced that CBC would be stepping away from broadcasting NHL games moving forward. For 74 years, the public broadcaster was bringing the game to places and homes that Rogers Sportsnet cannot reach, but that all ends today. Gone and never to return is the collective unity of a nation coming together on Saturday night to huddle around the television to watch "the game" on CBC.

For many, this will be an "old man yells at clouds" moment, but there was one thing growing up that was a constant for me in the winter: Saturday night was Hockey Night in Canada. Yes, I lamented over seeing the Maple Leafs and Vancouver Canucks every week, but I was addicted as a kid to watching as many games as I could. There were very few midweek games in that era unless the playoffs were on, so Saturday night really was hockey night for all Canadians.

For many Americans in Buffalo, Detroit, Seattle, and other border cities, picking up the over-the-air CBC signal with their rabbit ears or TV antenna was how they were exposed to the magnificence of Hockey Night in Canada. Thousands of Canadians in the north, in remote towns, and in cottage country would rely on that same signal to bring the sounds of Hockey Night in Canada to their TVs in their abodes. There weren't high-definition hockey broadcasts to worry about in that time. If you could get the signal, everyone was happy.

That was the beauty of CBC and Hockey Night in Canada - it didn't matter where you lived in Canada, you could find a place where CBC's signal would reach. Hockey Night in Canada became an institution that saw generations of kids dreaming to play in the NHL one day becoming parents who watched their kids have those same dreams. There simply wasn't another weekly program like it on television.

We welcomed men into our homes that we didn't know, but who we trusted to describe the action from their seats high above the ice. From Foster Hewitt to René Lecavalier to Danny Gallivan, the early days of Hockey Night in Canada had its iconic voices that brought the action to life on the screen. Bill Hewitt and Dan Kelly gave way to Bob Cole and Dick Irvin Jr., and we have been blessed with the sounds of Jim Hughson and Chris Cuthbert who have called some of the biggest games in hockey's history. These men ARE hockey's historians.

We've watched, laughed, disagreed, and cheered other personalities that include Frank Selke Jr., Dave Hodge, Brian McFarlane, George Stroumboulopoulos, David Amber, and Ron MacLean as hosts who tried to guide the many panelists featued on Hockey Night in Canada. John Bartlett, Harnarayan Singh, Don Wittman, Dave Randorf, and Paul Romanuk have all called games for the public broadcaster while the likes of Harry Neale, Craig Simpson, Glenn Healy, Howie Meeker, Greg Millen, and Mike Johnson have made the game better as analysts. Making the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast booth roster was always the ultimate job for many sports broadcasters in Canada.

You can thank George Retzlaff in 1955 for inventing the instant replay while working with Hockey Night in Canada before it was perfected in 1965. Gerald Renaud introduced the multi-camera option for sports, which is now a standard, when he set up three cameras to broadcast the very first game. In 1965, Hockey Night in Canada was one of the early adopters of broadcasting sports in colour with all games in 1966-67 being broadcast on "colour TV". Hockey Night in Canada was an innovator in producing telecasts in Inuktitut, Italian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog and Punjabi. Cassie Campbell-Pascall was the first woman to call an NHL game on national television in 2006 on Hockey Night in Canada. All of this was done with the support from the CBC.

Dolores Claman, a Vancouver-born composer and accomplished jingle writer, gave Canada its unofficial "second national anthem" with her song "The Hockey Theme" which started Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts. It was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010, and Bell Media bought the rights to the song in 2008 when the CBC reportedly declined to renew their rights. It was being used on TSN hockey broadcasts after Bell Media acquired it, and the first few notes of the song are recognized by almost all Canadians.

Sure, there were stumbles and questionable decisions made over its history, but 74 years of innovation, broadcasting excellence, and a reach like no other program in Canadian television history had were ended unceremoniously and rather callously with one brief announcement. We've talked about the loss of regional carriers for teams on The Hockey Show as broadright rights fees shot through the roof, but seeing Canada's trusted hockey institution close its doors today is a kick in the gut that I never saw coming despite me knowing that it was always on the timeline. Hockey Night in Canada is over.

I respect the fact that CBC wasn't making one cent off showing NHL hockey thanks to all of the ad revenue going back to Sportsnet, but there will be a void on Canadian TV now. CBC Sports did announce that they will launch a new Saturday night show that will focus on Olympic-oriented competition as they continue to be Canada's best media supporter of amateur athletics, and they can actually make a little money by earning ad revenue during this new show. That's a good thing when it comes to their continued support of amateur Canadian athletes and sports. I can't fault them for this decision.

With Rogers Sportsnet moving into a 12-year, $11-billion rights deal next year, it seems that cost for CBC to air games skyrocketed as well. It doesn't matter that the televised product got worse with Sportsnet involved, that innovation was all but killed under their watch, or that regional blackouts still plague the network. For $11 billion, Sportsnet got what it wanted all along as they're now only Canadian network where NHL games can be broadcast in Canada.

But as Ted Rogers and Gary Bettman will say, it's just business, right?

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!