ਰੋਜਰਸ: ਕੈਨੇਡਾ ਵਿੱਚ ਹਾਕੀ ਦਾ ਖਾਤਮਾ
For those unaware, Harnarayan Singh, Randip Janda, and Bhupinder Hundal began planting the seeds for Punjabi hockey broadcasts back in 2008. They worked on demos they pitched to network executives for their broadcasts, but none of it took until CBC's Joel Darling invited Singh to broadcast from Hockey Day in Canada as CBC looked to add multiple language broadcasts to its programming that day. That opportunity turned into a chance to call the 2008 Stanley Cup Final, and CBC expanded the Punjabi broadcast to Saturday night doubleheaders the following season that saw Singh pay for his flights to Toronto from Calgary every weekend just to call games.
That led Janda and Hundal to push for more exposure at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver after the Rogers-owned OMNI was named as part of the Olympic consortium. They were given the chance to call one preliminary-round game for the Canadian men's team. That stretched to two, and then three, then four before "we eventually got to the point where we did all the men’s games right through to the gold medal, and we did basically all the Team Canada women’s games all the way through to the gold medal," Hockey Night Punjabi producer Nathen Sekhon told Sportsnet's Sonny Sachdeva.
In 2012, Hundal and Sekhon recruited Singh to join the broadcast team on OMNI for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, and it appeared that things were on the rise when Rogers Sportsnet acquired the Canadian broadcast rights for NHL hockey. The group pushed for more with NHL hockey being a Rogers' property, adn the stars would align shortly after when Sportsnet Pacific moved east to Toronto, leaving their studio vacant. Hundal and Sekhon convinced then-Sportnet president Scott Moore to allow them to launch Hockey Night Punjabi in that studio space, immeidately raising their profile and giving them a polished look for their broadcasts. They had a future!
For the Canadian Punjabi population that numbers just short of a million people, they make up 2.6% of the total population. The market is already small, so it's not like Rogers was looking at generating truckloads of cash with OMNI's broadcasts. Adding to the problems with getting national attention was the fact that OMNI, as a station, wasn't carried outside of specialty cable packages.
On May 15, 2017, the CRTC granted OMNI access to Canadian homes via basic cable packages, making it far more accessible. However, Shaw Communications applied to be exempt from that decision on June 29, 2017 for all households it serviced in Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia where nearly half the Punjabi population in Canada lives. With OMNI based out of Vancouver originally, this decision had a massive effect on the availability of OMNI's broadcasts in those regions, but Hockey Night Punjabi pushed forward with its unique hockey broadcasts as expected thanks to Rogers' NHL rights.
There wouldn't be a change in Shaw's TV offerings until 2023 when Rogers bought Shaw Communications. With Shaw customers now under Rogers' umbrella, OMNI was introduced back to the channel options that had been not be available for years, but the damage had been done when it came to Hockey Night Punjabi's following as many Punjabi residents in western Canada simply had no access for years. As such, viewership was always lower than what could have been.
That brings us to today where Rogers Sportsnet announced that Hockey Night Punjabi would not be back for the 2026-27 season, citing that "the show's overall audience average was just 1,500 viewers, with more than half of all games averaging fewer than 1,000 viewers" as the reason for this decision. This is the end of years of hard work, dedication, passion, and a dream to bring hockey to the Punjabi community in their language after 18 years, snuffed out because Rogers likely saw it as red ink on their balance statement.
Forget that this was a hockey broadcast for a second and realize that this was a Rogers-created entity that had existed for nearly two decades on channels hardly available to anyone, and it still had a loyal following. Forget that it helped to promote Harnarayan Singh as a legitimate play-by-play hockey broadcaster who now finds himself calling games in English for Rogers Sportsnet. Forget that they had their own segments such as Meri Gal Sun ("Listen to me") - "basically, what your parents would say to you before they lecture you," Hundal explains - based on Punjabi culture. None of that mattered to Rogers when they looked at the books and saw that Hockey Night Punjabi simply wasn't a money-making property. Share prices matter, right?
It's amazing how Rogers can continue to be seen as a positive partner for hockey when it is doing irreparable damage to the game in Canada. There are no more over-the-air options nor streaming options on CBC with that network being removed as a broadcaster. There are no more Punjabi broadcasts to try and attract fans from that community. The quality of on-air talent is being diluted by letting accomplished analysts walk away in favour for cheaper, less talented analysts with some radio broadcasts no longer even existing in markets. When do we see Rogers actually INVEST in hockey?
The answer is likely "never" thanks to an $11 billion bill that will be amortized over the next twelve years. We've already seen them raise prices on their streaming services and sell off a day's worth of games to a competitor while raising prices on Blue Jays, Maple Leafs, and Raptors tickets, so don't expect the cuts to "extraneous expenses" to stop as Rogers tries to gets its financial house in order. Until this twelve-year anchor around their neck is gone, Rogers will simply cut, get rid of, and eliminate any property it doesn't see as profitable.
Rogers has done incredible damage to hockey since 2013, so maybe it should officially change its mission statement to "Killing Hockey In Canada". After all, that seems to be its intended goal with these cuts.
Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!
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