Dear President Obama,
You are about to become the most powerful man on earth. You have been elected to run the most important government in the world and with the help of your contemporaries around the globe have the opportunity to not only change things for the better, but also to rub out the constant threats of terror that have plagued western civilization for most of the last decade. You also have an opportunity to help your younger brothers become better equipped for life in the 21st century. You yourself are a sports fan. You stated last month before the election that if you could change one thing in the sporting world it would be to have an eight team playoff to determine the NCAA Football Champion. Mr Obama sir, myself and countless others in a foreign nation need your help too. We need your help to change the very structure of our own BCS situation. Mr President Elect: With your help and ours, we can together fix this atrocity. We can make the life of a Canadian sports fan no longer suck.
Don’t get me wrong. The sports scene here is pretty good actually. We have six teams in the league dedicated to the greatest game on earth. We also have a single baseball team and basketball team which captures the hearts of the nation; never more evident fifteen years ago when the baseball team won its second of back to back World Series titles and then later that fall it was announced that the same city would be getting its very own NBA franchise. We also not only have a great football league but live in close enough proximity that we can enjoy your American version of football and get every game live on television also.
It goes far beyond what we have I’m afraid. You see, we have three sports networks. Amazingly your country really only has two. (ESPN and FSN; we as well as you refuse to acknowledge Fox Sports World, GOL TV and OLN as true sports networks) And while we both know that FSN is really only for local sports and the all of a sudden non-stop “Best Damn” countdowns, ESPN is something that unless you have an illegal satellite system, us Canadians have only heard and dreamed about.
I’m a law abiding citizen sir. I do enjoy aspects of Canadian sports programming. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t watch “The Score Tonight” every night of the week. That being said, you need to help us. You need to step in and save us from what is happening. I do not even know where to start. I guess I’ll start with the “Premier” sports network in Canada. One called TSN (The Sports Network) and which coincidentally is partially owned by the juggernaut that is ESPN.
ESPN (and it’s family of networks; they never get tired of saying that)is by far the No 1 sports network in the U.S. And for good reason. They have a massive amount of original programming and dedicate every night to showing MLB games, college basketball and football games as well as a sports movie here and there. However, during the day the programming lineup is as dreadful as it is here. Non-stop yachting, darts, billiards and poker. It’s ok if you like that sort of thing. I myself like information and there’s one thing ESPN got right some time ago: They launched ESPNews which between the hours of noon and five broadcasts live, updated information regarding sports in any league. They also bring in various sports reporters to chat it up with the news anchors. Basically for five solid hours every afternoon, a sports fan can plop down and listen to in depth conversations regarding various sports leagues. That, sir, is where TSN goes wrong.
Why couldn’t TSN supplement the ESPNews coverage during the day? Surely that would be more interesting to watch than the “2007 Ladies 9ball championships” or the “2008 Worlds Strongest Man/Beer Guzzling” competition. ESPN owns a fifth of TSN, couldn’t they offer the simulcast to them? They changed the name of the flagship sports highlight show AND the logo of the network when they acquired them! Obviously ESPN has some clout. And why wouldn’t CTV (a mega million dollar television company who owns the other 80%) be open to such an idea? There is something to be said about the sports fan who would rather watch Extreme Fitness Challenge (even if they are “ladies”; I have yet to see any actual indications that they are female) over five glorious hours featuring in depth discussions with the likes of Peter Gammons, Andy Katz, Sports Illustrated columnists and perhaps even NHL sports reporters like EJ Hradek and John Buccigross. (Hooray for Hakan-Hannakuh!)
Alas, that’s not even the tip of the iceburg sir. Much like FSN in the U.S, we also have our own “local oriented yet nation-wide” sports network: It’s also called Sportsnet. Rogers Sportsnet. Original I know. This “network” is useful for about six months of the year. Because Rogers owns the Toronto Blue Jays, over 120 games are broadcast on Sportsnet every year. However between October and March (inclusive) the network is totally un-watchable. In Western Canada they show lots of hockey games on Sportsnet West or Pacific featuring the Edmonton Oilers games and Vancouver Canucks but here in Ontario it is dead air from night to night. Nothing but poker and darts. This is a sports network? It would be one thing if the Ontario Sporstnet showed Toronto Maple Leaf games and Toronto Raptors games. However it only shows about 15 Leafs games and ZERO Raptors games this year. (More on that later) How can this go on?
Sportsnet is the second most useless sports network in the country and sadly, promotes itself as the most all around sports network. Our third network, a new up and coming network called “The Score”, which barely gets any license to show live sports events, shows no pro hockey and only two years ago got allowance to show Raptors games is far and beyond a more premier sports network than this one which is owned by the largest media conglomerate in the country. The programming being offered by this “network” is an embarrassment to Canadian television and has to be changed sir. You need to step in and help us sports fans create a sports network lineup that is conducive to what we want. We want coverage. We want live sports events. Most of all, we want something we can enjoy during all hours of the day and night. But that doesn’t compare to the latest sports network travesty. I’m sad to inform you that it gets worse. Much much worse.
Mr President elect, you need to step in and save us from the monster that is TSN2. It was launched right before the NFL season started and was supposed to be a second network devoted to sports and give us Canadians more sports coverage than we’d ever seen. We envisioned a world where Pardon the Interruption and Around the Horn would never be pre-empted for early round golf highlights (just turn over to TSN2!), a world where we’d get bonus live sporting events and where we’d be able to watch not one but two women’s bowling championships at the same time! (Could you imagine?) But that’s not what has transpired.
TSN2 is nothing but a “west coast” version of TSN. “The Deuce” in the US is a fully independent network which offers viewers different sports and different shows. “The Deux” (or DUH!) on the other hand timeshifts regular TSN programming and for 95% of the week is rendered a useless network; until it decides to put on an NHL or Toronto Raptors game. (TSN2 is showing almost a quarter of Toronto Raptors games this year) Then and only then is it worth watching; except that nobody in Ontario can get it.
This is the thing that aggravates the SportsOne most of all sir. In this country we have various cable and satellite systems. Rogers Cable is by far the No 1 source for television in Canada while Bell and a company called Star Choice (I’ve never actually met anyone with Star Choice so you will have to take my word on it) factor in a reasonable minority. Both of the two satellite systems carry this “network” but Rogers refuses to be bullied into making its customers pay a premium for a station that for 152 out of 168 hours a week is nothing more than a complete copy of a station we already have, and is owned by the good people at ESPN.
Rogers offers its customers something called the Super Sports Pack. It is unprecedented in television; even the mighty DirecTV nor Dish Network have anything like it. Basically, for a fee of $30 a month the viewer gets access to the respective sports packages of the NHL, NBA, MLB, NFL, OHL (it’s a junior hockey league, you wouldn’t be interested) as well as every college basketball and football game broadcast by the entire ESPN network. It’s a great deal and we sports fans up here love it. However, because Rogers does not offer TSN2 as part of its channel lineup the NHL and NBA games broadcast on this “network” are blacked out and we are unable to watch. That in itself is not a big deal. It’s TSN’s decision to put those games on its network and it’s Rogers decision to not offer the station on its channel lineup. The problem however is that TSN DOES NOT SEND ITS OWN PERSONNEL TO BROADCAST THESE GAMES! THEY SIMPLY SUPPLEMENT THE U.S. COVERAGE WHICH WOULD BE OTHERWISE AVAILABLE TO SUPER SPORTS PACK CUSTOMERS! That Mr. Obama, is absolute bullying.
They’re basically saying sir, “Hey Rogers customers, do you wanna watch the Penguins/Capitals game? Too bad, because your cable subscriber won’t let you”. They should be saying “Hey Rogers customers, do you wanna watch the Penguins/Captials game? Too bad, because we’ve hijacked the Rogers Super Sports Pack by supplementing coverage we don’t own, and making it so that even if you do purchase the Sports Pack for $30 a month it doesn’t matter. If you don’t like it blame your cable carrier, not us. We’ve done nothing wrong by trying to bilk people out of more money. We’ve done nothing wrong by launching a new network that shows time delayed programs you already get with your basic cable subscription. We’ve also done nothing wrong by marketing this network under the false pretence that it’s its own network and that by ordering it you will get more sports coverage than ever before when in actuality all you’ll get is the opportunity to see Michael Landsberg four times a day instead of two.”
For me sir, it’s one thing to launch a network and black out games for those who don’t order your channel, provided that you offer original programming. If TSN were sending its own crew to televise these games I would not have issue with it. If someone owns the MLB Ticket in the US but for some reason does not subscribe to ESPN they do not get the games ESPN covers, because ESPN owns the coverage and covers it themselves. But for TSN to broadcast Versus’ coverage of a hockey game, sell it as “their own network showing their own game” and black it out for Rogers Super Sports Pack subscribers who would other wise be entitled to watch said game as part of their $30 per month fee, that can not happen. It just can not.
So you see Mr President, between the horrible TSN2 saga, the useless network that is Rogers Sportsnet and the fact that TSN (despite being owned by ESPN AND having a “second” channel) can not do anything to make their afternoon schedules more interesting, we Canadians have hit a brick wall. Myself and my contemporaries have faith in you. You are a sports lover and I know it breaks your heart to hear of a country not unlike your own going without all the things you Americans take for granted. Help us sir. Please. With your help we can end this madness. We can end this never ending bombardment of darts, billiards, “jet obstacle course” races and (gulp!) women’s bowling. I don’t even have the stomach to let you in on what ESPN Classic Canada is all about. (Really? You’re showing us CFL games featuring the Las Vegas Posse? Can’t we just imagine that US expansion never happened and be done with it??) Please Mr Obama. Help your neighbours to the north. We’re behind you every step of the way. Yes we can. Yes we can.
Yours truly,
Adam Cole
The SportsOne
P.S. What do you think of these early week NFL picks? Not too shabby eh??
Colts (-6) vs JAGUARS
COWBOYS (-4) vs Ravens
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