WordsOfWisdom Posted January 15, 2018 Share Posted January 15, 2018 One thing that has irked me in recent years (but especially this year) is the fact that fewer and fewer games are being shown on CBC with the Leafs. So far in January I'm not sure if the Leafs have played a Saturday night game yet at all. For those that aren't aware, CBC's Hockey Night in Canada has been in a "wind down" phase for quite some time. They can't compete with TSN and SportsNet for Leafs games because they can no longer afford them. Thus, the Leafs have been playing more and more games on TSN and SportsNet while CBC's role is being diminished. Eventually, the idea is that CBC will lose it's NHL broadcast rights to the Leafs altogether so that Rogers and Bell can charge customers a fortune for their sports packs. (CBC is available on basic cable TV by comparison.) In any event, I'm not a fan of Rogers or Bell. I feel like I'm not getting anything for my money. Monopolistic companies like Rogers and Bell are the reason why NetFlix popularity soared so quickly. Everyone wants that cable TV "alternative" and everyone wants to ditch these two greedy hogs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BluPuk Posted January 15, 2018 Share Posted January 15, 2018 Monopolistic?? Geeze, you sent me clambering for the Funk and Wagnals with that one WOW. You mean dictatorship, right?? Seriously, you are correct in everything you say there. The game is NOT ours any more, and having hockey night in Canada taken away from us is one sign that proves it. That's if 31 teams in the league in places like Texas, LA, Florida (with TWO teams) , Phoenix, Vegas and the like weren't enough proof. Besides, the CBC is too busy spending their money hiring useless Habs fan stuffed shirts like Strombo, putting on a Punjabi language broadcast, and passing out money to local hockey programs in their cheesy way. As I said in a post in another thread here earlier today, the hockey has become so bad to watch that I simply can't do it any more anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blocker Posted January 15, 2018 Share Posted January 15, 2018 It's a shame. I remember when there was a French version, and different parts of our countries got different games. HNIC has always been a step ahead of the competition in presentation. I listened to hockey on CBC radio before television, and since then have been a faithful viewer dating back to the 1950's. For years, our children and us spent Saturday nights eating treats and watching hockey on CBC. Sad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hobie Posted January 17, 2018 Share Posted January 17, 2018 Words, TO has been on CBC every Sat. this season except when not scheduled to play like Jan. 13 which was their bye week and they will also not be on Jan. 27 which is all-star weekend. I think you need a schedule Words and if you have cable you will probably notice that SN telecasts the other Cdn games every Sat. Instead of TO games being broadcast less on CBC, CBC is continuing to broadcast essentially the same as before but now they concentrate on TO games for the early feed whereas in the past they used to split between TO and MTL. If you're a Leaf fan without cable then life is good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JR Ewing Posted January 17, 2018 Share Posted January 17, 2018 I guess you have to be a Leafs fan to miss the days when your team had to be the other club if you wanted to watch them on a Saturday night. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted January 17, 2018 Author Share Posted January 17, 2018 9 hours ago, hobie said: Words, TO has been on CBC every Sat. this season except when not scheduled to play like Jan. 13 which was their bye week and they will also not be on Jan. 27 which is all-star weekend. This schedule is driving me nuts! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted January 17, 2018 Author Share Posted January 17, 2018 On 1/15/2018 at 1:29 PM, BluPuk said: Monopolistic?? Geeze, you sent me clambering for the Funk and Wagnals with that one WOW. You mean dictatorship, right?? Seriously, you are correct in everything you say there. The game is NOT ours any more, and having hockey night in Canada taken away from us is one sign that proves it. That's if 31 teams in the league in places like Texas, LA, Florida (with TWO teams) , Phoenix, Vegas and the like weren't enough proof. Besides, the CBC is too busy spending their money hiring useless Habs fan stuffed shirts like Strombo, putting on a Punjabi language broadcast, and passing out money to local hockey programs in their cheesy way. As I said in a post in another thread here earlier today, the hockey has become so bad to watch that I simply can't do it any more anyway. It's just the fact that CBC used to be in every home that had a TV. Now you need basic cable to get CBC, but that only gets you the Saturday hockey games, of which they keep playing fewer and fewer games on Saturday. The game continues to be shifted to high-end cable TV packages where you have to order additional "sports packs" to get games and even then you don't get all the games because there are different tiers of sports packs. So the progression (or regression if you will) has been like this: 1. CBC available to all over the air for free. 2. CBC on basic cable along with TSN and SportsNet. (Pay extra $$$.) 3. CBC on basic cable along with SportsNet. TSN shifted to extra $$$ sports pack 4. CBC on basic cable. SportsNet and TSN shifted to extra $$$ sports pack 5. CBC on basic cable. SportsNet and TSN on extra $$$ sports pack. SportsNet One, TSN 2, etc. shifted to extra $$$ sports pack. The future: 6. No hockey games on CBC. Crap games (low demand games) on SportsNet and TSN (pay extra $$$). Premium games on SportsNet One, TSN 2, etc. (pay extra $$$$$$). Playoff games on Pay Per View. Pay $80 per game? There have been at least FOUR tiered pay bumps related to professional sports games and how it is delivered to customers on television, and that's just in my lifetime so far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted January 17, 2018 Author Share Posted January 17, 2018 On 1/15/2018 at 6:15 PM, blocker said: It's a shame. I remember when there was a French version, and different parts of our countries got different games. HNIC has always been a step ahead of the competition in presentation. I listened to hockey on CBC radio before television, and since then have been a faithful viewer dating back to the 1950's. For years, our children and us spent Saturday nights eating treats and watching hockey on CBC. Sad. What's happening is that ultimately CBC is going to lose NHL hockey games because they can't afford the rights costs to broadcast them. CBC is already a bit player in the hockey world because they broadcast games one day a week whereas TSN and SportsNet own all the mid-week games. The next time their contract comes due, the assumption is that CBC will be out. Heck, they even lost their HNIC theme to TSN a few years ago! Less competition is a bad thing and less exposure is a bad thing. I think they're going to reduce the Leafs to a niche product with a smaller audience. Same thing is happening to the Blue Jays since Rogers bought them. Every Jays game is on SportsNet. (You used to be able to watch Jays games on CBC.) What they're doing is shrinking their market. To use an example of another sport that did something similar, you need look no further than professional boxing. Boxing removed most of their fights from TV and went to a PPV only model. The end result was that boxing went from mainstream to niche. They basically took themselves out of homes and put themselves in sports bars which killed their audience. Do people still watch big money fights? Sometimes they do yes. The problem is, there is no exposure for all the other boxers. People are familiar with one or two guys and that's it. The UFC took steps to correct this problem somewhat by putting some fights on cable TV and having a reality TV show that acted as a feeder system for the UFC. They're already doing things better than what pro boxing did. In any event, if pro sports teams continue to push for the "pro boxing" model of not showing anything on TV except in super high end sports packages and then go the PPV route (which I know they want to), then I think it's going to kill their bottom line in the end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brelic Posted January 17, 2018 Share Posted January 17, 2018 19 minutes ago, WordsOfWisdom said: It's just the fact that CBC used to be in every home that had a TV. Now you need basic cable to get CBC, but that only gets you the Saturday hockey games, of which they keep playing fewer and fewer games on Saturday. The game continues to be shifted to high-end cable TV packages where you have to order additional "sports packs" to get games and even then you don't get all the games because there are different tiers of sports packs. So the progression (or regression if you will) has been like this: 1. CBC available to all over the air for free. 2. CBC on basic cable along with TSN and SportsNet. (Pay extra $$$.) 3. CBC on basic cable along with SportsNet. TSN shifted to extra $$$ sports pack 4. CBC on basic cable. SportsNet and TSN shifted to extra $$$ sports pack 5. CBC on basic cable. SportsNet and TSN on extra $$$ sports pack. SportsNet One, TSN 2, etc. shifted to extra $$$ sports pack. The future: 6. No hockey games on CBC. Crap games (low demand games) on SportsNet and TSN (pay extra $$$). Premium games on SportsNet One, TSN 2, etc. (pay extra $$$$$$). Playoff games on Pay Per View. Pay $80 per game? There have been at least FOUR tiered pay bumps related to professional sports games and how it is delivered to customers on television, and that's just in my lifetime so far. It's a reflection of a cable-free world. The demographics and trends are shifting that way - they have been for a long time. I haven't had cable or any TV package for 8 years. $169 per season for ALL NHL games seems pretty cheap and reasonable to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hobie Posted January 17, 2018 Share Posted January 17, 2018 I pay $200 for all the NHL games via Center Ice which is alright but could be expensive if I were a multi sport fanatic, I guess. Will the CBC lose HNIC, maybe, we'll see. Cable is a fact of life, I still pine for the days when phones were land lines and you could go out with friends and not have to compete with their cells for their attention. I pay $15 a month for my land line whereas I have friends paying $400 per month for cell time, seems insane to me but that's me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brelic Posted January 17, 2018 Share Posted January 17, 2018 6 minutes ago, hobie said: I pay $200 for all the NHL games via Center Ice which is alright but could be expensive if I were a multi sport fanatic, I guess. Right, and then you should be bearing the cost of those packages - not being subsidized by others who don't watch sports. If it becomes too expensive, you'd have to make choices. Quote Cable is a fact of life, I still pine for the days when phones were land lines and you could go out with friends and not have to compete with their cells for their attention. I pay $15 a month for my land line whereas I have friends paying $400 per month for cell time, seems insane to me but that's me. Cable is not a fact of life - the oligopoly realizes that era is coming to an end. So they're trying to squeeze every last dollar out of a dying medium while the generational shift happens over time. Change is inevitable, and that's a good thing. We just have to make different choices. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hobie Posted January 17, 2018 Share Posted January 17, 2018 1 hour ago, brelic said: Right, and then you should be bearing the cost of those packages - not being subsidized by others who don't watch sports. If it becomes too expensive, you'd have to make choices. Cable is not a fact of life - the oligopoly realizes that era is coming to an end. So they're trying to squeeze every last dollar out of a dying medium while the generational shift happens over time. Change is inevitable, and that's a good thing. We just have to make different choices. Cable is not a fact of life? Until last year you could still get TV via rabbit ears where I live but no more so if you want TV you either have cable or the internet. What's the dying medium? Over the air broadcasts are dead, I get my Center Ice via cable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brelic Posted January 17, 2018 Share Posted January 17, 2018 29 minutes ago, hobie said: Cable is not a fact of life? Until last year you could still get TV via rabbit ears where I live but no more so if you want TV you either have cable or the internet. What's the dying medium? Over the air broadcasts are dead, I get my Center Ice via cable. My bad... what I meant was the traditional way to watch something. I don't know how old you are, but I'm guessing you are over 40, and the reality is that just about everyone under the age of 25 will never subscribe to a traditional 'cable' package. They stream everything, and most of it from non-traditional sources (YouTube, Netflix) and non-broadcast providers (as in not from Comcast, Rogers, etc). Of course they still get their internet from those companies, but not so much the content. They either pirate, expect it to be free, or reluctantly pay for specific interests (HBO, Netflix, Gamecenter). So the 'cable' packages are a dying form. Cord-cutters and cord-nevers, as they're called (like my daughter) will number about 55.6 million in the US this year. And the pace of that growth is significant - the growth of cord-cutters is up 33% from 2016. All that to say that the large providers like Comcast, Rogers, et al, know exactly what's coming. With the advent of 5G in 2020, the need for home WiFi will also become obsolete within 5-10 years, as the protocol will be enough to handle both capacity and load. There's a great podcast on Vector about exactly this. Very fascinating! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JR Ewing Posted January 17, 2018 Share Posted January 17, 2018 16 hours ago, brelic said: My bad... what I meant was the traditional way to watch something. I don't know how old you are, but I'm guessing you are over 40, and the reality is that just about everyone under the age of 25 will never subscribe to a traditional 'cable' package. Anybody not in agreement with that statement should take a gander at the huge number of channels running old TV shows and nothing BUT old TV shows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted January 18, 2018 Author Share Posted January 18, 2018 12 hours ago, brelic said: I haven't had cable or any TV package for 8 years. $169 per season for ALL NHL games seems pretty cheap and reasonable to me. I guess if you watch only hockey, that works out to about $20/mth. for the hockey season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted January 18, 2018 Author Share Posted January 18, 2018 11 hours ago, hobie said: I pay $200 for all the NHL games via Center Ice which is alright but could be expensive if I were a multi sport fanatic, I guess. The problem is that the cable TV companies never delivered on the "a la carte" promise of letting people choose which channels they wanted and pay for each one individually. That could have saved cable but they never did it, and now it's too late. The cable TV companies have scrambled to buy up all the sports teams in recent years in order to secure a monopoly on that content. They're relying on fan interest in sports to sell cable TV packages now because they have nothing else to offer that can't be found cheaper elsewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brelic Posted January 19, 2018 Share Posted January 19, 2018 On 1/18/2018 at 2:08 AM, WordsOfWisdom said: The problem is that the cable TV companies never delivered on the "a la carte" promise of letting people choose which channels they wanted and pay for each one individually. That could have saved cable but they never did it, and now it's too late. The cable TV companies have scrambled to buy up all the sports teams in recent years in order to secure a monopoly on that content. They're relying on fan interest in sports to sell cable TV packages now because they have nothing else to offer that can't be found cheaper elsewhere. It's typical of 'old' industries. Kodak never adapted to the digital age, so they went bankrupt. Record labels hung on stubbornly to an old model of distribution and control, even in the face of dwindling physical sales and soaring digital consumption. Cable companies are doing the same. At the end of the day, they focused on how things had been done, not on actual consumer patterns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brelic Posted January 19, 2018 Share Posted January 19, 2018 On 1/18/2018 at 2:01 AM, WordsOfWisdom said: I guess if you watch only hockey, that works out to about $20/mth. for the hockey season. The best part is that it's been free for me for the past 3 seasons. Not sure why, but Rogers keeps giving me free season memberships! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted February 11, 2018 Author Share Posted February 11, 2018 This is my personal pet-peeve this season: I flipped on the TV at 7pm last night (Saturday) and the Olympics were on. So what happened to the Leafs game? Different channel or earlier start time? This is really driving me nuts. I swear I'm just going to get an Android box and stream this beeeeetch! Rogers and their stupid basic cable TV can bite me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hobie Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 20 hours ago, WordsOfWisdom said: This is my personal pet-peeve this season: I flipped on the TV at 7pm last night (Saturday) and the Olympics were on. So what happened to the Leafs game? Different channel or earlier start time? This is really driving me nuts. I swear I'm just going to get an Android box and stream this beeeeetch! Rogers and their stupid basic cable TV can bite me. It was on Sportsnet because of the Olympics, doesn't your basic cable include Sportsnet and TSN? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted February 13, 2018 Author Share Posted February 13, 2018 9 hours ago, hobie said: It was on Sportsnet because of the Olympics, doesn't your basic cable include Sportsnet and TSN? See what I mean? CBC is losing hockey! I bet this season marks the fewest games they have ever broadcasted since the league went to 16 or more teams. No, basic cable no longer includes SportsNet or TSN. I've been a loyal Rogers (ie: bend over) customer for over a decade. I'm at the point now where I'm just going to pirate the stuff like everyone else does. Android boxes aren't illegal and streaming the content falls into a legal grey area. (Wonderful.) I get nothing for my money with cable TV. Rogers has raised prices and deleted channels for over two decades. I'm ready to delete Rogers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted February 18, 2018 Author Share Posted February 18, 2018 Well I got to watch tonight's game in Punjabi...... since it wasn't on CBC again. Toronto loses 5-3 to Pittsburgh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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