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Post by Mika on Mar 18, 2024 12:08:15 GMT -4
The University of New Brunswick Reds capped off an undefeated season with their second consecutive David Johnson University Cup title and 10th national championship of all-time. The perennial juggernaut Reds defeated the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières Patriotes 4-0 Sunday night at the Mattamy Athletic Centre - formerly Maple Leaf Gardens - in Toronto to claim their ninth U Sports men's hockey title under decorated head coach Gardiner MacDougall. Sunday's win was UNB's 42nd of the year and put a bow on a season in which the Reds went 30-0 in regular-season play, 4-0 in pre-season exhibition action, and 5-0 in the playoffs, sweeping the Saint Mary's Huskies of Halifax and the Université de Moncton Aigles Bleus en route to their sixth consecutive Atlantic University Sport conference banner and 20th of all-time. I feel like this used to get more national attention. Its crazy that in a world with like 12 national sports channels something like this probably ends up on some extended streaming service. Same with the Brier and Scotties. There's like 6 different TSN channels, can you not dedicate 4 of them to broadcast every game? If it's a matter of getting commentators, there's tons of local curlers in every province that would be up for a side gig in the tournaments providing some commentary. Instead it'll be Poker, Poker, Lumberjack tournament, Curling, Old hockey game, Curling. (Sportsnet isn't much better either). But hey, provide a crap product with weird region lockouts and complain that people turn to less than legal streaming services. And it's similar to TSN's CHL rights. Why not take full advantage of that rather than start broadcasting a game a week, midway through the season. If they need to, pay teams to use their in-house broadcast feed like the first year they broadcast the CHL finals.
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Post by Jack Bauer on Mar 18, 2024 12:35:57 GMT -4
I feel like this used to get more national attention. Its crazy that in a world with like 12 national sports channels something like this probably ends up on some extended streaming service. Same with the Brier and Scotties. There's like 6 different TSN channels, can you not dedicate 4 of them to broadcast every game? If it's a matter of getting commentators, there's tons of local curlers in every province that would be up for a side gig in the tournaments providing some commentary. Instead it'll be Poker, Poker, Lumberjack tournament, Curling, Old hockey game, Curling. (Sportsnet isn't much better either). But hey, provide a crap product with weird region lockouts and complain that people turn to less than legal streaming services. And it's similar to TSN's CHL rights. Why not take full advantage of that rather than start broadcasting a game a week, midway through the season. If they need to, pay teams to use their in-house broadcast feed like the first year they broadcast the CHL finals. There is zero creativity. The current model of growth is through cuts and offering less and wondering why people don't want to pay more for that. On a mid March Sunday night there's virtually zero sports programming. NHL and NBA mostly wrap up early on Sundays. Why not put a little bit behind the nations university hockey championship? Especially with a juggernaut to build the marketing around. If you think about it some creativity and attempts to stand out would have had a national broadcaster leading with the UNB games every night. Maybe its just my age showing but I feel like TSN showed many WJHC's before people kind of realized they were suddenly in the habit of looking for it on their TV every holiday season.
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Post by Mika on Mar 19, 2024 14:44:22 GMT -4
Same with the Brier and Scotties. There's like 6 different TSN channels, can you not dedicate 4 of them to broadcast every game? If it's a matter of getting commentators, there's tons of local curlers in every province that would be up for a side gig in the tournaments providing some commentary. Instead it'll be Poker, Poker, Lumberjack tournament, Curling, Old hockey game, Curling. (Sportsnet isn't much better either). But hey, provide a crap product with weird region lockouts and complain that people turn to less than legal streaming services. And it's similar to TSN's CHL rights. Why not take full advantage of that rather than start broadcasting a game a week, midway through the season. If they need to, pay teams to use their in-house broadcast feed like the first year they broadcast the CHL finals. There is zero creativity. The current model of growth is through cuts and offering less and wondering why people don't want to pay more for that. On a mid March Sunday night there's virtually zero sports programming. NHL and NBA mostly wrap up early on Sundays. Why not put a little bit behind the nations university hockey championship? Especially with a juggernaut to build the marketing around. If you think about it some creativity and attempts to stand out would have had a national broadcaster leading with the UNB games every night. Maybe its just my age showing but I feel like TSN showed many WJHC's before people kind of realized they were suddenly in the habit of looking for it on their TV every holiday season. It's as if sports coverage is also a victim of shrinkflation. Actually not even as if it is, it is a victim of shrinkflation. Cost is up, sports coverage is down.
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Post by Jack Bauer on Mar 19, 2024 14:59:48 GMT -4
There is zero creativity. The current model of growth is through cuts and offering less and wondering why people don't want to pay more for that. On a mid March Sunday night there's virtually zero sports programming. NHL and NBA mostly wrap up early on Sundays. Why not put a little bit behind the nations university hockey championship? Especially with a juggernaut to build the marketing around. If you think about it some creativity and attempts to stand out would have had a national broadcaster leading with the UNB games every night. Maybe its just my age showing but I feel like TSN showed many WJHC's before people kind of realized they were suddenly in the habit of looking for it on their TV every holiday season. It's as if sports coverage is also a victim of shrinkflation. Actually not even as if it is, it is a victim of shrinkflation. Cost is up, sports coverage is down. Yup. Based on highlights this looks to have been on CBC's streaming service. Know how to absolutely kill a product and any coverage of it from mainstream sports fans? Put it on CBC's streaming service or TSN+ or one of these other services you have thousands of people watching while millions are wondering why there's not more content on their television package and look more towards legal streaming and non-legal IPTV subs. The irony here is taking a fringe Canadian only thing like U Sports and putting on some service where only family members and alumni will look for it (what are we taking here....4 figures?) while the NCAA mens and womens sports on our regular tv channels for the next month. I knew UNB was unbeaten. But I didn't know their national championship was even happening until it was over. I'm generally a sports fan who is in the loop on whats going on. If they're making it so I don't even know its happening, it really starts to become a "if a tree falls in the forrest" thing in the grander scheme of things. If you win your national championship in front of 750 viewers on CBC Gem did you really win anything? This is a country that on December 28th will have Denmark's U20 hockey team playing Austria's U20 team (or some other obscure country)on a national broadcast during the WJHC. How does any of it make sense?
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Post by bois on Mar 20, 2024 7:54:10 GMT -4
While I agree with the general sentiment
the fact is most of the country couldn't care less about the University hockey championship
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Post by Jack Bauer on Mar 20, 2024 8:23:25 GMT -4
While I agree with the general sentiment the fact is most of the country couldn't care less about the University hockey championship There's a couple of ways to look at it. You're 100% right that nobody cares. So you can either accept that as never changing and have obscure broadcasters since nobody cares anyway or you can think that putting some marketing behind it and getting it on a major platform may actually start to create an audience. If you took all the major Curling events and the WJHC and stuck them on TSN+ they wouldn't have the same audiences and over time some attention, marketing, and viewers would disappear from those sports. I think of all the U Sports, mens hockey is the one that could actually catch on a bit with some national attention or at least an attempt to market the championship. We grew up with the WJHC becoming what it is. If in 1992 you stuck the WJHC on todays equivalent of CBC Gem or TSN+ it never becomes what it is now.
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Post by lirette on Mar 20, 2024 8:30:48 GMT -4
While I agree with the general sentiment the fact is most of the country couldn't care less about the University hockey championship This is pretty much true. University hockey is generally watched by people who went to the university, live in the communities like Fredericton where there isnt a Q team to compete for views or are just really hardcore hockey fans who want more product to watch. Now in saying that I may have watched if it was broadcast on a regular channel, but I cant say i had much interest in watching a team steamroll through a national championship without allowing a goal. I keep hearing so much about the quality of play but the same team winning every season without anyone even close isn't exciting in the least. Apparently they can bring back their entire roster next season....thrilling stuff.
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Post by Jack Bauer on Mar 20, 2024 9:34:08 GMT -4
While I agree with the general sentiment the fact is most of the country couldn't care less about the University hockey championship This is pretty much true. University hockey is generally watched by people who went to the university, live in the communities like Fredericton where there isnt a Q team to compete for views or are just really hardcore hockey fans who want more product to watch. Now in saying that I may have watched if it was broadcast on a regular channel, but I cant say i had much interest in watching a team steamroll through a national championship without allowing a goal. I keep hearing so much about the quality of play but the same team winning every season without anyone even close isn't exciting in the least. Apparently they can bring back their entire roster next season....thrilling stuff. People have gone on about the "quality" ever since the Q moved into the region. Newfoundland is the only place that seems to prefer the "quality" of a 23yr old 3 steps from the NHL over the 17/18yr old future NHL star. I think what i'm seeing is a huge void this time of year in programming. Especially on the Sunday before March Madness starts. The NHL and NBA playoffs are a month away. MLB not yet started. NFL in their offseason. And can't understand why it just doesn't make sense to try and create a product through exposure and marketing that can draw an audience for a week or so. There's millions who watch the WJHC but don't follow their local CHL team. Can we create our own version of "march madness" through putting our basketball and/or hockey championships on national broadcasters? I guess one way to look at it is that we just gave up on creating more media properties of our traditional sports and the next evolution is the non-traditional stuff like soccer as our population grows via immigration. One thing I do know is that every time the CHL rights changed hands recently it became harder to find. Yet a big push for people towards things like IPTV is the content of things like CHL games being available.
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Post by hal on Mar 20, 2024 10:03:47 GMT -4
IPTV Crack Down going on according to CBC News .
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Post by Jack Bauer on Mar 20, 2024 10:33:22 GMT -4
IPTV Crack Down going on according to CBC News . They can kill individual services but they can't kill the concept of it without drastically changing how we use the internet. Throttling is the biggest measure we see from local ISP's. Now we have local businesses here just doing blatantly stupid shit like opening advertising IPTV and selling it through a legit business and charging tax on it. Thats about the dumbest thing I can think of to start doing with an illegal service but these guys all think they're living in some legal grey area simply because they're a needle in a haystack of international services.
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Post by jimmy on Mar 20, 2024 10:49:43 GMT -4
While I agree with the general sentiment the fact is most of the country couldn't care less about the University hockey championship There's a couple of ways to look at it. You're 100% right that nobody cares. So you can either accept that as never changing and have obscure broadcasters since nobody cares anyway or you can think that putting some marketing behind it and getting it on a major platform may actually start to create an audience. If you took all the major Curling events and the WJHC and stuck them on TSN+ they wouldn't have the same audiences and over time some attention, marketing, and viewers would disappear from those sports. I think of all the U Sports, mens hockey is the one that could actually catch on a bit with some national attention or at least an attempt to market the championship. We grew up with the WJHC becoming what it is. If in 1992 you stuck the WJHC on todays equivalent of CBC Gem or TSN+ it never becomes what it is now. The appeal of the WJHC is watching the stars of tomorrow - the U Sports championships features the teachers, doctors and accountants of tomorrow LOL ... it is good hockey, don't get me wrong ... but lacks name appeal to draw in casual fans. I actually looked for the final to watch on TV the other night ... but I live in NB and am a UNB alum, so likely a bit more interested in seeing if they could pull off the perfect season than most.
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Post by jimmy on Mar 20, 2024 10:53:51 GMT -4
While I agree with the general sentiment the fact is most of the country couldn't care less about the University hockey championship This is pretty much true. University hockey is generally watched by people who went to the university, live in the communities like Fredericton where there isnt a Q team to compete for views or are just really hardcore hockey fans who want more product to watch. Now in saying that I may have watched if it was broadcast on a regular channel, but I cant say i had much interest in watching a team steamroll through a national championship without allowing a goal. I keep hearing so much about the quality of play but the same team winning every season without anyone even close isn't exciting in the least. Apparently they can bring back their entire roster next season....thrilling stuff. UNB is a perennial contender, but it is not like they win every year. This season was historic and deserves to be celebrated - I believe it was the first perfect season in USports history. Amazing accomplishment - no matter how strong your program is, a lot has to go right for a team to win 38 straight or whatever it was ... The more I think about it, the more I think it would be a perfect fit - younger team, needs to change the culture from one where losing and mediocrity is acceptable ... the Ottawa Senators should hire Gardiner MacDougall as their head coach this offseason.
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Post by Jack Bauer on Mar 20, 2024 11:31:11 GMT -4
There's a couple of ways to look at it. You're 100% right that nobody cares. So you can either accept that as never changing and have obscure broadcasters since nobody cares anyway or you can think that putting some marketing behind it and getting it on a major platform may actually start to create an audience. If you took all the major Curling events and the WJHC and stuck them on TSN+ they wouldn't have the same audiences and over time some attention, marketing, and viewers would disappear from those sports. I think of all the U Sports, mens hockey is the one that could actually catch on a bit with some national attention or at least an attempt to market the championship. We grew up with the WJHC becoming what it is. If in 1992 you stuck the WJHC on todays equivalent of CBC Gem or TSN+ it never becomes what it is now. The appeal of the WJHC is watching the stars of tomorrow - the U Sports championships features the teachers, doctors and accountants of tomorrow LOL ... it is good hockey, don't get me wrong ... but lacks name appeal to draw in casual fans. I actually looked for the final to watch on TV the other night ... but I live in NB and am a UNB alum, so likely a bit more interested in seeing if they could pull off the perfect season than most. I hear you. But the more womens NCAA sports I see on my TV the more i'm wondering who is watching it. Then see a Canadian U Sports story worthy of headlines getting little to no attention and cant help but think it would have similar attention in this country yet that womens NCAA game is on 3 TSN channels and the U Sports final is on CBC's streaming service. Really hard to wrap my head around some of that. And with no disrespect to the women...only the top few are going to the WNBA and the rest are teachers, doctors, and accountants of tomorrow.
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Post by gtsoc on Mar 20, 2024 11:44:22 GMT -4
If TVA Sports was able to pick up the broadcast of both the men's and women's championship games (and provide their own broadcasters), then surely TSN could have done the same.
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Post by Jack Bauer on Mar 20, 2024 11:51:52 GMT -4
If TVA Sports was able to pick up the broadcast of both the men's and women's championship games (and provide their own broadcasters), then surely TSN could have done the same. CBC had the rights. I don't understand how either CBC or U Sports benefits from CBC showing anything on a streaming service beyond giving exposure to sports that don't normally get any (soccer, volleyball as examples) so parents can follow their kids. We have to be talking less audience then a local newspaper. The advertising dollars would be non-existent. Regional and National football and hockey championships should be broadcast at a national level. It certainly was at one point. But sticking these things where there's no viewers just hurts everyone so I really don't see the upside with the CBC carrying any broadcasting rights and showing nothing on the actual CBC network itself. If these streams on CBC Gem or whatever were bringing in audiences we would know because they'd be jamming that info down our throats but the fact you won't find any measurement of that audience should tell us there's really very little to actually measure.
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