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SouthernWingsFan

Gary Bettman on the radio down here last night

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I was driving home yesterday evening after checking out a few Mardi Gras parades in my neck of the woods before the Wings-Yotes game and was radio-surfing in the car, when to my shock and amazement, Gary Bettman was being interviewed on one of the talk-radio shows down here. It definitely raised my eyebrows and caused my forehead to wrinkle up because hockey is all but non-existent where I am from. The radio show is local and fairly new, I've tuned into it off/on.

Anyways, I didn't listen to the entire interview, and rip on Bettman all you want which I know is popular, I don't know if he was sugarcoating or being rosy during the interview, but most of what I heard was promoting the NHL in media outlets. Here is what I heard more/less to the best of my knowledge...

VS vs. ESPN...Bettman said that going to OLN/VS was a long-term decision, he all but understood it wasn't going to be a popular choice the first season or two, since VS is still a new commodity. He says ESPN wasn't going to give the NHL any more focused attention, why would they, b/c they have other sports to broadcast. Basically, after an NHL game was over on ESPN, it was straight to SportsCenter. And he stated that hockey coverage (not including the games itself) on ESPN has been roughly the same, if slightly better, in terms of broadcasting results and highlights and such.

With VS, they have a post-game wrap-up show, off-ice interviews with players, etc., and the ratings and viewrship is slightly up as compared to last year. As impatient as we are as fans, generally speaking, I think we have to see how being broadcasted of VS works out in about 3-5 years. The sports conference that my alma mater is in (Mountain West) also struck a TV deal with VS, at least 3 of my school's football games were broadcasted nationally on that network, and they had 1-2 Mountain West games on every Saturday. As expected, fans were frustrated since not many people know the network yet, but again, it's not fair to judge the NHL or Mountain West's deals after just 1-2 years. It isn't the NHL's job to get VS into more households, that is VS's job. If VS can expand down the road, that means the NHL will as well.

More on promoting/broadcasting....

This I actually liked from Bettman. He stated that youth today might watch TV as much, but they have so much more options in terms of media outlets (Internet game broadcasts and such). They are downloading music/movies, they use their computers a lot more. The NHL has jumped on this by doing the YouTube thing. I go to YouTube a bit and I regularly see links/screenshots of NHL past games and highlights. I also heard him saying that you can download past games on Google.

The Internet isn't obviously the end-of-all-end solutions to generate NHL interest, but I really like how they've tackled YouTube and Google first.

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Guest Crymson

I agree with him about VS.

It pains me to say I agree with Bettman.

The guy isn't ALL bad. He does some good things, just not enough.. and he makes too many terrible decisions. All around, :thumbdown:

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