This almost doesn’t deserve the two minutes it will take me to post it, but here is the latest in TSN and Sportsnet’s silly “war” about which channel is better. In case you missed it, TSN sent out this press release last week.
Hockey lives here. This weekend, TSN wrapped up its most robust hockey production slate ever. Overall this hockey season, Canada’s Sports Leader has produced and broadcast 272 hockey games, or more than 700 hours of live game coverage. TSN’s slate of live hockey coverage includes NHL ON TSN regular season and playoff games, the IIHF WORLD JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIP, IIHF WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, and a series of Hockey Canada domestic and international events.
An overview of TSN’s hockey productions from the 2011-12 hockey season is below:
• 85 games – NHL Regular Season Regional Games (Jets, Canadiens)
• 74 games – NHL Regular Season National games
• 30 games – NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs (3 Rounds)
• 27 games – Hockey Canada domestic and international events
• 26 games – IIHF World Junior Championship
• 21 games – IIHF World Championship
• 9 games – NHL Pre-Season
Today Sportsnet tagged this on to the end of their Memorial Cup press release.
Sportsnet is Canada’s unparalleled home to all things hockey, producing and broadcasting more than 300 games – more than any other Canadian broadcaster – for the 2011-12 season including the 2012 MasterCard Memorial Cup, CHL Playoffs, Friday Night Hockey, NHL, AHL and CIS:
- NHL Preseason – 7
- Vancouver Canucks Regular Season – 57
- Edmonton Oilers Regular Season – 58
- Calgary Flames Regular Season – 59
- Ottawa Senators Regular Season – 52
- Toronto Maple Leafs Regular Season – 29
- CHL Canada-Russia Series – 6
- CHL Regular Season – 15
- CHL Top Prospects – 1
- CHL Playoffs – 8
- MasterCard Memorial Cup – 9
- Young Stars Tournament – 2
- AHL Outdoor Game – 1
- AHL All-Star – 1
- Canadian Interuniversity Sports Men’s Championship – 2
We get it, TSN and Sportsnet both show a lot of hockey.
A Rouge Point 
TSN’s list doesn’t include games on TSN2, so another 50ish NHL plus handful of others.
TSN hardly had anything to do with the production of NHL games on TSN2 (then again, neither did Sportsnet with the AHL All Star Classic).
True, but SNET will tote 500+ MLB games and produce only 30% of them.
TSN could probably then add the fact that its French language sister network RDS (plus RDS Info and RDS2) also put about 170-180 regular season NHL games plus all the playoffs to air. Although a number of them would’ve been overlaps with Montreal games plus many NBC Sports Network games already on TSN2. But I guess this is about boasting who can actually put more hockey to air on all its platforms…
RDS did mentioned they showed 2590 games this season (I’m assuming this includes RDS INFO games as well) in their Stanley Cup Final PR.
http://legrandclub.rds.ca/profils/601155/posts/141371/public
Wow, nearly 2600 games by RDS! Must have shown lots QMJHL and other junior Quebec leagues. LOL. I think you meant 259 games and RDS2 games would be in that total. It is silly what TSN and Sportsnet are doing. They appear to be a pair of 9 year old kids screaming NA NA I’m better than you.
Well, these are the same networks that brag about how they broke a trade 14 seconds before the other network… This kind of 1-upmanship is not surprising from them.
I’m more interested in how many actual games were broadcast by both network – I think, for example, that a game between the Leafs and Flames aired by both Sportsnet teams is counted as 2 broadcasts instead of 1. In fact, there may have been a few games between one of the Jets or Habs and one of the other Canadian teams that would have been broadcast by BOTH TSN and Sportsnet on their local feeds. So, how many different NHL games aired on TSN and Sportsnet? (Josh, I’m not actually asking you to figure that out…)
I did the math, 581.
Just kidding, I don’t have the time or patience for that.
Leafs and Flames broadcasts on Sportsnet are two separate productions though, so I think they should count. Surely TSN did the same with Habs-Jets games.
There is a difference between a regional game and a national game. A national game reaches everybody and a regional game has a limited audience. When this is taken into consideration, I think TSN is the network with the more impressive hockey schedule.
A difference, sure. But when regional Leafs games on SN outrate most national games on TSN (save for Leafs and the odd Canucks game), I’m not sure the gap is that big. It seems that Monday-Thursday people mostly watched their local team, regardless of if they are on TSN or SN. On the weekend (when there aren’t as many new shows on TV, I guess), ratings seem to go up for national broadcasts.
I look at this from the standpoint of being a viewer in Quebec. I get to see all the national TSN games, but not the regional Sportsnet games from other regions, so the only games that matter to me are the games I can see and TSN is the leader there. I am sure it is the same for viewers in all regions.
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