Lacroix most commonly asked: When will the CBC broadcast Canadiens games?

The single most popular question put to CBC/Radio-Canada president and CEO Hubert T. Lacroix is whether he has plans to obtain the broadcasting rights to Montreal Canadiens games, he says. Lacroix noted the public’s concern about CBC rights to Canadiens’ games during the public broadcaster’s annual public meeting in Ottawa Wednesday. Lacroix said the CBC should be involved in national sports broadcasting and said that he hopes to be at the table when the Montreal Canadiens broadcasting rights come up for renewal. “We hope we will be invited to bid when the contract for the Montreal Canadiens comes up,” he said. CTV’s specialty sports service RDS won exclusive broadcasting rights to the French-language regional broadcast of Canadiens games in 2002 starting in the 2002-2003 season. The Canadiens had asked that one broadcaster offer all games, a request that Radio-Canada could not meet because it demanded too much airtime. In an effort to save Radio-Canada’s popular program La Soirée du hockey, the public broadcaster and RDS reached a deal to simulcast Canadiens games on Saturday nights, but that province-wide agreement ended after the 2003-04 season. In 2007, the Canadiens and RDS extended their agreement, giving the specialty channel exclusive broadcasting rights to all 82 regular season games and the NHL All-Star Game until the end of the 2012-2013 season. RDS is paying about $20 million a year for the broadcasting rights. “When the contract that binds CTV and RDS to the Canadiens comes to an end, we hope the Canadiens and the National League will consider that we can be an interesting broadcaster for them, and will invite us to the auction,” Lacroix said. Gregory Taylor, a broadcasting expert in Montreal who is writing a book on the transition to digital television, said Radio-Canada’s rights to the Canadiens is important because Quebec has an unusually high number of television viewers who rely on over-the-air signals. “I actually thought there would be people out in the streets when they lost the rights to it about five years ago,” Taylor said. “I think it’s culturally significant that Radio-Canada should have Canadiens games.” But CTVglobemedia—which owns RDS and its English-language counterpart, TSN—appears to be solidifying its hold on the Canadiens’ broadcasts. TSN announced Thursday it has secured exclusive, English-language, regional broadcasting rights to about 30 Canadiens games per year until the end of the 2012-2013 season. No broadcaster had the rights to the English-language games prior to the announcement. The deal does not include Saturday night games, which the CBC continues to broadcast in English. The NHL negotiates national TV network deals on a league-wide basis, but individual teams negotiate their own regional and local broadcasting deals. The English-language market for broadcasting regional Canadiens games is considered relatively small, but TSN’s announcement Thursday further identifies the TSN/RDS brand with the Montreal team. Taylor said the CBC may not be able to compete for broadcasting rights at a time when live, professional sports is becoming the most valuable programming on television. “It’s going to increasingly cost a lot of money. I don’t know how the public broadcaster will be able to compete with the conglomerates we now have,” he said. Taylor also noted the CBC lost its bid to broadcast the 2010 Olympics to a partnership between media conglomerates CTV and Rogers Media Inc. The winning bidder paid $153 million US for the rights to the Olympics, representing a 110 per cent increase from the $73 million US that the CBC paid for the rights to the 2006 and 2008 games. In a recent interview with Cartt.ca, former head of the CBC, Robert Rabinovitch, also said the CBC will face difficulty competing for sports, predicting that the ever-popular Hockey Night in Canada will be “toast.” He said BCE Inc.’s agreement to wholly purchase CTV is a “game changer, and I really doubt that the CBC is going to be able to compete in the future. I think they’re going to lose all of their sports properties.” On Wednesday Lacroix told reporters the CBC is considering launching its own sports specialty channel. “We’re still thinking about it. You’ll see early next year what we’ll decide according to our strategic plan,” he said. “Sports has the advantage of rallying a large number of Canadians around important events. I think that’s where the public broadcaster should be.” The CRTC has approved the CBC for two for Category 2 specialty channel licences, an English-language service called CBC SportsPlus and a French-language service called Radio-Canada Sports. Both licences say the channels would broadcast programs on Canadian athletes and sports with an emphasis on amateur Canadian sports. The French channel must be launched within three years of the CRTC approval on June 18, 2010 and the English channel must be launched within three years of Aug. 20, 2008, according to the licence approvals. Although the CBC maintains it does not have any current plans for the licences, Lacroix’s reference to the specialty channel suggests the CBC could make a bid for the national cable rights to NHL games. But in an email to The Wire Report, CBC spokesman Marco Dubé said Lacroix only intended to talk “about broadcasting rights in general terms.” Bell owned CTV when RDS won the rights to Canadiens games in 2002. The same year, Bell paid $100 million US for the rights to rename the Canadiens’ Molson Centre as the Bell Centre for a 20-year period. Although Bell spun off CTV as a separate company in 2005, Bell announced an agreement this year to again purchase CTV. In February, Quebecor Media Inc., owner of the TVA Group, received a CRTC licence for a new Category 2 specialty channel called TVA Sports. In its application, TVA requested the right to broadcast Canadiens games, but the commission said it was “not convinced that it would be appropriate to intervene in existing private contractual relations.” --With files from Karen Fournier news@thewirereport.ca

Lacroix most commonly asked: When will the CBC broadcast Canadiens games?

News | 10/21/2010 9:38 pm EDT

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