Changes: NHL on SportsChannel America

Revision as of 14:21, 17 February 2020

NHL on SportsChannel America was the presentation of National Hockey League broadcasts on the now defunct SportsChannel America cable television network.

Terms of the deal

Taking over for ESPN, SportsChannel's contract paid $51 million ($17 million per year) over three years, more than double what ESPN had paid ($24 million) for the previous three years SportsChannel America managed to get a fourth NHL season for just $5 million.

SportsChannel's availability

Unfortunately, SportsChannel America was only available in a few major markets,^[1]^[2] and reached only a 1/3 of the households that ESPN did at the time.^[3] SportsChannel America was seen in fewer than 10 million households^[4]. In comparison, by the 1991–92 season, ESPN was available in 60.5 million homes whereas SportsChannel America was available in only 25 million. As a matter of fact, in the first year of the deal (1988–89), SportsChannel America was available in only 7 million homes when compared to ESPN's reach of 50 million. When the SportsChannel deal ended in 1992, the league returned to ESPN for another contract that would pay $80 million over 5 years.

SportsChannel America took advantage of using their regional sports networks' feed of a game, graphics and all, instead of producing a show from the ground up, most of the time. Distribution of SportsChannel America across the country was limited to cities that had a SportsChannel regional sports network or affiliate. Very few cable systems in non-NHL territories picked it up as a stand alone service. Regional affiliates of the Prime Network would sometimes pick up SportsChannel broadcasts, but this was often only during the playoffs. SportsChannel America also did not broadcast 24 hours a day at first, usually on by 6 p.m., off by 1 or 2 a.m., then a sports-ticker for the next 16 hours.

Philadelphia

Since SportsChannel Philadelphia did not air until January 1990, PRISM (owned by Rainbow Media, the owners of SportsChannel, at the time) picked up the 1989 Stanley Cup Finals. Other than that, there was no NHL television coverage in Philadelphia except for the Flyers for the first half of the original deal.

See also: 1988–89 Philadelphia Flyers season and 1989–90 Philadelphia Flyers season

Lawsuit

Shortly after the ESPN deal was signed, SportsChannel America would contend that its contract with the NHL gave them the right to match third-party offers for television rights for the 1992–93 season. SportsChannel America accused the NHL of violating a nonbinding clause. SportsChannel America argued that it had been deprived of its contractual right of first refusal for the 1992–93 season. Appellate Division of New York State Supreme Court justice Shirley Fingerwood would deny SportsChannel America's request for an injunction against the NHL. Upholding that opinion, the appellate court found the agreement on which SportsChannel based its argument to be "too imprecise and ambiguous" and ruled that SportsChannel failed to show irreparable harm.

Coverage overview

Regular season coverage

SportsChannel America would televise about 80–100 games a season (whereas ESPN aired about 33 in from 1985–88). Whereas the previous deal with ESPN called for only one nationally televised game per week, SportsChannel America televised hockey two nights/week in NHL cities and three nights a week elsewhere.

It was very rare to have a regular-season game on SportsChannel America that wasn't a regional SportsChannel production from the Chicago Blackhawks, Hartford Whalers, New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, or Philadelphia Flyers. The San Jose Sharks were added in 1991–92. As previously suggested, SportsChannel America for the most part, used the local telecasts. The dedicated SportsChannel America station was little more than an overflow channel in the New York area for SportsChannel New York.

Special programming

In 1989, SportsChannel America provided the first ever American coverage of the NHL Draft.

In September 1989, SportsChannel America covered the Washington Capitals training camp in Sweden and pre-season tour of the Soviet Union. The Capitals were joined by the Stanley Cup champion Calgary Flames, who held training camp in Prague, Czechoslovakia and then ventured to the Soviet Union. Each team played four games against Soviet League clubs. Games were played in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and Riga. The NHL clubs finished with a combined 6–2 record against the top Soviet teams, including the Red Army club and Dynamo Moscow. 5 of 8 contests were televised by SportsChannel America.

All-Star Game coverage

SportsChannel America was the exclusive broadcaster of the 1989 All-Star Game. The following year, they covered the first ever NHL Skills Competition and Heroes of Hockey game. SportsChannel America continued their coverage of these particular events through 1992. In 1991, SportsChannel America replayed the third period of the All-Star Game on the same day that it was played. That was because NBC broke away from the live telecast during the 3rd period in favor of Gulf War coverage.

Year	Play-by-play	Color commentator	Ice level reporter	Studio host	Studio analysts
1989	Jiggs McDonald	Scotty Bowman	Gary Thorne		Denis Potvin and Herb Brooks

Stanley Cup playoffs

Divisional finals

Year	Teams	Play-by-play	Color commentator
1989	Montréal-Boston	Rick Peckham	Gerry Cheevers
	Pittsburgh-Philadelphia (Games 1–5 aired on tape delay)	Mike Emrick	Bill Clement
	St. Louis-Chicago	Pat Foley	Dale Tallon
	Calgary-Los Angeles	Jiggs McDonald	Herb Brooks
1990	Boston-Montréal (Games 1–2 aired on tape delay)	Mike Emrick	Bill Clement
	New York Rangers-Washington (Games 3–5 aired on tape delay)	Rick Peckham	Dave Maloney
	Chicago-St. Louis	Pat Foley	Dale Tallon
	Edmonton-Los Angeles (joined-in-progress)	Jiggs McDonald	Herb Brooks
1991	Boston-Montréal	Jiggs McDonald	John Davidson
	Pittsburgh-Washington (taped delay)	Rick Peckham	Gerry Cheevers
	St. Louis-Minnesota	Mike Emrick	Bill Clement
	Los Angeles-Edmonton (joined-in-progress)	Pat Foley	Dale Tallon
1992	Montréal-Boston (CBC's feed; Game 1 was joined-in-progress; all other games on taped delay)	Bob Cole	John Garrett and Dick Irvin, Jr.
	New York Rangers-Pittsburgh (Game 1 was joined-in-progress)	Jiggs McDonald	Ed Westfall
	Detroit-Chicago	Pat Foley	Dale Tallon
	Vancouver-Edmonton (Games 1–4 used CBC's feed; Games 3–4 were joined-in-progress)	Chris Cuthbert (Games 1–4) Pat Foley (Games 5–6)	Harry Neale (Games 1–4) Dale Tallon (Games 5–6)

Conference finals

See also: NHL Conference Finals

Year	Teams	Play-by-play	Color commentator
1989	Montreal-Philadelphia	Mike Emrick	Bill Clement
1989	Calgary-Chicago	Jiggs McDonald	Herb Brooks
1990	Boston-Washington	Jiggs McDonald	Bill Clement
1990	Edmonton-Chicago	Pat Foley	Dale Tallon
1991	Boston-Pittsburgh	Jiggs McDonald	John Davidson
1991	Edmonton-Minnesota	Mike Emrick	Bill Clement
1992	Pittsburgh-Boston	Jiggs McDonald	Bill Clement
1992	Chicago-Edmonton	Pat Foley	Dale Tallon

Stanley Cup Finals

Year	Teams	Play-by-play	Color commentator	Studio host	Studio analyst
1989^[5]	Calgary-Montreal	Jiggs McDonald	Bill Clement	Mike Emrick^[6]	Herb Brooks
1990	Boston-Edmonton	Jiggs McDonald	Bill Clement	Mike Emrick^[7]	John Davidson^[8]
1991	Pittsburgh-Minnesota	Jiggs McDonald	Bill Clement	Mike Emrick^[9]	John Davidson
1992	Pittsburgh-Chicago	Jiggs McDonald	Bill Clement	Mike Emrick	John Davidson

Production

A fair number of times in their first season, they would use their own production services for games. But very rarely would this sort of practice occur in the last three seasons. Since programming was so sparse otherwise on SportsChannel America, usually the games were replayed immediately following the live telecast.

For playoff coverage,^[10] if any of the aforementioned teams made the playoffs, SportsChannel America would focus on those teams, using their facilities. For example, SportsChannel Chicago produced the SportsChannel America coverage for the Blackhawks' 1990 playoff run. Because of Hawks owner Bill Wirtz's disdain for free and basic cable home telecasts of his games, the road games were shown in Chicago, with the home games only given short live look-ins as "bonus coverage". The same occurrence happened in 1992 only this time, Blackhawks' home games were broadcast on a pay-per-view basis via "Hawkvision"^[11]. Sometimes, they would use the CBC feed for other series (the Boston Bruins–Montreal Canadiens series, for example). For the Stanley Cup Finals, SportsChannel America uses their own facilities. They would also use their own facilities for any Conference Final series that did not involve one of SportsChannel's regional teams. SportsChannel America's master control was at a Cablevision studio in Oak Park, Illinois with its NHL studios located at Adelphi University on Long Island.

John Shannon was the senior producer of The NHL on SportsChannel America.

Announcers

Bob Papa and Leandra Reilly were the studio hosts during the regular season coverage. For the Stanley Cup Finals, Jiggs McDonald served as the play-by-play announcer and Bill Clement was the color commentator. Also in the Stanley Cup Finals, Mike Emrick served as the studio host while John Davidson served as the rinkside reporter and studio analyst (Herb Brooks filled that role in 1989).

Play-by-play

Color commentators

Ice level personalities

Studio personalities

Herb Brooks
John Davidson
Stan Fischler
Al Koken
Bob Papa
Leandra Reilly

Commentating crews

Chicago Blackhawks: Pat Foley and Dale Tallon (in 1991–92, SportsChannel America rode them all the way through the Stanley Cup Finals)
- SportsChannel Chicago
Hartford Whalers: Rick Peckham and Gerry Cheevers
- SportsChannel New England
New York Islanders: Jiggs McDonald and Ed Westfall
- SportsChannel New York
New Jersey Devils: Gary Thorne and Peter McNab
- SportsChannel New York
Philadelphia Flyers: Mike Emrick and Bill Clement
- SportsChannel Philadelphia
San Jose Sharks: Joe Starkey and Pete Stemkowski
- SportsChannel Pacific