The first home game since the Flames made their dash for the Stanley Cup – the entire city has been waiting for this for a year. And the game is banished to CTV SportsNet? Why the hell isn’t the game on every single channel? Hockey Night in Canada should be doing a special event. Heck, even TSN could cover it – it’s part of the basic cable package, so would reach the whole city. CBC has decided it’s better to run Coronation Street and Canadian Antiques Road Show (from Montreal). Coronation Street? Really?
But SportsNet means you have to subscribe to the correct “tier” of channels, getting a whole bunch of low-quality crap to get the one you want. So, I don’t have access to SportsNet, since we only subscribe to basic cable at home.
I guess I’ll be keeping the stats window open during the game – and tuning in to the NHL Radio stream, since I don’t have a radio in my house (we hates it…).
I was really looking forward to watching this game tonight, assuming they’d at least try to make sure it got out to a wide audience. It’s not like the game won’t sell out or anything…
Update: Just had a thought… What if the iTunes video section carried streaming live events? Sure, you couldn’t chuck them onto your iPod, but they’d play nicely via Front Row. I’d pay some cash to watch the game tonight. I’d bet people would also pay to watch the Stevenotes and One More Things… There must be an audience for streaming, and if the infrastructure is mostly in place, it just might work. Of course, paying customers would be less tolerant of stream droppage…
Update 2: Holy. Crap. Is the quality of the Windows Media stream suck-tacular! 20Kb/sec stream, and it sounds like a weak AM radio signal while driving through a tunnel or parkade. And it keeps dropping out for no apparent reason. Jebus. Why do people settle for Windows Media???
The first home game since the Flames made their dash for the Stanley Cup – the entire city has been waiting for this for a year. And the game is banished to CTV SportsNet? Why the hell isn’t the game on every single channel? Hockey Night in Canada should be doing a special event. Heck, even TSN could cover it – it’s part of the basic cable package, so would reach the whole city. CBC has decided it’s better to run Coronation Street and Canadian Antiques Road Show (from Montreal). Coronation Street? Really?
But SportsNet means you have to subscribe to the correct “tier” of channels, getting a whole bunch of low-quality crap to get the one you want. So, I don’t have access to SportsNet, since we only subscribe to basic cable at home.
I guess I’ll be keeping the stats window open during the game – and tuning in to the NHL Radio stream, since I don’t have a radio in my house (we hates it…).
I was really looking forward to watching this game tonight, assuming they’d at least try to make sure it got out to a wide audience. It’s not like the game won’t sell out or anything…
Update: Just had a thought… What if the iTunes video section carried streaming live events? Sure, you couldn’t chuck them onto your iPod, but they’d play nicely via Front Row. I’d pay some cash to watch the game tonight. I’d bet people would also pay to watch the Stevenotes and One More Things… There must be an audience for streaming, and if the infrastructure is mostly in place, it just might work. Of course, paying customers would be less tolerant of stream droppage…
Update 2: Holy. Crap. Is the quality of the Windows Media stream suck-tacular! 20Kb/sec stream, and it sounds like a weak AM radio signal while driving through a tunnel or parkade. And it keeps dropping out for no apparent reason. Jebus. Why do people settle for Windows Media???
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