TSN vs. Sportsnet: Numbers Game
In the fall of 2011, I spent over a month investigating TSN and Sportsnet, the two multi-platform sports giants involved in Canada's fiercest media battle. I conducted at least a dozen interviews and tried to gain the best understanding of the differences between the two companies that I possibly could. The result was a cover story for The Grid that earned me a National Magazine Award nomination in the Sports Features category.
There’s big money to be made from our insatiable appetite for the Leafs, Raptors, Jays and TFC. That’s why the competition in the broadcast booth is getting just as heated as any athletic contest. A report from multiple battlefronts in Toronto’s fiercest media war—TSN vs. Sportsnet.
The sheer volume of the weekday lunch-hour rush at Real Sports Bar and Grill, the palatial Maple Leaf Square watering hole just steps away from the Air Canada Centre, is a reminder of one of this city’s most fundamental truths: Even when they’re supposed to be working, Toronto’s coveted 18–34 (mostly male) demographic simply longs to sit around drinking beer and arguing about sports. On a daily basis, this 25,000-square-foot man-cave, decked out with its 112 taps and 199 screens (tuned into every conceivable athletic event on the planet), is ground zero for some of the most pressing debates of our generation—like whether the Leafs screwed up the Phil Kessel trade or whether the Raptors’ Andrea Bargnani will ever learn to grab a rebound.
Despite a rather glaring lack of recent reasons to cheer, the city’s twenty- and thirtysomething sports fans are intensely, stubbornly, often pathetically loyal. It’s a quality that makes them the target in the current battle between TSN and Sportsnet—a contest predicated on the belief that such loyalty will extend from a team logo to a sports network. It’s a fierce, Toronto-based media war that’s redefining the way Canadians get their sports coverage. And in a country that puts hockey imagery on its currency, that’s kind of a big deal.
Toronto’s last great media war was waged over a decade ago, with Conrad Black’s National Post defiantly taking on the Globe and Mail in the battle for national-newspaper supremacy, a war that effectively ended when Black waved the white flag and sold his pride and joy in 2001.
The bout between Sportsnet and TSN kicked into overdrive after the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, a watershed moment for Canadian sports in which the two companies joined forces to form Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium. Though the partners reportedly lost money on their $153-million venture, the fan hysteria that surrounded the Vancouver games proved that the opportunities presented by today’s multi-platform media landscape are a branding goldmine that makes the Globe and Post’s print scuffle look very much like a relic of a bygone era.
Since Sportsnet and TSN are prime content factories for their respective telecom giant owners, Rogers Communications and Bell Media, the sports-media arms race stretches out across television, the internet, mobile apps, radio and, in Sportsnet’s case, a glossy new bi-weekly magazine (appropriately called Sportsnet) featuring Stephen Brunt, the much-celebrated sportswriter who was lured away from the Globe earlier this year.
In case you haven’t noticed, over the past decade, sports networks have largely ignored middle-aged sports buffs and become geared very directly at guys in their 20s and 30s who were raised in the ADD-centric worlds of gaming and pop video. Fast-paced game-highlight reels are now accompanied by generic up-tempo rock by the likes of Nickelback, analyst panels have been beefed up to include sound bites from three, four and even five talking heads and UFC (exceedingly popular among virile young bros) has become a prominent part of the programming.
Toronto may have recently been named the “Worst Sports City in the World” by ESPN, but the packed tables at Real Sports are proof that mediocre teams haven’t made our city’s audience any less rabid for the games they love. And with rabid fandom from this extremely desirable demographic comes an avalanche of disposable income that makes advertisers salivate.
Most significantly, in the age of PVR, Netflix and instantly downloadable torrents, sports is the last realm of entertainment that demands to be consumed live, ideally in a massive throng of equally passionate supporters. And if you’re watching it live, you can’t skip through the ads.
All of which means TSN and Sportsnet are fighting over a giant pool of money, each focused on being the first-choice outlet for a generation who vote every time they place their fingers on a remote. This could get ugly.
While any battle between two rival sports broadcasting entities would be charged with competitive fire, this one burns especially bright because the companies’ histories are so closely intertwined—Sportsnet was launched in 1998 by CTV, which sold the network to Rogers when it acquired the more established (and prestigious) TSN just a few years later.
For a decade, both companies operated out of CTV’s Agincourt headquarters at 9 Channel Nine Court, where their offices were separated by a parking lot. Over the years, “crossing the parking lot” became the colloquial term for making a leap that often only went one way. From the smaller Sportsnet, on- and off-air talent “moved up” to TSN, considered by most observers to be the big leagues.
Now, in its 14th year of operation, Sportsnet’s stint as the little brother has officially come to an end. TSN increased its Toronto profile by launching TSN Radio 1050 in April, but over the past 18 months it’s been cash-infused Sportsnet (now operating out of Rogers’ Bloor Street campus) that’s put on the major push across every platform. It has launched the magazine, purchased new specialty channels, brought in a slew of on-air talent (including ex-Globe scribes Brunt and Michael Grange, and former anchor Hazel Mae, who returns from a seven-year sojourn south of the border) and undergone a complete corporate rebranding, which rolled out in October.
It’s all happened under the direction of former TSN boss Keith Pelley, who jumped ship to become president of Rogers Media last year, then quickly recruited CBC Sports boss Scott Moore to head up the Sportsnet revamp. Moore believes the recent push will bring about the culture change Sportsnet needs to overtake TSN in the ratings.
“We want to be the number one sports media brand in Canada in the next five years,” he says. “We choose those words very carefully, because we’re going to be a brand on a bunch of different platforms.”
He uses the magazine to illustrate his point.
“We’re the only sports media outlet in Canada that could really do justice to Sportsnet magazine, which we’re really proud of. We think that’s a great addition to the brand—to call it a brand extension would be an insult to the people who put it out, because it’s a quality piece of journalism. But just the perception of Sportsnet magazine in and of itself has probably done more to raise the profile of the Sportsnet brand in the last couple of months than anything else we’ve done.”
It’s telling that when Moore talks about the changes he’s made to the company, he talks a lot about perception. Because aside from re-arranging the desk chairs and renovating the studios, there isn’t much else Moore can do at the moment to ramp up the network’s athletic content—deals for every major sporting event are locked in at one network or the other for the time being.
And while Sportsnet’s ratings have climbed a bit since all the changes went into effect (Blue Jay games were up 17 per cent in 2011, for example), TSN is still riding a comfortable lead on the strength of its uniquely Canadian package of content: the CFL, World Junior Hockey Championship, Canadian Curling Association and, of course, national weeknight NHL games featuring Canadian teams.
Sportsnet has responded to TSN’s concerted effort to wrap itself in the flag by leaning heavily on Rogers-based entities: witness its reliance on the Rogers-owned Toronto Blue Jays, Rogers Cup tennis and the Buffalo Bills in Toronto series. The network’s lineup also boasts regional NHL coverage, the complete baseball playoffs, select soccer matches from the English Premier League, a newly-signed four-year deal with UFC and, on Sportsnet 590 The FAN, the flagship show Prime Time Sports hosted by the highly rated curmudgeon Bob McCown.
Moore says he’s pleased by the recent bump in ratings but admits that the familiar faces of high-profile analysts can only take the network so far. It’s the popularity of the games that drives viewership and, with so much competition, it’s of course impossible to broadcast every nail-biting championship game.
It’s 5:58 p.m.—two minutes to showtime on a Tuesday night, and the Sportsnet Connected studio is surprisingly silent. Sports news anchor Brad Fay sits alone at the desk, quietly awaiting the show’s kickoff. A few feet to his right, hockey analyst Nick Kypreos is jotting down notes while looking at his iPad, preparing for a brief news hit about concussions in junior hockey. Minutes later, Kypreos will rush into an adjacent studio to join colleagues Daren Millard and Doug MacLean for the evening’s hockey broadcast. These guys cover the wild world of pro sports for a living, but the vibe in the room is anything but fun and games. It feels serious, focused, professional. Sportsnet is, after all, a network fighting to make up ground, working to change that all-important perception.
Sportsnet works all of its on-air employees at a frenetic pace. But perhaps the most active of them all is Kypreos, a former Maple Leafs grinder whose on-ice career ended after a devastating knockout punch left him unconscious in a puddle of blood in the middle of Madison Square Garden. Kypreos has found at Sportsnet the kind of integral role that always eluded him on the ice.
Kypreos has the giant fists of an NHL enforcer, but these days he looks more like a young CEO, with a sleek haircut and perfectly fitting blazers that distract the eye from the tiny scars on his face. Over the course of a few hours, the viewer can watch as he bounces from his midday radio show (simulcast on TV) to a quick-hit appearance on the network’s news show, Sportsnet Connected, to his main gig as a panelist on Hockey Central, the show that precedes Sportsnet’s regional NHL coverage.
Tonight, with the Leafs hosting the Florida Panthers, Kypreos will handle this transition with ease, but it’s not always so smooth.
The war between TSN and Sportsnet hits its on-air climax each year in the dead of winter on the NHL’s trade deadline day. As the last chance for teams to swap players before the playoffs, it’s like Christmas morning for hockey nerds—both TSN and Sportsnet give it marathon (10-hour) coverage, and the competition between the two can get intense. It’s also a yearly source of comedy for viewers, who look on in bewilderment as the networks treat the announcement of every minor deal with all the gravity and intensity of a Wall Street stock market frenzy. Laptops and BlackBerrys are worked voraciously as over-excited analysts trip over each other in an effort to be the first to report deals as wholly insignificant as little-known Czech forward Petr Kalus being shipped to the Columbus Blue Jackets for future considerations.
On deadline day this past year, in the midst of conflicting views over the veracity of a breaking deal (Bryan McCabe being traded to the New York Rangers), Kypreos mistakenly sent out a tweet he believed was a private message. It included this memorable quip: “Those fuckers at tsn try to discredit me all the time. I’m really pissed!”
Almost instantly, the gaffe shifted the attention away from deadline day and made Kypreos the talk of the hockey universe. Or, more specifically, the butt of many jokes in the twitterverse. Still, his report ultimately proved to be accurate. While he regrets that the tweet went public, he assumes responsibility for what he wrote.
“At the time, I felt that way,” he says, his hands clasped together on the table. “It was an honest show of emotion for me, and people love that. I think people did appreciate the honesty. I learned a valuable lesson from it. I’m happy the damage was minimal.”
Across the board, the on-air talent refrain from taking shots at their rivals. But does Kypreos feel there’s a similarity between his hockey battles and this ongoing skirmish?
“Yeah, there is,” he admits. “I think what that tweet did was reiterate that we are in a very competitive environment. People who follow me, or people who follow the hockey world, see that competitiveness on a daily basis. That passion and emotion doesn’t just stay on the ice, it follows people like us in the broadcast world.”
The on-air personalities at both places sound sincere when they say they’re on friendly terms with their various counterparts, and in many cases they’ve spent time working side by side. But Kypreos’ tweet stands as a brief glimpse into the behind-the-scenes world of these off-ice hockey pros, and the kind of intense pressure they’re under to deliver scoops, even nano-scoops about Petr Kalus.
TSN’s hockey nerve-centre is a hangar-like studio located just behind the shipping bay of CTV’s mammoth compound at McCowan Road and the 401. The large set sparkles with bright neon red panelling, but at the back of the room, away from all the hot lights, it’s chilly—reminiscent of the temperature of a hockey rink just before game time. The network has just kicked off its coverage of a Wednesday night game when news anchor Darren Dutchyshen strides into the cavernous room and puffs out his chest to strike a mock heroic pose. He’s vamping like a fashion model, allowing his colleagues to get a good look at the new cashmere vest he’s about to debut on the air. “Dutchie!” hollers his colleague Aaron Ward, “I saw that vest in Sixteen Candles, bud!” A few metres away, NHL legend Bobby Clarke sits between host James Duthie and TSN’s “Hockey Insider” Bob McKenzie at the big red desk. Together, their job is to banter about suspensions and forechecking schemes between periods. But while the actual game is on, the group focuses on the multiple TV screens set up on the side wall, off-camera. They’re marketed as experts, but in person they seem more like fans, snacking on Swiss Chalet, watching four hockey games at once.
McKenzie claims he sleeps seven hours a night, but it’s difficult to believe him since the nature of his job means he functions like a one-man, 24-hour hockey news organization. The 55-year-old McKenzie has spent 30 years covering the game, including six years as a hockey writer for the Toronto Star and nine as editor-in-chief of The Hockey News, slowly compiling a contact list that’s the envy of the entire industry. These days, his role as “Hockey Insider” makes him TSN’s most valuable player and one of Canada’s most influential tweeters (his 240,000 followers number far more than those of Peter Mansbridge, Lisa LaFlamme and the Prime Minister combined). If some fans see Kypreos’ feed as a source of entertainment, McKenzie’s is a work of art—a delicate balance of opinion, self-deprecating humour, obsessive updates on the smallest of transactions and genuinely earnest interactions with his followers (even his minor-hockey player son, Mike, who he recently advised to “read your rule book” and “put a shirt on”).
On camera, his look is that of a seasoned politician (red plaid ties, monogrammed shirts and a conservative salt-and-pepper crew cut), but he spends most of his day holed up at home, working that golden Rolodex to craft the encyclopedia of information he dispenses on a nightly basis. Amid all the salary cap minutiae, trade rumour analysis and chirping with the fans, McKenzie’s credibility hinges on being a trusted voice.
“I want to be first, but more important than being first is being right. Not making mistakes. I like to think we make fewer mistakes than anyone else.”
McKenzie’s job defines TSN’s strategy as an organization. The company markets itself as “Canada’s Sports Leader,” but it’s more specifically Canada’s hockey leader, thanks to its ongoing obsession with our national obsession. Hockey is its bread and butter, and McKenzie’s panel with fellow reporters Darren Dreger and Pierre LeBrun, dubbed “Insider Trading,” has arguably eclipsed the nightly highlights show SportsCentre as the network’s trademark.
So it’s interesting that while the Sportsnet studios are hushed, sober and intently focused on earning legitimacy among the fans, the vibe at TSN’s evening hockey broadcasts is downright jovial. The relaxed mood in the building might imply nonchalance, but they’re deeply confident in that leadership role, something that TSN president Stewart Johnston quickly makes abundantly clear.
“The other guys, they like to make a lot of noise,” he says. “We like to win. That’s our mandate. That’s what we do. We don’t take for granted our place as a leader in the sports industry and the media landscape. We pride ourselves on being number one, but we try to act like we’re number two.”
Pelley’s defection to Rogers and the seemingly unconstrained budget over at Sportsnet must have “those fuckers at TSN” looking over their shoulders, but they treat the subject with such composure, you’d hardly know it.
When he’s asked about a Toronto Star story that suggested Pelley’s name is not to be uttered at TSN headquarters, Johnston breaks out into a hearty laugh.
“That is absolutely not true.”
With their Movember ’staches providing an anachronistic antidote to their elegant Coppley suits, TSN’s late-night SportsCentre hosts Jay Onrait and Dan O’Toole know they look a little bit silly. And thanks to the Monster energy drinks they guzzle while the highlights are rolling between 1 and 2 a.m., they feel silly too. They claim it’s this nightly jolt of caffeine, sugar and ginseng that fuels their zany and original spin on what TSN had historically offered in its wee-hours timeslot—an informative yet decidedly buttoned-down take on the day’s scores.
Onrait and O’Toole started off their careers as relatively staid presences, but in their eight years behind the desk, they’ve increasingly attempted to push the envelope on a nightly basis. In this time slot, the comedy is just as important as the slow-motion replay of Sidney Crosby’s wraparound goal. These days, the pair aren’t opposed to wearing Phantom of the Opera masks, imitating James Bond villains or live-tweeting as they take turns narrating the goals and assists. They are the spawn of David Letterman’s ironic sensibility, transported to a world where mere sports highlights are no longer enough to win younger viewers. Onrait’s 2011 Gemini Award for Best Sportscaster/Anchor suggests the Monster drinks are working.
Hosts like Onrait and O’Toole are an essential part of the viewer’s experience, but it’s the quality of the games that matter most to advertisers. While TSN’s national cable package of NHL games isn’t the Cadillac of deals (that belongs to CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada, which draws over a million viewers every Saturday night), it’s still a notch above Sportsnet’s, which, despite owning regional rights to five out of Canada’s seven teams, lags behind CBC and TSN when it comes to high-profile games and playoff coverage.
And in an already crowded television marketplace, more competition is appearing. Until recently, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan appeared set to sell off its stake in MLSE (the corporation that owns the rights to the Maple Leafs, Raptors, Marlies and Toronto FC) early next year, and Rogers and Bell were both suggested to be mulling over acquiring the company for a reported sum of $1.8 billion.
But the Toronto Star reported late last month that MLSE—recently taken off the market after spending 2011 being unsuccessfully shopped to bidders—plans to launch a regional sports network of its own. The result would be a premium sports station in the mold of the New York Yankees’ YES Network, a cash cow that raked in revenues of US$417 million in 2009.
If executed properly, there’s no reason the network, home to four pro teams, including the Maple Leafs, the jewel in the NHL crown, couldn’t be an impressive moneymaker. But it would further dilute the content marketplace for TSN and Sportsnet.
And quite apart from the MLSE network threat, the dynamics of this power struggle could also dramatically change come 2014, when the current NHL cable deal expires. This will allow Rogers and Bell to bid for the most desirable packages, potentially ending the CBC’s almost 60-year TV grip on Saturday night hockey.
The stakes are huge for Sportsnet and TSN, but also for the diehards who pack the booths below the two-storey screen that lights up the south wall of Real Sports. In a sports-mad city like Toronto, it’s our TV networks that offer us the kind of front-row tickets we could only dream of scoring at the Air Canada Centre. As the battle unfolds, both on the ice and over the airwaves, one thing is certain: We’ll be watching.
