A New Era of NHL Broadcasting in Canada Is Around the Corner, And Fans Hate It

Hockey Night in Canada is effectively no more

October 3 is not just when Aaron Samuels asked Cady Heron what day it was. It also marks the first Saturday of the NHL regular season in nearly 75 years that Hockey Night in Canada won’t be available for free on CBC.

The Canadian radio and television broadcaster and Sportsnet jointly announced in June that their 12-year partnership was ending, leaving many NHL fans lamenting the loss of a long-standing tradition.

CBC started airing Saturday NHL games on the radio in 1936, then on TV in 1952. Rogers, owner of Sportsnet, acquired exclusive rights to Hockey Night in Canada ahead of the 2014-2015 season and entered into a sublicensing agreement with CBC.

Sportsnet said earlier this month that it’s “lifting 150 blackouts” with its new Saturday Night Hockey and Monday Night Hockey broadcasts.

“Sportsnet will showcase more games than ever before with 35 percent more national broadcasts than last year and fewer blackouts, giving fans unprecedented access to the NHL’s biggest stars and best moments,” Greg Sansone, president of Sportsnet, said in a news release.

Hockey fans will no longer get free broadcasts in Canada and some parts of the U.S.

Hockey Night in Canada started as a free radio broadcast. It became a free TV broadcast. It was free because CBC is a public broadcaster — the PBS of Canada, if you will.

Now fans need a pay TV provider that carries Sportsnet to watch marquee games on Saturdays. And the Monday games are exclusive to Sportsnet+. So CBC has been completely removed from the NHL broadcast ecosystem.

This change doesn’t only affect Canadians. Some fans in the U.S. who live in certain Canadian border cities can receive CBC with a digital antenna or through TV providers, so they’ll miss out on the NHL games that previously aired on the network. Examples of major border markets include Detroit, Michigan; Buffalo, New York; and Seattle, Washington.

CableTV verdict: Messing with an institution is always a bad idea

Imagine if TNT and TBS just decided to stop airing 24 hours of “A Christmas Story,” a tradition that began in 1997. People would revolt.

That’s how monumental it feels for Sportsnet to take Hockey Night in Canada away from CBC. Nearly 75 years of history just … gone? And the explanation for it was that the cable channel had success airing the Olympics?

Watching hockey for free seems like a genuinely totemic experience for so many Canadian and American NHL fans. Yes, Sportsnet will help reduce blackouts and continue airing games on Saturdays under a rebranded name. In that sense, more hockey is a good thing.

But going from a situation where these games were available to people for free to one where those people will now have to pay for a service is just straight-up disenfranchisement, plain and simple.

It’s not surprising that when the news came out, fans from both countries decried the decision in droves. They shouldn’t stop screaming about it.

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