Breaking News: NHL playoffs are on TV…and some people are actually watching

Posted on April 28th, 2009. Written by Emmett Jones.

That’s right folks, there are at least hundreds of thousands of you out there, that care about hockey (pronounced “ockey” i think.  I was told that the “H” is silent).

Versus, over 16 games through April 22, averaged a 0.4 rating, a 33% rise from 0.3 mark during the corresponding period in the NHL’s 2008 post-season, according to Nielsen Media Research.

All told, the Comcast-owned service delivered 449,379 viewers on average, a 50% jump from 300,033 through 16 opening-round contests last year.

On the demo front, the competition channel registered a 39% gain among men 18 to 49 and a 52% advance among guys 25 to 54, according to Versus officials.

So, Versus has seen a jump in viewership, which obviously is good news (Pounds and hand-claps to hockey fans everywhere), but what has it accomplished really?  For the sake of comparison,  the Rockets vs. Trailblazers game  brought in over 3 million viewers on Saturday.  As I’ve stated before, the NHL/Versus deal is great for Versus, but not so much for the NHL.  Even with the increase in viewership, the NHL on its best day, can only be described as “the fastest in the slow group”.  The NHL needs to consistently appear on a major network through the course of an entire season, or Versus needs to reach TNT/ESPN levels in terms of access to their station.  The longer the NHL goes without seeing any of these two scenarios comes to fruition, the longer they will only be a second tier sport.
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MultiChannel.com — Versus Nets 50% viewership surge w/NHL Playoffs (via TV by the Numbers)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Emmett Jones

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