TORONTO – If you’re a hockey fan with a high definition television set, you want to see as many games as possible in crisp, clear HD.
And if your favorite regional National Hockey League team is playing on Rogers Sportsnet, you don’t want to hear the technical and league reasons why there is poker on Sportsnet HD (shot in standard definition) while the game (shot in HD) appears in fuzzier analog on the SD Sportsnet channel.
The reasons why that was, was confusing enough for those of us in the industry, let alone a regular hockey fan.
Years ago, Sportsnet was able to sort out the boundary issues with its SD multiplex digital channels so that BDUs across the country could carry all four regional Sportsnet feeds (Pacific, West, Ontario and East). While due to NHL restrictions, those of us in Ontario still can’t watch a Calgary Flames home game, opening up the regional feeds to the entire country lets sports fans see more western baseball and basketball games. And when it comes to hockey, it allows Sportsnet to be the home of the home team.
However, when Sportsnet wanted to make its 80-plus regional hockey games for this season available in high definition, it wasn’t as simple as just layering in the HD feed into the pre-existing infrastructure.
There are capacity constraints to consider, as well as making sure those regional borders are held tight to that Leafs games aren’t seen in Ottawa’s territory, for example.
“The real challenge for us, and the thing that took us a long time to come up with a solution for, was the ability to fence our high definition broadcasts into the appropriate territory,” said Doug Beeforth, president of Rogers Sportsnet, in an interview with Cartt.ca.
Recalling Sportsnet’s launch in 1998, “this was exactly the same challenge we faced (then). We had to figure out how we could, with our standard definition broadcasts, make sure that they do not go outside their territories,” he explained.
So this year, Sportsnet put the word out that the Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, Toronto Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators games it owns as part of its regional NHL rights package would be made available to BDUs in high definition.
And those satellite and cable carriers have bought in (although the HD feed is being made available at no new cost, so it’s not literally buying in). In the Vancouver area, Shaw Cable, Delta Cable, Coast Cable, Novus Entertainment, Bell ExpressVu and Star Choice offer the new HD games.
In Calgary and in Edmonton, it’s Shaw, Star Choice and ExpressVu, while in Ottawa it’s the two satellite carriers and Rogers Cable Ottawa Valley and a few Cogeco systems.
Rogers, Cogeco, Compton Cable, Cable Cable, Bluewater TV Cable, Mountain Cable, Execulink Cablecom, Source Cable, Kincardine Cable, Ex-Cen Cablevision, Amtelecom Communications, Aurora Cable Internet, ExpressVu and Star Choice all offer Sportsnet’s Toronto Maple Leafs games in high definition.
And all of them “do it differently,” said Beeforth. Some substitute the signal, while Shaw, for example, puts the games on its own HD channel. In Rogers’ case, it leaves the primary Sportsnet HD channel alone and creates a separate channel for whatever HD game is being carried in a certain territory.
“But that does get into channel availability and capacity issues,” added Beeforth.
“It means we have to still do an HD channel for everybody else in Canada, so we end up offering two HD options and we say to the BDU folks ‘if you’re in the Leaf territory, you can take the Leaf game if you’re technically able to.’
“Where we’ll get to eventually is we’ll be swapping out that HD channel’s non-hockey material (like poker, or The Best Damn Sports Show), or we will end up offering four HD feeds, to match our four standard def feeds,” he added.
“That will be where this evolves to, but we’re not there yet.”
What will make it easier will be when Sportsnet moves from the CTV headquarters in Agincourt to its own new state-of-the-art studio and production facility being built on the Rogers campus on Bloor and Jarvis in downtown Toronto. “We will then have the technical infrastructure ourselves to be able to send out four feeds,” said Beeforth.
That move will happen in the first quarter of 2008.
The push for so much more HD – and doing the work to make sure that technically, this could happen without violating regional rights – came from all angles: BDUs, the league, the teams, and of course, the viewers. “We’re past the tipping point where hockey fans want to see all their games in HD,” said Beeforth
And, “in Canada, there’s not a lot of content that you’d place a higher value on than NHL hockey when it comes down to what people buy HD sets for.”
– Greg O’Brien
