THE TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS are the most valuable, most talked about, most loved sports team in English Canada.
Launching a TV channel that’s all Leafs, all the time, was a no-brainer for team brass back in 2001. But without any games, LeafsTV left a little something to be desired, say viewers, and says executive producer and vice-president programming John Shannon (right).
That changes this season (and was supposed to last year, but for the NHL lockout) as LeafsTV will have a total of 21 Toronto Maple Leaf games – eight pre-season matchups and 13 regular season tilts – to go along with a bunch of minor pro games and U.S. college hockey.
The Leafs games will drive more subscribers to the channel, that much is certain. The team is in a special position among sports franchises in that fans will watch them no matter what, wherever they are. Even if they stink. There’s a good reason why so many Hockey Night in Canada games on the CBC are Leafs games. The team means ratings. Oh, holdout fans will pay the two bucks for LeafsTV now.
Shannon would love such team loyalty for the channel focused on his company’s other pro team, the NBA’s Toronto Raptors.
Roundball fans dig this channel (at least the ones in the east…), especially those with an HDTV set. RaptorsTV will show over 100 basketball games in high definition this season, thanks to what figures to be a slam-dunk approval of its HD application now before the CRTC.
Shannon has a distinguished history in sports television. He won an Emmy Award for his work as senior director of NBC Sports at the hockey venue for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games and was EP of the Olympic radio/television organization in the hockey venue at the Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan in 1998, among other Olympic assignments.
From 1994 to 2000, Shannon was EP at Hockey Night in Canada on CBC after holding other positions at the CBC from his start there in 1984.
Changes are afoot at Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment’s two digital channels. What follows below is an edited transcript of a recent chat between Shannon and www.cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien.
Greg O’Brien: Let’s start with what’s most topical, the 13 games on Leafs TV. What’s the response been to that so far and has it surprised you?
John Shannon: I think our initial response came when we announced this a year ago, and I think in the first week after we announced it, we had 15 to 20 e-mails from people who were very unhappy. Now these aren’t subscribers because anybody who was a LeafsTV subscriber was thrilled.
They understand the landscape and the process and over the last year we have prepared people so that when the announcement came out this time, the reaction has been “Oh yeah, that’s what you said you were going to do.”
Are there going to be a few disgruntled people? Sure. There always are. There are even disgruntled people when you don’t pay for it. And we’re prepared to grow with it and make it worth their while. We really believe that anybody who is a subscriber to the channel already knows that they’re getting more than the value of $2-a-month.
GOB: And digital has come a long way since your launch in 2001.
JS: Exactly. And now the next step in the evolution is we needed to put more quality content on – and I say that when I sit here with our basketball channel which delivers a lot of live, quality first-run content as well – and the amount of dollars we’re putting into (the 21 Leafs games) is millions of dollars in rights fees is probably one of the most prolific investments of programming on the digital tier.
GOB: You mentioned Raptors TV as well. What’s going to be new there?
JS: It’s not any secret any more that we’re in front of the Commission to get permission to move Raptors to Raptors NBA TV HD and we’re hoping by the first of November, we will start delivering over 100 basketball games in high definition across the country.
I think where LeafsTV needed the injection of the content, our basketball channel – for a single-sport channel really is one of the best offerings on the sports tier – we just have to convince the distributors and convince the viewers that if you’re a basketball fan, this is the place to go.
It’s colleges basketball and pro. Our ESPN Big Monday has been a huge success for us – it’s gotten us into the world of U.S. college basketball and now that we can distribute the games on behalf of the NBA in Canada, and we’ve been able to protect most of the TNT content – which is in HD – for ourselves, it’s really helped us.
GOB: How many of the HD games are going to be Raptors games?
JS: We’re not sure yet. What happens with the Raptors schedule is… we have to sit and discuss it with our partners. On Raptors NBA TV we will have 20 simulcasts with Rogers Sportsnet.
(But) we’re trying to get through our hockey situation first and we have not sat down with Sportsnet to say which (Raptors) games are going to be in high def yet.
GOB: Sportsnet has been a big pusher of HD as well.
JS: Absolutely, and the fact that they’re owned by a distributor has helped them push HD and quite frankly, I think it’s helped us, too. They’re much more prolific about it and understand it and want to do it, and I think that’s in many ways how partners are supposed to work together.
GOB: So, how far away are the Leafs games from HD?
JS: Well, that’s a great question. There will be some games that we produce for TSN and Sportsnet in HD, but we’re not quite sure where we are with LeafsTV yet in the HD model for those 13 regular season games, but you never know. HD is such a moving target still and if we do HD, we don’t have an HD license yet… but we’ve got other fish to fry yet.
We’ve got to put better TV on the air first and then we can address that.
GOB: When you say “better TV” what else is going to change on the schedules of the two channels?
JS: On the basketball side, in addition to ESPN Big Monday and TNT and the Raptors simulcasts, we’ve added the women’s NCAA final Four and on the hockey side, not only will we do 13 Leafs regular season games, we’ll probably do 20 Marlie (minor league) regular season games and then obviously, our regular live allotment of college hockey from the United States so… our focus on Leafs TV is to become much more game-driven.
We’re going to do a lot more games from the Pensacola Ice Pilots, which is the second-tier farm team of the Leafs – and they’ll be on tape delay. On a seven-day cycle, with Marlies and Leafs, other AHL games, college hockey and ECHL, we’ll probably have five games a week in prime time, which is a lot more than we’ve done in the past.
GOB: What about some of the surrounding programming like Reporters…
JS: As of Thanksgiving weekend, the original Reporters will be on Sunday and Reporters Saturday will come out of the Air Canada Centre.
Paul Romanuk (the former host) moved to England so we’ve moved Damien Goddard from our basketball side to be the new host of the Reporters so that’s one change. Leafs Today, the regular Leafs daily show has been moved from a half hour to an hour so our commitment is we’re starting to be a lot more focused on our content between our live news shows and being game-driven.
GOB: What about taking the content and moving it into an on demand environment? You see a lot of the game highlights in other sports, soccer springs to mind first, where a lot of the content is made available on demand with a video provider or even a cell phone provider within minutes after a game is completed. Is that something Leafs TV is looking at?
JS: Lesley (Hunter, MLSE’s manager, distributor relations) has been pushing us for a lot more VOD than we’ve probably been willing to do at this point. I’m not sure our business plan is to a point where we’re ready to branch out too quick.
But VOD is something we’re going to have to look at. Certainly the new NHL deal in the United States (with the NHL and Comcast-owned OLN)) is driven by a lot of VOD, so we’re going to be forced to look at it again and certainly on the basketball side, where we do control so much more inventory in Canada, VOD is a fact of life in probably the next six to 12 months.
GOB: You’ve been doing the “game-in-an-hour” right? Shortly after the normal game?
JS: On a weeknight, game-in-an-hour (where a 60-minute game is shown in about 60 actual minutes, with all the superfluous stuff taken out) appears at midnight.
GOB: Because to me, as a fan, that would be the perfect VOD vehicle.
JS: I guess my concern – and we need to address it with our distributors – is I’m not sure I want to give people the chance to do VOD before they buy Leafs TV. I think they should buy Leafs TV first and then say, as a Leafs TV subscriber, you can get game in an hour on VOD.
We’ve made our commitment based on this platform – to create a channel that was going to be 24/7 and have different layers of content. That may be an old-fashioned or conventional way to do it, but it also allows us to do a lot more integrated programming with corporate partners and with advertisers.
GOB: What you mentioned – being a Leafs TV subscriber first before getting VOD – that’s what TMN On Demand is. You only get it once you’re a subscriber to TMN.
JS: That’s right. And if we can do LeafsTV On Demand with the content we have, then it’s worth talking about. But we have to make sure that we can follow through on our original proposal, which is Leafs TV 24/7.
GOB: Have you gone to the Commission yet for a Leafs TV HD license yet as you have with Raptors TV?
JS: We have not. But, I wouldn’t rule that out in the near future.
GOB: And as for Raptors TV, is it now carried nation-wide, or do you still have that hole in the west?
JS: There is that hole at S-H-A-W… Both my brothers live in British Columbia and are Raptors TV subscribers so I’m not worried – they’re on Bell ExpressVu.
GOB: I understand.
JS: And I know we’re big on Delta Cable, too.
GOB: And a few other pockets too, I bet.
JS: That’s right.
GOB: You’ve got a long history producing sports, so I’m also curious that with the CBC lockout and the announcer-free games of late on CBC, what do you think of them and would you be willing to try anything like that?
JS: Harry Neale would kill me. I really think that we have to look at it – and more importantly – I think we have to learn from it. While I still think part of the broadcast is missing in what the commentators are saying, I think the fact that people have enjoyed (announcer-free games) should be a bit of a red flag to those of us in the industry. People don’t want wall-to-wall gab – people don’t want to have too much information. What they want is the right information.
The world has changed so drastically in our business and the knowledge of the fan has changed – not only about the sport but our business as well during my time – in 30 years. The evolution of play-by-play and color is just that it’s what we used on radio so we moved it to television and it just kept on going.
Then there were layers. My predecessors said that the announcers need to give us the experience of what it was like to play the game so that’s how the color-man, the analyst, was developed. That’s the Howie Meekers and Gary Dornhoefers and Mickey Redmonds and all those guys.
What we have to do is learn a little bit of what the CBC has gone through – and any producer and commentator in their right mind has to pay attention that maybe they should be a little more cognizant of what they say and how much they say.
GOB: You could offer it as a multiplex where people could subscribe to an announcer-free game.
JS: I think that world is coming. If you look at what the NFL Network did this year with pre-season games – with Oakland and Philadelphia they gave you the Oakland announcers in the first half and the Philadelphia announcers in the second half (from radio).
We don’t take advantage of technology in this country with the SAP button and maybe we should offer international sound on one channel. I think there’s some validity to that and that should be an option.
