From: mczody@athena.mit.edu (Michael C. Zody)
Subject: Re: What the world needs now is an AMERICAN TV CONTRACT.
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 15:32:22 GMT

I've been following this thread with some interest.  I thought people might like
to hear about hockey in non-hockey towns (sort of).
   Back when there was another league (WHL, WHA?  I never can remember), Houston
had a team.  They were called the Aeros, and they were pretty good.  I think
they won the league championship two or three years in a row.  They had Gordie
Howe and both his sons.  Eventually they went out of business because they
couldn't sell enough tickets (I don't suppose Gordie was really playing for
peanuts either) and merged with the Hartford Whalers (or something like that).
As far as I know, they were never on TV in Houston.
   I went to a game or two.  I guess I was in junior high then, and we didn't
know anything about hockey.  I'd been on ice skates once in my life and decided
this was something Texans couldn't learn to do.  Anyway, we didn't know what
was going on other than some guys were hitting each other a lot a chasing a
piece of rubber.  No one else knew what was going on either.  It seemed like an
entire section of spectators would issue a collective "huh?" everytime icing
was called.  Basically, we were all just sitting there waiting for a fight to
break out because that was the only thing we could understand.
   The problem with a big U.S. TV contract is that that's the half of the market
it's going to play to.  No one is going to preempt games that everyone can
understand to run hockey instead.  I would agree that an ESPN contract would
be good for the league, but ESPN has enough other good sports to run that they
aren't going to show hockey more than once or twice a week, which isn't really
what we, the fans, want.  As far as a major broadcast network is concerned, 
forget it.  Even if they did want it, look how many baseball games CBS has shown
since forking out some ridiculous sum for the contract.  Can you imagine being
a baseball fan and having that as the only station showing games?
   It has been suggested that expanding to more U.S. markets and banning fighting
is the route to go.  As I've already said, most U.S. markets can't understand
anything but the fighting, and there are a lot of good reasons to keep it in
the game (personally, I think the other contact sports should loosen their rules
about it to cut down some of the other bull**** that goes on during games when
everyone knows that only the retaliator gets caught).  As far as expansion, the
days of big money national contracts should be fading as SportsChannel counts
its losses on the NHL and CBS goes into the red on MLB.  This means that
expansion should be based on the ability of the franchise to remain solvent
through revenues from local ticket sales and TV contracts.  If no one watches,
it won't fly.  What the league doesn't need is more failed teams.
   As far as building more support in the U.S. in concerned, the way to do it
is the way soccer has done it:  support local youth leagues.  Sure, it's a long
term plan, but until people start playing the game, they won't watch it.  This
isn't a completely ridiculous plan, either.  Hockey is a game Americans can go
for:  it's got a lot of fast action and violence, sort of like football on ice,
only it's not as boring.  Even in the south there's a fair amount of ice, if
someone would just create the interest in using it for hockey.
   Of course, what it all comes down to is how much is enough.  Hockey is run
like most American business today:  buy now, pay never.  Unfortunately, I don't
really think Uncle Sam is going to bail out the NHL when it goes under.  The
teams need to look seriously at how much they can afford to pay and what they're
really going to make.  However, it's going to be hard to start cutting back
contracts.  Maybe a salary cap and more league profit-sharing could solve it.
Maybe somebody will just win the Stanley Cup a couple times without a superstar
free agent on their team just to prove it can be done and then salaries will
even out.  I suppose baseball will get there first and everyone else can learn
from what happens to them.
   I'd like to be able to tie this all up neatly into my plan to help the NHL,
but the point is that there isn't really one simply, short term solution.
Sorry this was a bit longer than I anticipated.

Michael Zody