Hockey Night in Canada stayed on the air. So did the Oscars, Friends and almost all the other big-draw shows on Canada’s big three networks. Contrary to what many had predicted, the war with Iraq did not open with a massive bombing campaign, did not pre-empt many shows, and has not, so far, caused massive revenue loss from round-the-clock news coverage.

Just a few weeks ago, execs at CTV, CBC and CanWest Global were planning to go commercial-free for 24, 48 or even 72 hours to cover the outbreak of war in the Persian Gulf. Significant revenue loss was expected, but that’s not the way it played out.

‘It has had a much milder effect than we supposed,’ says Jack Tomik, president of CanWest media sales. ‘Because of the nature of how this war has rolled out, advertisers initially pulled out, but now they’re right back at it, with very few exceptions.’

Mark Jan Vrem, managing director of Global National News, agrees. ‘We’re not saving any money on the operational side but we are saving money on the revenue loss side… We haven’t had to blow out commercials for 24 or 48 hours so, in that sense, the war hasn’t been as costly.’ CWG expects to pay $1 million to $2 million per month to cover the war, and currently has 10 reporters stationed in the region – including Jeff Steven in Turkey, Wilf Dinnick in Kuwait, and a handful of print reporters recruited from the CanWest newspapers.

Likewise, advertisers at CBC backed away from the first few days of the war, but most have since returned, says chief marketing and sales rep Doug Brooks. ‘They’re trying to get an understanding of how this thing is going to play out,’ he says. ‘It’s kind of a wait-and-see situation. There’ve been times we’ve broken away for extensive news coverage, but then we’re back to regular programming and it’s business as usual.’

By the end of the first weekend of the war, CBC had gone commercial-free, off and on, for roughly 30 hours, most of it when hostilities broke out on the night of March 19, and during the first wave of ‘shock and awe’ bombing on March 21.

‘We go with the flow,’ says CBC News editor-in-chief Tony Burman. ‘We had our people in position where we wanted and we’re very flexible in terms of airtime.’ CBC has 13 people covering the war, including Paul Workman in Kuwait, Sasa Petricic in Turkey and Don Murray who, having retreated from Baghdad, is expected to return. Workman will also follow the troops into Iraq. ‘Our concern is we don’t want to go overboard, so there’s a proper balance of programming. We’ve got to be careful because we’re in this for the long haul,’ says Burman.

But he warns it is still too early to predict how the new Gulf War will affect the programming or balance sheets of any network. ‘We’ve got to wait until this thing is over and then make an assessment,’ he says.

‘It’s going to take the accountants days and maybe weeks to find out what [the impact] might be,’ says CTV senior VP Rick Lewchuk, adding that, even if ad revenue drops at some point, it will likely rebound. ‘The advertisers still have to get their message out. They still have these dollars allocated, so they will be doing additional buys. We found that right after 9/11 there was a pullback of ads, but a lot of ad money came back very quickly. It bounced back because there’s a pent-up need to get the advertising out.’

The biggest problem with going commercial-free, he says, is not the expense. It’s the timing. ‘We’ve got five time zones in this country and we could be running five different shows,’ he says. ‘What are you breaking into? Is it the middle of a kids cartoon and you’re showing dead bodies strewn all around? You have to take the viewer into account.’

Getting on the air ‘one minute before the competition’ isn’t all-important, he says, ‘because the viewer at home isn’t flipping channels to see who got on first.’

-www.canwestglobal.com

-www.cbc.ca

-www.ctv.ca