With the NHL hockey season officially on ice, Canadian sports broadcasters are turning to Swedish hockey, vintage games, NASCAR, the NBA and any number of other tricks to stem the loss of ad dollars and to round out schedules that, for this year and perhaps next, have been left vacant by intractable hockey players and team owners.

And yet at least one sportscaster is – dare we say it? – quietly pleased by the cancellation, in that, for once, its springtime shows won’t be competing against the (usually) unbeatable NHL playoffs on CBC and TSN.

‘Everybody wants hockey back,’ says Rogers Sportsnet spokesperson Andy Shapiera. ‘It’s a money generator. But over the short term, we’re going to do okay.’

Sportsnet is Canada’s busiest Blue Jays carrier, and will have no interference from hockey during the start of this year’s baseball season. The sportscaster also has the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament set for March and April, and its exclusive coverage of the MasterCard Memorial Cup, the Canadian Men’s Junior Hockey Championship, will air in May – all without an NHL jersey in sight.

Sportsnet has not added any new programming following the NHL shutdown.

TSN, on the other hand, has just expanded its regular season NBA coverage from 20 games to 27 and, for the first time, has the exclusive Canadian rights to the NBA finals in June. The sports channel has also upped its NASCAR coverage by five races to 21, and expanded its planned coverage of the IIHF World Women’s Championship from three games to five.

Also new are nine games of the World Under-18 Hockey Championship from the Czech Republic and the IIHF Men’s championship, expanded from nine to 17 games and set for early May. TSN will also continue to air classic NHL games, which it introduced as NHL replacement programming, says TSN spokesperson Andrea Goldstein.

But will anyone be watching and, more importantly, will anyone pay for ad time?

Michael Dougherty, VP managing partner of Toronto media buyer Media Edge CIA, says that advertisers have redirected money usually earmarked for male demographics and the NHL.

‘It’s going to other male-oriented properties, such as other sports,’ he says. ‘It’s harder to deliver the same absolute number or reach with other sporting events, though. You would spend the money on six different properties, as opposed to one replacement.’

On the advertiser side, he says, the upcoming spring will force the biggest shift in strategy, noting, ‘Most companies that sponsor hockey spend about 50% of their dollars in the playoffs, which is April-May. That’s going to be where they will have the hardest time trying to replace it.’

The NBA playoffs, according to another media buyer, provide about one-tenth the reach of the NHL in this country.

Shortly after the NHL cancellation, TSN aired its six-hour hockey extravaganza Canada’s Game: Hockey Lives Here, watched by an average 2+ audience of 105,000.

‘We didn’t do it for the ratings,’ says Goldstein. ‘We did it to celebrate Canada’s commitment to the game. We’re pleased with the ratings.’ The show was hastily put together in five weeks after the CBC iced its own annual hockey special Hockey Day in Canada. She says it’s too early to tell whether TSN will remount the show next year.

TSN’s sister digichannels also rely on classic NHL games to fill the void. The NHL Network is televising the Classic Playoff Series, Top 10 hockey-themed shows, NHL All-Access programs, and Groundhog Sundays that relive the 2004 NHL season. NHL Network has also recently added to its lineup vintage NHL games from the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, as well as every game from the 2004 Stanley Cup playoffs.

NHL Network’s non-NHL-themed programming includes coverage from the upcoming 2005 IIHF Men’s World Hockey Championship, live NCAA hockey games, the ECHL game of the week and Kelly Cup playoffs, instructional hockey programs and historical highlights, says Goldstein.

ESPN Classic Canada, meanwhile, features a big dose of vintage NHL content, including Saturday night primetime blocks that feature classic NHL games, the Vancouver-made documentary series Legends of Hockey, and NHL Videos produced by NHL Productions.

The biggest loser in the NHL impasse is the CBC, which has reportedly lost advertising revenues of $20 million from the cancellation of the playoffs alone. At the onset of the NHL lockout, the pubcaster cut 30 staffers, it says, and word came down on Feb. 22 that longtime sports commentator Chris Cuthbert had been laid off as well.

Slawko Klymkiw, CBC’s executive director of network programming, is circumspect about programming alternatives sans hockey – preferring to let the public broadcaster promote its programming initiatives on its own timeline.

However, he acknowledges the need to maintain audience numbers and ad revenues to ensure the CBC can deliver on its significant promises related to Canadian drama programming next fall.

The CBC’s big-ticket movie stream Movie Night in Canada, for instance, will continue, he says, and without disclosing ratings or revenue numbers, adds that the replacement programming strategy has been successful in hip-checking some of the CBC’s lost hockey business.

‘We’re very pleased [with Movie Night in Canada],’ says Klymkiw. ‘We didn’t get the entire number back. We know that families are watching together and we’ve broadened our demographic. It’s gotten good feedback. But nothing can replace hockey.’

But the ad dollars must go somewhere. One media buyer remarked that, back in the fall, a planned $100 ad spend on Hockey Night in Canada would get knocked down to $20 on Movie Night in Canada, with the rest going to football on another network.

With files from Mark Dillon

-www.cbc.ca

-www.tsn.ca

-www.sportsnet.ca

-www.tsn.ca/nhl_network