No Clever Moniker wrote:
Satellite and then cable pushsed PPV/subscription TV out of the picture around the same time that ESPN began to push aside the broadcast sports networks. That was the early 80s. Wirtz, under the guise of protecting his "season reservation" holders would still black out the first period of televised road games. I can't speak for Canadian TV markets except that they had hockey night Canada to give the league exposure.
Hockey Night in Canada was actually a production of Molson's ad agency from its inception up through the late '90s, when the CBC started producing it in-house. They basically only carried the Leafs (Ontario and points west) and Habs (Quebec and points east), with rare appearances from the western teams, western doubleheaders being a fairly recent concept as well, and never the Nordiques. The Habs also had a French version of HNIC on the French version of the CBC. Over-the-air stations picked up local games here and there, but the idea of dedicated RSNs didn't reach Canada until around 1998, I think, a good 15 years after MSG, NESN, and PRISM pioneered the concept. Even today, the Jets don't have an RSN
per se, they just override TSN's national feed in their region when their games are on.
The extent to which everyone but Toronto and Montreal got the televisual shaft well into the 1990s explains why the whole country is still full of Leafs fans coast to coast: they didn't really have much of a choice. Hell, the Leafs tried to block expansion into Vancouver on the basis of the Canucks infringing on their territorial rights. Even Jerry Reinsdorf would say "wow, guys, kinda being a dick on that one."
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Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
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) for them. Once the Cubs lose, the rest of them will come out of the woodwork. The longtime fans are fine for the most part. The newbies are nearly insufferable.