Does TSN Give The CFL Enough Respect?

Benji, can you please stop calling the CFL “1A” in terms of it’s pecking order in Canada. It’s #2, and as a guy who doesn’t like hockey, I have no problem admitting that hockey will always come before football in this country. That’s just the way it is. And even if it was up there with hockey, football would be 1B, not 1A. Hockey would be 1A.

:thup: Excellently said. I agree with every single point you made.

that is a good point…they only have 4 games they can discuss in pregames. other leagues have triple that.

If you look at TSN’'s TV ratings, the CFL does better then all American NHL games
And matches many Canadian team numbers.
It is 1A as far as TV ratings for TSN goes.
Yet it gets second rate treatment.
Cohon can’t be happy with everything TSN is doing.
To me it looks like TSN is backing off on the pushing the league.
Maybe Cohon is leaning towards CBC and TSN can’t match so they’re cutting back on the promotion?
Time will tell.
Bit in my opinion TSN has to step up their game more and give fans of the
league more respect.

as i said it does well in a per game rating. Now think about yearly viewership. You think the CFL would touch NBA, NHA, MLB who have 10 times as many games over the year? NFL…maybe, because they show limited number of games, BUT there is a lot of competition for the NFL, and they have to keep pace with other networks.

Lets say the CFL has 600K viewers per game average…that is 43mil viewers a year (plus post season)
now lets look at NHL…151 games this season…lets say 350k average = almost 53mil viewers a year.

its all in how you want to crunch the numbers. And like pointed out, there is a lot more to talk about in a pregame for a league that has more than 4 games a week.

TSN isn’t the only station that shows NHL hockey in this country. You can’t just take TSN’s ratings and say that’s why the CFL is 1A in terms of pro sports in Canada. You are eliminating an extremely large segment by just focusing on TSN. Hockey Night in Canada has draws 2 million people a week. That’s one game on one night. The fact of the matter is more people watch hockey in Canada than watch football. That’s not a slight against the CFL, it’s just a fact. I would much rather watch football. And I will watch the Stamps-Lions game tonight instead of the hockey games. But hockey is still king in Canada, and if you take all the ratings from all the networks it will paint a much more accurate picture of what is tops in Canadian sport.

CFL will do around 700,000 a game this year.
Playoffs around one million plus.
Grey Cup 6 million.
NBA doesn't come close.
Baseball doesn't come close.
If tSN doesn't want to push the CFL more for some reason, if I'm Cohon I ask why.

Here's the TSN website as of 9.58 PM.

http://www.tsn.ca/

Do you see any promotion of the big game tonight?
Was there a mention of the game on Sportsdesk except for at the end?
Very strange way to promote a major property like the CFL.

No, they are promoting the return of the Winnipeg Jets (which will do HUGE numbers) and their lead story is the passing of Al Davis (which transcends any sports league). The return of the Jets and Davis’s death is bigger news than a Week 15 CFL game between any two teams.

Besides, if two minutes before kickoff you don’t know that the game is on, no promotion will matter.

Like I say.
You guys settle for whatever they give you.
Like Al DAvis?
Sorry he died, but whats it got to do with us.
And if you didn't know the game was on tonight, you sure won't now.
Thats how you promote the CFL?
LOok how Rogers pushes the Blue Jays.
Why isn't TSN doing that for the CFL?
Thats all I'm asking

While TSN could add some more analysis style content during the week, they cover every game and do a very good job overall. Remember how brutal CBC was!

I don't know.
So we're saying we should be happy with TSN because they're not as bad as CBC was?

Why shouldn’t we be happy? When something is vastly improved over the way it was before, even if it’s less than perfect, the typical reaction is not excessive negativity, but that seems to be all you can muster.

If your behaviour outside if this forum is anything like how you are in here, I would seriously hate to be a member of your family trying to buy you a gift. No matter what they give you, based on what I see here, I expect that you wouldn’t be grateful and you’d just complain that it wasn’t something better.

The Bombers could win the Grey cup this year and end their long slump, city will go crazy. It won’t even come close to what is going to happen at MTS center tomorrow at 4pm , in terms of excitement and meaning!

I have to agree with the majority while the CFL isn’t always going to be on the front page of the TSN website on game day, I remember the days I would watch TSN and the Canadian media never say anything nice about the CFL, coast to coast it was like watching an elderly out of date relative die.

Since the 80’s and 90’s I’ve watched a network (TSN) for the first time make the CFL look legit, and take the atmosphere of a real game and bring it to the TV. The CFL has grown, now the news is about the games, and the players.

I say be happy when I was growing up if the league got any news it was about how long until the league dies.

I say TSN has done an incredible job in the last ten years, and continues to do so, so the NFL gets a game day televised TSN does show the NFL as well.

In the end all CFL games are shown, no blackouts thats huge I remember never being able to watch some big football games as a kid and having to hear them on the radio. Times have changed and i am grateful to TSN for that.

TSN is The Sports Network. Not the CFL Network.

Giving the CFL Respect does not mean completely ignoring other things like the NFL. The Al Davis story is big news.

TSN isn’t just “not as bad” as the CBC was. They are very good. Do you not remember how pathetic the coverage used to be? Now, as I mentioned earlier, we have the top-50 players thing every year. We have the weekly game ball segment. We have the panel on SC whenever there’s a CFL game. There’s plenty of coverage on SportsCentre. EVERY GAME is televised… and now, we have the draft on TV! We have actual prospect rankings. It wasn’t long ago there were CFL games untelevised. Now we have all this. So they skip a pre-game show now and then… oh well! It’s come a long way, and right now, the CFL is definitely treated at least as well as the NHL and NFL and better than MLB and the NBA.

And maybe we don’t get quite equal time compared to other leagues… well yeah - we have one game, maybe two games a night… four games a week… there’s a lot more to talk about in the other, bigger leagues.

In general, TSN treats the CFL very well.

TSN broadcasts 100% of the CFL games. That's 12 hours a week. They do occasional pregame shows and have a panel on sportcenter. People want a pregame show for every game? That's 14 hours a week. Add a postgame show and that's 16 hours a week. Add the panel every once in a while and thats even more coverage. How much does TSN have to do to "show respect?". Bigger leagues get more coverage because there are more games.

TSN does a terrific job covering the CFL. :thup:

....seems a lot of fans think there's room for improvement by tsn...I agree and it should start with some new play-by- play guys....Some will always feel we are getting the 'Rodney Dangerfield' no respect tag...
...So i'll leave this one with a Dangerfield anecdote:
...Rodney...' i went to take my son out to a father and sons banquet the other day, but when i arrived to pick him up he was walking down the street with the milkman'.....

Now that's what i call NO respect....C'MON TSN ..YOU CAN DO BETTER.. :thup:

Ok, so replace Rod Black and everything will be perfect. :stuck_out_tongue:

those complaining about tsn re cfl either have very short memories, or are very young. We have NEVER had it so good. TSN is in the drivers seat. They could do less, and pay less and nothing the CFL could do about it because there is no real competition for TSN. I am totally greatfull to TSN and see no reason for anyone to try to upset the applecart.