Post by Booker Thee on Apr 21, 2005 7:14:28 GMT -5
pwinsider.com
ESPN's recent acquisition of Monday Night Football may have international ramifications on WWE's TSN timeslot on Monday Nights in Canada, according to an article in today's edition of the Globe and Mail newspaper in Canada.
According to the article by William Houston, TSN is expected to have the inside track to Canadian coverage of Monday Night Football as ESPN is a minority owner of TSN. TSN also currently has a contract with the National Football League which gives them the Canadian rights to any football games ESPN airs in the United States.
Houston notes that while WWE has been one of the network's leading ratings maker for the last decade, football games that currently air on TSN on Sundays draw as many viewers as Raw does on Monday evenings (listed as 350,000 viewers), plus Monday Night Football will be an easier (and more attractive) fit for advertisers due to the more high profile and accepted nature of the NFL vs. professional wrestling.
The article also noted that NBC, which paid $600 million a year for the rights to the Sunday NFL games starting in 2006, has huge penetration in Canada, which makes airing the Sunday games much less feasible for TSN. Thus, TSN is expected to go for Monday Night Football.
Houston predicts that WWE on TSN will end up the casualty of the situation, but will have the chance to be quickly picked up by Sportsnet or The Score in Canada.
Thanks to Christopher Spencer for passing along the article and contributing.
Adam Lebow sent the following in regard to the TSN story....Just something interesting I thought I should pass along. When TSN announced the NBC deal on Sportscenter, they mentioned the fact that TSN will continue to carry Sunday Night Football. Furthermore, while NBC does have major penetration in Canada (with either the Seatle, Buffalo, Detroit, Boston or New York feed available depending on your local provider), for the past few years, Craig Media which is the owner of 'The A Channel' network and Toronto1 has still picked up the feed and has had local cable and satellite providers switch the American Network to the Canadian Feed so the Canadian Commercials could be shown in place of the American ones. It should also be noted that Craig Media is a network, where as some cable stations have not placed the Canadian feed on top of the American feed, such as Sportsnet and the MLB on Fox (FOX also has market penetration).
Will be interesting to see, however at least we have at least a year until the ESPN Monday Night Football experiment takes place...
As a funny little side note, if WWE wasnt moving or to NBC/USA, WWE Canada could have gone and decided to have SpikeTV Canada pickup the feed of Raw instead of being forced to put CSI Reruns and endless ammounts of commercials during the WWE Overruns, in its place.
ESPN's recent acquisition of Monday Night Football may have international ramifications on WWE's TSN timeslot on Monday Nights in Canada, according to an article in today's edition of the Globe and Mail newspaper in Canada.
According to the article by William Houston, TSN is expected to have the inside track to Canadian coverage of Monday Night Football as ESPN is a minority owner of TSN. TSN also currently has a contract with the National Football League which gives them the Canadian rights to any football games ESPN airs in the United States.
Houston notes that while WWE has been one of the network's leading ratings maker for the last decade, football games that currently air on TSN on Sundays draw as many viewers as Raw does on Monday evenings (listed as 350,000 viewers), plus Monday Night Football will be an easier (and more attractive) fit for advertisers due to the more high profile and accepted nature of the NFL vs. professional wrestling.
The article also noted that NBC, which paid $600 million a year for the rights to the Sunday NFL games starting in 2006, has huge penetration in Canada, which makes airing the Sunday games much less feasible for TSN. Thus, TSN is expected to go for Monday Night Football.
Houston predicts that WWE on TSN will end up the casualty of the situation, but will have the chance to be quickly picked up by Sportsnet or The Score in Canada.
Thanks to Christopher Spencer for passing along the article and contributing.
Adam Lebow sent the following in regard to the TSN story....Just something interesting I thought I should pass along. When TSN announced the NBC deal on Sportscenter, they mentioned the fact that TSN will continue to carry Sunday Night Football. Furthermore, while NBC does have major penetration in Canada (with either the Seatle, Buffalo, Detroit, Boston or New York feed available depending on your local provider), for the past few years, Craig Media which is the owner of 'The A Channel' network and Toronto1 has still picked up the feed and has had local cable and satellite providers switch the American Network to the Canadian Feed so the Canadian Commercials could be shown in place of the American ones. It should also be noted that Craig Media is a network, where as some cable stations have not placed the Canadian feed on top of the American feed, such as Sportsnet and the MLB on Fox (FOX also has market penetration).
Will be interesting to see, however at least we have at least a year until the ESPN Monday Night Football experiment takes place...
As a funny little side note, if WWE wasnt moving or to NBC/USA, WWE Canada could have gone and decided to have SpikeTV Canada pickup the feed of Raw instead of being forced to put CSI Reruns and endless ammounts of commercials during the WWE Overruns, in its place.