They lead from start to finish today, ending the second longest losing streak in NFL history.
They beat the Washington Redskins 19-14 today at Ford Field, Detroit.
I would think, in the time honoured tradition of sports in North America, this momentous victory will be followed by a riot.
The view from Windsor will be incroyable.
WFDS
Showing posts with label Windsor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Windsor. Show all posts
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
652...Hockey Mad Canada Less Hockey Mad
A study Misty Harris wrote about in your Friday Canwest newspaper says that in 1990 35 per cent of Canadian adults were hockey fans; in 2005 that number was 30 per cent. And, although there is no way of proving this, I betcha the number would be in the high 20's today.
The University of Lethbridge's Reginald Bibby postulates in his new book The Emerging Millennials that immigration patterns and an explosion of entertainment options are re shaping the national dynamic.
Like all academics, especially those from second rate universities [go Pronghorns!] the obvious is way too easy for Professor Smarty Pants.
Canadian NHL teams pretty much suck the pipe, especially in the playoffs.
Last time a team from Canuckistan won a Stanley Cup was in 1993; that was eons ago. But, again with the unprovable bets, I betcha that the love of hockey hasn't abated in Windsor, Ontario. Why? Because of a shift in the monocultural dynamic? No. Because their team, the Detroit Red Wings, have won the Stanley Cup four times and made it to the finals two times in the last decade and a bit.
I bet he can spin a grad course out of this.
WFDS
The University of Lethbridge's Reginald Bibby postulates in his new book The Emerging Millennials that immigration patterns and an explosion of entertainment options are re shaping the national dynamic.
Like all academics, especially those from second rate universities [go Pronghorns!] the obvious is way too easy for Professor Smarty Pants.
Canadian NHL teams pretty much suck the pipe, especially in the playoffs.
Last time a team from Canuckistan won a Stanley Cup was in 1993; that was eons ago. But, again with the unprovable bets, I betcha that the love of hockey hasn't abated in Windsor, Ontario. Why? Because of a shift in the monocultural dynamic? No. Because their team, the Detroit Red Wings, have won the Stanley Cup four times and made it to the finals two times in the last decade and a bit.
I bet he can spin a grad course out of this.
WFDS
Monday, June 22, 2009
349...We Love To Talk In Canada
Talk.
And talk.
And talk some more.
In my town, Ottawa, we have been talking about moving the Central Canada Exhibition, The Ex, since the middle of World War Two. Still at Lansdowne Park. We have been talking about building rapid transit, a subway, something something, in this town since, minimum, the 1974 mayoralty eleciton. Still no rapid transit.
Parliament Hill is in my town and on the Hill they have been talking about buliding a superfast supertrain from Quebec City to Windsor as long as I can remember and I can remember back into the 1960's.
Here we go again.
Mike De Souza of Canwest News Services writes this morning that Joe Volpe, the Liberal Party transportation critic, says that now is the time for such a train and that it would aid in nation building. Even though they are separatists, the BQ follows the Canadian way and to that end the Bloc Quebecois transportation critic, Mario Laframboise dit "no way", unless of course, the nation you are talking about is Quebec and then what do we need a train for anyhow?
Oy f'ing vey.
Do something already.
WFDS
And talk.
And talk some more.
In my town, Ottawa, we have been talking about moving the Central Canada Exhibition, The Ex, since the middle of World War Two. Still at Lansdowne Park. We have been talking about building rapid transit, a subway, something something, in this town since, minimum, the 1974 mayoralty eleciton. Still no rapid transit.
Parliament Hill is in my town and on the Hill they have been talking about buliding a superfast supertrain from Quebec City to Windsor as long as I can remember and I can remember back into the 1960's.
Here we go again.
Mike De Souza of Canwest News Services writes this morning that Joe Volpe, the Liberal Party transportation critic, says that now is the time for such a train and that it would aid in nation building. Even though they are separatists, the BQ follows the Canadian way and to that end the Bloc Quebecois transportation critic, Mario Laframboise dit "no way", unless of course, the nation you are talking about is Quebec and then what do we need a train for anyhow?
Oy f'ing vey.
Do something already.
WFDS
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
310...Shell Shocked Economies
Life is tough in Detroit, Michigan, the epicentre of the world's economic crisis and, in a Canadian Press story and The Conference Board of Canada is naming a component of Metro Detroit, Windsor, Ontario, as ground zero of the economic recession in our nation.
Things are not rosy anywhere in The Great White North but they are especially not rosy in the Rose City where the economy is slated to shrink 5.6 per cent which is more than double the projection for the country as a whole, 2.5 per cent.
Most of the gloom is in Ontario; the only non Ontario city in dire straits is St. John's, Newfoundland, which is getting rocked by the drop in the price of oil. Ironically, of the fourteen mid sized cities surveyed only one, the other Johnnie, Saint John, New Brunswick, is showing growth.
WFDS
Things are not rosy anywhere in The Great White North but they are especially not rosy in the Rose City where the economy is slated to shrink 5.6 per cent which is more than double the projection for the country as a whole, 2.5 per cent.
Most of the gloom is in Ontario; the only non Ontario city in dire straits is St. John's, Newfoundland, which is getting rocked by the drop in the price of oil. Ironically, of the fourteen mid sized cities surveyed only one, the other Johnnie, Saint John, New Brunswick, is showing growth.
WFDS
Friday, June 12, 2009
276...More On Hockey
Could you ask for more?
It comes down to this, game 7, Stanley Cup Finals in the city that bills itself as Hockeytown, Detroit.
It is the Windsor Red Wings, favourites, against the Sidney Crosby Pittsburgh Penguins.
8 o'clock tonite, CBC's Hockey Night In Canada if you are a true hockey fan and NBC's coverage for the more casual fan.
I will explain my reasoning re CBC/NBC. The NBC broadcast offers more background on the teams, players and leagues; CBC, which caters to those of us in The Great White North, assumes that you know the game.
Different styles, both excellent broadcasts.
WFDS
It comes down to this, game 7, Stanley Cup Finals in the city that bills itself as Hockeytown, Detroit.
It is the Windsor Red Wings, favourites, against the Sidney Crosby Pittsburgh Penguins.
8 o'clock tonite, CBC's Hockey Night In Canada if you are a true hockey fan and NBC's coverage for the more casual fan.
I will explain my reasoning re CBC/NBC. The NBC broadcast offers more background on the teams, players and leagues; CBC, which caters to those of us in The Great White North, assumes that you know the game.
Different styles, both excellent broadcasts.
WFDS
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
247...Big Opportunity For CBC/HNIC
That's a big opportunity for Hockey Night In Canada. Seems that the American rights holder to the NHL Stanley Cup Final telecasts, NBC, is none too happy with the fact that both the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings have been holding viewing parties in and around their respective arenas when their teams are on the road.
Here is a cut and paste from the Detroit News morning edition:
Here is a cut and paste from the Detroit News morning edition:
There will be no Joe Vision broadcast of Tuesday night's Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals because NBC would not rescind its exclusive rights to the telecast.The game will not be shown at Pittsburgh's outdoor plaza either. At issue is television ratings, and a large crowd at Joe Louis Arena could be hundreds -- if not thousands -- of television sets not tuned in to NBC. "It is certainly something we wanted to show but were unable to secure the rights," said Steve Violetta, Senior Vice President of Business Affairs for the Wings. NBC representative Brian Walker did not immediately return a phone message for comment, but NHL media relations vice president Frank Brown confirmed the situation while expressing sympathy to Red Wings fans. "We are very much in tune and very sensitive to the great experience that fans have by coming to a great venue and watching a great hockey game," Brown said. "That said we need to be sensitive to the business end of things and that business is ratings driven."
Shortsighted, very, on the part of NBC but this is where CBC could and should step up to the plate, probably won't, but should. The Windsor station, channel 9 CBET, comes in nicely both over the air and on cable in the [former] Motor City so, iffen they wanted to, Joe Vision [referring to the Joe Louis Arena] could still come off.
A bit tricky dicky for certain but it could happen.
WFDS
Friday, June 5, 2009
212...Sidney Comes Back
Last night, did you see the sea of Terrible Towels? Kid Sidney Crosby leads his team, Pittsburgh Penguins don't you know, to a come from behind victory over the Windsor Red Wings in the Stanley Cup Finals.
For those of you keeping track at home, the series is now tied at two games per.
For those of you keeping track at home, part two, Pittsburgh is one of the many NHL teams Jim Balsillie has tried to buy and move to Hamilton.
WFDS
For those of you keeping track at home, the series is now tied at two games per.
For those of you keeping track at home, part two, Pittsburgh is one of the many NHL teams Jim Balsillie has tried to buy and move to Hamilton.
WFDS
Saturday, May 9, 2009
109...NHL, Group Think and Failure
The National Hockey League and their commish Gary Bettman are the most absurdly run major professional sports league in North America and most likely the world.
Just because you say something over and over and over again does not make it true but it does reinforce group think.
Case in point comes from Rod Bryden's interview in Friday's Ottawa Citizen under Don Brennan's byline where the former owner of the Ottawa Senators wraps himself in the flag and repeats the company line which is small market Canadian cities, like Ottawa, cannot make it in a world full of big bad American cities that want to steal our hockey teams and make them our own.
It is Joesph Goebbels big lie theory redux; if you say it enough and with sincerity then it must be true. No one, and I mean no one, in media, either main stream or in the blog sphere has ever questioned the fact that little ol' Ottawa is a small market.
The only fly in the ointment is that we are not a small market. We are not Toronto or New York or Montreal that is for true but out of about 300 markets in North America we are in the top 20 per cent.
Keep in mind sports fans that the NHL is not selling corn flakes or pop or cars, they are selling a specific product, hockey, and when you take that into account Ottawa is safely ensconced in the top 10 per cent of North American markets, as are Edmonton and Calgary.
When Mr. Bryden's Ottawa Senators were spiralling into bankruptcy he kept saying what he said in yesterday's Citizen: I could have sold them to an American market for a lot more money than keeping them here. Yeah, well, no. Seriously, where Mr. Bryden, where? No one ever asked that question. Until now.
The truth of the matter is in the little story right below the piece on Mr. Bryden where our beloved Premier, Dalton McGuinty is quoted in an uncredited piece as saying "I don't know what's up with these guys. I mean, this is a great market [referring to Hamilton and Southern Ontario]...the strongest and most committed fan base on the face of the planet. We would welcome one, two or three more franchises in the province of Ontario." The Premier suggested that the NHL come to grips with the realities of the hockey business, that being it works well in markets that have snow. He is, of course, right.
You could drop a team in Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo and somewhere north or east of the CN Tower and do just fine with those clubs. For those of you who have been to the Joe Louis in Detroit, do you think it is a coincidence that the Detroit Red Wings rink is right, right, right on the border with Windsor, Ontario? For those of you not familiar with Detroit's demographics, the metro is a bit over 21 per cent Black, a bit under 4 per cent Hispanic but the city of Detroit is about 90 per cent Black and about no per cent White. Look around next time you are at a hockey game, it is very pink and pale in that house. If the owners of the Wings were merely marketing to their Michigan fans the arena would be above 8 Mile Road; in a lot of respects the Detroit Red Wings are really the Windsor Red Wings.
The concept of a metro in North America having more than one major league team in the same sport should not be anathema, in fact the NHL has two teams in the Los Angeles region and three in the New York City area, spread out over two markets in both locales. You can not tell me or anyone sane that there are more hockey fans in either places than in Toronto. In England's Premier League [soccer] London has five teams, Liverpool and Manchester, a pair each and best I can figure Birmingham will have two in the Premier League next season. It is germane to point out that the combined population of Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham is less than the GTA and Liverpool is smaller than Ottawa-Gatineau. Therefore, the concept of cities spread tens of klicks from each other in the most hockey mad part of the world having individual clubs in the NHL should also not be anathema. It should be an no brainer.
Which may be Gary Bettman's problem.
WFDS
Just because you say something over and over and over again does not make it true but it does reinforce group think.
Case in point comes from Rod Bryden's interview in Friday's Ottawa Citizen under Don Brennan's byline where the former owner of the Ottawa Senators wraps himself in the flag and repeats the company line which is small market Canadian cities, like Ottawa, cannot make it in a world full of big bad American cities that want to steal our hockey teams and make them our own.
It is Joesph Goebbels big lie theory redux; if you say it enough and with sincerity then it must be true. No one, and I mean no one, in media, either main stream or in the blog sphere has ever questioned the fact that little ol' Ottawa is a small market.
The only fly in the ointment is that we are not a small market. We are not Toronto or New York or Montreal that is for true but out of about 300 markets in North America we are in the top 20 per cent.
Keep in mind sports fans that the NHL is not selling corn flakes or pop or cars, they are selling a specific product, hockey, and when you take that into account Ottawa is safely ensconced in the top 10 per cent of North American markets, as are Edmonton and Calgary.
When Mr. Bryden's Ottawa Senators were spiralling into bankruptcy he kept saying what he said in yesterday's Citizen: I could have sold them to an American market for a lot more money than keeping them here. Yeah, well, no. Seriously, where Mr. Bryden, where? No one ever asked that question. Until now.
The truth of the matter is in the little story right below the piece on Mr. Bryden where our beloved Premier, Dalton McGuinty is quoted in an uncredited piece as saying "I don't know what's up with these guys. I mean, this is a great market [referring to Hamilton and Southern Ontario]...the strongest and most committed fan base on the face of the planet. We would welcome one, two or three more franchises in the province of Ontario." The Premier suggested that the NHL come to grips with the realities of the hockey business, that being it works well in markets that have snow. He is, of course, right.
You could drop a team in Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo and somewhere north or east of the CN Tower and do just fine with those clubs. For those of you who have been to the Joe Louis in Detroit, do you think it is a coincidence that the Detroit Red Wings rink is right, right, right on the border with Windsor, Ontario? For those of you not familiar with Detroit's demographics, the metro is a bit over 21 per cent Black, a bit under 4 per cent Hispanic but the city of Detroit is about 90 per cent Black and about no per cent White. Look around next time you are at a hockey game, it is very pink and pale in that house. If the owners of the Wings were merely marketing to their Michigan fans the arena would be above 8 Mile Road; in a lot of respects the Detroit Red Wings are really the Windsor Red Wings.
The concept of a metro in North America having more than one major league team in the same sport should not be anathema, in fact the NHL has two teams in the Los Angeles region and three in the New York City area, spread out over two markets in both locales. You can not tell me or anyone sane that there are more hockey fans in either places than in Toronto. In England's Premier League [soccer] London has five teams, Liverpool and Manchester, a pair each and best I can figure Birmingham will have two in the Premier League next season. It is germane to point out that the combined population of Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham is less than the GTA and Liverpool is smaller than Ottawa-Gatineau. Therefore, the concept of cities spread tens of klicks from each other in the most hockey mad part of the world having individual clubs in the NHL should also not be anathema. It should be an no brainer.
Which may be Gary Bettman's problem.
WFDS
Monday, March 9, 2009
24...Americans are smarter than we are, Part 3
At least when it comes to local TV.
To get you up to speed on this, last week CTV decided that they couldn't make money with the number one TV station, A Channel Windsor, in a market of about .25 million adults 12 plus, directly adjacent to a market of 3.8 million 12 plus, Detroit. They also claim they cannot make money with other properties including the only locally licensed stations in Wingham, London, and Pembroke, Ontario. The Pembroke station has profile as a local station, repeater and all, in Ottawa/Gatineau, the number four market in Canada with a metro of about 1.0 million adults and London is a top ten market of about 400 K, 12 plus.
E!, an arm of Global, claims it cannot make money with its Hamilton station, which has repeaters all over Ontario and is ensconced in Canada's number nine market, with a 12 plus population of over half a million, a population that makes it a top 100 market in North America and so on and so and so on.
How is this so?
How can you lose money in a business that is, to quote the first Lord Thomson of Fleet, a license to print money?
Especially when you have the only game in town in a lot of towns.
Get out your clicker and play along with me.
They get greedy, they do and try to cut costs by getting rid of local programming. Contrast what Canadian stations do to what the stations in Detroit do. Local 4 and 7WXYZ and FOX2 run like a zillion hours a day of local news and make bags of money off it and it is the same in virtually every market in the States. I ask you this: how do you make more money out of your store if you close it? And when you watch the local news it is L O C A L or localized. In a lot of respects we are such a backwards nation. If the airwaves are public and TV stations are the servants of the people isn't tons of local content the way to go?
Most stations in the US are privately owned affiliates of networks, for example, CBS has 200 plus affiliates but only owns and operates 16 sticks; they pay the affiliates to run their programming, but have to be sensitive to the wants and needs of the Heartland and Dixie and the Northwest and and and so, unlike a lot of the Toronto centric CanCon crap that we try to force fee the populace [remote please] they are market driven, driven to serve their markets.
TV and radio is about getting stories out; the fact is there are not enough stations in this country. Just look across the water from Kingston, is Watertown, New York, 90 000 people 12 plus, about 2/3 the size of Kingston but, snap: 12 commercial radio stations, 5 TV stations. Kingston, one local TV station and like six or seven local radios. Heck, good old battered steel town, Hamilton, seven times the size and yet only 1 TV station, which, because of greed, instead of dominating Hamilton and making bags of money, is trying to be everything everywhere in Ontario [remember ON TV?] and ends up being a non factor everywhere. Where are the local stories being told?
When you watch Detroit, Watertown, Buffalo local TV, you see local stories and local ads. Little guys are shut out in Canada; it is go big or fold up thy tent.
Back to my fave story: A Channel in Windsor is the number one station in Essex County, which, if cleaved off from Detroit would be the about the 110th biggest market in North America and when combined with Detroit is the 10th or 11th and they cannot figure out how to make money with the number one station in a town that size? Oy vey, what about these things called commercials? Or, infomercials?
You have to spend money to make money; there are larger on air staffs in the Motor City and that talent in Detroit is making exponentially more money than talent in Toronto. T.O. is a much bigger market, but less competitive and less money and less money and less competition means less talented talent. You have the internet; listen to Toronto radio personalities and compare them to those down the 401 in Detroit. You get what you pay for.
The big danger for Canada is that TV is a reflection of the people who are consuming it; when I watch Detroit/Seattle/Buffalo TV I see those towns reflected in the local news, which is L O C A L; when I see Canadian TV it is a reflection of Toronto and how people from the Big Smoke perceive the rest of the country.
WFDS
To get you up to speed on this, last week CTV decided that they couldn't make money with the number one TV station, A Channel Windsor, in a market of about .25 million adults 12 plus, directly adjacent to a market of 3.8 million 12 plus, Detroit. They also claim they cannot make money with other properties including the only locally licensed stations in Wingham, London, and Pembroke, Ontario. The Pembroke station has profile as a local station, repeater and all, in Ottawa/Gatineau, the number four market in Canada with a metro of about 1.0 million adults and London is a top ten market of about 400 K, 12 plus.
E!, an arm of Global, claims it cannot make money with its Hamilton station, which has repeaters all over Ontario and is ensconced in Canada's number nine market, with a 12 plus population of over half a million, a population that makes it a top 100 market in North America and so on and so and so on.
How is this so?
How can you lose money in a business that is, to quote the first Lord Thomson of Fleet, a license to print money?
Especially when you have the only game in town in a lot of towns.
Get out your clicker and play along with me.
They get greedy, they do and try to cut costs by getting rid of local programming. Contrast what Canadian stations do to what the stations in Detroit do. Local 4 and 7WXYZ and FOX2 run like a zillion hours a day of local news and make bags of money off it and it is the same in virtually every market in the States. I ask you this: how do you make more money out of your store if you close it? And when you watch the local news it is L O C A L or localized. In a lot of respects we are such a backwards nation. If the airwaves are public and TV stations are the servants of the people isn't tons of local content the way to go?
Most stations in the US are privately owned affiliates of networks, for example, CBS has 200 plus affiliates but only owns and operates 16 sticks; they pay the affiliates to run their programming, but have to be sensitive to the wants and needs of the Heartland and Dixie and the Northwest and and and so, unlike a lot of the Toronto centric CanCon crap that we try to force fee the populace [remote please] they are market driven, driven to serve their markets.
TV and radio is about getting stories out; the fact is there are not enough stations in this country. Just look across the water from Kingston, is Watertown, New York, 90 000 people 12 plus, about 2/3 the size of Kingston but, snap: 12 commercial radio stations, 5 TV stations. Kingston, one local TV station and like six or seven local radios. Heck, good old battered steel town, Hamilton, seven times the size and yet only 1 TV station, which, because of greed, instead of dominating Hamilton and making bags of money, is trying to be everything everywhere in Ontario [remember ON TV?] and ends up being a non factor everywhere. Where are the local stories being told?
When you watch Detroit, Watertown, Buffalo local TV, you see local stories and local ads. Little guys are shut out in Canada; it is go big or fold up thy tent.
Back to my fave story: A Channel in Windsor is the number one station in Essex County, which, if cleaved off from Detroit would be the about the 110th biggest market in North America and when combined with Detroit is the 10th or 11th and they cannot figure out how to make money with the number one station in a town that size? Oy vey, what about these things called commercials? Or, infomercials?
You have to spend money to make money; there are larger on air staffs in the Motor City and that talent in Detroit is making exponentially more money than talent in Toronto. T.O. is a much bigger market, but less competitive and less money and less money and less competition means less talented talent. You have the internet; listen to Toronto radio personalities and compare them to those down the 401 in Detroit. You get what you pay for.
The big danger for Canada is that TV is a reflection of the people who are consuming it; when I watch Detroit/Seattle/Buffalo TV I see those towns reflected in the local news, which is L O C A L; when I see Canadian TV it is a reflection of Toronto and how people from the Big Smoke perceive the rest of the country.
WFDS
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