Streaming, Blackouts, and MSG Network

Thanks for this post – that’s good info. I’m hopeful that MSG will at least get the games online, although I’d prefer them on my HDTV.

They don’t skew numbers. The Rating is a percentage of how many people in the area watch the program. The NYC area has about 7.5 million people (households), which is by far the largest in the country. Buffalo is 51st with 645,000. The last couple of seasons, the Sabres have had the top rating in the league, around an 8. Which means on average 8% of Buffalo is watching every Sabres game (That’s really good).. But on average, the Rangers have about 3 times as many viewers (Which was going up this season, until the TWC issue pooped up.).. The Sabres though, might fall out of the top spot. The Penguins, Red Wings and Bruins are all right up there with the Sabres. Blues and Blackhawks draw good ratings also in recent years.

For example, in the Winter Classic, the Flyers were the highest rated market at 11.9%.. The Rangers were actually 5th with a 4.3% (Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Boston all had better ratings for this years game).. People were like “Teams and cities that weren’t even in the Winter Classic did better then the Rangers this year”.. Which is true if you look at ratings. But when it comes to viewers, the Rangers and Flyers were pretty much tied for the most (Only a couple thousand difference in viewers)..

Of course, none of this matters, since it’s according to the “Nielsen Guess-Machine”.. It’s not a legit system. They try to stay that they know exactly how many people are watching each program based on a 0.02% sample. They have 25,000 households set-up with their boxes, and they use those 25,000 households to guess what the other 116,000,000 households are watching. You can make a rough estimate based on that sample, but that’s about it.

I canceled my cable and am spending that money on booze at my neighborhood bar instead while I watch the games. It’s actually been kinda great!

Thanks for the tip on online streaming though. My liver hopes that is true.

The NHL Network picks games to broadcast because they think these games will be exciting games, with top players and teams, that will appeal to their viewing audience – hockey fans. Instead of riding the success of a local team, and getting a double whammy of hockey fans who want to watch a good/exciting team play, and local fans who want to watch THEIR team play, the black the whole thing out. It’s really not well thought out.

If they need more money, I will give it to them, just let me get every game, in HD when available, in the comfort of my own home.