So TSN owns the rights to the old Hockey Night in Canada song. Big woo.
The only thing it's gonna accomplish is to remind everyone of CBC and Hockey Night in Canada. Don't kid yourself, when you hear the song, you don't think of Darren Dreger and James Duthie, do you? You don't even think of Bob McKenzie's hair. To me, this "big story" feels so...so...I dunno, so Nouveau Riche. What am I on about? Here goes...
Hockey Night in Canada is evocative of so many things for so many different people. It's Original Six hockey and brush cuts. It's Peter Puck and NHL Power Players. It's Murray Westgate and Danny Gallivan. (I could go on and on, couldn't I?) Hockey Night in Canada used to be the only game in town. Everyone looked forward to it, no matter what the match up was that weekend. It used to be the night that Mum and Dad let us have chips and pop (Pop Shoppe Pop of course.) It was special. That's what I think about when I hear the song.
Now, we have about five or six stations that cover NHL hockey, seven nights a week. More if you pay the money to get a special Centre Ice package (which I may just have to do so I don't have to watch the Leafs all season long!) The game isn't as special as it was. Too many teams. Too many broadcasts. Too many "hockey experts" and commentators wearing too much cologne and deifying Todd Bertuzzi every night.
So TSN thinks they got something pretty special, that they robbed the Old Guard or the crown jewels. And how smug they are when they talk about the song, as if they own all the nostalgia and magic of our hockey past. Get over yourselves, it's a song. And their traditional recording of it doesn't really fit with with the other music they use in promos and features. The name of their show, NHL on TSN, doesn't give you goose bumps. Playing the old Hockey Night in Canada song might...but that's because you'll be thinking of times gone by, of a more exciting time, of great moments in CBC broadcasting history. And those smug faces on your television screen will not etch their mugs or names on your brain, because, well, they're just so bland.
thanks and good luck.