Thursday, March 13, 2008

ESPN Boycott Day 1

Note: As a result of traveling and slow, intermittent Internet access this is a day late.
On the drive into work I kept the radio off, I missed the Bob Picozzi college basketball scores, but that's about it. I realized if I had had the radio on and listening to 1000 from Chicago, an ESPN affiliate, I probably would have been mad not hearing the hockey scores. Even though locally I might have heard that the Blackhawks lost to the Red Wings the night before.
Anyway I turned on the radio at about Columbus, Indiana and picked up CKLW from Windsor, Ontario. Now it's not a sports specific radio station, but about every 20 minutes they give sports updates. I heard all the hockey scores - including NHL and OHL scores, heard the Pistons and Raptors scores, and also the Tigers split-squad scores.
As I got closer to Indy I turned the station to 1260 WNDE, a Fox Sports affiliate. To be honest it's not really good at providing the NHL scores. At least Fox, as an organization, doesn't seem as anti-hockey from the top down as ESPN is. Most if not all the regional Fox Sports networks showcase NHL teams too.
Oddly enough almost right after I posted my blog entry yesterday, I found an ESPN related topic on a Red Wings message board. A poster there posted that Tim Comlishaw mentioned the NHL on Around the Horn yesterday.
This was my response:
I don't care what ESPN says anymore. I'm officially boycotting everything ESPN except the website. ESPN is obviously run by hockey haters, from the top down. This mindset is ingrained in all of its employees. It's obvious to me that Comlishaw is just throwing hockey fans a bone, but in my opinion it's not enough. I hope the NHL never goes back to ESPN. I've decided I'd rather hunt to try to find it on the web, NBC, Versus, Fox Sports regional networks or any other network besides the world-wide entertainment leader.
I should edit that to read "ingrained in most of its employees" instead of all. I doubt John Buccigross or Barry Melrose hate hockey, but that's probably just two out of thousands.

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