Someone quite rightly pointed out that 90% or more of the US couldn't care less
about hockey. That it ranks somewhere below synchronized miming on US Today
lists of "our favorite sports" ("We're eating more beets...").
 
So what?
 
What is the point of pushing the sport down people's throats? Why the drive towards
a larger, more geographically-broad audience? I understand Eisner's motivation,
since it's congruent with everything that Idyllic Childhood Incorporated stands for:
an obscene profit margin draped in the tender touch of the Soft Sell. ("And now, new
Log for Girls").
 
But what about people who actually care about the sport?
 
Is this some messianic "bringing culture to the great unwashed" trip? Other people
don't watch hockey because............... THEY AREN'T INTERESTED! The kids can't
play it without hundreds of dollars of equipment and hundred thousand dollar rinks
that towns in Georgia and Kansas and Virginia and Oregon have no interest at all in
building and never will until their residents come down to city hall with signs that
read: "please, please raise out taxes!"
 
We love the sport. We tell our friends, some of them wind up addicted as well. But
this isn't some biblical doctrine that you can spread - what, you think Mr. and Mrs.
75 degrees in March will care more about this bizarre frozen sport if ESPN
wallpapers it across prime time? I think they'll just be pissed off that the drag race
was pre-empted. If the tables were turned, I certainly would be.
 
Finally, the Family Values thing is really sweet,  but please don't turn the NHL rinks
into day care centers. I remember the MISL, the piped-in Top 40 music DURING
PLAY, the cartoon cheerleading on the scoreboard, the incessant ads glorifying the
Wonders of the American Family (and, by the way, buy our product). All very
touchy-feely-80's. I never went back, and I doubt I was the only one. I might have
gotten to like soccer, but the marketing approach turned my stomach. And did the
sport take America by storm... I'm still waiting...
 
In my opinion, hockey occupies a tremendous amount of the time and energies of a
few strange individuals, and doesn't have broad national television appeal. The thing
that will save hockey is that most of the US just doesn't give a damn, so it isn't in the
corporations' interests to come in and turn it into a product spot.
 
Michael Eisner will burn in hell for a variety of other sins, but even The Church of
Mickey Mouse, the Ultimate Salesman can't conquer Complete Indifference.
 
LONG LIVE OBSCURITY!
 
 
Greg
Let's Go Red!