TSN clear winner on NHL trade deadline day
WILLIAM HOUSTON
Globe and Mail

TSN won the battle for NHL trade deadline viewers on Tuesday by a wide margin, drawing more than triple the audience of Rogers Sportsnet and almost 14 times as many viewers as The Score.
TSN's audience of 166,000 jumped 11 per cent from last year's trade deadline day. Sportsnet's 54,000 was flat. And the Score's 12,000 represented an increase of 33 per cent.
Réseau des Sports, the French-language sports service, topped them all, drawing 268,000. But the RDS telecast was only four hours in length, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. EST.
TSN and Sportsnet were on the air for 10 hours and the Score for 10 1/2 hours. It's more difficult to hold an audience over 10 hours than four.
"We did fantastic, really," TSN president Phil King said. "We're continuing to grow every year."
King noted TSN (and the other English-language networks) went on the air two hours earlier this year than last and presented a longer telecast, but still managed to increase the audience.
"The first two hours are the toughest, because trades are unlikely," he said.
The TSN, Sportsnet and Score numbers are down from 2006, but interest in hockey two years ago was extraordinarily high because of the NHL's return from the cancelled 2004-05 season.
Although Sportsnet improved the quality of its coverage from last year, when it employed a failed studio party format, it was unable to win back viewers. The Score continued to rank a distant third.
Speculation about the Montreal Canadiens trading for Atlanta Thrashers star Marian Hossa kept viewers glued to RDS in the afternoon.
But TSN, Sportsnet and Score took a hit when Toronto Maple Leafs veterans with no-trade clauses, including captain Mats Sundin, refused to be moved.
Online, records were set.
TSN.ca had its busiest day, with 14.26 million page views, up 39 per cent from last year and bettering the previous mark of 13.92 million in 2006.
The Score set a one-day record for its online traffic. Its website received 88,647 visits, an increase of 89 per cent from last year's trade deadline.
TSN.ca provided 1.4 million streams of its TV coverage, more than double last year's 607,000. It had 359,00 unique visitors to its live video and audio services, up 30 per cent. At Sportsnet, 60,000 used its live video stream, double last year's traffic.
Page views for the deadline special on Hockey Night in Canada Radio streamed on CBCsports.ca jumped 135 per cent to 800,000 from about 300,000.