Rogers Sportsnet: Now with fewer sports!

Canadians like hockey, and Canadians love Game 7s. Canadians love the occasional junior hockey matchup, gain casual interest in the Memorial Cup, turn out to sports bars in droves to watch World Junior games, but Rogers Sportsnet doesn't give a shit.

Nope. If you're an average Canadian Joe Sports Fan, you probably have a digital cable package with Sportsnet One and all the Sportsnet regional networks. On my dial, I'll have Sportsnets Pacific, West, Ontario, East, HD, One, and Vancouver Hockey HD. That is seven channels.

How Sportsnet One succeeded last night

There were three sporting events that Rogers Sportsnet had the exclusive Canadian rights to that would interest viewers in the Pacific timezone last night: the clinching World Series game, the Canucks game, and the Toronto Raptors/Sacramento Kings tilt.

Headlines to begin your September

-Canadian Interuniversity Sport football season kicked off last night, and we begin with an upset. Number 10 McMaster beat defending Vanier Cup champ Queen's 23-18 in what was, by all accounts, a thrilling game that featured one of the craziest plays we'll see all year, a 101-yard kick return by McMaster's Michael DiCore. Meanwhile, in a less publicized game, the GeeGees beat Windsor 23-14.

-The Canadian Journalism Project, jsource, drops a mention on the Toronto Sun/Pension Plan Puppets issue, which has miraculously made it two weeks without anybody ever having given it the suffix 'gate'. They linked back to a story where they criticized the Toronto Star for avoiding accreditation as well.

-Jose Bautista closes in on George Bell's 47 with his 43rd home run as the Blue Jays crushed the Devil Rays 13-5. The Jays put up a 10-spot in the sixth, but you probably didn't see that, because you probably didn't have Sportsnet One. You probably won't watch the Blue Jays today either, because you probably don't have Sportsnet One.

-In Cincinnati Red-land, Cuban Aroldis Chapman hit 103 mph on the radar gun in his Major League Debut. This somehow affects Toronto native, Joey Votto, who still leads the Major Leagues in OPS. The Reds are seven games up on the Cardinals and look to be a shoo-in for the playoffs.

-BC Lions defensive back and all-around CFL good guy Davis Sanchez will donate his game cheque from this week to the Tony Proudfoot foundation for ALS reserach. For a primer on the former Alouette diagnosed with ALS, here's a Bruce Arthur column from two weeks ago on the subject.

-Finally, the Canadian basketball team dropped their fourth straight at the FIBA World Championship with a 71-61 loss to New Zealand. You may have missed my ivory tower hemming and hawing from last night, which chronicled Canada's struggles in the fourth quarter. At least in this morning's game, they looked

Sportsnet One: The Phantom Menace?

Mustachioed D1 soccer enthusiast Andrew Bucholtz wrote a poignant post this morning on the availability of top-tier European football on Canadian channels, or lack thereof. Buried deep within the post is a criticism of Sportsnet One, the new flagship cable channel of the Rogers media empire, and their attempt to screw the rest of us.

Sportsnet One is essentially Sportsnet HD. It shows the Raptors, Blue Jays, Oilers, Flames, Canucks and Senators, with the hockey teams being restricted to their own markets.

So really, the only alternative programming that Sportsnet One will offer is European football, but, as Bucholtz points out,

1: Sportsnet One is available only on Rogers carriers.

2: Rogers only offers cable to Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland.

For now, the only thing we'll be missing out on is Rogers' rights to Premiership games. For now. Keep in mind this summer that the Vancouver Canucks took on the communcations giant as a business partner this summer.

13 Canucks games to be broadcast on Sportsnet One

Since BC viewers are unable to get Rogers One, this means there will be pressure on Shaw, the Western Canadian cable company, as well as sattelite carriers, to carry the Rogers channel.

The Canucks generally have 11-17 pay-per-view games per season. The package is about $11 a game or $15 in HD. If Shaw begins carrying Sportsnet One at, say, $5 a month, it disguises the cost of pay-per-view games as a regular cable channel, offering nothing that the old Sportsnet didn't do already.

Good business? Hell yes. Ethical? Hell no. It's not just the Canucks, but the Oilers and Flames each have 58 games to air via Sportsnet, without the release stating how many will be reserved for the Sportsnet One broadcast.

This would be the television equivalent to money-laundering. How many Canuck, Flame and Oiler fans refused to buy the pay-per-view broadcasts because of the inherent bias of the phrase? Under the 'Sportsnet ONE' umbrella, it's just another cable channel, like TSN2.

Unlike TSN2, however, Sportsnet is not actually committed to bringing sports programming to our homes, but more determined to shut us out from it.