History of the National Hockey League on United States television

In fact, hockey broadcasting on a national scale was spotty prior to 1981; NBC and CBS held rights at various times, each network carrying weekend-afternoon games during the second half of the regular season and the playoffs, along with some (but not all) of the Stanley Cup Finals.

[1] Initially, Bud Palmer served as the play-by-play man while Fred Cusick did color commentary and intermission interviews for the first three seasons.

This was despite the fact that CBS was at least at one point, getting better ratings than NBC's NBA package from around the same period, especially in cities with NHL, minor-league, or major college (division 1 level) hockey clubs.

In the United States, the clinching game of the 1966 Stanley Cup Finals on the Thursday evening of May 5 aired in black and white on RKO General-owned stations (including WOR-TV in New York and WNAC-TV in Boston).

CBS started their weekly 1967–68 coverage with the opening game (the Philadelphia Flyers vs. Los Angeles Kings) at the Forum in Inglewood, California on December 30.

Due to an AFTRA strike (which resulted in the cancellation of a New York Rangers-Montreal broadcast), CBS started their playoff coverage with a CBC tape of the previous night's Boston-Montreal game.

In 1971, CBS originally had not planned to broadcast Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals but showed the prime time contest between the Montreal Canadiens and Chicago Black Hawks almost as a public service after thousands of calls flooded network switchboards.

For the CBS' Stanley Cup Finals coverage during this period, a third voice was added to the booth (Phil Esposito in 1971 and Harry Howell in 1972).

Tim Ryan and Ted Lindsay (with Brian McFarlane as the intermission host) served as the commentators for NBC's NHL coverage during this period.

The concept of Showdown involved with 20 (16 shooters and four goaltenders) of the NHL's greatest players going head-to-head in a taped penalty shot competition.

Meanwhile, HBO's first sports broadcast was of a New York Rangers / Vancouver Canucks game, transmitted to a CATV system in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania on November 8, 1972.

As a result, CBS viewers were unable to see the far boards above the yellow kickplate, and when players were on that side, only their skates were visible; the rest of their bodies were cropped out from the picture.

USA's coverage begin as a Monday night series with Dan Kelly doing play-by-play alongside a variety of commentators including Pete Stemkowski, Lou Nanne and Brian McFarlane.

Sam Rosen,[7] Mike Emrick,[8] and Ken Wilson,[9] served as the play-by-play men while Mickey Redmond and Bill Clement were the color commentators.

In September 1989, SportsChannel America covered the Washington Capitals training camp in Sweden and pre-season tour of the Soviet Union.

The Capitals were joined by the Stanley Cup champion Calgary Flames, who held training camp in Prague, Czechoslovakia and then ventured to the Soviet Union.

This allowed American broadcaster NBC to air the game live across the United States – marking (surprisingly) the first time that a national audience would see Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux play.

Finally, NBC also was allowed to conduct interviews with players during stoppages in play, to the chagrin of the Hockey Night in Canada crew, whose attempts to do likewise were repeatedly denied by the league in past years.

Prior to the 1999, these telecasts were non-exclusive, meaning they were blacked out in the regions of the competing teams, and an alternate game was shown in these affected areas.

The main broadcast team for Fox was Mike Emrick and John Davidson, while regionally distributed games were handled by a variety of announcers.

Fox challenged that it had not been given a chance to match the network component of the deal, but ABC ultimately prevailed[44][45] (perhaps barring a large NHL ratings increase).

NBC's deal included six regular season windows, seven postseason broadcasts and Games 3–7 of the Stanley Cup Finals in primetime.

The selection of teams for The NHL on Versus was somewhat more diverse (possibly due to there being more game slots to air) than its broadcast partner, NBC.

Games started at various times, ranging from 12:30 to 3:30 during the season (this variation primarily resulted from NBC's commitments to the PGA Tour and other programming).

Coverage of the overtime period was shunted to Versus, the league's cable partner, although viewers in the Buffalo and Rochester markets were able to continue watching the game on WGRZ and WHEC, their local NBC affiliates.

However, NBC and the NHL later revealed that the Preakness deal had been made several years before and contained mandatory advertising commitments during the pre-race build-up.

On New Year's Day, January 1, 2008, NBC began its 2007–08 schedule with an outdoor hockey game (the AMP NHL Winter Classic) between the Buffalo Sabres and Pittsburgh Penguins at Ralph Wilson Stadium.

While never expected to beat or directly compete with football ratings the timing was designed to take advantage of the large audience flipping between channels to watch the different bowl games.

Like its predecessors, NBC frequently chooses games with a focus on about five teams (New York Rangers, Detroit Red Wings, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Boston Bruins).

The relation has very little correlation with team success; for instance, the Anaheim Ducks won the Stanley Cup in 2007, and the Buffalo Sabres made it to the conference finals in both 2006 and 2007.