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  • The familiar silence of mainstream media


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    Without a doubt, this has been a momentous week in Canadian soccer and Canadian soccer media. In a bygone era, the Canadian Soccer Association’s recent historic vote to remove all its provincial association reps from the board by 2015 would have garnered at least several columns in newspapers across the country. So far, the only nationwide media outlet to offer relevant commentary is CBC online, by way of Jason de Vos’ balanced op-eds and Kara Lang’s recent statement in support of CSA reform (respect must also be paid to local outlets: BC’s The Province and the Winnipeg Free Press).

    In fact, most of the mainstream coverage of Canadian soccer news comes by way of TV channel websites, not newspapers, and the soccer broadcasting landscape changed significantly this week. CBC Online’s CSA vote coverage comes at a time when the CBC seems to be losing ground to CTVglobemedia with the loss of Major League Soccer rights to TSN. Globe and Mail media analyst Bruce Dowbiggin argued in a recent editorial that the CBC is inching closer to leaving the sports business with its loss of the “mediocre” MLS package to TSN. Dowbiggin writes that the “CBC is left to compete against well-capitalized communications giants that can amortize rights purchases and talent raids against their cellphone or cable TV businesses.”

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    But as Ben Rycroft wrote yesterday, providing a successful, quality soccer product is about more than just paying to show live games on TV. Live soccer content needs to be couched in expert associated content and analysis, which broadcasters offer as an online adjunct. Despite comparatively limited resources, the Score and CBC have done this very well by paying for internationally respected columnists like Paolo Bandini and Sid Lowe in addition to their in-house online analysts. The smart networks know you have to build an intelligent online presence to drive viewers to watch games on TV, and to promote your media brand as a soccer-smart content provider.

    Despite its financial muscle, TSN still has a ways to go in this department (by way of a cheap-but-illustrative example, as thousands of Canadian soccer fans eagerly awaited de Vos’ report on the CSA vote, TSN struggled to spell Atiba Hutchinson’s name right. But the fact is, most Canadian sports broadcasters could do a hell of a lot better when it comes to covering Canadian soccer. The old canard that nobody cares about Canadian game so let's stick to the Premier League was in some part dispelled by “CSAreform” trending on Twitter last weekend, as Benjamin Massey pointed out in his excellent post-vote piece on SBN. Disillusioned with mainstream media’s contempt for soccer (unconsciously echoed by “mediocre” Dowbiggin), Canadian footy fans long ago moved online to forums and blogs to help fill in large narrative gaps in Canada's soccer story.

    Those gaps persist in the Canadian sports news cycle, whether online or in the newspaper. For example, TSN posted up a CP report on Carolina Morace’s decision to leave the Canadian women’s team after the 2010 World Cup without even attempting to put it in a larger context with the CSA governance vote and long-standing funding and budgetary control grievances coming to the surface, something that would require going beyond a wire service story.

    As I’ve written before, while it’s great that sites and forums like Canadian Soccer News are covering the vote and its repercussions, Canada needs more voices to join in on the discussion on where the game goes from here. The Score has a great soccer infrastructure in place but still largely focuses on European club football. The CBC's Jason de Vos is pretty much a hardworking voice in the wilderness. Meanwhile, TSN may find out the hard way that promoting MLS will involve providing intelligent, comprehensive coverage of the game in Canada with added online coverage.

    The sad but familiar silence that met the CSA reform vote is an alarming sign Canada's sports media leaders have a lot of work to do to meet the demands of Canada's largely-online footy faithful.

    Richard Whittall writes on football from his hovel in Toronto, Canada. In addition to A More Splendid Life, he also writes the Canadian Soccer history blog, The Spirit of Forsyth. He is the associate editor of Tom Dunmore's award-winning Pitch Invasion. And his writing has appeared in Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and he was a contributor for Brooks Peck's Yahoo! blog Dirty Tackle for the 2010 World Cup. His columns on media and football will appear weekly on Canadian Soccer News. Follow him on Twitter @RWhittall



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