The Sunday Soapbox: "It's Just Business" -- How Much For That Ditty In The Window?

In any given week there are usually one or two stories in hockey, or the sports world in general, that are guaranteed to annoy, confuse, amuse or just plain piss me off enough to talk about.

Rather than continue to inflict these meaningless rants on Beloved during our daily commute (although I will miss the eye rolls), I thought I'd explore them here in a new feature I'm calling The Sunday Soapbox. Like it? Hate it? Think I should just do everybody a favour and get the hell off the internets, leaving them to people who know better? Let me know in the comments.

This week: HNIC, The Song, and putting a price on being "a fan". Please ensure onions are firmly affixed to belt prior to proceeding.

The saddest statement I've run across (so far) in the HNIC Theme Song imbroglio came from "Louis". I've never met Louis. I have nothing against Louis. I'm sure Louis is a fine fellow. But Louis depressed the shit out of me.

In a brief exchange in the comments section of the New York Times coverage of the saga, Louis and I debated the relative wisdom of the CBC's decision. When I pointed out that if Ms. Claman and her lawyers were just trying to squeeze the song for the largest possible pay-day, as Louis was implying, they could simply sell the tune to TSN for "a thousand times more" than Mother Corps had ever paid. It was Louis' response that depressed me. "Then she should do that and quit squeezing the CBC. It’s just business."

"It's just business". If we, as a society are indeed going to hell in a hand cart as some of our more "eccentric" members insist, then that phrase would adorn the license plate. The sad implication is that all things are expendable, and that anything can be sacrificed, as long as it "makes good business sense". This may hold for strictly "business" transactions (although a few Enron investors may beg to differ), but in the sports world it's scariest string of words a fan can hear. Because "it's just business" has no room for the deep emotional investment we, as fans, make in our favourite sports.

"It's just business" tells us, the fans, that not only do our passion and loyalty not matter, but worse, that the owners of the teams to whom we freely give that loyalty and passion couldn't give a rat's ass about either.

"It's just business" is why hockey fans in Winnipeg, Quebec City and Hartford no longer have teams to cheer for and why Hamilton never will.

"It's just business" is why we've replaced grand old arenas like the Forum, Maple Leaf Gardens, Boston Gardens, The Spectrum, and Chicago Stadium, infused as they were with history, character and noise with soulless cookie cutters stuffed with luxury boxes whose "naming rights" are whored out to whichever corporate pimp comes up with the biggest cheque.

"It's just business" is why, on most nights, you can hear a pin drop in most arenas as the well healed snack on sushi and Perrier in those boxes, throwing an occasional glance to the ice between rounds before disappearing half way through the third to beat traffic.

"It's just business" is why a working class family has to spend the equivalent of their mortgage payment to go to a game.

"It's just business" is why that same family, after spending that money, can only hope to actually enjoy a hockey game amid the deafening music that has replaced the organist, the commercials running on the scoreboard or the blinding array of strobe lights and flashing signs exhorting them to "MAKE SOME NOISE!!" five seconds after the aforementioned deafening music killed the spontaneous chants of the crowd.

And "It's just business" is why people like Louis will never understand how, in a sports landscape where all of the traditions and lore that make being a sports fan worthwhile are slowly and constantly being stolen from us in the name of turning a buck, losing some silly song would mean so much. And that makes me sad.

Dear CBC: Perhaps You've Misunderstood Us...KEEP THE FUCKING SONG!!!

The ability of pinhead elitists to misread or (more likely) ignore the common mood never ceases to amaze me. "There, there", they cluck. "We know better. Now go play with your t.v. and drink that stuff you like so much...what's it called again? Oh yeah!..."beer". How cute!"

Say goodbye to the soundtrack of Saturday night. The iconic, long-running theme song for Hockey Night In Canada will be replaced by a new tune chosen in a $100,000 contest open to all Canadians, the head of CBC Sports said last night.

Um...okay. We (and it's very much "we", remember) are going to spend one hundred large, on top of whatever production costs some asinine CBC-ized version of "Canadian Idol" (please welcome your host, Rita McNeil! And she's dressed as Anne of Green Gables!) will run, just to avoid paying an 80 year old woman $23,000.00.

Ah, but there's another consideration, isn't there? Yes, indeed, there is. One no doubt manufactured by a room full of lawyers pulling an all nighter trying to justify their idiocy in the face of the enourmous, and apparently completely unexpected (at least to the CBC) shit storm their original announcement started. Out of the blue, comes this:

The sticking point is the $2.5-million lawsuit launched by Claman's reps, Copyright Music and Visuals, in 2004, alleging breach of contract and breach of copyright. The lawsuit points to the alleged unlicensed use of the song to sell cellphone ringtones.

This one is an even bigger no-brainer. Did the CBC sell the song as a ringtone, and thereby profit by that sale? The twelve people in my office who have just such a ringtone say yes. Did the CBC pay Ms. Claman the appropriate royalties for use of the song as a ringtone? Apparently not. Otherwise, why bother with the lawsuit?

So here's an idea, Mr. Scott Moore, Chief Pinhead at CBC Sports. How about we...oh, I don't know...PAY THE WOMAN WHAT SHE'S ENTITLED TO! Weird. I know. But I guess Mr. Moore doesn't agree with me. Referring to his Open Mike Night To Replace The Legend, Upon The Back Of Which We've Made Millions of Dollars idea, he was typically oblivious:

"I think it'll generate a great deal of public interest and discussion among Canadians," CBC Sports executive director Scott Moore said last night.

On that we can agree, Scott. It certainly will "generate a great deal of public discussion". Unfortunately for you, most of it will centre around the bunch of clueless, condescending, stuck-up, expense accounting, parasitic fucking morons running the Canadian Broadcasting Corporporation.

'Get Your Guitars Strumming': CBC [Ottawa Sun]

And Moses Sayeth Unto Them: "Behold, The Holy Land, Which I Giveth Unto You. Now Piss Off. I'm Outta Here!"

If you'll indulge me for a moment (HA! Like you have a choice!), I'd like to bid a fond adieu to one Mr. Will Leitch, author, renaissance man, gadabout, founding editor and driving force behind the greatest thing to grace the interwebs since midget porn, Deadspin.com, who is moving on to other things.

When I started this here chuckle hut just over a year ago (a start directly inspired by Deadspin, I should add), my overriding thought, my mission statement if you will, was "Be Like Will". The tone for most, if not all, of my best posts came from reading and re-reading that day's DS before ever putting fingers to keyboard, on the off chance that I might find and borrow a small bit of the magic in Will's language and humour. Sometimes, not often mind you (I'm not that good), but sometimes, it worked. And it felt magnificent.

So to Will...though I've never met you, spoken to you, emailed you or even know you from anything outside of the 8 to 10 posts you've written so brilliantly every day for the past three years, I just want to say thanks. Thanks for letting me watch what you do so well, and use it as inspiration to pick up a hobby I've long dreamed of, but until then, never had the nerve to try.

Good luck, Dear Leader. Deadspin will go on, but it won't be the same without you. Oh, and hell to 'da Naw.

CBC To Little Old Lady: "Cat Food Is Yummy! Oh, And Thanks For Everything!"

I'll say this for CBC Sports (Hi Nancy! Long time no see!). They certainly know how to generate hockey buzz in the off season, even if that off season is less than 21 hours old. Normally they would wait until July to pull something this stupid.

At 12:34 p.m. this afternoon, a little item went up on the CBC website to the effect that Hockey Night In Canada would not be renewing the licensing agreement to it's own iconic theme song (they were no doubt reacting to an earlier report in that bastion of balanced journalism, The Toronto Star -- H/T to Four Habs Fans), a song written especially for them in 1968 by Dolores Claman, and one that has become, through some kind of genetic mutation, Canada's unofficial "second national anthem".

Try as they might to bury it between a link to the day's soy futures and a five part series written by David Suzuki about how David Suzuki is such a genius he deserves to be canonized by Saturday, those pinko commie astute CBC readers found it. The reaction was swift, and severe. 389 comments (and counting) were left on the site, almost universal in their condemnation. To put that number into perspective, that's roughly three times the average number of listeners tuned to CBC Radio 2 at any given moment.

At 5:26 p.m., a "clarification" was posted, saying that "Oh no no no, you have it ALL wrong! We're still in negotiations!"

Contrary to published reports, CBC Sports hasn't yet pulled the plug on the Hockey Night in Canada theme song. "We've been reaching out to [Claman] and her representative, and haven't heard back," (Executive director of CBC Sports Scott) Moore said. "We're prepared to do a deal, we're prepared to talk, but we're not prepared to do a deal at all costs."

While there's no mention of nice Mister Moore's reaction when pressed about the evident contradiction in stating that Mother Corps had been "reaching out but haven't received an answer" nearly five hours after Ms. Claman's agents told reporters that they had received a drop dead letter from HNIC the week before, I imagine it involved a shout of "LOOK OVER THERE!", followed by a dive beneath Greg Millen's ego.

Apparently the hang up is money. So let's put our math caps on, shall we?

According to the same report, CBC pays a fee of $500.00 each time the song is played, a number that has remained virtually unchanged in 40 years. To be generous, let's assume that the song is played...oh...40 times a season (20 regular season games...remember, they don't repeat it between games of a Saturday double header, and now we know why... plus playoffs). That works out to the princely sum of $20,000.00 for the entire season. The Claman camp is asking for a 15% increase in the fee. Okay...15% of $500 is $75. $75 multiplied by 40 is $3,000.00.

So, in effect, we have a Crown Corporation with an annual operating budget somewhere north of $1.2 billion balking at spending $23,000.00 for something that gives them a level of brand recognition for which McDonald's would cheerfully eviscerate Ronald in front of a room full of preschoolers to achieve. Nicely played, Mother Corps. Nicely played indeed.

To sum up, in the five or so years of Ms. Nancy Lee's stalwart leadership, CBC Sports has, in no particular order:

• a) almost fired Ron McLean before a backlash forced them to surrender faster than the French Army.
  
• b) almost fired Don Cherry until a backlash forced them to surrender faster than the French Army.
• c) actually did fire Chris Cuthbert, their best play-by-play man, and heir presumptive to Bob Cole only to see him walk to TSN for half the work and twice the money.
• d) become so Toronto centric that even the more sane members of Leaf Nation are becoming embarassed.
  
• And finally, e) attempted to nickel-and-dime a little old lady into destitution, not to mention spit in the face of every Canadian hockey fan, over a dollar amount that wouldn't cover Czarina Lee's car allowance for week.

Well, let me tell you, I have never been more proud to be a Canadian taxpayer. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to call my MP and explain to him how "privatization" works.


Last play for Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song? [CBC.ca]
Deal still possible for Hockey Night Song [CBC.ca]
Fire Up Your iPods: HNIC Song Won't Remain The Same [Four Habs Fans]

Marc-Andre's Ass Would Like To Congratulate The Detroit Red Wings!

I can think of a few worse feelings than losing a Stanley Cup on an own-goal. Like...say...getting one's testes caught in a band saw. Or coaching the Laughs.

But really, MAF's posterior exploits aside, the Wings have deserved this win since the first week of October. So congrats Detroit! And thanks! Universal Order has been restored.

Now we can finally start talking about the draft.

Another Refugee Escapes The Dying Of The Light

Speaking of The Universal Cynic, it would seem she is moving on to better things:

And, Finally...The Announcement: Many have asked where the column has been (I've never taken two weeks off in a row). Well, after nearly four years, Sun Media and I have parted company.

While I don't pretend to know the reasons behind the parting of ways, I can't help but think that Sun Media will ultimately regret letting it happen at all. For all of the talk about how traditional print is losing ground to "the new media", it seems rather counter intuitive (that's a polite way of saying "really fucking stupid", by the way) to allow a columnist with solid cred on the interwebs to get away, while at the same time, keeping a talentless hack like Steve Simmons on the payroll. But then again, I'm just an amateur "blogger", so what the hell do I know, right Quebecor?

But here's the best news:

I can say with nearly unwavering certainty that my days with traditional media are over. However, I will soon have an announcement to make regarding my next move. What can I say? You can't keep the Scott Norwood Section down for long.

Damn straight, Erin. You can't. And if traditional media, addled as they are by bean counters citing ad rates and circulation numbers, can't wrap their collective head around that concept, then I have no problem stepping over their bloated corpses on my way to indulging my preference for good writing, no matter where I find it.

For whom the bell tolls [The Universal Cynic]

I'll Take "Painfully Obvious Choices" For $1200, Alex

In light of the glacial pace in which The Bryan's search for a Head Coach seems to be proceeding, I would like to direct your attention to Erin's eminently logical reasoning as to why a certain candidate would be, in her words, "currently the right choice". And I agree with her completely.

That said, for those of you within the organization who may a) have The Bryan's ear, b) have a little trouble with the subtlety of Erin's prose and c) stumbled across my little site while looking for thumbnails of barnyard porn, please allow me to point out our preference in a way that should remove all doubt and most of the ambiguity:


Thank you, that is all.