Public Broadcasting,Sport,and Cultural Citizenship

In this article we examine the recent debate over the continued role of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in airing National Hockey League (NHL) games on its iconic television show, Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC) . Specifically, we outline the heightened competition between the CBC and private networks for the most desirable sports rights in the context of the explosive growth of subscription television. We then review how the CBC was, in the face of this competition and to the surprise of many commentators, able to secure a new contract with the NHL in 2006. We argue here that, while Canada's public network will never again have the place in Canadian life that it had in the early days of television (Rutherford, 1990), HNIC remains an important investment because it acts as a critical promotional platform for the public network, as well as providing a sizeable revenue stream that subsidizes the network's other programming. We will also argue that providing free-to-air broadcasts of the sport that matters most to Canadians is an issue of cultural citizenship, and thus an important part of the mandate of a public broadcaster, and a matter of national interest.