VERSUS president, Jamie Davis, is a very busy man these days. His network is in the midst of covering the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. As he rushed between meetings, we had a chance to talk about a number of topics:
Davis on VERSUS playoff coverage » We are big fans of the Caps and of Ovechkin. I know that fans in Washington will be watching the games on our sister network, CSN, but we will be doing all the games against Montreal nationally. As a matter of fact, our viewership in Washington is up over 23 percent from last season and we expect that to climb even higher. As for our playoff coverage, we are using our successful “super-serve” with expanded “Hockey Central” with doubleheader coverage and, in some cases, tripleheader coverage throughout the playoffs. There will also be plenty of NHL content on our Web site for fans to view that will enhance our extensive on-air coverage.
Davis on the NHL getting an Olympic bump » We have helped make sure that the names of Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby and other stars have become household names, but the Olympics really took things over the top. The numbers don’t lie. Our viewers are up almost 40 percent post-Olympics. NHL growth translated online as well. Since the Olympics, traffic to the NHL pages on VERSUS.com showed increases with average page views per user up 50 percent, user’s average time on the site up by 75 percent and repeat visits up 20 percent. So there is an interest in the NHL and clearly we have worked hard to make sure we have served the viewers interests and needs.
Davis on the future of VERSUS » We are proud of the growth of the Indy Racing League and our dedication to pre-racing has paid off in higher ratings than ESPN. We have done very well with our relationship with World Extreme Cage-fighting. Mixed Martial Arts has been a huge rating hit. We, of course, are proud of our long history with the Tour de France, which just gets better every year. As for college football, we are expanding our relationship with the Pac-10 to carry seven games this year.
Jim Williams is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, director and writer. Check out his blog, Watch this! on washingtonexaminer.com.
