On Friday afternoon at 1 p.m., NBC will air the inaugural NHL Thanksgiving Showdown. The game will feature the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins hosting the Detroit Red Wings. The NHL hopes to make this Black Friday telecast a tradition that can pull in the casual fan in the same manner as the Winter Classic on New Year’s Day. NHL chief operating officer John Collins said the Thanksgiving Showdown is just part of the league’s growing portfolio of new programming.
How did the Thanksgiving Showdown come about?
Collins » “The NHL has had a long tradition of playing games on Black Friday afternoon. Boston has been doing it for many years, and in our conversations with NBC, it just made too much sense not to showcase a game on Black Friday. We have had the full promotional machine at NBC working on this event. They aired spots in the ‘Sunday Night Football’ telecasts, and we [had] a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade that will promote the Showdown with Grammy Award winner and star of NBC’s ‘The Voice’ Cee Lo Green. So we are really showing the promotional force of our partnership.”
How has the relationship with NBC and the NHL worked out thus far?
Collins »
“It is all we hoped it would be and more. As you know, the network will use this year’s Winter Classic [on Jan. 2] to introduce the NBC Sports Network. If you watch both Versus and the NHL Network, then you know that we have an almost seamless transition between both groups. The viewers are really getting max coverage starting with our early programming on the NHL Network, then over to Versus for the prime game coverage and back to the NHL Network for ‘On the Fly,’ where we follow all the games till the last one is over. I think for the first time we have a truly unified broadcast plan that makes following our games very easy for our fans.”
Are there plans for new NHL original programming?
Collins » “We have a great relationship with former HBO president Ross Greenburg, and he has joined forces with our NHL Original Programming unit. Our first two projects were very successful ‘HBO: Broad Street Bullies’ and the Emmy Award-winning ’24/7 Penguins/Capitals: Road to the NHL Winter Classic.’ Coming soon will be our ‘Day in the Life’ player documentaries revealing the regimens and personalities of NHL players appearing in NHL on NBC games.”
Examiner columnist Jim Williams is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, director and writer. Check out his blog, Watch this!, on washingtonexaminer.com.
