In Defense of Deadline Broadcasts

While the Trade Deadline was pretty much a dud except to the last hour, I have to say something that was more annoying than the lack of movement was the people complaining about the over-covering of the deadline, knowing that it'd be very slow.

Even with it being very slow, what does it matter-- it leaves more time for things to breathe and more people to actually talk rather than a select few and then having to cut them off to get reactions from management or the traded players themselves. Hell, the all-star casts that both TSN and Sportsnet had was something to keep me tuned in, even if some of the things they had were very inane and unnecessary on a day like this.

Granted, having a show that goes from 8 AM Eastern Time until 5 PM is a bit insane, regardless of how busy the day might possibly become. Notwithstanding, you have to realize that sometimes the tradition is hard to actually kill off or actually tone down. With sponsors and analysts and all kinds of special people going into the studios to give their two cents to the situations, you almost need all that time in order to justify their presence or just travelling them up there in the first place.

If the show was truncated to 1 PM to 5 PM, it would be too short for some people. While that would have been the perfect timing for this year, you can't always predict it and you can't change something on a dime like that when you have sold the advertising space and actually got in-show sponsors to give up their money in order to present the show and have their brand all over the place-- like Tim Horton's mugs everywhere on the TSN set.

The best part about having the coverage as it is has to be the fact you can see the person on the TV and have them rely true or false information. With Twitter being the crapshoot as it is, many have been duped by fake accounts of real people, fake insider accounts, and just other craptasticness on the internet. With those talking heads actually being accessible for an extent amount of time on the TV, they can almost instantaneously shoot down the false information or confirm it was actually them saying it.

Despite the coverage being overkill and going to some things way more than they should have with way more people than a company should have had up there-- it was a success for both sides of the ball. Many tried-and-true people stuck with TSN, as it seems to the gold standard for shows like this with their connected insiders and cast of analysts; but Sportsnet did have a solid panel with their Strategy Room being another great gimmick, as well as the inclusion of Greg Wyshynski to break up the monotony of serious and sometimes hypothetical talk about what possible trades could come.

There's definitely something for improvement when it comes to timing and how much air-time should actually be given in times like this-- but the more hockey that is on TV, game-play or otherwise, is never a bad thing and it engages some people into discussions and situations they may not have thought of when socially networking with others online.