Canadians are trying to save Hockey Night in Canada on CBC

Thousands of Canadians are backing a growing campaign to keep Hockey Night in Canada on free television after CBC confirmed the iconic Saturday night broadcast will leave the public broadcaster at the end of the season.

A Change.org petition launched by Saskatchewan rock group Blu Beach Band has now surpassed 16,000 signatures, with supporters urging CBC and Rogers Sportsnet to resume negotiations to preserve one of Canada’s longest-running sporting traditions.

The band, which just released its third studio album, Mulligan, set up a Change.org petition that very day and quickly achieved their goal of 10,000 signatures. It has now surpassed 16,000. 

Rogers Sportsnet, which acquired national broadcasting rights to the NHL in 2013 for $5.2 billion and recently renewed them for another 13 years for $11 billion, was unable to come to an agreement with CBC, which had broadcast Hockey Night in Canada every Saturday since 1952. 

“After a successful 12-year partnership, Sportsnet and CBC today announced the public broadcaster will no longer carry NHL broadcasts after the current season as it moves forward with a new sports programming strategy following the unprecedented success of the Milano/Cortina Olympic Games,” the statement read. 

Blu Beach Band’s Carter Vosper, lead singer, guitarist and petitioner, spoke with Now about the mission to bring it back. 

You feel really passionate about this. It’s not just because you have a new album out?

No, no, I’ll give you some context. We had been leaning really hard into our Canadian roots for this tour and this album. We’ve been wearing Hockey Night in Canada jerseys on stage and displaying archived Hockey Night in Canada footage at these shows. So, we were wearing our Canadian hearts on our sleeves, and then about three days into the tour, the news broke and we figured we could either hang our heads and change direction on this, or we could use the platform that we have and the advantage of being in a room with 200 like-minded Canadians every night, as a way to try and garner support and raise concerns that we think that this is a bad decision for accessibility and hockey in general.

I bet a lot of people don’t even know. 

That’s the thing, when we first started doing this petition, people were confused. They hadn’t heard the announcement. It got brushed under the rug. I think that was intentional, that this Canadian tradition is disappearing. Obviously, the more people know about it, the more uproar there’s going to be.  So, our goal with this is just to raise awareness and show that there’s a lot of people who think this is a bad decision and don’t agree with it.

What are the repercussions of not having Hockey Night in Canada on CBC?

We’re seeing hockey becoming more and more privatized every day, and this is just another nail in the coffin in terms of making hockey for everybody, rather than a select group of people in Canada. 

Do you think the news got lost because of FIFA fever? 

Definitely part of it. It was some pretty skillful timing with the announcement. I think it’s going to come time for next season, and people are going to go to turn on Hockey Night in Canada and it’s just not going to be there. 

You reached 10,000 and it’s still going. What is your plan now that you have reached your goal with the petition?

Now that we have over 10,000 signatures, we think we have enough legs to write to CBC and Rogers Sportsnet directly and say, “This is all the people that we have behind us, and we want to find a way, whether that’s going back to the drawing board, going back to the way it was, or lowering subscription costs, or maybe even something with the PWHL on CBC. We want hockey to stay accessible, and we just feel that a big part of the reason that Canada has been the hockey country for 74 years is because it’s always been accessible on Saturday nights to anybody with a TV antenna.” So, the main goal with this is to just get their attention and send a message.

Are you still collecting signatures? 

Yeah, and it still is growing. We have it set up as a QR code at our merch stand, so we’re going to keep pushing it. The first one, I think people were a little confused, but now they’re showing up to the show expecting to see the petition. The petition can also be accessed through our social media, or you can just find it through Googling “Save Hockey Night in Canada,” and we’re hoping to grow it until we get some response [from CBC and Sportsnet].We’re going to keep pushing. 

Besides the obvious, being Canadian, what’s the reason you’ve been wearing Hockey Night in Canada jerseys onstage?

We’re super proud to be Canadian. We’re inspired by bands like The Tragically Hip and April Wine, just classic Canadian rock bands. There’s a lot of Saskatchewan-specific references across the new album, and there’s a lot of Canadian references, and the whole branding for the entire thing was hockey.  We all grew up playing hockey. My girlfriend coaches hockey. We still play beer league. It’s very much a part of our identity.

No songs about hockey? 

The last song on the album, “Bacon,” when we wrote it, we said, “This is a hockey dressing room anthem if we’ve ever written one.”

What team do you root for?

 I’m a Toronto guy, actually [Toronto Maple Leafs].

Does Blu Beach Band have hockey jersey merch with your band name or is that too costly? 

We have pins right now that are a play on the Hockey Night In Canada logo that we’re giving out for free, but we’re actually working on some hockey jersey merch right now.