Versus and NBC Announce NHL Talent Schedule

Versus and NBC have announced their talent schedule for the 2011-12 season. The schedule looks like this:

NBC – (Winter Classic, Thanksgiving Friday, “Game of the Week”)

GAME COVERAGE:

Mike Emrick, Ed Olczyk & Pierre McGuire

STUDIO INTERMISSIONS:

Liam McHugh & Mike Milbury

VERSUS - 

GAME COVERAGE:

Sundays – Dave Strader & Brian Engblom
Mondays – Mike Emrick & Pierre McGuire
Tuesdays – Strader & Engblom
Wednesdays – Emrick, Ed Olczyk & McGuire

STUDIO COVERAGE:

NHL Live (Pre-and post game show) – Liam McHugh, Mike Milbury & Keith Jones
NHL Overtime – Bill Patrick, Jeremy Roenick & Various Rotating Personalities

McGuire and Engblom will be stationed as “Inside the Glass” analysts for all the games they do. For the season opening doubleheader on Thursday October 6, Emrick/McGuire get the early game with Strader/Engblom on the West Coast. Additional talent is yet to be announced for Hockey Day in America or for any playoff coverage or bonus games. John Forslund has tweeted that he will be doing some future games for Versus.

The most notable change has McHugh and Patrick swapping regular jobs on Versus with Patrick demoted to the highlights show. NHL Overtime will also have a different schedule this season. Puck the Media reports that NHL Overtime will only air three nights a week until January with five nights from then on. The show will air Mon.- Wed. at 11 PM ET until the Versus/NBC Sports Network branding change. It will then also air on Fridays and Sunday nights.

While that’s a bit of a minus, ratings wise it makes sense as NHL Overtime struggled badly on nights without hockey. This will allow the show to have a hockey lead in every night it airs except Fridays as Versus is currently scheduled to only show one Friday night game. There’s no word yet if Overtime will have a live show for the West Coast (2 AM ET) as it did much of last season.

 

New Versus Shows Struggle To Gain Viewers

Versus unveiled a slate of new programming over the last couple of weeks but it is yet to translate to much rating success. NBC SportsTalk has been a complete bomb since its debut. It had a high of 14,000 viewers last week while it hovered around a measly 10,000 for the entire week. That would put it in a battle with the Florida Panthers, Phoenix Coyotes and Atlanta Thrashers for viewers if we were comparing it to local NHL ratings.

Darren Rovell’s GameOn sports business show didn’t fare much better with a debut of 36,000 viewers. The debut of College Football Talk also brought in 36,000 viewers. The much hyped NFL Turning Point was the high point with 126,000 viewers while Pro Football Talk was behind it with 90,000 viewers. Those ratings are comparable with ESPN2′s Jim Rome Is Burning and the new Numbers Don’t Lie which air in the middle of the afternoon.

There is some positive news for Versus as college football is drawing some decent viewership. Its peak was for the USC/Utah game which brought in a respectable 700,000 viewers. Indy Car ratings have also been on the rise the last couple of months with the Baltimore Grand Prix setting IndyCar viewership records for the network. The bottom line is that there’s a long ways to go for Versus to be competitive in the cable television landscape. SportsTalk and its sister shows should see a boost once the NHL starts up and there’s certainly plenty of room for them to grow.