Kukla's Korner Hockey
Rocky Bringing the ‘Hawks into the 21st Century
by Alanah McGinley on 10/23/07 at 01:15 AM ET
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From Jay Mariotti at the Chicago Sun-Times,
I’ll never forget the hilarious day when Jim DeMaria, public relations boss of the least publicly relatable sports team I’ve known, tried to censor me with an ultimatum. If I wanted to cover a Blackhawks home game, I had to agree not to mention the forbidden words: No home TV.
Naturally, in either the first or second paragraph of my live column from the United Center, I wondered why the Hawks were the only franchise in the civilized world not to televise home games. It was such a gross miscalculation of the needs of 21st-century fans, the edict literally swallowed up what once was the crackling pride of every Chicago winter. Long before Michael Jordan, the Hawks owned the West Side, but as long as Bill Wirtz was lowballing his star players and making illogical decisions about TV marketing, they were doomed to plunge further in popularity and impact than any team in American sports.
Well, in the wee hours of a September morning, Mr. Wirtz passed away. And not a month later, in a Monday memo that melted the ice beneath the feet of the few local hockey fans that remain, his son moved quickly to rectify a decades-old blunder.
continued…
*Original press release from the Blackhawks about televising home games in the future is noted here.
Filed in: NHL Teams, Chicago Blackhawks, NHL Media | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: chicago+blackhawks, rocky+wirtz,
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