The “Nickmas Game” broadcast will feature a slew of virtual filters, graphics and guest appearances geared toward kids and families, from cannons that fire slime after touchdowns to Yetis who hurl snow across the stadium in celebration of the holidays. Think crazy, colorful and festive. Additionally, analysts Nate Burleson and Noah Eagle will be joined on the broadcast by Raphael (Brady Noon) and Donatello (Micah Abbey) from “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” plus teen reporter Dylan Schefter. And the halftime show will include an exclusive sneak peek at new Nickelodeon series “Rock, Paper, Scissors.”
Nothing new, they’ve generally had a “slimecast” edition of a game at least once a year for the last two or three, usually near or in playoffs time. Opposite a normal call on CBS of course.
The highlights I saw on earlier years felt better than the Toy Story game ESPN put on Disney+ earlier this year, maybe because it didn’t go too hard by replacing the real-world action (as much as I understood the latter doing so). Again, at least the normal call was also available on ESPN (in AUS, they went in parallel on ESPN 1+2).
Yeah, Nickelodeon was a former Viacom property (it’s been under the MTV group for ages) so is now under the Paramount Global banner along with CBS.
ESPN, of course, being controlled by Disney [only 80% owned unlike ABC, but their minority partner, Hearst, is just an equity stake] is how the Toy Story game came about.
Ararity on Sky Sport NZ tonight - taking the innings break coverage from Seven for the BBL. Usually they pick up Fox pre game, at innings break and straight after the match has finished
What you have caught is how RedZone fits their ticker in around the on-screen graphics of the game. My guess is that the new ticker is slightly taller than the old one, and so to fit it under the CBS graphics, they had to shift the game feed slightly up.
This isn’t a new thing either. It was mentioned a while ago, but during the 2021 season Fox changed how they displayed their score ticker during games. Instead of having enough room to have the ticker under the scorebug, they moved the scorebug lower on the screen and vertically compressed the feed when they wanted to display the ticker. At the time, there were many people who believed that this was done to discourage people watching RedZone because the RZ ticker covered the game and play clocks, and the down and distance information. RZ quickly fixed this by shifting the Fox game feed higher to fit the ticker in.
The broadcast is produced by Sportsnet and simulcast on CBC.
CBC had produced the coverage for television from the 1950s until the mid-2010s, until financial difficulties meant they pulled out of renegotiations. CBC still hold the Hockey Night in Canada name and branding, and they sublicense it out to Sportnet along with full production and sales control in return for the right to simulcast the games (the original terms of the deal saw CBC pay nothing for the rights, but this may have changed).
CBC’s financial difficulties is part of the story. Recognising the situation they were in, the NHL offered CBC a reduced rights package of national games and less playoff games (among other things). However, CBC (foolishly) insisted on retaining exclusivity to all games featuring Canadian teams played on Saturday’s. A deal couldn’t be reached and (to simply things) the rest is history.
The story of how CBC lost control of HNIC to Rogers is fascinating and if you follow sports media, it’s definitely worth reading about further:
