If nothing else, we Canadians are a compassionate people - at least when it comes to hockey.
It will surely come as a shock to any non-Canadians reading this that Monday's announcement of CTV/TSN purchasing the rights to "The Hockey Song", ending its forty-year association with CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, was literally front-page news across the country.
Perhaps this shock can be explained by the fact that no other country has such a significant portion of their national identity comprised of a commercial song (Sweden and anything by ABBA notwithstanding). In fact, in the book How To Be A Canadian, authors Will and Ian Ferguson note that "the theme song from Hockey Night In Canada has more resonance among Canadians than any other piece of music". However, they go on to explain that, due to worries of political incorrectness in words such as "native" and "sons", the opening lines to 'O Canada' were changed to "Louie Louie, whoa-oh-oh, we gotta go, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah", so there might be a credibility issue here.
(I believe in full disclosure. I also believe that How To Be A Canadian is a very funny book; you should read it.)
On a more personal level, I was a high school band geek. In four years, I probably played hundreds of different pieces. However, I can only recall two Canadian ones (the 'Lord of the Rings' soundtrack, although composed by a Canadian, doesn't count) - Maple Leaf Rag, and 'Hockey Night In Canada Theme', which I guess will need to be retitled now. Guess which one was a favourite of the entire class?
This is literally nothing other than CTV/TSN spending $2.5-million to laugh in CBC's face. If you wanted more proof of that, turn on TSN - they seem to be playing it every time they get the chance. I'm amazed they don't just have a loop of it running in the background, really.
There is one other scenario here - if they offered a lot of money, CBC could theoretically still lease the song from CTV, the way they were with the original owners. However, since it'd be taxpayer money, I don't see that happening.
The best news? We don't have to hear TSN's hockey theme anymore.
--Ryan
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