New NHL Blow'd Up Commercial

Whenever I hear "NHL Marketing" or "the new NHL", I think of a column written a few years ago "The NHL, Now with more Explosions!" The article did not live up to the headline (i.e. it fizzled), but it inspired a new marketing angle to reach American audiences from NHL Headquarters.

In conjunction with Etrade and TriMount Studios, the new 200 million dollar NHL commerical is all Blow'd Up.

Oh my.

[Update] NHL All-Star TV rating plunges 76% from 2004 - USA Today.

TV watchers didn't exactly warm up to the NHL's midweek All-Star game, which experienced a 76% drop in household viewership from the previous All-Star game in 2004.

Wednesday night's game in Dallas drew a 0.7 Nielsen rating on Versus, the cable channel formerly known as OLN. The game was viewed in an estimated 474,298 households and by 672,948 viewers, down from the 1,985,000 households that saw the 2004 All-Star game on a Sunday afternoon on ABC.

Wednesday's most-watched show, American Idol on Fox, drew an estimated 37 million viewers in the 9 p.m. hour. The NHL ratings drop-off was even greater when compared to the 2000 game in Toronto, which was watched in approximately 2,681,000 households on a Sunday afternoon — or more than five times as many homes as were tuned in Wednesday.