CFL labour disruption would be a blow to TSN, too

When CFL commissioner Mark Cohon was defending his open letter on negotiations with the players association on Wednesday, he talked about a labour disruption being bad for all concerned.

"Everyone hurts," he told Sportsnet 590 The FAN. "The players get hurt, our fans get hurt and we get hurt."

He didn't name TSN in the list of victims, but you can add the sports channel to those who would suffer if the two sides can't reach an agreement before the season starts. Depending on how long such a disruption lasted, it could be a very painful summer for the sports channel.

Now, it's way too early to worry about the possibility of a lockout or strike leading to the cancellation of games. There's more than a month to go before the season starts and a lot of things can happen between now and then. You have to wonder how either side would even consider such a possibility, but crazier things have happened.

Once the battle lines are drawn, people tend to get itchy trigger fingers.

But you can be sure TSN is making alternative plans should something happen -- like Boy Scouts, networks have to be prepared -- and dreading the possibility.

Nobody benefits from a labour dispute -- just ask those broadcasters who suffered through the last NHL lockout. But the prospect of labour unrest couldn't come at a worse time for TSN.

It is heading into its first fall in more than a decade bereft of a national NHL package, a situation that will certainly cut its overall ratings. Missing out on the ratings and revenue that Canada's second-hottest TV property supplies would only make the loss of Canada's first even more painful.

TSN, naturally, isn't talking other than to say that it isn't talking.

"Like all football fans we are hopeful that an agreement can be worked out as soon as possible," said TSN communications director Greg McIsaac, "We don‘t discuss specifics on our rights agreement."

Losing CFL games wouldn't be a death blow to TSN. For one, it would save a portion of the record $40 million a season it paid to the league for TV rights. The longer any disruption went on, the more money TSN would save in rights fees.

But that's not good news. Networks had that reality hammered home during the last NHL lockout. They saved millions on rights fees, but endless nights of poker, minor league hockey and vintage hockey broadcasts had viewers fleeing their rec rooms in droves.

What was even more damaging was that they didn't flock to other channels. So the likes of Rogers and Bell, which own a lot of TV real estate, didn't benefit in any way. Those who couldn't watch the NHL on TV simply found something else to do.

Ratings dropped dramatically and so did ad revenue. After all, a major bank isn't going to pay quite as much to reach the 100,000 eyeballs that watch an American Hockey League broadcast as it does for the 2 million who tune into an NHL game.

Even if the season starts on time, the labour situation could hurt TSN. If training camp is truncated, the quality of play would surely suffer. That could affect ratings unless Canadians suddenly developed a penchant for bad football.

The CFL is one of TSN's top properties. Barring a World Series run by the Toronto Blue Jays, it will easily be the most-watched sport in the country this summer. Losing that kind of audience, even for a couple of weeks, would be painful for TSN.

Making it even more painful is that possibility that rival Rogers, purveyors of all Blue Jays games, would now hold Canada's most popular summer sport.

Is a strike or lockout in the cards? Nobody really knows, but it certainly is a possibility. And that possibility has to have TSN executives losing a little sleep.