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Hockey Night Song No Longer Taxpayer Funded As CTV Scoops Rights
Hey, CBC—you wanna come over to Torontoist’s house and play a little Texas Hold ‘Em sometime? CBC got called on their Hockey Night in Canada bluff today as rival CTV announced that they’ve struck a deal for the rights to the HNIC signature tune.
The news comes four days after the kind-of public broadcaster announced they were pulling out of negotiations for the storied 40-year-old theme, and mere hours after they suggested that they would consider going back to the bargaining table after all.
Under the new agreement, CTV will use the song for hockey games on TSN and RDS, as well as during the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. No word on what CTV is paying for “buh, BUH, buh, buh,” but it’ll be interesting to see how much of the HNIC brand cachet was tied up in the song.
Besides being embarassing to the Mother Corp and a day-brightener for other Canadian media who like to taunt them, the change could be good news for superstitious Toronto Maple Leafs fans. Considering that the Leafs haven’t won a Stanley Cup since the year before the song was introduced, maybe a change of HNIC tuneage will be just the ticket to break the multi-generational jinx.
Photo by frigante in the Torontoist Flickr Pool.