CBC Hockey Song, (ENT-CBC-Hockey-Song)
TORONTO - CBC appears to be making a last-ditch effort to rescue
the popular Hockey Night in Canada theme song.
The public broadcaster has asked Toronto sports lawyer Gord Kirke to mediate negotiations between CBC and Copyright Music and Visuals, the company that controls the song.
CBC Sports executive director Scott Moore says CBC feels it's worth one last effort to save a theme song that evokes such passion among Canadians.
CBC's licence for the song, written by composer Delores Claman and a staple of Hockey Night in Canada since 1968, expired last week following the Stanley Cup finals.
The parties were in negotiations late last week before CBC announced Friday it would begin the search for a new theme song.
The broadcaster has asked Canadian musicians to vie for a $100,000 prize by submitting their own original compositions to replace the theme.
I gotta tell you, though, that my spidey sense is tingling. The newsguy in me isn't ready to conclude anything, but suspects that this is just all a publicity gimmick, just like the protracted, eleventh-hour contract negotiations with Ron MacLean and Don Cherry a couple of years ago. Or, maybe CBC management has enough brain cells to realize that the stupid move to kill the theme really did raise the hackles of hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of Canadians.
One co-worker commented last week that the $500 the CBC pays every time the song is aired is "our money". To which I replied that it isn't, because Hockey Night In Canada is a cash cow for the Corp (or as Frank Magazine calls it, The Corpse).
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