Vancouver media doesn't want Canucks to lose, despite what Michael Bublé said
Michael Bublé is an acclaimed singer, a beloved Vancouver celebrity, and a diehard Canucks fan.
And as a fan, he’s entitled to his opinion about the local hockey team, and I suppose Frank Seravalli, too.
But he was wrong about at least one thing.
“I keep reading these things from the media… [Canucks fans] are like a dog that’s been beaten. We’ve been beaten. So we just keep waiting for the next bad thing,” Bublé said in an interview on Donnie and Dhali on Thursday.
“There’s a lot of guys… in the media, that know that, and they prey upon it. They want us to lose… It’s better for them.”
Everyone is entitled to their opinion on how the local media covers the Canucks. Are we too hard on them? Not hard enough? Do we over-sensationalize things?
That’s for you to decide.
But I can, with great certainty, let you in on a secret.
We want the Canucks to win.
That goes for Daily Hive, and it’s also true for every journalist who covers the team on a regular basis. Doesn’t mean there’s cheering in the press box. And there are plenty of reporters who cover the team who have never considered themselves a Canucks fan.
But wanting them to lose? That doesn’t make a lick of sense.
Sure, negative stories can sell. But it’s short-lived.
Nothing is better for the business of Vancouver sports media than when the Canucks are winning.
You know the classic six o’clock news story they run whenever the Canucks make the playoffs, when they interview someone at the Shark Club who explains how business is booming thanks to the success of the hockey team?
Same for us.
Negative stories get attention, but nothing is better for ratings than a winning team that the whole city is invested in. We want more seasons like 2023-24, when the Canucks won the Pacific Division and made it to the second round of the playoffs. We miss the glory days of the 2011 team, and we yearn for a chance to cover a Stanley Cup winner.
When the Canucks are winning, more people tune into the game on television and listen to the post-game show on the radio. More people click into our articles and download podcasts.
This is not open for debate.
When the team stinks, as it has for much of the past decade, casual fans drop off. The bandwagon empties.
And that’s bad news for everyone in our industry.
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