Rival Steals Hockey Night In Canada Theme Out From CBC

The saga of CBC’s “Hockey Night in Canada” theme song took a surprising turn Monday as rival network CTV announced it has acquired the rights to the iconic tune.

CTV said it will use the song on NHL broadcasts on TSN, RDS and during the broadcaster’s coverage of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

“The song has a long and storied history in Canadian sports and has become ingrained in the hearts and minds of hockey fans across the country,” CTV president Rick Brace said in a release.

“It is an iconic tune, embraced by Canadians everywhere, and we felt it was imperative to save it. We know it will be in hockey forever, so there’s no doubt this acquisition will create value for us.”

The theme was composed by Dolores Claman in 1968. CBC’s licence to use the song expired at the end of the Stanley Cup final last week.

“I am very moved by how so many Canadians have taken the hockey theme to heart,” Claman said in a release. “Throughout our negotiations, CTV displayed a tremendous amount of respect for my family and the song.”

Earlier Monday, CBC had announced it asked Toronto sports lawyer Gord Kirke to mediate negotiations between the public broadcaster and Copyright Music and Visuals, the company that controls the song’s rights.

Shortly after the announcement, CBC Sports executive director Scott Moore said in an interview with CBC Newsworld that the network did everything it could to reach a deal.

“It’s unfortunate, but the reality is it takes two sides to do a deal, and we tried everything we could to do a deal,” Moore said. “We offered arbitration, mediation, we offered to meet their price.”

CBC didn’t get a response to its last offer on Friday, and “in the meantime, they appeared to be negotiating with CTV,” Moore said.

While Moore said CBC couldn’t afford the $2.5 million to $3 million demanded by Copyright Music and Visuals, he didn’t know how much CTV paid.

CTV president Rick Brace declined to say how much the network paid for the song, but said it was “fair.”

“The value that we’re going to see in this is that both RDS and TSN are in hockey for the long haul,” he said in an interview with CTV Newsnet.

“We own these rights obviously in perpetuity, and therefore the value is going to be spread in our lifetime, and probably the lifetimes of many generations to come.”

Brace also hinted that the tune will undergo a makeover.

“We’re going to reorchestrate it, and I don’t mean it’ll change,” he said. “It’s still going to be the same music but a different arrangement.”

CTV said it made an agreement in principle Friday with Copyright Music and Visuals after CBC announced a $100,000 contest to find a new theme song.

The contest announcement followed months of negotiations that failed to result in a new licensing agreement between CBC and the agent.

Moore said he didn’t think “Hockey Night in Canada” would lose viewers along with the song.

“Hockey’s a game, not a song,” he said.