Public Response
| This article contains weasel words: vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Such statements should be clarified or removed. |
| This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. |
There was a divided response to the implementation of the FoxTrax puck. Newcomers enjoyed the feature, since they could follow the game more easily. In fact, a Fox Sports survey found that 7 out of 10 respondents liked the new puck. World News Tonight did a story on the innovation, in which ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, himself a native Canadian, claimed to receive significant favorable feedback from viewers on the technology, but cautioning that although he liked it, that "I don't think Canadians are going to like it as much as Americans are."
However, there was a strong backlash among hockey purists. They argued that the video graphics were a distraction and turned hockey into a video game. Others said that it really shouldn't be that hard to see a black puck on white ice. Perhaps not coincidentally, Nielsen Ratings for the NHL on Fox began declining in 1996, falling from a regular-season peak average of 2.1 in 1996 to 1.4 for 1998. The NHL would not recover from the slump until the NHL Winter Classic debuted in 2008.
Despite the puck having passed rigorous tests by the NHL to qualify as an official puck, matching the non-enhanced puck in every material way, some players claimed the enhanced puck had more rebound, and were frustrated that the pricey pucks were not available for practice.
The concept was later parodied in a Molson Canadian beer advertisement where an American marketer is attempting to sell the idea to a boardroom full of Canadian executives. As he is forcibly ejected from the room, a blue comet trail follows him (i.e. "they passed").
Canadian news satire program This Hour Has 22 Minutes parodied the concept, promoting a glow that recognized when Americans would appear on screen.
Canadian Folk/Comedy trio The Arrogant Worms satirized the glow puck in their song Proud to be Canadian with the line "we don't need no microchip inside our hockey pucks."
Sportswriter Greg Wyshynski named it the second-worst idea in North American sports history, trailing only the infamous Ten Cent Beer Night promotion that baseball's Cleveland Indians threw in 1974, in his book Glow Pucks and Ten-Cent Beer.
Canadian Folk/Country group Corb Lund Band added a verse to their recording of "The Hockey Song" by Stompin' Tom Connors mocking the scheme.
Read more about this topic: FoxTrax
Famous quotes containing the words public and/or response:
“The twelve Cells for Incorrigibles ... are also carved out of the solid rock hill. On the walls of one of the cells human “liberty” is clearly inscribed, with the “liberty” in significant quotation marks.”
—Administration in the State of Ariz, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The truth is that literature, particularly fiction, is not the pure medium we sometimes assume it to be. Response to it is affected by things other than its own intrinsic quality; by a curiosity or lack of it about the people it deals with, their outlook, their way of life.”
—Vance Palmer (1885–1959)