How CBC Lost Its Hockey Theme
Inside story includes angry account by composer's daughter.
Composer Claman: scapegoat? Photo courtesy HockeyTheme.com.
How much is a song worth? Hockey fans from coast to coast obsessed over the question last week. They extolled and excoriated the theme from CBC's Hockey Night in Canada. They found it priceless and worthless.
One Globe and Mail story on the subject has 500 comments. Canadians invoked everything from the New Coke to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur in making their case. "The HNIC theme makes me vomit. Replace it with 'Battery' by Metallica," wrote "Green Milos." Okay, so Canada's other national anthem, the song that sends chills up Wayne Gretzky's spine, isn't everybody's hockey song.
How much is respect worth? Somewhat lost in the debate over the song's monetary and symbolic value is the CBC's long-standing ungraciousness in dealing with the composer of the theme, Vancouver-born Dolores Claman.
Elderly composer wanted 'respect'
The 80-year-old composer, who now lives in London, England, and wrote the song as a jingle in 1968, allowed her agent, John Ciccone of Toronto's Copyright Music and Visuals, to represent her as the controversy heated up. But when CTV bought all rights to the theme on June 9 for an amount that may have approached $3 million, Claman offered this in a brief written statement: "CTV displayed a tremendous amount of respect for my family and the song."
Dolores Claman has been looking for respect from the CBC for a long time. Twenty years ago, not long after complex changes in rights began to earn her royalties for the song, there was another controversy. She wanted a credit at the end of the broadcast. You know, "Theme Song: Dolores Claman." Even though the federal government had just introduced a law requiring such credits, CBC refused to add her name to the long list of gaffers and knob-twiddlers. "People forget it was written," Claman told the Georgia Straight's Maja Grip at the time. "They think it just growed like Topsy."
Media coverage changed CBC's tune, but Ciccone told The Tyee the CBC continued to regularly omit Claman's name when it ran full credits, despite a contract that required it. "They give credit to catering. Everybody but Dolores. It's insane."
Birth of a law suit
Ciccone also says CBC failed for years to provide a requested accounting of numerous uses of the song outside the terms of their contract. That prompted Claman to sue the CBC in 2004 for $2.5 million. The statement of claim, which also alleges that CBC interfered in Claman's efforts to sell the theme as a ring tone, gives a pretty good idea of the cloud that, according to the CBC, hung uncomfortably over the negotiations.
CBC, of course, blames the other side. CBC Sports executive director Scott Moore told CBC on June 5 that he thought there was a deal, and that Ciccone wouldn't communicate with them. Ciccone's website, HockeyTheme.com, provides a compelling alternative version of events.
Claman's daughter lashes CBC
On June 10, Claman's daughter Madeleine Morris, once a Vancouver alt-rock singer now living in Vietnam, posted a broadside on the Internet that also suggests the issue is mainly one of respect. "They kept bullying us, telling us the song was worthless, threatening to drop the song altogether if we didn't give them exactly what they wanted, absolutely on their terms," Morris wrote in the blog post In Response. "If not, they'd hold a national contest and replace the song.... No matter what they say publicly, they really, clearly, didn't give a shit about the theme. Their only concern was they should not be seen to be the villains in getting rid of it."
Morris said Claman became a convenient scapegoat. "My mother was so depressed, she just said 'No, they don't really want the song. It's better at least if it dies a dignified death.' "
Claman shouldn’t be too depressed. The song has certainly garnered her a handsome income, now and in the recent past. She was paid $500 per game broadcast, and there are a lot of them. Moore described the licensing deal as the most generous in the country. CBC said Claman made $65,000 from the song last year. One Internet wag said the publicly owned CBC shouldn’t “give some old bag more of our money.”
Saving taxpayers' dollars?
Certainly the CBC has won some friends for taking a hard line with the "demanding" Claman. A Vancouver Sun editorial praised the CBC's economy. Many agreed with the CBC's contention that the song would have little value without Hockey Night in Canada.
Ciccone won't disclose the numbers, but he said his negotiations with the CBC were based on industry standards that suggest all rights to a song are worth 13 times its recent average annual income. Add to the CBC payments revenue from sheet music (it's topped the sales charts), ring tone downloads (which once exceeded 18,000 in a single month from Bell and Telus alone, says Ciccone), and other sources, and a figure in the millions for all rights suddenly doesn't seem so out of line. What's more, Ciccone believes the CBC could have recouped the cost of buying the song through collecting fees, once it owned the new rights.
CBC Sports regularly operates in the realm of millions -- Globe sports business guy William Houston pegs Ron McLean's annual HNIC income at $600,000 and Don Cherry's at $900,000 -- but according to Morris and Ciccone, it hardly came down to that kind of dough.
They say, as a last-ditch effort, they offered to drop the lawsuit and simply extend the terms of the existing contract if CBC would cover Claman's legal expenses. But, they say, CBC rejected their offer.
Instead, CBC announced a $100,000 contest to replace the theme. Then they declared that they had hired a sports lawyer to try and mediate a settlement.
That came way too late.
CTV's promise to Claman
Ciccone says CBC's all-rights offer, which CBC Sports executive director Scott Moore pegged in the "high six figures," was "less than a third of what anyone else offered us." He says CBC negotiators told him no one would care if they dropped the song, and that a CBC lawyer once told him "I could give a kid in his basement with a synthesizer $20,000 and own the song for life."
Not something that a composer of the caliber of Dolores Claman, who was granted free tuition at Julliard and wrote music for an Oscar-winning short film, likes to hear.
"When CTV made an offer," wrote Morris, "they promised that they'd use the song, and they'd use it in association with Canadian hockey. Of all the things, this mattered most to my mother....
"To a composer, their music is like their baby -- they don't want to see it buried, or forgotten, or sidelined. And my mother, being a rather strong woman, just wasn't willing to be bullied and threatened any more. A lot of people are going to call her greedy and opportunistic. Well, they just don't know her at all.... Life, and people, are a lot more complex than that."
Hard hit for Hockey Night?
Now, of course, it doesn't matter what the song is actually worth. There are issues besides whether Moore or Ciccone is telling the truth.
For example, how much damage has CBC done to its Saturday night hockey franchise? Is it true, as Scott Moore said, that everything beyond the game itself on Hockey Night in Canada "is just window dressing"? How do Don Cherry's suits feel about that? Will the new theme be as unbelievably awful as the alternative that the HNIC window-dressers briefly used a few years ago? Does anyone in English Canada even care that the theme is being returned after a four-year absence to francophone Quebec, where French broadcast rights are held by CTV affiliate RDS?
And then there's the big question: is this another step toward the end for Hockey Night in Canada? CBC and its audiences remain hopelessly conflicted about the place sports should take with our national broadcaster in this era of netcasting and ceaseless reruns of classic NHL games on channel 118. Foster Hewitt is dead. Danny Gallivan ("and Lapointe will be playing another visitation to the box of punition") is just a wonderfully anachronistic memory.
Will the new song contest be another failed CBC excursion into the realm of reality TV? Will the nostalgia that many Canadians still feel for Hockey Night in Canada turn to annoyance if the new theme is performed by Nickelback? Will hearing Claman's iconic music on TSN and CTV make it easier for English Canadians to detach themselves from CBC's Hockey Night in Canada tradition -- and for CBC to write off sports entirely?
I think so. I agree with the guy whose post on the Globe and Mail website said Hockey Night in Canada is a brand that depends on its symbols. "If a brand intentionally loses its symbols, the owners have lost their marbles."
Related Tyee stories:
- Are You Lovin' It?
More indie artists are turning songs into ad jingles. Survival or sell-out? - 'Cold-Cocked': The Hit of Hockey
Interview with author Lorna Jackson - Music to His Eyes
Mark Mushet's portraits of musicians bend the usual notes.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
shmendrick
13-06-2008
a jingle
I'm with those who are glad the cbc didn't shell out boatloads of cash for a jingle.
As mentioned in the article, it was the cbc that made the jingle worth money.
The idea that anyone can make 100 grand per year of a 1.7 second jingle they wrote 40 years ago is insane all by itself, let's not get into paying another 3 million on top of that.
what she was up to was extortion plain and simple. I'm not surprised the cbc wasn't feeling all that respectful....
If she wanted some respect, the right thing to do would have been to release the song into the public domain.
Bobb999
13-06-2008
That $100K a year figure is
That $100K a year figure is way higher than other articles I read suggested, which as I recall, was something like $30K - $40K. And that's only in recent decades. Other articles said for the first few decades since '68, she got just $2K - $10K a year.
I'm generally a CBC supporter, but tend to believe the CBC treated Claman badly here , with its bullying, threats and disrespect. Refusing to list her name on credits at the end of the broadcast when required to by law, just underlines the pettiness of CBC's treatment of her.
CBC doesn't deserve the song now. I was disappointed at first CTV got it. Now I'm glad.
Canadians concerned about Hockey Night in Canada wasting good taxpayers' money on expensive non-essentials, should consider the 1.5Mill/yr. The Grapes buffoon and his smirking sidekick cost us each year:
Extravagance on non-essentials.
Remember, HNIC existed quite happily and successfully for decades before those over-rated two came on board. I'll take a Howie Meeker any day. And he probably came at a more reasonable price.
Bobb999
13-06-2008
Topsy trivia
I was curious about an obscure reference attributed to Dolores Claman in the article:
"They think it [the song] just growed like Topsy."
It turns out it's a reference a character in the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin".
Topsy is a wild and uncivilized slave girl whom Miss Ophelia tries to reform.
The novel recounts a conversation between Topsy and St. Clare's cousin Ophelia:
"Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy?" The child looked bewildered, but grinned as usual. "Do you know who made you?" "Nobody, as I knows of," said the child, with a short laugh. The idea appeared to amuse her considerably; for her eyes twinkled, and she added, "I spect I grow'd. Don't think nobody never made me."
David Beers
13-06-2008
Apologies for editing error
The $100,000 figure originally in this article and mentioned in comments above is not accurate. The author had it right but the wrong figure crept in while preparing the story to post. The figure has been corrected and sourced to read that the CBC has said Claman earned $65,000 from the CBC last year. Apologies to all affected.
greengreen
13-06-2008
Don cherry
Don Cherry gets $900,000 a year! How many houses would that build for the homeless?
Who the hell would stop watching hockey if the ego-endowed idiot wasn't part of the show? His absence may cause less trips to the fridge, but that's about it.
Jeffrey J.
13-06-2008
A Sad Day for Canadians
As in much of life, there are often more than one villains to a plot. First, CBC. Hated by Harper & Co, probably undermined and underfunded for years. Incompetence at the upper echelons wouldn't be surprising. It's called "crashing the system" and its being done in health care and most other public services. So Harper will be ecstatic with this story. Most Canadians will be saddened. Even though likely true.
But don't count out villian #2. The opportunity for the CTV to come along and "make nice" with the copyright holder (which I'm sure they did) wasn't born out of selflessness. Rather, it was a perfect opportunity to embarrass the CBC and make a huge PR scoop. Which they did. As the months go by, if CTV fails to live up to its respect, we'll never hear about it. The copyright holder can cry all she wants, but there won't be a peep from the public media.
All in all, a very sad affair, with incompetence at the helm of CBC, NOT on purpose, so the system will one day be derided and ridiculed until it is finally sublet to CanWestGlobal. Can't wait.
A good article inspite of it all.
Van Isle
13-06-2008
To think that the country is
To think that the country is going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket with our boneheaded political and business elite and all the great unwashed have to bitch about is a friggin hockey jingle. A common expression for this is "Lord give me strength". (and I'm an athiest)
alive
13-06-2008
save my money!
Is it possible that someday we shall become so civilized that organized mayhem no longer warrants CBC time?
I see it as an insult to anyone's intelligence to have people like Cherry getting paid for his rants, as for that song, like who cares?
Jake-from-the-lake
13-06-2008
hockey
We couldn't care less about the song associated with HNIC.HNIC is another Canadian sport that's run by americans for Canucks [OFFENSIVE COMMENT REMOVED HERE...]. It has a lot in common with wrestling.Amuse the spectaters.Give them booze so they can stand what their watching. If you can stand to watch Cherry you have a problem.
Anyway we only get a glimpse of hockey when were changing channels. We also have no use for Asper,CTV or Global. Prefer CBC.
It's the only news outlet for Canadians.
CBC is for Canadians ,and thats why Harper
would like to get rid of it.[...AND HERE. -MODERATOR.]
Bailey
13-06-2008
Dear shmendrick
I'm interested in your claim that a short jingle doesn't merit much pay for the author.
Can you hum it? I bet you can, every note.
Multiply that by thirty five million Canadians in this generation, 25 million in the last who all could recognize it instantly.
Any sane company, or insane one for that, would kill for such a jingle. CBC threw away a treasure of branding and took a huge PR hit when they let that one go for nothing more than a chance to be rude to the author.
The replacement, unless the contest is only for nitwits who never heard of intellectual property, will cost them more just to establish, and is unlikely to ever rise to the level of that one you just hummed in your head.
ME2
13-06-2008
It's more than just a jingle
I agree 100% with both Jeffrey and Bailey, even while I don't give a tinker's damn for Hockey and esp for that ignoramus Don Cherry.
But CBC has been forced to commerialise by the neocons, and like all media, must live by the ratings. Anything that threatens those ratings, like the loss of even a jingle can do, threatens the CBC.
IMO, this represents just another incident in the constant chipping away of the CBC structure, and it's little wonder that the Sun sees paying for the jingle as a "waste of taxpayer's money". Now Harper can cut the budget by another $65,000.
I can't believe how tunnel-visioned some TYEE posters can be.
nightbloom
14-06-2008
I'm amazed at how much
I'm amazed at how much discussion by the watercooler this snaffoo has generated. It seems the jingle is an institution unto itself. Any other private network would be witnessing heads roll over this error. I can't believe they were so churlish as to even deny the composer any mention in the credits. Sounds like CBC is getting a wee taste of karma.
(Incidentally, The Tyee's earlier article on Battlestar Galactica was picked up yesterday by "The Website @ the End of the Universe", a popular sci-fi blog: http://www.theendoftheuniverse.ca/node/1069 )
Moat
14-06-2008
A work of Art - left goes looney and splits again
The song is a work of art, cultural art that love it or hate it, will be a reflection of us in the future. It does not have the same connotations as a McDonald's or Ford commercial.
So while we are at bashing the hockey song, some of you might as well consider getting ride of the National Gallery of Canada - a place where most Canadians have even less attachment too.
realisticman
14-06-2008
Perhaps Stephen Harper
Perhaps Stephen Harper agrees with many posters here that $900,000 for Don Cherry is a waste - along with other expenditures. Perhaps this is why Stephen Harper is feared as one who would eviscerate the CBC, given a chance. Maybe he feels just as outraged as many here do. Although Harper has been in power for a while and all his government's legislation is being passed there has not been a move against the CBC by the Conservatives.
It's important to remember that when people like Jeffrey J., above, claim that the, "CBC. Hated by Harper & Co, probably undermined and underfunded for years." a bit of perspective is called for. Federal cuts to CBC have been going on for years. The Stephen Harper government didn't start this and has not, in fact, been doing any.
Dec. 12, 1984
Workers at the CBC are in shock. Yesterday came the news they were dreading: management is cutting about 1,150 jobs in a bid to slash its $906-million budget by $75 million. Some jobs will be eliminated through attrition, but about 750 people will be laid off across the country.
Deep budget cuts in 1991
March 22, 1991
Radio Canada International cuts language services and staff members in a round of restructuring.
September 30, 1996
...budget cuts of $127 million, resulting in sweeping changes to radio and TV operations and the loss of as many as 2,500 jobs by April, 1998. "This is," said Beatty, in a remarkable change of tack, "a very painful day."
Phased in over the next 18 months, the cutbacks will bring to $414 million the total CBC budget reductions, which were first imposed by the Liberal government in 1994.
funniously
14-06-2008
Compare with Monday Night Football
Every sports fan probably knows this theme as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOmcLIzIuzc
The Monday Night Football theme, indeed the entire broadcast, was dropped by ABC in 2005 and taken up by ESPN. However, both ABC and ESPN are owned by Disney and MNF was a net money-loser. Not so for HNIC, which is by far the CBC's biggest cash cow. I don't see the CBC ever being foolish enough to give up HNIC altogether, but they're product is definitely going to a slightly paler version of its former self as a result of the change. Definitely a dumb move, revenue and marketing-wise.
PS: I take issue with anyone who says watching pro sports is a blue-collar, low IQ-holder activity! Besides being easy to disprove (e.g. Wimbledon, Kentucky Derby, The Masters, etc.), it's insulting to working class people.
Adrian22
14-06-2008
on an up note
Thanks for such a thoughtful article.
Music certainly has value in our culture, and to many creatures. It's been a fascinating week or so in which to observe how differently people come to determining it's worth.
In relation to the Hockey Theme song, it's welcome to see the creator Dolores Claman receive due respect and payment.
(There's more than enough documentation, even transcripts of examinations for discovery in the civil case, available online to inform anyone who so wants to know - how things went down.)
On another note, Happy Father's Day weekend to all!
Skookum1
15-06-2008
only 60k in one year?
There's so much in the article and forum, so much ground to cover, but one little factoid sticks in my mind from my usual too-fast scan:
CBC paid Claman $60,000 last year. ONLY sixty thousand, for playing her composition how many times? I'm not sure exactly what SOCAN rates are like, but I do know a bit about film/TV actor/writer rates. Speaking-part actors can make that much in one year, from one commercial, if the ad is played a lot (and more for US nation-wide than Canadian nation-wide, but some Canadian ads might earn in that range). A non-speaking part, depending on the ad, can also make an actor that much, especially if special skills/attributes are involved. That's not a composer, that's a meat-puppet. Now, for a composer in those commercials, the earnings are gonna be higher - unless as in many cases the song is owned/bought outright (as is probably the case with the McDonald's jingle, for example). But a theme for a major television show, used on all its commercials and promotions.....$60,000 is way under market rates.....no wonder Claman walked to the competition.
I don't think Danny Elfman or John Williams would have been treated so callously ("your song's worthless, you're lucky we pay you anything" - is SUCH a Canadian attitude; Americans may be crass but at least they know value for money...). But their agents/managers probably would have cut a better deal in the first place - a contract specifying play-rates - or had some kind of concept of what the buy-out would be worth.
This has me wondering what a composer for a comparable American "jingle" would be getting; but I'm not sure there's an equivalent to the iconic status of this theme in the US....they have three or four national sports to obsess over, instead of just one.....
Skookum1
15-06-2008
cont.
All very discouraging to hear about, speaking as a musician and erstwhile performer/composer. Last week one of the CBC n ews shows - CBC Sunday with Carol and Evan I think - had a profile of Alannah Myles, who's trying to restage her return to the limelight after getting screwed and starved by her (Canadian) label for years. Off one of her hits, the first one whatever it's called, the record company made $160 million dollars.
$160 million dollars they made off one song. She only just now started getting royalty cheques, s they billed her $7 million - SEVEN MILLION TO RECORD ONE SONG - to record the song for her, even though they owned the recording and (I believe) bought the song out from underneath her, and she only just last year finally paid off that outrageous debt.
And I'll tell you what - the HNIC theme gets a lot more play than that song by Alannah Myles. The CBC used it to make a lot[/i[ of money.
$60,000 should have been a bonus, not the full annual royalty. But in Canada, artists are lucky, apparently, just to have big corps (Crown-owned or otherwise) take advantage of them; "you'd be nobody if we hadn't ripped you off".
Not that this doesn't happen in the US. But the entertainment lawyers down there work on contingency and if you do get screwed, there's lots of room to screw back....
Speculation: the use of the theme by Bob & Doug on [i]one
of their Excellent Adventures probably paid more of a royalty than CBC paid for an entire season; and that was just the toot-toot-toot version, not even on instruments.Jeffrey J.
15-06-2008
Shrinking the CBC into a Bathtub
The first (of many) neocon attacks on the CBC rightly commenced in the 1980's. Which is exactly the decade that rolled out the Reagan/Thatcher/Muroney led agenda to begin the undermining of progressive North American/British economic policies. To shrink government to the size of a kitten so it can be drowned in the bathtub.
So the current desires by the same policies to diminish the CBC is nothing new. And yes, under Paul Martin's neoliberal finance policies, it was business as usual, but cloaked in slightly more palatable language. As we saw under Clinton and Tony Blair.
In short, the social forces that arose from the 1930's to encourage real democracy, and real equity for most citizens, has been eschewed and villified by most western financial elites since the 1980's. Harper is trying to outdo his progenitors in a sad show of toadyism to the US elite. Thankfully, he doesn't have a majority government, as the damage would be much worse.
Indirect efforts to embarrass the CBC will continue. They help to make a mockery of a public broadcaster, and will encourage contempt for such an impressive institution, particularly when compared to CanWestGlobal and the US monopoly media (owned primarily these days by Westinghouse and General Electric).
funniously
15-06-2008
How many of you saw this?
Stephen Colbert taking the piss. Brilliant!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8BhSXEu3fo
no1important
15-06-2008
Quote:Although Harper has
Wait until he gets a majority in Oct 09 and see what happens in 2010 to the CBC...
carfreecity
16-06-2008
hockey
Never watch it. I prefer Canadian content.
How many players are Canadian, born and bred here or atleast long time citizens? Look at the Grey Cup. All those Rough Rider fans so proud of their AMERICAN PLAYERS,over 1/2 I believe. I"d rather watch 22 minutes or Rick Mercer.I dont think the people on these shows are millionaires.