Outdoor Life Channel

The Mighty Ducks take on the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference finals beginning tonight, but some local Ducks fans won't be watching it on television. They can't -- unless they get OLN. The cable network, whose contract with the NHL gives it exclusive broadcasting rights throughout this best-of-seven series, reaches only 49% of the cable TV households in the greater Los Angeles market, which includes Orange County. Bill Padian of Torrance is among the disgruntled fans.

"Hey, did you see that game on Versus last night?" That doesn't have quite the same ring as "Hey, did you see that game on ESPN last night?" The executives at Comcast-owned OLN hope someday it does. Today the test begins as the name changes. The cable channel that began in 1995 as the Outdoor Life Network -- mainly fishing and hunting -- and only last July changed to OLN as it picked up the National Hockey League and went indoors, officially has become Versus.

It may not seem sensible to televise hockey, an indoor sport, on the Outdoor Life Network, but NHL officials seemed pleased with their new national television contract Thursday. "We're in love with the whole deal," said Tim Leiweke, the president of AEG, which owns the Kings. "And we have the right partners. We will miss ESPN, which did a phenomenal job, but this deal marks a fresh start. "ESPN was a servant to 20 masters. On OLN, at least for now, we will be the single most important sport."

The NHL, returning from a season lost to a lockout, needed a cable TV outlet that would give it star billing instead of the bit-player status it had received at ESPN. OLN, known as a hunting-and-fishing haven during the lulls between Lance Armstrong's Tour de France triumphs, wanted to change its image from a quaint and quirky sportsman's paradise to a home for testosterone-fueled competitive sports.

"The search for gold is quintessentially American," Andy Dale was telling me the other day, sounding a bit like a college professor lecturing students about American corporate culture. In this case, however, Dale was making a very specific point about the Outdoor Channel, the growing cable network he serves as president and chief executive. Outdoor traces its roots back to an itinerant marketer of gold-prospecting tips and equipment named George "the Old Buzzard" Massie.