Please Turn to Channel 33 For All Your Habs Needs

RDS is a magical channel that exists at the same position, 33, on both analog and digital cable in Montreal. Like, whoa, dude.

So big news out of the RDS offices today where they have announced that they have extended their deal to broadcast Habs games another five years, through the 2012-2013 season. For those of you unfamiliar with RDS, it is the French-language equivalent of TSN, which is the Canadian "equivalent" (read: sucky ugly 3rd cousin) of ESPN. RDS' nightly sports news broadcast is 25 minutes of Habs and other hockey news followed by five minutes of everything else, even during the hockey off-season - it's awesome. And RDS used to broadcast mini-putt for like 4 hours a day, but it's been a while.

You know I would be snarky about this but imho it's all good. RDS is good at broadcasting games, and their talent is great (even Benoit Brunet!). Pierre Houde may be the best play-by-play man working today in any language. In fact, I once heard him do a game in English and he was even good then. Yvon Pednault gives you no-bullshit analysis. Even Chantal Machabée has somehow managed to become less irritating and better-looking over the years. And Jacques Demers, despite his inability to read a teleprompter (sorry, bad taste?) is solid in the studio.

And with the launch of RDS-HD coming in the fall, this deal is that much better. And as usual, RDS will broadcast every Habs game. Suck on that, Blackhawks fans.