Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - David Shoalts and Mark Hebscher: Toronto Mike'd #150

Episode Date: December 15, 2015

Mike chats with Globe and Mail writer David Shoalts about Canada's sports media, particularly Prime Time Sports with Bob McCown, Dean Blundell vs. Mike Richards, perceived bias and Rogers Hockey. Mark Hebscher crashes the party to tell the inside story of what happened at CHCH last Friday.

It would be the sesquicentennial. That's the name I was trying to come up with because I remember that from, well, it's been a while now, I think. Welcome to episode 150 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything, often with a distinctly Toronto flavour. I'm Mike from TorontoMic.com and joining me this week is David Schultz from the Globe and Mail. Welcome, David. Thank you. Good to be here.

You are my guinea pig. No disrespect intended. Most people just drop the first half of that off when they're calling me. No, the guinea's key to this because episode 150, which congratulations, we were talking off the top that this is the sesquicentennial celebration at Toronto Mike Studios. I'm just floored that I'm the person who's been chosen to be part of this. You are the chosen one. And little story is in 1984,

I played softball at Rennie Park near Swansea and our team was called in 84, they called our team the Sesquies to commemorate the Sesquies Centennial. Was that the year? Okay. That's how I remember the year. Because I moved to Toronto in 83, and I do remember there was a year you couldn't get away from that word. Yeah, they gave us at school, we got pins. I might actually have the pin somewhere.

You shouldn't have said that. Now I feel real old. I was working. 1984 was my first year at the Globe and Mail. You know, you have to... The fact that you're still at the Globe and Mail is a good thing. This is a positive thing. Well, yeah, nobody else would ever offer me a job. And, you know, the Globe and Mail,

that's like a prestigious newspaper. Like, you know, I work for the Sun, and people are, like, booing and catcalling you, and you're like, I work for the Globe and Mail, that's like a prestigious newspaper. I work for the Sun and people are like booing and catcalling you and you're like, I work for the Globe and they're all like, they nod their head a little bit. Yeah, you do get a fair bit of that. Because I came to the Globe from the Sun organization and yeah, it was not unknown for people to, when you told them it works, some people would turn up their nose at it. Although I work with a lot of good people at The Sun. And actually, I realized I haven't explained why you're the guinea pig, which people are

going to be left wondering forever. Why was David Schultz the guinea pig? But for the first time in 150 episodes, I'm going to record this podcast in a completely different way. I'm using different software. Jeff Salmon was here for 149, and I saw some things in GarageBand that made me nervous because it's a very old, dusty MacBook Pro. So this is all being recorded in Audacity. Free software on any platform. I am a little bit familiar with Audacity, yes.

He was a sound guy for the NHL who put me onto it years and years ago when we were talking about how do you record something on your computer. It was music we were talking about. The price is right, man. It's a neat little program. I would have thought it was far too simple for this sort of... We're going to find out, Mr. Schultz. We'll know. But I will say,

even someone like me, who's a complete computer idiot, is able to use it. It's also like, not only is it free, but it's free if you're like on Windows or Mac or Linux, it's the same program and it's free. So it's like perfect for somebody who jumps around from operating system to operating system.

And I gave you the speech, the power move, I gave you the speech about staying on the mic, but I'm going to invest in those swing arm things so it's easier for you to stay on the mic. I've made a decision. The Toronto Mic people, we all met, the cfo said i could spend the money the cfo okay mrs toronto mic that's right okay uh i know how that works so uh next time you come by you're gonna have the swing mic so you cover media in this country do Do you actually listen to My Little Podcast ever?

Yes, I do. That's my first big question. I do. I discovered it some time ago, and probably around the time I was getting on the Media Beat, or maybe a little before I think I was aware of it. And I quickly discovered it was a bit of a resource, because you interviewed, well, a lot of my buddies. But I did discover a few things that were good to know. You were interviewing people like Elliot Friedman and Damien Cox, because I was just starting to cover Hockey Night in Canada then, which had been fall of 2014 or summer of 2014.

I forget exactly when all that. So my only goal for this interview here is to be more interesting than Elliot. Do you find that unlike talking to someone like yourself, that when they come here, you notice that maybe they're a little less guarded? Yeah, that's why it was fairly useful. They're not all as unguarded as Mike Toth was the other way.

That was quite the episode. Not being advisable. He was guns a-blazing. Well, that's Mike, you know. Mike has always been that way. But yeah, no, there were some useful tidbits that you pick up and just sort of store away. You think, well, that may come in handy sometime. How did you, like very few, I've noticed in the mainstream media, very few people are covering the media, especially spoken media.

Well, yeah, it was sort of accidental, really. And the reason there's so very few people covering media is that there's just fewer and fewer people in the media anymore. And so there just isn't the staff to do it. But we shrank a bit as a department and so I was looking around for something to do and I had also had a little sideline over the years in sports business, writing sports business, a lot of hockey business. I had some nightmarish years covering the Phoenix Coyotes. Oh, I can imagine.

Glad to be rid of that. And then, you know, this whole thing was sitting right there where Rogers had spent all this money on the hockey, the national hockey rights. And it started, you know, occurred to me, there's a ton of people interested in this stuff. So I wrote a few stories, and I was also just sort of poking around and chatting to people I knew in the business

and got onto the fact that the CBC had really blown it by not being able to hang on to a part of it and actually get some money for it. Right. So that turned into a story, and the interest in it was huge. Just, I couldn't believe it. It not only led the sports section in readers,

but it led the whole, the globe, I think, for a bit. And I thought, okay, well, I guess we're on to something here. There's an appetite there. Yeah. And, of course, I also found out Roger's hate's being covered. We're pretty funny beasts in the media community because we're the ones that all go out there and cover other people, warts and all. But when someone turns the same lens on us, we just can't stand it. We all react like scalded cats and just hate it.

But I kind of enjoy it because I certainly don't miss covering the Maple Leafs, who I really haven't covered regularly for a few years now. But there's not a lot of jobs right now, in my view, worse than covering the Maple Leafs, in the sense that you would have to go down there every day and stand in one of those scrums. And I just kept thinking, it is getting so hard to do your job,

because the media coverage in Toronto is just completely insane compared to when I started covering the Leafs in the, well, late 80s, early 90s. And so every interview with the Maple Leaf, because they trot these guys out one at a time. They're a very obstructionist organization in that sense. at one at a time. They're a very obstructionist organization in that sense. So every interview is like a scrum with 30 people in it sometimes. Right.

And most of the other NHL cities would see a group like that, maybe in the Stanley Cup final. Exactly, exactly. And so this player will come out, mumble a few cliches, and then a PR guy, this is the other thing,

you've got to love about PR people now over the last 10 or 15 years. Three questions in, the guy will jump in and go, well, thank you very much, Dion, and that'll be it. That's a power move right there. Oh, yeah, yeah. They've been taught that in PR school. And so then you walk away and go, oh, God,

I'm going to write about these people. But media people are way better interviews. As I said to one of my friends and guy I was interviewing a few weeks ago, I said, you guys are way more interesting to talk to than hockey players. And on top of all that PR guy jumping in, they've all been conditioned to say nothing. Yeah, yeah. And we've got to say nothing. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we've got to work harder. Yeah, the cliches.

Yes. There are still a few, some of the younger guys, you know, before everybody else gets to them, they're pretty good. Morgan Riley comes to mind. My son's favorite player, by the way. Yeah, I think he's going to be a terrific player for that team. And so far, he has not been ruined by the PR machine. Right. But he's a rare example.

Well, I've caught him. I've caught him. The cameras have caught him singing Kaisa. And there's a great YouTube clip of him just mouthing the words to Kaisa. Kaisa is a musician, I think, from Calgary, actually. And she had a big hit. And Riley just sings

it on the ice, and it's... Yeah, it's too bad he came along just as I was leaving the beat, because, yeah, I always found him to be an interesting young kid. Our goal is to make sure he doesn't end up the next Luke Shen. I think that's the goal. I don't think that's going to happen. I think he's pretty talented. Merrick told me... Merrick said he's going to be sensational. I thought Merrick was going to give him number four for a minute there. Well, he's not ready to be number four, but

yeah, I do think he's going to be the best defenseman Toronto's had in, oh God, at least a generation or two. Awesome. Since Boris Solming? Is that the last guy? Well, you know, when you talk Boris Solming, you're getting up there. I just wanted you to feel better about your age

that I've seen Boris Solming. I just wanted you to feel better about your age. I've seen Borea's homing. I got on the Leaf beat probably when Borea was in his last year or two. And then they traded him to Detroit. I forget exactly what year that was. But I started covering the Leafs at least part-time about 1987. And I don't think he was around too much longer after that I was at the game where Harold Ballard gave him a gift for his 1000th game now I may have covered that I but I don't remember it so I don't it's all a blur I was in

the grays so I barely I barely saw it but I was apparently there hey what's it like you're covering sports media but I suspect you're friends with, what's it like? You're covering sports media, but I suspect you're friends with a lot of the sports media. How is that balanced? It can be a little awkward, yeah, yeah. And one in particular, I won't mention his name because his employers would probably fire him for talking to me. Every time he answers the phone, he's,

what do you want now? I can't talk to you. So I saw a tweet just like as I was preparing for this interview. Steve Simmons sent a tweet, and it said, so proud of my pal David Schultz who brought down the house at Absolute Comedy today, and what a great turnout to see his comedic debut. What's that about?

Oh, you did some research. I did a little. It hit me. It came across my feed. I couldn't resist. Well, yeah, I made my debut as a stand-up comedian of a fashion on Sunday. Really? Yeah.

This is your debut. I blame Gare Joyce over at Sportsnet. He's an old friend of mine. He got me into this. Second City runs stand-up comedy courses. Sure. I think most people take them just so they can speak better or more comfortable speaking in public.

And I've always been interested in comedy. I've been going to comedy clubs off and on since the 80s, but I never really thought about it much. And then Gare Joyce last month sent me an invite to his grad show, because it's a seven-week course, and your graduation is you have to do five minutes along with your classmates in a comedy club in front of an audience. And so I get this invitation. I thought, holy mackerel, you can take courses for this? And I immediately

went from the invitation to the second city website and signed up nice you know and then i went to gare's show and went holy mackerel everybody in this class is really good what have i done and so our yeah our uh our show was on sunday now uh second city's pretty clever about this uh there's a guy there a really funny funny comedian named Jim McAleese, who's the teacher and he's been doing this for a long, long time. And he told us, he said, this is the best crowd you're ever going to get. Yeah, it's a friendly crowd. Oh, very much so, because

it's all friends and relatives of the guys in the class. So I had to, you know, thank, oh, thanks for everybody who showed up, because I had a fairly large contingent somewhere between 25 and 30. I could have been the embedded journalist in the room. Oh, well, yeah. I'm trying to think who...

Cahal Kelly was there and well, obviously Steve Simmons. So ask Simmons what he thinks if he could give you an unbiased opinion. It went fairly well because, as I said, it was a pretty friendly crowd and by gosh, I got to tell you,

it was a real rush when you're done. So you did five whole minutes? I did six, actually. As my family's always telling me, stop wandering off on tangents and get to the point. So I didn't quite bring it in at five minutes. Sometimes the tangents are often the best part of the story. They don't think so.

This podcast was built on tangents, I think. Yeah. So, yeah, it was a lot of fun. Yeah. I'm just impressed because I often wonder if I could do that because sometimes my kids tell me I'm pretty funny, I've been told. You probably could. But I would recommend signing up because you do public speaking and this sort of thing uh with the podcast so yeah yeah but i'm like dr dr johnny fever do you remember the episode where

he had stay he remember he was working with bailey on how to not be afraid of talking to thousands and thousands of people by pretending you're talking to one person and then he got the stage fright and then bailey told him you know remember you're only talking to me or you're talking to one person. And I'm just talking to you. I forget this thing's recording. That's my secret here. Well, that's the difficult thing about it when you get up there. You cannot convince yourself you're talking to one person.

Actually, it didn't make the podcast, but I had in my notes that Jeff Samet graduated from this Second City. Did he? Yeah. Oh, good for him. Yeah, so I know he did that. Now, okay, so let's talk about one of my favorite radio shows, Primetime Sports with Bob McCowan. What do they say?

It's Canada's most popular sports presentation broadcast or something like that. That sounds, yeah. It sounds about right? Words to that effect. I've heard it a hundred times. We're the best, I think is what they're saying. I think that's what he's saying. Now, okay, tell me your history, if you don't mind. Tell

me a bit of your history with primetime sports, because we used to hear you on primetime sports. Yeah. Steve Brunt got me on, oh, years ago when he was in one of his phases as one of the regular co-hosts with Bob. And he got me on because I went over to him and said, hey, Brunt, you've got to get me on that show. That'll do it. Yeah, yeah. He eventually complied. And so I would turn up now and again on the roundtables.

And I did a few co-hosting stints, never with Bob. Bob was always very particular about who would be his co-host. So I got some work a lot when Elliot was filling in for Bob, that sort of thing. But most of the time I was there on a round table. If Bob is so particular about his co-host, how does Ken Reed keep showing up on that? Well, I think we're in the phase now where, as Bob said to me, and it seems to have been a fair bit of mileage, Bob's getting a little bored, and he doesn't take an interest

like he used to. Unfortunately, it's starting to become apparent. Yeah, I'm... Like, Kenny Reed is a decent broadcaster for what he does on television, but I just don't think it's working on radio. I would agree with that sentiment. And they seem to be having real trouble

finding somebody to replace Brunt as a co-host. Well, I can understand it, because it being radio, they're not willing to pay, I think, a really good amount of money, and they want to get by like they always have in the past, where you get a moonlighting sports writer or somebody from another area of the broadcast business,

and that's not going to work. There aren't that many unemployed sports writers around anymore. I hear Mike Toth is available. Well, yeah. Yeah, that's another one of Mike's former employers. Yeah, he used to fill in there. Well, I wish Mike all the luck in the world, but obviously they haven't found anybody either to their satisfaction

or because Bob did tell me he wants someone to commit to 40 weeks a year, and you think about it, that's a long time. That's a real commitment. And I wouldn't be surprised if you wouldn't really be making a full-time salary doing that, because they tend to pay, you know, co-hosts, and you're paid by the hour or a set fee or something. Yeah, yeah. And so I just don't think the commitment to the full-time money's there. You could probably blame Bob.

He sucked it all up with his last contract. Bob's making all the bucks. Bob's making all the bucks. If I've learned anything from 150 episodes, I've learned that, except for the one percenters, okay, in radio, radio, it does not pay. It's the one, if I have one takeaway, it's that if you want to have an adult living in Toronto,

go find another career, I would recommend. Yeah, and it's gotten worse. Traditionally, radio, the big money in radio is for the morning guy and the drive time guy. And that's about it. There are a few exceptions. If you work for the CBC, you'll make a decent wage no matter where you are on the dial. They have a very strong union over there. But in private radio, no. It's an easy way to starve, especially if you're young.

I have so many more primetime sports questions. I'm sorry, but I have to go back to this. So we're looking for a replacement for Brunt. I learned from a Globe and Mail column, I believe it was written by you, I learned about the boredom of Bob and something about Stephen Brunt did a show, did Tim and Sid

at the same time, even though Tim and Sid is not on the radio, it's TV only. Yeah. And Bob was, didn't like this and there was a falling out

between Bob McCowan and Stephen Brunt and Brunt basically, he's going to do Jeff Blair and he's going to do Tim and Sid, but he's not doing primetime sports anymore. Is this the gist?

Fill in the cracks there. Basically, well, it was all, the whole episode, I think, was very passive-aggressive, probably on Bob's part. But, you know, as you know, Tim and Sid started out as a very popular, well, I'm saying started out, but the fan got them over, I guess from the score, was it? And gave them that one-to-four slot in the afternoon, and it took And gave him that one to four slot in the afternoon

and it took off. It turned out to be really popular. And it was a great lead in for Bob's show at four. And he loved it that way because it really gave his audience some momentum. Even like Bob, he's been the ratings king in the four to seven slot for, oh God, 25 years at least, right?

In the category of sports talk, I might add. But then, of course, Sportsnet got the idea. They wanted to start dominating because I think the advertising money is a little better in television. So they said, okay, why don't we just start dominating the supper hour in television, which you might think is kind of odd

because the overall audiences aren't that huge. But I think part of their thinking was that this would tee up our evening stuff because we got so much hockey, you know, that might build the audience. And also, very important, they appeal to a very, Tim and Sid, that is very younger crowd.

Right. And so then they thought that, okay, and this won't be a real conflict with Bob, because I'm sure in one of the meetings, somebody said, well, wait a minute, Bob is simulcast. And I know from personal experience being on the show, Bob is very, very aware and concerned with the simulcast on Sportsnet.

Interesting. It's a favorite topic. He walks in, it's like, what channel are we on today? Are they screwing us around today? Because, you know, they're tennis tournaments or what have you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll bump him.

So someone obviously said, well, wait a minute. Now they're going to be on television directly opposite Bob. How is this supposed to work? And the rationale, Scott Moore, when he was still talking to me, told me that, no, no, we've decided that they're a younger audience,

and so it's not going to clash. Bob's audience is a little bit older. And so that's that. Well, Bob didn't see it that way. No, Bob looked at the Venn diagram and realized, yeah, there's some younger guys. You know why? Because of...

It's because of... kids like that, apparently. Yes. And Bob got very annoyed, especially when it was compounded by all the promotion they did for Tim and Sid. They had him on the Blue Jay Games. Right. And Bob really got his nose out of joint.

And he admitted as much to me. And so, silly me, I wrote about it. But, okay, there's a perception out there that Bob picks up the phone, calls up his buddy David Schultz and spills these beans, knowing that David Schultz will write about it. I saw a few tweets to that effect. And I really thought it was funny because, no no we are not bosom buddies um but bob is like anybody else he likes to talk about himself and and bob is very honest when

you do talk to him and he hardly ever says this is off the record like most this is that's i shouldn't yeah tell me that's the one downside to interviewing so many media people it's always oh you know this is off the record. They don't want to lose their job. When I press the stop button on the recording, that's when, without a doubt, most people who visit me, that's when they tell me all the things they couldn't say when I was recording off the record.

Oh, yeah, yeah. But Bob, no, God love him. Bob just, and he laid it out for me. But he will answer your phone calls? Like all this information about being bored and stuff? I don't know if he will anymore because there were two pieces at that time. The first one was that Brunt was leaving primetime

because Bob got very angry that Brunt was going on Tim and Sid's show and it was then on TV directly opposite him. Now, Brunt was doing this when he wasn't on primetime, when it wasn't his week, but that didn't really matter to Bob. I think Bob saw it as a sort of betrayal. And I believe that at the same time, Brunt was getting tired of primetime because of Bob's disengagement there.

Because when Bob's not engaged, the producer has to carry the ball and even more so the co-host has to. And Brunt was not real keen on that. And a lot of co-hosts aren't because the guy on the other side is the one scooping up all the cash. Big difference. Big difference. Yeah. co-hosts aren't because the guy on the other side is the one scooping up all the cash big difference

big difference yeah and now i brunt will never say this for obvious reasons um but he yeah and so he was quite happy when bob the i think the final straw for bob was that uh steve filled in for a week when one of tim and sid were off. And that just drove Bob around the band. That was it. And yeah, I think behind the scenes, Bob said basically, get this guy out of here. We can't have this. And Brunt was quite happy to say, yeah, OK, I'll go. What do you want me to do?

And at the same time, he signed a contract. I was told by somebody who who should know it was for close to 10 years and uh all brunt would say which i was able to use is that it it he said something to the effect it will take me to the end of my working life which is about 10 years now you can tell me all the things he said you couldn't write this is is the following. Well, no, I mean, he did... Now I've let myself get worn off. Should I offer you an alcoholic beverage? What I can say is that, you know, Brent was quite happy to shift his responsibilities

because actually primetime was probably becoming one of his lesser responsibilities because he is so good on those television essays that sort of dovetailed with the Blue Jays taking off. So Sportsnet wanted him doing that stuff. And when you're doing that, there's only so many hours in the day. Now, if you were careful and listened

to some of the little lines that Brunt dropped here and there in that period, you'd know that, yeah, he was pretty happy to leave primetime and go work with Blair and do baseball on TV, that sort of thing. Because, you know, it just wasn't fun anymore for him. And he did say, you know, and Brunt's right, he said, when Bob's engaged, he said that three hours, or I guess it was two

because Bob's on solo, right? He said that goes by like five minutes. When Bob's engaged, Bob's doing Bob's thing. It's a great, great gig. But when Bob's not engaged, and you're the guy that has to grab the wheel and steer

the ship, it's not fun. And you make a great point. I've heard stories. I know people who have been, you might have been there, of course, many times, but Bob's house, for example, I've heard tales of Bob McCowan's estate

and the kind of cash he's making. And then to hear that a co-host would be potentially paid hourly, pay-as-you-go resource. To me, that's a chasm right there. Oh, well, yeah. Chasm is a good way to describe it between what Bob's making and what the co-hosts are making.

Mind you, Brunt's doing okay. Yeah, that's right. Okay, now why is it that we never hear you on Primetime Sports anymore? What happened? Well, there was a couple of things. One was when they started investing a lot of money in their own staff, and it was probably a little before when they scooped up the TV rights, they started hiring more people, which

is good for our business, good on Rogers in that sense. And they were hiring people to write on their website. You know, guys like Chris Johnson. Yeah, yeah, he's been here. And other people. And so it occurred to them, why it didn't occur to them a few years earlier, that we don't need these freelancer guys coming in and sitting on the round tables.

Why aren't we using our own people? Yeah, like a Rash Medani. Right. And so, yeah, that's one thing that happens. And there's a few holdovers. I guess, oh, Dave Perkins and probably Doug Smith come to mind. But other than that, I think a lot of the other regulars on the roundtable fell by the wayside. Right. And in my case, I started covering media stuff, and that's a fairly large conflict of interest.

You know, if you're going to write about a show you're on, it doesn't quite work. Do you ever cut somebody, like somebody like a Steve Simmons, who sounds like somebody who's fond of you, like, does he cut him a bit of slack? And how do you go at a guy like that? How does that affect your relationship? I haven't had occasion to write directly about Steve. We've been friends. Not even about the hot dog thing?

Come on, the Kessel hot dog? Oh, the Kessel hot dog thing. That was a great moment there. A lot of clicks from that. Come on. Well, yeah, for him. But that's not sort of the stuff, the daily minutiae stuff. That's not what I write about.

You know, we cover the beat a little different. I mean, back in the day when you had Bill Houston at our place writing four or five times a week column on media, yeah, something like that would have probably got a bit of attention. But I tend to do more long-form stuff, and that's why I'm not in the paper six times a week or whatever like that. So yeah, a story like that. But yeah, you know what? It's funny you mentioned Steve because that would be kind of tough. Steve and I have been friends for, oh gosh, since 1979,

when I got my first real job at the Calgary Herald. And a few months later, along came Steve. He was hired. And also on that staff was Al Mackey, who's still there. Or no, I'm sorry. Al's at the Globe now. And at that time, the other paper in town was the Albertan, and Eric Duhacek was the main writer there. So within a year of that, there were all kinds of really exciting changes going on in Calgary at that time, and the city was just booming. And within a year, the sun had bought the Albertan and turned it into the Calgary sun. Nelson Scalbania moved the Atlanta Flames to Calgary, and in the very first season

of the Flames being in Calgary, Eric DeHatchek, he wound up going from the Calgary Sun to the Calgary Herald. Steve Simmons and I wound up going from the Calgary Herald to the Calgary Sun, and Steve was the main hockey writer. I was hired as the stampeder writer and backup flame writer, and Eric was hired by the Herald as the main flames writer. So three of the four guys who covered the flames regularly that first year were me and Steve and Eric. Nice.

And we've been friends ever since. That's a long time. Oh gosh, yeah. Don't remind me. So you can't write about the hot dog, that's for sure. I'm making that decision. Well, I could if I wanted to. But since he tweeted out how nice the show went at Absolute Comedy on Sunday, I guess I can't. No, you can't.

Hey, okay, so I'm trying to remember the ownership breakdown here, but the Globe and Mail, I think it's 15%. Tell me if you think, but Bell owns 15% of the Globe and Mail. Not anymore. Not anymore? Not anymore. So that's how out of date I am. So does Bell own any part of the Globe and Mail? No, it's 100% owned by the Thompson family.

Okay. So how long ago did Bell, because I know fairly recently. The Good Riddance Day, as I call it, was in August. I happen to be on vacation in PEI, where I go every year. Nice. And I was just sitting on the balcony looking over this wonderful view of the Southwest River and New London PEI. And I was glancing at my BlackBerry. And there, somebody tweeted that Bell had sold its last 15%.

So, immediately, I couldn't resist. I tweeted out, hey, Damien. Yeah, right. This is a bullet. Free of Bell. You're right. TSN is dead to me there so because that's a little pet peeve of damien's he always accused me of favoring tsn because bell had

this piece of i hear this no but i was wondering how can you cover all the rogers well it's funny because the first time that happened and this is a dame it was also the first time Damien went off on Twitter. I forget which story it was. It was something about probably, I'm sure it was something to do with Hockey Night in Canada. And so suddenly Damien's all over me on Twitter, like, oh, no, you just, you know, you're favoring the people that own you. And I had completely forgotten that Bell owned any part of us. And I'm sitting there going, what's he on about?

Right. And then somebody, one of my colleagues at the Globe said something about, well, they do own, I said, what, really? That's funny. They still do. You know, there's been a lot of like

Bell versus Rogers stuff. Like just as a guy who, you know, follows sports media because he loves sports. I love my sports teams i see a lot of bell versus rogers and and you know the blue jay for example the alex anthopolis situation there seems to be and even if it's just a perceived bias in my opinion like if the optics are bad it doesn't matter that it's in reality everything's on the up and up it

just seems like rogers people are defending the move or the non-signing of David Price, things like this. You can kind of see, okay, the Bell guys are kind of hard on it typically, and then the Rogers guys will explain why it's the greatest move ever. Yeah, I think that whole period when Alex Anthopoulos turned down the contract extension was rather extraordinary.

And it fell along company lines, very obviously. And not so much the people that were directly employed by TSN, well, I guess some of them were, but guys like Bruce Arthur and Steve Simmons who sort of make a part-time income from TSN. And they have their own sources, but they were very, hammering very hard on the ownership angle. Because this was a completely bungled job

by Edward Rogers, and Blue Jay fans should really worry about this guy as an owner. Not only him, but his college buddy, this Roger Ray character. Okay. I think they should be very concerned. Roger Ray, who was also the quarterback

for the Argos. Not really. I think Ricky Ray would be better as an advisor to Edward Rogers than Roger Ray. But so the TSN people, yeah, were hammering away at the ownership angle. Like, why did he, he being Edward Rogers, go and hire Mark Shapiro in August when everybody knew how well these trades were working out? But not only, I mean, hiring a new president is one thing, sure. But, you know, at that point, you shouldn't be,

I think you should have been just looking at the business side because your GM's just done a hell of a job. Maybe the greatest trade deadline in the history of baseball. Yeah, and so you need to be careful there, just how you're splitting up the power. And they just gave this guy everything. Yeah. And so the TSN people were quite rightly hammering away at why this happened.

Is this why it happened? Did Alex Anthopoulos wake up and discover that, oh, I'm going to be a glorified assistant GM, no more a GM? And I believe that's exactly what happened. But the Rogers guys, and a lot of this, in fact, I think most of it, is self-censorship, by the way. They're very mindful. So they're not getting a memo passed to them like, be easy on the Js.

No, no. Most of them will tell you, no, we're never told how to say something. But let me tell you. I always ask them, yeah. Let me tell you, everybody with half a brain figures out very quickly where the line is. Right.

And there is an understanding there. And people in broadcasting will tell you this off the record. They'll always tell you that anybody smart knows where he can go and where he can't. And so what you heard from the Rogers side was mostly the discussion stopped at Mark Shapiro. It didn't go beyond that. It was, well, did Alex not think this was a good fit with Mark Shapiro? And that's, you know, they sort of walked up to

that line. Except for, I must say, for Bob McCown. He went after Alex. See, I think guys of a certain status, you know, a certain number of years and a certain kind of contract kind of have the heft that they can kind of get away with that. But I think there's so few, my perception is

there's so few media jobs out there. Like if you have one, you want to hold on to it. Yeah. And that drives a lot of the fear and rightly so. Once you lose a really good job like that, good luck getting one back. Right. And I also think that companies will allow one

or two rebels. Bob is one of them. Because his show has always had that persona, Bob likes to say. I created this character. And so, yeah, one or two guys can get away with it. Usually a former athlete, because Toth was very clear. Well, I heard Mike's theory. I'm not sure.

I think there is a certain truth to that. But I think it's a little broader. I think there are still one or two people who aren't necessarily ex-athletes, you know, can get away with things. Because even people who run large corporations know, well, it's not good that we would be perceived as the Kremlin here and brooking no dissent of any kind. So one or two people can shoot their mouths off, but only to a point and only for so often. Hey, before we get too far away from primetime sports, I realized I had a tweet from somebody who needs closure on something. Apparently you often talked about your home renovations, that you were working on home renos. Yeah, that's... They need closure.

How do renos go? They were done, oh, spring of 2010, the major ones. But I mean, anybody who's ever done home renovations knows it never really ends. There's any number of jobs that weren't quite completely finished that still need touch-ups and a few things here and there. My wife will certainly be able to give you a list off the top of her head. That's funny. Good, we have closure now. Hey, let's leave Bob McAllen for a moment.

And I have a question for you about morning shows on the Fan 590 and TSN 1050. You notice how we're always talking about Rogers? These guys, this 590 dominates the 1050 and the Zeitgeist. Yeah, I know. And I don't know. Well, the people who run Sportsnet and Rogers, they're all convinced that I hate them. I don't.

But it's just that some of the stuff they do, I don't like. So what is your perception? Now we're going to get into one more area. Tell me, what's your perception of Dean Blundell, who spent over a decade at 102.1. Yeah, I never listened to him when he was at 102.1. It's not really my kind of music. It's not your demo? I used to listen to it when I was younger, in the late 80s,

but not anymore. No, but I certainly read all the stories, and when he got himself in trouble over there for a lot of tasteless stuff yeah and like bad taste is one thing if it's funny but whenever i went back and then there were a few times because he would do something completely insane that whole thing about him and his producer talking about um there was a jury trial involving uh I guess it was a bathhouse, and some sexual assaults.

And that whole thing was just astonishing. I thought, okay, somewhere in the last 25 years, people thought, the saying was, you've got to be edgy. And all that meant was, how often can you swear on the air? That's the sort of imagination that went into it. Or how often can you talk about something in extremely poor taste, like these guys were making fun of the victim in these sexual assaults, or victims, I guess. And I did listen to that part and just shook my head.

I thought, you know, how can anybody with half a brain think this is funny? No, I know. And now Rogers decides that they want to shake up their morning show and get better ratings. Didn't Brady and Walker? Go ahead, sir. Brady and Walker had decent ratings. Yeah. But the thing was, their ratings were never that much higher than Gord Stelic and Don Landry,

which is why they got rid of Don Landry. They just kind of thought, okay, you guys have hit a, I assume this is what the thinking was, you guys have hit a plateau in the ratings, and we want to do better. And so they brought in Brady and Walker and figuring that it would pop the ratings. And it didn't really.

I mean, there were nothing wrong with their ratings. They were respectable. And so the next thing you know, and I think they won't tell me this, but I think it was all tied into, again, the hockey rights. That deal with the NHL is sucking so much cash out of that division. And, you know, I mean, yeah, Rogers is a multibillion-dollar company, but each division is run like its own little world. You've got to pull your weight.

Sure. And so it affects all the other things that are owned by Rogers Media. So they thought, okay, well, we've got to start making more money off the morning show. Let's get edgy, as they say, and bring this guy Blundell in. Well, he's a big name in the market, and he delivered big ratings. Well, he's a big unemployed name. He's a big unemployed name.

Yeah, and so I forced myself to listen several times, and I just thought, no, this is not funny. This thing is a train wreck. And as far as I know, it still is. And somebody was tweeting, I think it was Jonah, the Toronto Sports Media guy, was tweeting yesterday. I happened to see how awful the morning show was. I thought, why is he suddenly, everybody knows it's in Toronto.

So I went over and there were a couple of substitute guys on and yeah, it was really awful. But is Mike Richards any better on TSN? You know what? I like Mike's show. Maybe it is just by comparison it's so much fun, or so much better. And here I am again again picking TSN over.

But you've got two choices if you want to get caught up on sports in the morning, and I think his is by far preferable. I like the voices he does. He did a really good bit this morning with Victor Newman and Mike Babcock. I thought it was pretty funny. I remember looking forward to when his morning show started. Gosh, was it four or five years ago? Yeah, maybe longer.

Because I remembered him being on The Fan. Yeah, me too. He was funny, right? I thought he was so funny. Yeah, he was great. And his morning show on TSN got off to a really slow start. I was really disappointed. And I said, oh, gosh, I just remember this guy was so funny.

Is it sustainable, like at TSN, considering the numbers after this much time? Everybody over there tells me, yeah. Okay, so they're going to keep going. They're going to keep going. So they say. However, I'm not totally convinced. They've got a new head of radio over there. And it's not someone with a great deal of loyalty or background in sports,

and my personal experience would say beware. All right, David, it's a very important question. Very important question. What do you think about either replacing Mike Richards or Dean Blundell with Mark Hebscher from Sportsline? This guy is suddenly a free agent, because I don't know if you heard, but Hamilton CHCH had a gut in his writing. Yeah, I heard something about that.

Yeah, yeah. I'm right here. I'm sitting right here next to you guys while you're saying this. If you sat down and said, what is the absolute worst thing I could do to this morning show? Hebbshire. Yeah, the answer would be Hebbshire. show. Hebbshire.

Yeah, the answer would be Hebbshire. This is a very exciting moment in Toronto Mike's history because David Schultz is the guest today and we're having a

great conversation but fresh off the CHCH gutting as I'm calling it now. Don't you have any security in this place? He has his own

key. This is his third episode. So I should point out Mark Hebbshire episode 89 is a great A to Z of the career of Mark Hebbshire and we talk about the Hebbsy Awards

and everything. And then he came back for episode 112 to tell me some fantastic stories. He's a great storyteller. He'd be great on the morning show TSN or The Fan. And here he is now to tell us what the hell happened at CHCH on Friday.

I want to ask Dave some questions though. This is his moment. Yeah, go ahead. This is my third time Friday? I want to ask Dave some questions, though. This is his moment. Yeah, go ahead. This is my third time on. I want to know what other information he's got. I listen to the same morning shows as you do. And I feel the same way. I kind of want more, but I understand how difficult it is to do a morning show and to appease your bosses.

If you're working for one company and the other company's baseball team happens to be incredibly successful do you lead your next day with baseball stuff and ignore your core audience that loves sports and really doesn't care which station is running those sporting events or do you do you ignore it and go to hockey if you're tsn do you say i know the jays won again but you know what we got hockey stuff and that's our bread and. I think there's a little bit of that goes on, but no, because I listen to, as I said, I just don't find Blundell funny, or any of the other people

that are on in the morning. And he's not a sports guy, so if I'm a sports guy, why the hell would I listen to him? He's not going to tell me anything that I don't know, and that's the key to a good show. Tell me something I don't know. But is he going to draw listeners that aren't super sports fans? Maybe they're bandwagon jumpers

and they want to learn more about baseball and the Jays and the inner workings and he might provide that. Well, I think we're getting a little off topic here, but I will say that I think that his numbers should be a hell of a lot better than they are because of the success of the Blue Jays.

They got huge numbers on radio, and people leave their radios on the same station when they go to bed listening to the Blue Jays. So there's a lot of people, it seems to me, get up in the morning and go, oh, that's Blundell, and switch the station. So his numbers should be a lot better. But if I'm TSN and Mike Richards, no, you've got to jump on that Blue Jay bandwagon. And this is another thing, and it was a very smart

move by Rogers. Okay, you hear that, Rogers? I've already written that. They did something a month ago that really, really hurt I think TSN radio, because during this whole Blue Jay stuff, they had two really good analysts on there

in Dirk Hayhurst, who I like. I don't think he's so hot on the newsy stuff, but that's not his bag. I mean, listening to him talk about pitching. The Garfus. Yeah. I think he's terrific. But the other guy, the huge advantage they had

was Dan Shulman. Oh. I mean, if there's ever a guy born to a broadcast, I remember the first time I heard him on the fan, God, in, what was it, the early 90s, and you just right away knew, there's a natural. That guy, you know, and I can't believe he was an actuary in an earlier life, because I had a friend

I went to university with who tried to become an actuary. It's just unbelievably hard to get into actuary school. He's fantastic. He's fantastic. I heard him in Barry. He used to be heard him in Barry. He used to be on radio in Barry. And I think it was one summer, we had a cottage up there.

And I went, who's this guy? He sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Oh, yeah. And that, I think, was the key, is that there was no hesitation. This guy knows what he's talking about, is confident in what he's talking about, the subject matter.

And now when I hear him, I think, it's like he's been my whole life. That's the soundtrack of college basketball, baseball, authoritative sports, and a sense of humor that's kind of dry, but never offensive. Like Dan's the kind of guy he could, if you said, look, you need to offend somebody, take a side. He's not that guy. He's the, I don't know, he's the voice of reason. And he got a great set of pipes. Yeah, I could listen to him talk baseball all day.

So in the summer, it was just wonderful. You got to know when he was coming on, and they worked the crap out of him, and rightly so. And so when Scott Moore and Sportsnet stepped in and stole him, that was huge. Right. Because it wasn't just that they took him away from TSN. I mean, that was their one advantage in baseball.

But now they're putting him on every bloody show they got going. And I'm sure they must be paying him some decent money because they're working him like TSN works Darren Drager. Right. I don't know when that poor guy sleeps. All right. I've got to pause the Schultz talk because I've got to know, while it's still fresh, while the wounds are still oozing.

What happened Friday? Because all of a sudden I saw a tweet from somebody who covers this stuff. And it was something about how CHCH is going bankrupt. And then you dig in and it sounds like CHCH is owned by Channel Zero. But there's this Channel 11 LP that runs the news department, and they were declaring bankruptcy so they could fire a bunch of people, many people, without severance. And then another numbered company that's not either of those companies is a numbered company

would then offer some people a new contract to come back to work Monday. But of course, I guess this breaks the union. I don't, please tell me what, how did you find out what happened? Tell me. Okay. So Friday morning, I go into work, but before I do, my wife says to me, Hey, there's a deposit in our bank account and it's for several thousand dollars and today's not payday. And I, Oh, that's interesting. Well, interesting that could have been an error it had happened to me before a couple of times where somebody you know they mistakenly put money in your account and said we've made a mistake we're taking it out uh so i thought at first that was it when i got to the office my boss said to me did you get a deposit put in your account i went yeah he goes yeah so did i so when your boss says yeah scratching

his head you're thinking oh he's not in the loop what the heck's going on yeah and then during the course of the day and we taped the square off show at one o'clock in the afternoon so we still we weren't told anything so business as usual we're putting the show together we actually taped the show liz west and i was a good show friday no one ever got to see it and then as the afternoon went on the rumors all over the place and then we found out that there was going to be an announcement made at four o'clock. And that announcement at 4 o'clock was, you know, CHCH is suspending news operations. We hope to be back next week. There will be no more news.

The station's gone bankrupt, that type of thing. So all the employees were asked to go into the newsroom for a meeting. My office is at the other end of the station. So I didn't hear that we were supposed to go to the newsroom. And about 10 minutes later, I see everybody walking past my office going up the stairs to studio b so i think oh i guess this is what so i go up with everyone to studio b and um unbeknownst to me uh the boss had named off a bunch of people like it's roll call and if if i call your name go up to studio b any names like maybe 30 or 40 people i I wasn't one of those names, but I didn't know that at the time.

Oh, my God. I'm following everybody up the stairs. So now we get up to the studio, and it's deathly quiet. And one of the owners is up there, and he can barely talk. And it's just so quiet. What's going to happen? And he starts saying things like, you know, those of you who are here, here's the bankruptcy.

There's the trustee of bankruptcy over there. He's going to explain what the situation is. And basically, we're going to offer you jobs with the new company under the new management on Monday. So I'm thinking, OK, well, Sportsline's going to still be around. I'll be all right. And then I get a tap on the shoulder from my boss who says, come over here. And so we get out of the studio and he goes, you're in the wrong room. Oh, my gosh. That's incredible. You're in the wrong room, meaning I'm in the wrong room. He goes, yeah, you're supposed to be in the room with those people who, by the way, had already been escorted out of the building by then 20 minutes early.

The way they do these things is so, so heartwarming. That's terrible. So, yeah. So that's how it happened. And, you know, over the course of the weekend, especially with social media now, just everybody weighs in. And it was really nice to hear from people, you know, sorry to hear what happened, that kind of a thing. And then I reached a point where, okay, am I going to now be upset that I'm not going to get my severance and I'm going to be angry for the rest of my life about this? Or is it time to now turn

the corner? It's almost Christmas time, maybe make a couple of phone calls, see where things are at. What's your next gig going to be if you're going to get one. And I decided to go that route there because too many people are just, oh, that company, I hate them. I want my severance. And I don't think I can deal with that now. I don't want to be that person now that's thinking, you know, how was I wronged? And they screwed me. I'd rather be the guy to say, well, well, that's the business that we're in. I'm not the first guy to have it happen to, and I certainly won't be the last. Yeah, that is a fact of broadcasting. It's always been a lot less stable than print,

although print is certainly going that way now. And I don't have the makeup to stand like, you know, Hebsey's been through all kinds of stuff in broadcasting over the years. I used to hear all kinds of tales of, you know, back when we thought the business was stable, I'd hear stuff from radio guys about, you know, you get fired at the drop of a hat. Well, sometimes they're like, we're going to go country, and then all the rock shots are...

Well, yeah, that was the big danger in radio was the format change, right? And then they'd come in and fire you. Look at the Jim Ralph thing a couple years ago, all right? Jim Ralph finds out in the middle of the summertime, oh, no, Jim Ralph's not going to be back on the radio broadcast. Now, when I heard that, and that was in the summer, I made a point of going on social media and saying, how can, like, Jim Ralph took over for me as Joe Bowen's color guy in 1997, I think it was. You lasted that long, Hemp. 1990, I know, two years.

Remember, we used to take those trips with, oh, those were fun. And so 1997, so that's a long time. And you've got to give a pretty good reason why a guy has lost his job as the color man on radio. Who are you replacing him with and what? He was making so much money or he was such a bad broadcaster? None of those things were true. The reason I listened to Leaf Games on the radio, I loved listening to Joe and Jim Ralph. They told it like it was.

And it's very refreshing. I've always liked ralphie's attitude and i thought as an analyst he was great on the radio and he had the right amount of sense of humor when the time uh called for it but also he was critical when uh the leafs needed to be critiqued and uh you know i ran into him a while later he ended up getting the job back but and i don't know how much if any i had to do with, but I kind of rallied people around saying, you can't let these new guys at MLSE get rid of Jim Ralph. You just

can't let that happen. Well, it's funny about Ralphie. He's so far been the great survivor, because this happened to him, I think, two summers in a row. And I think the one Mark's talking about is somebody at MLSE had it in for him, an executive there who was, I guess, somewhat higher in the food chain.

And yeah, Ralphie, I think, had actually been told, certainly not with any good, great notice or anything, that he was not coming back. And then the guy who had it in for him, he got fired. I believe that's what happened. And Ralphie was saved. Nice. And Ralphie was saved. Nice. And then a year later, by then, you know,

the Rogers and Bell had bought MLSC and it sort of, okay, we're going to get out of the broadcast business. MLSC is right. And so Ralphie and Bowen, they all ended up going over. I think their paychecks are now paid by Rogers and TSN. Right. And I think TSN had thoughts of replacing Ralphie with, might have been Jeff O'Neill when he first showed up. And then at somehow along there, I don't know the ins and outs of it,

but it was decided, no, we're going to, we'll stick with Ralphie. I think maybe it was because Jeff O'Neill turned out to be such a great addition to like Leaf's lunch. And I just,ie. I think maybe it was because Jeff O'Neill turned out to be such a great addition to Leafs Lunch. Yeah, I think he's terrific on that show. He is great, but I'm not sure he would translate into the color guy doing 82 games on the radio. Well, yeah. I think you'd lose some of that edge. You might, yeah.

And I don't know if he wanted to. I mean, that's a pretty tough grind doing all 82 games and basically not having a day off for eight months of the year. And he's got little kids too, right, John? Yeah, I think he does. Mark, a quick question. So you had that money, just a clusterfuck that they accidentally deposited to her.

Because of course that's going to trigger alarms. Like, what is this? But if that's not severance, what is that? They paid you up till the end of the day on December the 11th. So that was your paycheck. The following week would have been payday.

So I guess... See, I don't know because we can't get into our- Accrued vacations or something? Yeah, vacation pay and then the rest of the pay that was owed you, your regular pay. And then that was it. And then you can apply for, I think up to $3,200 maximum of severance pay

if you work for a company that went bankrupt. That's big bucks, man. Now different, yeah, right, that's great. Now different lawyers will tell you different things. Oh, just because the that went bankrupt. That's big bucks, man. Yeah, right. That's great. Now, different lawyers will tell you different things. Oh, just because the company went bankrupt doesn't mean that you're at the back of the line amongst the creditors. But instead of thinking about, I'm not a lawyer, and I don't want an update every 10 minutes saying, oh, it looks good.

Yeah, and they even owe tax money. Let's get a civil suit together. I've seen very few bankruptcies where the employees are anywhere near the front of the line. Right, so onward and upward. And look, if it happens, great. And if I can squeeze a few thousand dollars out of the, I think it's a bankruptcy equalization kind of a thing. But now it comes down to what does 2016 look like on the broadcast horizon? And is there a place there for me somewhere?

And is there a place there for me somewhere? Okay, on this note, so the first question fans are going to ask or they're going to ask any chance of you and Taddy getting together on TSN radio. That's the first question. I know you don't know, but this would be something you'd be open to. Jim Taddy, you mean? Jim Taddy, yes, guy. I would think, well, Jim and I got along pretty well for a long time, and we haven't worked together in a long time, but I respect him.

In fact, talk about a guy that's the hardest working guy in broadcast. This guy's on every single broadcast. Well, isn't he selling real estate too somewhere in there? He was. And he's on Bean Frank. He's like one of the guys who laughs at Frank D'Angelo jokes. I don't think he's on that show anymore. Not anymore? Are you kidding? I don't think so. I'm not kidding. I saw him on there once. But I mean, every time

I'm listening on the radio, on TSN radio, if it's pregame or postgame, whether it's the Jays, no, sorry, whether it's the Leafs, the Raptors, and before that, the Argos, and the Ticats, Jim's doing the pregame show, the postgame show. Man, that's a lot of work. Hey, should Wilner be nervous right now? You're gunning for that Jays talk gig.

You'd be great at it. I was the originator of Jays talk. I was the first guy to, we did the first year of Jays talk was 1984. Because Wilner's coming down, no, he's not coming down. 1984 was the first year of Jays talk. And Tom and jerry jerry had just started i think with the jays he'd been there for a couple of years and they wanted to do a pre-game show and i was working i was doing a talk show on ckey and i got fired from that and i got a call saying hey how'd you

like to do a pre and post game blue jay show on the radio that was the year that they had a fantastic team but detroit ran out to a 35-5 start. 1984. 1984. Sesquicentennial. Right, and Detroit ran away with it, but Toronto's team was a really good team, the emergence of Bell and Mosby, Barfield, and guys like that.

So that was, I think, I think 84 was the first year where the Jays, I think they had their best attendance and things were really looking up. They had been around for seven years. They had some terrible first years, and that's when people really started paying attention to the Jays, and I think that's when people really started paying attention to the jays and i think that's when tsn started so there were more games on television starting around then instead of the one game a week i think instead of the one game a week

on cbc i think there was a couple of games fergie was part of the don chevrier for sure and tony kubek but i think that's when there were more games on television. And that really, I think... Fergie Oliver got quite famous for a few years there. How about those Blue Jays? Yeah, because he would... Wasn't he... He was doing hosting, but he was the late-night sports guy as well, right?

He was the late-night sportscaster on CFTO, and he hosted the Jays games on TSN. Now, I don't know if they ran concurrently, but I think when he was... Because I remember George Brett telling me the great story. They would always look forward to seeing Fergie because he would have $50 bills. Here you go. How many do you need? I missed you last time. And he'd peel off

the $50 US bills for an interview. And remember, just like mom. Don't forget his... Just like mom. Oh, gosh. Yeah, that show. That CFTO. There was a significant creepy factor to that show. Oh, you've seen the YouTube clip then. Who hasn't seen that?

That was a, yeah. We won't go there, I don't think. But yeah, how about those Blue Jays? That was Fergie Oliver. Can I tell you a great Fergie Oliver story quickly? Yeah, of course. One night he was at a bar mitzvah, I believe it was, and when he left to go back to do the late sports at CFTO,

he forgot to take his skullcap, his yarmulke off. And I don't know what time he rolled in. Back in those days, him and Marsden would roll in whenever and everything would be edited for them and written or whatever. So he rolls back in and now he's on the air and now whoever Tom Gibney introduced, oh no, here's Ferg with sports

and he's still got the yarmulke on while he's doing the sportscast. That was great. Hey, Schultze, can I call you Schultze? That comes natural to me. He's still got the yarmulke on while he's doing the sportscast. That's great. I thought that was great. That was great. Hey, Schultz, can I call you Schultz? That comes natural to me. Oh, everybody does, yeah. Because I call him Hebsey.

Hebsey and Schultz. That's all you ever get called. Quick, because people are going to wonder, you guys know each other? Of course. I mean, of course, of course, but we don't know anything, of course. Media is like a little village in Canada. You get to know everybody. No bad blood between you?

I should have cleared that first. No, thanks. I think we cleared up that thing. Come on, real talk. Oh, blood between you? I should have cleared that first. No, I think so. I think we cleared up that thing. Come on, real talk. Oh, you know what? You and the goat that time. Oh, yeah, we did. That's an infamous story.

You know what? If anything was written about me that I disagreed with, I understood where the guy was coming from, whether it was you or Bill Houston. And I don't remember any specifics, but I understand that's the job

of the person. And it's not a personal thing. It's like, look, he doesn't prefer Dean Blundell. Does he hate Dean Blundell? If he walked past Dean Blundell on the street, would he throw a punch at him? I wouldn't know him if he walked in. And there you go. I think there's a healthy respect.

I've always liked David's work. We used to travel together on the same planes and be in the same hotels and have a beer together at the same bar, that type of thing. So it is a fraternity that way, and nothing but respect. Look, if you can stay at the Globe and Mail for as many years as you did, and outlast the Marty Yorks,

Al Strachan, still there, still there, do, do, have, then more power to you, because in this day and age, to stay with the same broadcast or print entity for any longer than a few years, man, you must be doing something right.

Oh, I don't know if my bosses would say that. Probably say, well, we got a good union. I can't get rid of you. Hey, so Schultz, since it's Hebsey and Schultz, I'm going to do this anyways. But you wrote an article recently about the number of viewers of Leaf Games is down. Is anyone

surprised by this? Because the team is in rebuilding mode. Well, they shouldn't be. I'm going to hear. You wrote that I guess of Leaf games is down. Is anyone surprised by this? Because the team is in rebuilding mode. Well, they shouldn't be. No. I'm going to hear. You wrote that, I guess, the average audience for Leaf games right now is like 863,000 viewers, and it's down from 1.2 million the same period last year.

But as you mentioned in the article, which I think is a no-brainer for any sports fan, the Leafs were competitive through Christmas. We sort of fell off the cliff early in 2015. Yeah, and I think this is... Scott Moore hates it when I write about ratings. He's always disputing. He disputed, I think, my figures again.

I mean, there's so many different ways of looking at ratings. It drives me crazy, too. And I don't particularly like writing about ratings, but I think you need to at certain periods just to show what the trends are. Yeah, nobody should be surprised at this. And I compared the same period last year, so from the start of the season through,

let's say, the American Thanksgiving, I don't know, the 21st or 22nd of November, and that's what they're down from. I think their overall average last year might make it look a little better, but because in January, that's when everybody tuned out and stopped listening. Lots of us diehards tuned out.

What's too bad for Rodgers here is that they just had some of the worst luck in the world when it comes to this. I mean, in their first year, they started, everybody figured the Leafs, they're coming off that real high with the Boston series and let's go. And I'm sure Keith Pelley and Scott Moore and all those guys are like, great, we just came in at the right time. And then they fall off the cliff. And then they clean house. And now it takes so long to rebuild a team in a salary cap world. And the example I always use are the Chicago Blackhawks. They drafted Duncan

Keith in 2002, not even the first round, the second round. And it was eight years from that point to when they won their first cup. And so you apply that to Rodgers. They've signed a 12-year deal. It could be eight years. And I said that to Keith Pelley once. He was buying me lunch, too. And he had this sort of sick smile on his face. And he just said, well, we have great faith in Brendan Shanahan. So now that they've hired Lamorello and Babcock, and Scott Moore has said as much, they really hope that the rebuild gets accelerated. And as we were talking about their poor luck this year they're thinking you know they know the leaf ratings are going to stink but we've got this great new star

on the scene connor mcnaven and so they loaded up on because they have that right in the deal with the nhl they loaded up on more national uh oiler games you know they're going to do up 31 or 32 and then boom that guy gets hurt. You know, the irony of that, Dave, is it's the exact opposite of when the fan first started in the early, I guess, 92. It wasn't owned by Rodgers at the time, but their timing was impeccable. The Leafs and the Jays were just in the rise. Oh, yeah, in that period.

Yeah, they were both... And it was what a great time to start an all-sports radio station when the whole city is going nuts all year long, right? All winter long with the Leafs, and then all spring, summer, and fall with the Jays. And now Rodgers decides how many years later, 20 years later or so, to say, you know what, let's take a leap of faith here

and spend $5.2 million. And the exact opposite happened. Their luck was terrible, whereas when the fan began, the luck was fast. In fact, the Argos at the time were a big talking point on the fan. There luck was was was fat in fact in fact the argos at the time were a big talking point on the fan there was not a day that right the rocket was there yeah there wasn't a day that you could turn that station on that there wasn't something exciting uh and relevant to talk about that the whole city was interested in nelson millman i should just

point out quickly was on this show very recently and kind of we talked about that history because it was like feast or famine because it was that wonderful time to start the sports radio, like you mentioned, with the Leafs and the Jays and everything. But then very shortly thereafter, the World Series is canceled and I think there was a lockout or something. But he actually credited John Derringer

with saving the station. This is Nelson Millman's words here. In Marsden? Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, that show was a terrific show. Well, here's another conflict of interest for me. I love them.

In those years, it would have been late 90s, I guess, the Globe had a sort of contra deal with the fan. And they got a certain amount of advertising. And in return, the guys who worked in sports would appear regularly on their morning show. You would phone in and do five minutes or whatever it was with Derringer and Marsden. That was always a lot of fun at that time.

But yeah, that was a really good show because those two guys played off each other very well. Do you think that's the best morning show the fan has had? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I do too. There was, I forget what version Mike Richards was on when he was doing all the voices. I don't know if he was on with those guys or was it the earlier period?

Or was it when Mike and Paul Romanuk did the morning show on the ill-fated team? Well, yeah, that came later. Yeah, that turned out to be quite a dream. Because when you think now, if you go back to all the morning shows that have to do with sports radio, it's hard. Mornings are tough because you expect to be talking all sports, but some of the most successful morning shows, like when Imus was on in the mornings on WFAN in New York, he didn't talk sports.

Yeah, I know. And I always thought that was the strangest thing because why wouldn't you tune in in the morning and hear about what happened last night to your team? Because it's all very local sports radio. And that ill-fated team thing we were talking about, that was their big mistake. And I'm amazed that no one figured that out,

was that they thought they were going to establish this national network of sports radio. And it doesn't work that way. Somebody in Calgary doesn't care about the leaf minutia. They want to hear about the flames. That's for sure. That's what did them in. But the same is true in Toronto, though. How many people, when you're listening to, it doesn't matter what show or whether it's the morning

or not, how many people in southern Ontario are that interested in the Calgary flames? Yeah, well, and that's what happens to you in every city. It's like, what are you talking about those guys for? The Argos? Well, get out of here. Quick on the, actually are you talking about those guys for? The Argos? Get out of here. Quick note. Actually, you're two perfect guys to ask this question.

I'm having a debate with my friend Fred Patterson about the popularity of the Argos in the GTA. And I think he likes to be contrarian. And he likes to take a hot take, as we call them now, which I hate hot takes because they're ridiculous. But his argument is that the Argos, and he's only basing this on tv numbers and you're the perfect two guys to ask he says the argos in toronto in the sorry the gta are more popular than the raptors in the gta oh no way yeah there's no it doesn't even pass this i had this

chef arash madani the other day and he said he laughed when i told him so freddie p P., and you press him, because I will bring up many, many reasons why that's an absurd opinion. And he will only point to one thing, the television ratings. Apparently, the Raptors deliver rather poor numbers in whatever the Numeris books and stuff. If that's what you're going to look at. That's all he can point to. Yeah, because I don't know why it is, but the Raptors don't do that well on television until they really,

really start winning. Like an average, I think an average Raptor game is probably less than 300,000, right? But they're taking the numbers for the whole game, right? Like I bet you if the Raptors numbers

in the last five minutes of the fourth quarter were taken, there wouldn't be a comparison. That could be. But I'll tell you, I watch the Raptors, but a lot of times I'll miss the whole first half, and I don't feel I've missed anything.

You're right. And the other thing is, I don't know if he's comparing them to actual GTA numbers for Argo games. Right, because you only get the national numbers, right? Yeah. Now, the average crowd for a CFL game for TSN, I think this season, was somewhere around 600,000.

And that's down. They've had a steady decline for the last two or three years. As I get reminded a lot by Scott Moore when he bellyaches about me writing about ratings. Why aren't you writing about the CFL? Well, Scott, nobody cares about the CFL. This is my feeling in my little circle, small sample sizes.

Nobody cares about the CFL. In Toronto. In Toronto, right. And that's why Larry Tannenbaum and Bell have made a huge bet that they can somehow restoke the fires here. Oh, with the BMO Field stuff? With the BMO Field. Which has pissed off my TFC friends. That's the trend in the CFL,

do the little intimate thing. And yeah, if I was a billionaire, maybe I'd do it too, because I like the CFL. But I don't know. I don't want to rule, like just say it's no way it's going to happen. I'm very dubious.

But, you know, the Ottawa thing makes me wonder a bit because I always thought nothing could be deader than the idea of the CFL in Ottawa after, you know, the years of just horrible ownership they had. And suddenly this team has caught fire. Who just passed away like two days ago. Yeah, I saw that. Well, I think it's great for Ottawa. The most mysterious man in sports.

It's exciting to watch Ottawa. I think it's great for Ottawa. Mysterious man in sports. It's exciting to watch Ottawa. I think it comes down to this. If you were to ask any hockey, a Leaf fan, for example, would they know more than just the Maple Leafs? Do they know about the NHL? Are they aware of the league? And with baseball, for sure, people love the Jays. There's lots of them that couldn't tell you

any member of the Pittsburgh Pirates. But I think in the CFL, it's important that if you're a fan of a team, you've got to be a fan of the league as well. If you're an Argo fan, but you don't know anything about any other team, you don't care, that makes it difficult. There aren't enough of those people. Out West, CFL fans love the CFL.

They like the whole league, not just Edmonton or Calgary or Saskatchewan. In the East, I think it's a much tougher sell because people aren't engaged in the entire league. Yeah. And you need to be because there's only nine teams, right? And so how can you enjoy the league if you don't understand or know what the other eight teams are doing? And yeah, unfortunately, I think the only two cities that are really consumed by the CFL are Winnipeg and Regina. Because the Vancouver guys, they're a lot like, and even Calgary, because I lived there for a time,

they're a lot like people in Toronto. It's like, okay, well, if the team's doing all right. Yeah, if Doug Flutie's here, we'll watch. We'll watch, and yeah, if somebody gives me a free ticket, I'll show up or whatever. Maybe. But the buzz in some of those cities is like if you live in a college town in the United States. If you happen to be

from Columbus, Ohio, it's Ohio State all the time. And you're right. It's like that in Regina. It's like that in Winnipeg with the football teams, but in not enough other centers where they're always talking about it. Even in Ottawa, once the Senators start, it's like, hey, the Sens, we're hockey fans first, and

we'll kind of, you know, if the Rough Riders, not the Rough Riders, if the Red Blacks are doing well, we'll kind of yell it. You've got to yell it. Red Blacks, it's all caps. You've got to yell it. Yeah. Well, Larry Tannenbaum and Bell are counting on that whole Red Blacks phenomenon, translating here, where their audience or the people that go to those games are young, as opposed to most CFL crowds, which are fairly old. Because we all remember the good old days in the 70s

when 50,000 people went to an Argo game. Yeah, and they were all older people who had wineskins. Oh, yeah, I was going to say wineskins. You couldn't drink in those days. Corked out of their minds. Another thing that someone mentioned to me, and I've forgotten about this, is they didn't start serving beer at the games

until the mid-80s. You couldn't get a beer at Exhibition Stadium. The amount of drink you could bring your so you'd bring more in you would bring your own stuff and then the security didn't exist no big deal bring your wines so they were drunken crowds at argo games i remember going with my dad and and holding onto his hand very tightly because just be careful because you don't know who's going to be sitting next to you and how drunk they're going to be my my dad was i grew up in an agri-peninsular my dad was just a huge Hamilton Ticat fan.

And he would take me once a year. And that's the first time in my life I ever saw drunk people. Because I come from a family that didn't do a lot of drinking. And the ones at Ivor Wynn are special. And so you go, yeah, Ivor Wynn Stadium. What an eye-opener for an eight-year-old kid. Oh, my. And I walk in the bathroom, in the washer, and I'm eight years old.

And of course, my dad sent me by myself. That's why I'm in the States. Listen, at the old grandstand at the Exhibition Stadium, if you went to Dominion, you could get a Jays ticket for a dollar. So a lot of my first games in the mid-'80s, early-'80s were in the grandstand at Exhibition Stadium. And if Detroit was in town, we would count the number of fights nearest. Like fights, you know, today, think about fights breaking out

every 30 seconds at Skydome. Yeah yeah so yeah i do know a little bit about the the drunken drunken crowd the cheap tickets but i like this younger crowd thing i like the idea because the idea of a it's a party we go for a little tailgate we have some fun there's some tfc is big on that yeah well i think that's what they want to do which which you can't do in canada the way you can in the states and i think people like the people that I know that are real sports fans, the best events they go to are down in the States where it's either NASCAR or college football, where they're really part of a scene. It's almost like you're transported to somewhere where you're expected to have fun. You're going to have a great time. The game may not be great, but the whole atmosphere around it.

Whereas, let's say, Iverwind Stadium, which is now Tim Hortons Field, you go there for the game. As soon as the game's over, you get the hell out of there. You're not there. There's no pregame tailgate party. There's no excitement. There's no reason to get down there in advance and restaurants or bars. I know that the Jays did it and have done it successfully the last couple years

when they have those little beach parties before the game. You know, where you're hanging out and there's bands that are playing and stuff. Like Monster Truck or whatever. Yeah, I think an atmosphere has a lot to do with it now because you're talking about going to an event where it used to be if you had tickets for a game, that was enough. Just the game. Now you've got to sell the sizzle. Well, the hardcore fans are in the minority, so you have to create something that the people around them would want to come along and take part in. One note on young people in the Raptor ratings, just one thought I have is I finally found somebody wearing a PPM device.

So I actually have been searching for a long time. I wonder, where are these people? They're like unicorns. You can't find these guys. I found one. So I interviewed him off the record. I can't name his name. I know a guy who has a PPM device.

And I asked him about streaming. Okay, so my thoughts on Raptor fans is they're very young, very young. A lot of these young kids, I don't know if you know this, they're cutting the cord, okay? This traditional, like the old CFL guy who turns on the TV and goes to whatever,

TSN, that's sort of gone. So these guys are streaming it and watching it online and stuff. He tells me, the guy with the PPM device tells me, you have to put something in the headphone jack. It's not going to pick up the encoding or whatever.

So I have a feeling, first of all, I have many issues. This is a whole separate podcast. I have many issues on how the ratings are gathered and all that. But we're missing out

on the bulk of, I would think we're missing out on the bulk of Raptor watchers just because of the way they do it. Yeah, there's a ton of stories about how those radio ratings are skewed because there's so few people actually wearing the PPM. Especially young people. And I think in one of his rants about ratings, Scott Moore had told me one year the ratings for a particular radio show on, I forget, it was a sports radio show, got really skewed because apparently two guys who worked at Stelco in Hamilton were wearing these things.

That's right. And they both got laid off and then both just sat there drinking beer, collecting pokey and listening to this one show. Oh, yeah. And they represented a million listeners. Yeah. And I remember when I just started looking into ratings, I got a chart of all the numbers for, I guess, the fan and TSN.

And I think it was in April of 2014, the numbers for both stations just spiked. Just like the Brady and Walker show had this... Yeah, I remember this. Four and a half to an eight. Yeah. And the guy in the business who has helped me out on this said, pointed

it out and said, don't pay any attention to that. nobody in the business trusts those numbers for april there's something weird happening to voltaire maybe it's like you said two guys who got laid off or two guys said they're gonna watch the same so the way i understood it too was and initially with the ppm was you had to be the the device you were watching the sound had to be up if there was no sound like another if you're in the bar right and you're watching the game with a hundred other people, and the sound isn't up. Yeah, how many

bars are doing that? And you had a PPM, it wouldn't register. It was in the bar they're playing bad music. And they call themselves a sports bar. So that's another one. So now you've got all these people, and you're going, boy, look, everyone's watching the Leaf game. Guess what? It does not show up on that guy's PPM because the sound wasn't up. The same

thing with a device. And I think this is where the headphone jack or whatever comes in. There has to be a certain thing so that... Also, what if you're watching something online? Let's say you didn't see it live. Now you go online to watch it. Does that register if you have a PPM? Right. And a CFL fan's not going online

because it's not there. It's just not there. But whereas, I mean, basketball stuff online, I mean, you could... the streaming, Reddit, for example, will list good streams for cord cutters who want to watch the Raptors versus Golden State or whatever. It's just all there, and it's not being recorded by numerous.

I actually had a chance to get one of those radio PPM meters about six months ago. I got a letter. That's how they recruit them. Right. And they said, you know, your name's been selected. I have no idea how. I'm probably off an email list or something.

And we'll be in touch. The next step was we're going to phone you, and then you tell us, yeah, you're willing to do this. And I'm like, oh, yeah, okay. And then I'm sort of thinking, well, is this, I don't know, where this fits in a conflict of interest. And I'm like, well, no, I don't know. I'm still a... But what happened was, when they phoned me, my wife

thought it was a telemarketer and told them to buzz off and hung up, and that was that. So I got the toonie that came with the letter, and that's it. That's as close as I got. Had you agreed, do you think that you would have changed your habits? Would it have been a conflict of interest? You know what?

It's your personal viewing or listening habits. Yeah, because years and years ago, when I was in university, I got sent one of the diaries. Me too. And this was television. I have no idea how they picked me because I was just this crazy student living in Waterloo, and I got the diary. And I thought, okay, I'm going to fill this thing out.

You had it for at least two weeks. And I remember then consciously writing in some shows I liked, even though I didn't watch them. CBC. I might have missed them. And then I would try. I remember at the time I couldn't stand Merv Griffin. And I would write it, because they had these little spaces for comments,

and I'd be writing stuff in there, like, what's Merv Griffin doing on television, for God's sake? And yeah, and you do alter your viewing habits when you're aware that this has an effect. When I worked in Montreal, there was a morning man for the, CFCF was the station at the time, I don't even know if they're still the call letters, but this morning man, his next-door neighbor got a diary.

BBM for radio i think it was nielsen for television but it was a radio diary so it's the next door neighbor of the guy so hey how's it going bill no not bad jim like yeah i got this diary here well the guy who's the morning show host says really interesting so buddy um let's let's make a deal now i mean i don't know how many of these were distributed let's say 500 around montreal were distributed you got one of 500 so the ratings on the morning show of that station spiked the the guy uh had it in his contract that he would get a new porsche if if the ratings hit a certain number oh they hit that number all right you know all right and but the next ratings they went back down to the way they were before and like you said david got fired

hey wait a second here. What's going on? So a spike in the ratings, like Dave's right. A spike in the ratings is one thing. Unless it's consistent over a number of books. Yeah. It's like an outlier. Yeah.

It's an outlier. Exactly. An anomaly. This whole system is ripe for corruption. I'm thinking my buddy who, he's not my buddy, but I know of him and he reached out to me and we've been chatting through DM on Twitter about his PPM device. Like, yeah, there's got to be like a black market like to for crooked radio people you know to hey you got a device just put it next to the radio during well yeah the only problem is you don't know who these 500 people are no i know i know they were careful because this guy was very

you can never tell people i have it or whatever because What I don't understand is why all the secrecy. I mean, Numeris is, I get their philosophy. They say, we are the only company in Canada that compiles this number, so if you want that information, you have to be a subscriber to us. And that's a hell of a lot of money. I can imagine.

Six figures. And so the subscribers, in addition to the broadcast companies, are basically the ad agencies who can afford this. I mean, the Globe and Mail has no interest in buying a subscription to Numerics for three stories a year. So how do you get your numbers? You get your numbers the same way

I do, right? Well, you've got to cozy up to somebody who gets the spreadsheets. Same here, except... And you may get, I won't say inaccurate numbers, but you may get the cherry-picked numbers. Well, that's the problem with getting the numbers from the broadcast companies. And they always tell you, well, you should get them from us. And I think, well, no, you're the one who's going to massage them. Because it doesn't take long when you realize they're not giving you the exact numbers you want, like actual viewers for each program.

the exact numbers you want, like actual viewers for each program. They're giving you an average because maybe the average makes them look better or less bad. And I'm not tiring Rogers with this brush. You get the same thing from TSN. So you quickly learn, oh, crap. Occasionally you can use them, like say for a Grey Cup, because they will then. Like TSN did quite well at the Grey Cup, so they'll give you the numbers.

But a lot of other stuff, you just have to say no. But aside from, you know, trying to protect their six-figure incomes, okay, why doesn't Numeris do what they do in the States and release at least some of the numbers so you can make head nor tail of them? This weekly top 30 that Numeris puts on their website, it's, you can't make it.

I mean, they'll give you a number for like Hockey Night East. Well, there's like four games. How do you know who is watching which game? Don't they have a, there's competition though in the States. Numerous had their other ratings services. And in fact, one that I was reading about that a couple of Canadian radio stations have, but it's extremely expensive because you need the hardware, right? And it's got to take some time over a number of ratings periods to determine.

But I would love to see a comparison between Numeris' numbers and a competitor, which also measures audiences. Oh, I bet you they'd be different because I can see a difference between David Schultz's number and Chris Zelkovich's numbers. They're different.

Well, I'd say it all depends on who you're getting it from. What is your, each of you, because I have an idea what David's going to say, Malkovich's numbers, they're different. Well, I'd say it all depends on who you're getting it from. What is your, each of you, because I have an idea what David's going to say, but have you ever gone with a story that turned out to be completely false? And have you ever had that moment where you went breaking news, if you will,

you break something that turned out to just completely be untrue? Like you were fooled, if you will. I wasn't because fortunately for me, people prior to me had been burned that way. And the first thing, Jim Hunt taught me this. He said, you've got to get a second source. I don't care if it's the mother of the guy

that did the killing. You've got to get a second independent source. And I had struggled with that. I was saying, wait a second, Pat Marzen just said Walter Gretzky died. This was many years ago on the radio, right? And he didn't. Someone had said, look, Gretzky, I'm telling you right now, Walter Gretzky died.

Pat didn't check the source. Pat figured, look, this guy knows Walter Gretzky. That's good enough for me. I'm going with it. And that was many years ago before social media. Now, especially with we got to get it first. So I'm very cautious, very, very cautious. I'm not that interested in getting it first, but I got to get it first. So I'm very cautious, very, very cautious. I'm not that interested in getting it first, but I've got to get it right.

And that idea of getting an independent second source has always stuck with me and I think should be with every journalist. Well, this happened to me. It was an April Fool's joke that went badly wrong. And it still bugs me a lot to this day and but it's going to take a little while to tell this i want to hear this um how long ago was this this was around 2010 i'm going to say it was when i was still covering the the whole coyote mess and this started because one of the guys in that group of Canadians that bought the Coyotes,

it wasn't Anthony LeBlanc that did this to me. It was one of the other guys. And this guy was complaining to me constantly. You're making us look bad. You're always laughing at us, mainly because they didn't have any money. And I just couldn't believe, you know, how are you going to pull this off? Well, the NHL was so desperate. They did pull this off.

But anyway, he was complaining to me that you think we have no credibility. You are always dumping on us. And I said, well, okay, well, you know, he said, you know, we're not – we know what we're doing. You've got to give us a break. And I said, oh, fine, all right. This is like a week before april fools and so he told me a couple of things this guy off the records i'm not going to say who he was and they checked out it was about league business and i remember one of them was

significant enough that i called gary batman about Bettman, well, Bettman would never tell you that's right. What Bettman does is he won't deny stuff. Gary is, in that sense, an honest person in that he won't... He won't mislead you. Well, yeah, he will. He won't. He's a lawyer, right? So lawyers have their own version of lying, you know what I mean?

So you have to learn sort of how to read what he's saying. Like a non-denial denial kind of thing? Yeah, that kind of stuff. And this is what Gary did. And someone else, there was someone else who had told me this originally. I ran it, and I ran it by the Coyotes guy

and then Bettman, and I knew it was right. It was to do with expansion fees or something. So I had a story there. And this guy then told me something else that turned out to be true. And I thought, okay, maybe I have been too hard on you. And then April Fool's Day comes along. I haven't thought about April Fool's since I was in grade four. And I happened to be off that day.

And, I mean, you talk about a perfect storm. I'm in Fort Erie with my wife buying a fridge and stove for our home renovation project, which was just coming to an end. And the reason we're in Fort Erie is because it was an amazing auction place that sells brand name appliances, just absolutely dirt cheap. And so I'm standing there, and my phone rings. And it's this guy. And he says, we've just bought Manchester United, which was up for sale then. And then he sent me a text in the form of a press release.

And I'm looking at this thing, and I'm thinking, what? What the heck? And I thought, well, you know, stranger things have happened, because they were sort of a group that fronted things, and we're getting into sports management. So I phone the office, and I've got barely a signal. I can't write anything on my blackboard. And I said to the office, this guy has just told me this.

Oh, yeah? Well, so I dictated like two paragraphs. And our web desk guy had it on his machine. And then the sports editor said, now, okay, let's figure out if this is true or not. And that was the very day we had installed a new computer system to handle our website. Yeah, CMS, yeah. And the RRS feed, which I knew nothing about.

Yeah. Well, this guy had it on his screen, and we had this three-way conversation going, and the sports editor had said to him, you know, it's on your screen. He said, it's not going on the website yet, right? He said, no, no. Well, somehow the way this thing was set up and it was the first day, it did not go on the website. This thing never appeared in the paper, never appeared on the Globe website. It slipped onto the RSS feed. And I believe Sportsnet picked it up and ran it as a story as the Globe and Mail is saying that these

guys have bought, Ice Edge has bought Man United and I'm going oh my God. I didn't even know until like five hours later when I was on McCown's show. He phoned me about it. I'm like what are you talking about? Yeah and it had my

name on the story. That's a clusterfuck. And I'm on his show live, and he's telling me this story is out there. Because I'm still in Fort Erie on my day off. I haven't seen anything. And he said, yeah, so what do you mean it's out there? And I said, oh, God, this is awful. And I'm on the air with him going, oh, God, this is awful. I phoned the office, and they just said, I mean, they just said, oh, God, this is awful. And I'm on the air with him going, oh, God, this is awful.

I phoned the office, and they just said, I mean, they just said, no, no. Well, it just slipped out on the IRS. And then they said, we just, but we grabbed it. Don't worry about it. It's not on the website. It's not in the paper. And the next thing you know, Twitter explodes. Sure, they get screencaps and everything.

And I felt sick. You're done, yeah. And so I issued an apology on Twitter and said, I'm really sorry, but I have to own it. It was my name on it. And meanwhile, my boss is saying, because this guy was, oh, April Fool, you know. And like 10 minutes after, and then I said to him,

I texted him back after this all, and I said, yeah, you really got me. You got me. And he's going at first, he's going, well, you know oh geez that's too bad i didn't mean it and i said oh shit i haven't thought about april fool in 35 years and uh and then once um all the coyotes fans picked on because they absolutely hate me right and uh then all of a sudden so both of them were on the guy started what what really frosted me, is the guy later started owning as if I set this all up very carefully

to punk this guy. And yeah, so that's how that happened. And so out there, there are tons of people who are convinced this story appeared in the Globe and Mail. That you bid on the April Fool's joke. I think that's when I started following David Schultz on Twitter.

No, because I remember the apology. Yeah, I just felt sick. And you know what? Had there not been Twitter in those days, you might have been in real... At least you got an opportunity immediately to say, listen, that's wrong. Yeah.

And I own that, right? It doesn't make you feel any better. Although if there was no Twitter, maybe we would have known about this little RSS. You know, my boss is saying to me, like, don't beat yourself up, but it didn't appear anywhere. It was just a stupid April Fool's. But now you know what an RSS. My boss is saying to me, don't beat yourself up, but it didn't appear anywhere. It was just a stupid April Fool's.

But now you know what an RSS feed is. And I've never subscribed to one to this day. I live and die. I use Feedly. They used to use Google Reader and they killed it. Google kills some good programs sometimes for no good reason. But I use a thing called Feedly and I basically use that. All the blogs and stuff I follow,

I subscribe to the RSS feed, and it comes to me and aggregates in my feed. Your stuff is more up-to-date than most news organizations. It is. I mean, I'm like, how does he get this? How did he get the ratings? How did he know this was going on? You're ahead of the game because of your knowledge of technology.

RSS feed. I can write. It's an XML file. I can write it. In fact, this is real boring, except this podcast, the way we'll get to all the subscribers is via an XML file. I can write it. In fact, this is real boring, except this podcast, the way we'll get to all the subscribers is via an XML file. Basically, iTunes and all the different podcasting systems just read my XML file. So when I update that XML file, I say, here's the new episode. Here's where the file lives. Here's what it's called. Here's the

description. Mark Hemsher crashes David Schultz's party. It's all going to be there and it's going to just come to them. He's crashed way better parties. Well, so far, this is a pretty good party to crash, actually. So that story you told about being in the wrong room, so you're basically in a room

and you're being told essentially that you're being spared, although they were going to, I'm going to guess that this is like you'll be, it's a way to break a union, right? That group, not you, obviously you were in the wrong room,

but everyone else in that room was offered, and I'm going to guess like less money and all that jazz too, probably. Like it's more than just breaking the union. It's bringing like in that room was offered, and I'm going to guess, like less money and all that jazz too probably. Like it's more than just breaking the union. It's bringing, like, I don't know, let's say a resource was being paid $70,000 a year.

Perhaps the new deal is for $50,000, take it or leave it, and a lot of people will take it. That's standard operating procedure for a lot of businesses. Because there's no severance. Why wouldn't you take it and find a job shortly thereafter? You declare a bankruptcy

and basically all your creditors and employees get screwed. I don't like what I don't like. And I'm not a lawyer and I don't understand this. I don't like how they sort of have, they hide behind these different companies. I got screwed over by somebody who did this once.

And they basically, they had a numbered company that is now the boss and the old channel, I want to get the names right, Channel 11 LP is the one that went bankrupt and screwed you over.

But meanwhile, the company that owns CHCH is called Channel Zero. So to me, it's a Ponzi scheme, man. We're all shell game. Come on. The way I look at it is this. There should be federal legislation that prevents any company from going bankrupt into screwing their employees that way. Either the government has to have some type of an equalization plan. They have to have a fund somewhere

to protect these employees. I mean, look, I was only there for 12 years. There's people that were there for 40 years. Now, if you're at a company for 40 years, should you get, I don't know, at least six months severance, a year severance? At least, at minimum. Well, there are labor laws in Ontario

that dictate what the severance is based on how long you work there. It's a minimum of two weeks for every year you work there. Minimum. And somewhere around a month is about right. And if you get a judge that, you know, a sympathetic judge, he's never going to side with the big company.

He wants to side with the employees, but you can't in a bankruptcy thing. So why isn't there federal legislation that doesn't allow a company to, like you say, a Ponzi scheme, say, you know what, we're just going to change the name of it, this company goes bankrupt, we move everything over there, it's a different management thing, and then we're off the hook, we don't have to pay these people.

Yeah, this sort of thing went on, it goes on all the time in businesses, but it was happening all the time in the first internet boom and collapse. These entities were being formed by these entrepreneurs, they call themselves. And yeah, people were losing their jobs and getting screwed, losing money. But it's standard operating procedure because a company, for example, is going to look at something like Channel 11 because Canwest Global was just going to walk away from it and shut it down.

So this company stepped in and obviously said, well, okay, but this is kind of risky, so we're not going to expose ourselves in case something goes wrong. So you create a third company. So it's designed that way for this exact scenario. Worst case scenario is no... And then that company goes bankrupt and you walk away.

And I don't know what the... Sorry, go ahead, Mike. What you're doing at the same time, though, is even though it's a different company, the owners of the company are now going to Hollywood and they're going to film festivals and saying, yeah, we own a television station. And they go, wow, you got distribution.

They go, yes, we do. We have facilities. We have distribution. We're available all over Canada on the satellite, on cable systems. So come, let's make a deal. And they did with this other company, which is different from Channel 11, which, you know, it was basically all news. And, you know, when they first took over, their commitment to local

news was admirable. And a lot of other stations were like, you know what, this should be the model. You're serving your local community. You've got news almost all day long. You know, my shows, Sportsline and Square Off, were very popular shows. They were on for quite a long time. Their ratings were actually pretty good. So why wouldn't we think they were going in the right direction? The only problem is we were the only station in Canada doing that, the only independent station. And you need a lot of money to do that.

We didn't have Rogers or Bell backing us up, you know, with the deep pockets. We had a company that, you know, with the deep pockets, we had a company that, you know, had limited resources. And it just so happened at the time, you know, the recession, everything just made it even more difficult to generate revenue. They don't have the revenue streams, they used to have the local production, the LPIF, they don't have that anymore. How many revenue streams can an independent station have, there's no subscriber fees, there's no carriage fees, it's no carriage fees. All the money you're going to earn is on advertising

and that's it. And that's not sustainable. Yeah. I mean, Rogers can't make huge money on HockeyNet in Canada right now because thanks to the Leafs and the fact that a lot of the other Canadian teams aren't much good. And the one team that's really good, the majority of their fans are French.

Right. You know, and so Rodgers can't go. They had visions of really strong-arming the advertisers and saying, you know, you're going to pay this much. And the advertisers said, no, we're not. And that's basically what happened. And they took another hit in revenue, I'm sure, this season, because they decreased their ad rates for this season, Scott Moore admitted. And that was a decrease from the first year of the deal, which was actually a

decrease by at least, I think, 20% from what they were looking at. So you can imagine the damage that's done to their spreadsheets. And they still have make goods, right? Well, you have to. You promised the advertisers a certain minimum number. If you don't reach that number, you have to. You've got to give them more ads. Ethically, you have to go to them and say, look, we know we promised you this.

At this rate, well, we're going to give you make goods, which means now some of the inventory that you are running it has already been paid for and now instead of you know more revenue coming for those it's sorry we have to make good with the old advertisers i realize i asked david to come to an hour podcast and i i see now he he's probably missed very important appointments i might have it's mark's fault no game day, though. I don't cover those guys anymore. You know, it's very close to here. Come on, they're at the Mastercard Center. Hey, thank you both.

David, thank you for coming. You're welcome. Dave, thanks for letting me crash your big podcast. Oh, well. I just feel, for the record, I grew up with Hilarious House of Freidenstein and a number of Red Green Show and a lot of... He had a lot of shows there,

Smith and Smith, there were Max and me, me and Max. Anyway, CHCH was kind of a big deal when I was growing up and it's just heartbreaking to see all those people two weeks before Christmas,

sent home, no money, terrible. So I'm sorry about that, man. Thanks for having me on the show and things will look up for me, hopefully, and for everybody else, too. And that brings us to the end of our 150th show,

the big 150. Hopefully I recorded this. I realize that's my first time recording this way. I'm not coming back. I see squiggly lines. We're good. You can follow me on Twitter at Toronto Mike, I see squiggly lines.

We're good. You can follow me on Twitter at Toronto Mike, and David is at D Schultz, S-H-O-A-L-T-S. And Mark Hebbshire, are you still at Hebsey, man? I am. Follow him. They're both very good on Twitter. I enjoy their stuff.

See you all next week. It won't be today And your smile is fine And it's just like mine And it won't go away Cause everything is Rosy and green Well you've been under my skin For more than eight years It's been eight years of laughter And eight years of tears And I don't know what the future can hold or do

For me and you But I'm a much better man for having known you Oh, you know that's true