Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - David Shoalts: Toronto Mike'd #182

Episode Date: July 6, 2016

Mike chats with Globe and Mail journalist David Shoalts about the changes at Rogers Hockey and what the heck went wrong.

Welcome to episode 182 of Toronto Mike's, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a local independent brewery producing fresh craft beer. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com and joining me this week is Globe and Mail journalist David Schultz. Welcome back, David. Thank you. Thank you. You, for those who haven't yet heard the epic episode 150,

the sesquicentennial of Toronto Mic'd, if you will, it's the David Schultz show for like 45 minutes. No, it wasn't. For 45 minutes, the spotlight was shining brightly on Davidid's head and then uh some guy some guy named hebsey crashed the party to talk about being fired from chch so it's only fair that you come in again and i lock the doors i was gonna ask i looked around i didn't see any sign of

hebcher it's a little early in the day for him, maybe. Well, here's the funny story. Hebtshire hadn't called me in a long time, so it's not like he's calling me every week. That's what makes this interesting. But last night, Hebtshire calls me. Hey, Mike, I'm recording with Liz West tomorrow. Would you come over and be a guest? And I said, actually, I have David Schultz coming over.

And then I realized as I said it. And he said, I'll be there at 20 after nine, right? That was my fear. And I thought, this can't happen twice. Like, poor David. Like, nobody crashes these episodes. Oh, my goodness. But as far as I know, he's busy recording with Liz West

and can't be in two places at once, I don't think. So we're good, man. We shall see. places at once, I don't think, so we're good, man. We shall see. Now, the last guest, fascinating Spike Gallagher, John Gallagher, he kept moving off microphones. So, see how I'm right on it, and he would move off it, and I got complaints. People would write, they write letters. I could see the typewriter.

Actual letters? You have an aged demographic, my friend. Like Grandpa Simpson. He whips out the typewriter. To whom it may concern. I'm very confident that I can sit still better than John Gallagher. And you can, what I try to tell John is you can move, you could tilt it up, for example, if it makes it easier.

But just, I don't want to use this power move on David Schultz. Oh, you won't have to. Stay on the mic. Speaking of mics, your comedy career is taking off. No, I wouldn't say taking off. It says here in your PR sheet. My PR sheet, obviously it wasn't written by me. Right.

Can you tell, so last time you came in, you were just sort of starting, you just had finished like a school for comedy. Yes, I was here in what, mid-December. It was probably a couple days after I made my debut, which was the graduating class,

if you will, of a Second City class I took under a very funny guy named Jim McAleese. And since then, I took a part two course. And then I started somewhere around March, I'm going to say, going out regularly to the hell of open mics. So you know how to get on a microphone. So how does that go? Are the crowds usually pretty friendly because it's open mic? Not at open mics.

It varies. A lot of the time, the crowd is basically eight other comics who are bored to tears and really have no interest in listening to you. That's funny. Because all they're worried about is getting on for their own five minutes. So I was going to ask you, so how long you do? So you got like five minutes of material? At an open mic, it's five minutes is customary there are a few that will

allow you a little longer but you have like a you have like a five minute set you've got kind of down pat or do you have multiple I've got over the last four months or so I've probably got I could probably do three separate five-minute sets. Two of them are pretty much linked. But I'm still a rank beginner. I have no illusions on that score. So, yeah, I'm a long way from being a headliner who has to do 30 minutes. But I know you've got three instances of five. So if I told you do 15 right now,

you could theoretically do 15. Yeah, I could probably stretch it out to 15. It might be a little repetitive. But I'm happy enough with the way things are going now. I'm starting to make the jump from just going to open mics to what they call book shows. Oh, yeah. And so you you know where

you approach email a booker or so i shouldn't say booker a um uh a show producer and because there's all kinds of of small comedy shows around toronto where uh someone usually a comic who's looking for stage time himself will cut a deal with a pub owner, and he'll say, okay, you can have a slow night of the week, say a Monday or a Sunday, and you can have a show. And so usually what they do in that case, if it's not an open mic, they'll book a bunch of comics for about five minutes each, and then there's a headliner and a host.

The host is often the guy who's producing the show. You're not paid for those. The headliner, in some cases, I suppose, get paid. But it's a bit of a jump up from the open mics. And so I'm starting to appear on a few of those, and I've had one or two at regular clubs. So the next jump, which is the biggest jump of all, and a lot of people don't make the jump, including me maybe,

is actually getting paid. I was going to say, at least for these five minutes, do you get beer, free beer? You know what? There are one or two shows where the comics do get free drinks. At least you get free drink here, I was going to say. I think the you know, the pub owners

quite wisely have a limit on it or otherwise knowing comics that they'd soon be bankrupt. But, yeah,

so that's when I'm, you know, I do think. Well, the only one who would drink more than a comic

would be like a journalist slash sports writer slash comic who would drink and dry. It's funny, I did a show last night, it was an open mic at the Rivoli, and

the MC and I were talking, and he said to me at one point, don't expect to make money from this. You're one of two guys who got paid tonight. That's funny.

Him and the headliner. And that's interesting counsel. Did you ever listen to the Steve Simmons episode of Toronto Mike? Oh, sure I did, yes. Because you came up in that convo. Oh, my ears are burning. I think it was a complimentary statement. From Simmons? Yeah, dear friend, I think it was a complimentary statement. From Simmons?

Yeah, dear friend, I think, or something like that. Yeah, we've been friends for a long time. And yeah, so that was fun. The Simmons episode got a lot of reactions. So it's always interesting to have guys like that who have strong opinions on things that might not be shared by everyone who listens or reads. Well, he's made a pretty good career having strong opinions.

Now, you said, so that episode 150 that was hijacked by Mark Hebbshire, that was like December. So you were just on the cusp just before the beer showed up. So the beer started in January. So another good reason to come back is that... It's a fine-looking six-pack in front of me here.

I have had occasion more than once to drink Great Lakes beer. I rather like it. Unlike Mike Richards, I'm not going to crack one open right now because I have to go from here to the office. The boss takes a dim view. I'm showing off. I'm taking an eye over. Lit.

In his defense, his day started at like 3 a.m. So kind of like noon for him. Radio guys are funny like that. It's kind of like those overnight guys when they crack open a beer at 9 a.m. It's like, what are you doing? It's like, well, this is my nighttime. So when am I supposed to crack open a beer for breakfast? All right, buddy, good.

That beer is yours. You're taking that home. I'm going to just update everybody and you because I know you're fascinated by the technology behind this podcast. It's one of your passions. Oh, yeah, i'm an it guy so um i say i i must i do think i'm from the school that thinks it people um should be taken out once a week and just hit over the head with a two by four and then brought back in sit down so just like just because they're such a joy to deal with when something goes wrong with your computer. Kind of like in an office space

when they take out the printer and they smash it, you would take out the IT guys. The same ghetto boys. You can lump HR people in with that too. Yeah, if you have to deal with HR, there's a problem. If there's a more useless industry in this world, I don't know. I certainly haven't heard about it.

But you don't... You surprisingly, I mean this nicely, you don't get fired that often. You don't have to deal with that. There's always a first. How long have you been at the Globe now? I've been at the Globe 32 years as of April. That's amazing.

Well, nobody else would offer me a job. I heard you were going to be the permanent co-host for Bobcat on the... Oh, is that right? Yeah, too bad Rogers didn't hear that. All right, we'll get to that. So the update on my computer really quickly is just prior to episode 181 with John Gallagher, I realized this MacBook I'm pointing to that nobody listening can see would not start up. It just would loop forever.

So I had to make an appointment with the geniuses. Have you ever had to make an appointment with the geniuses? you ever had to make an appointment yeah my i'm not an apple guy but my kids my kids uh were in high and so yeah i've dealt with those guys so i'm on the on the head to make three days out by the way i make this appointment at the shirley gardens apple store so i'm fine i got a 145 appointment like monday and i'm biked i'm there and then they make you sit in a certain spot. The guy at the tablet says sit there. I sat there for like 20 minutes and then a genius comes up to me and I'm like, this is the problem.

And then he tries a bunch of stuff. The genius. The genius. And then he comes back with the wise. He's like, you need a new hard drive. And in my head, I don't know much about Apple. I'm not an Apple guy either. I got Android.

I'm not an Apple guy. But he's telling me I need a new hard drive. And in my head, I'm not an Apple guy either. I got Android. I'm not an Apple guy, but he's telling me I need a new hard drive. And in my head, I'm thinking, oh, great. This is where I find out it's cheaper to buy a new laptop. Well, Macs aren't cheap. That's the one thing I learned. No, they aren't. So I'm like, okay, what does that cost? And he goes, $114. I honestly thought he forgot to carry the one. Well, I guess I haven't had too much to do with Macs in a while. And he goes, you know, your MacBook, my MacBook, this MacBook's like five years old. He's like, they don't make that size hard drive anymore.

It was like 300 gigs. He goes, we don't make that anymore. So I have to give you a 500 gig, but it won't cost you anymore. He says, it'll still be $114. And I actually thought that was actually kind of reasonable for $114 to get a new hard drive. And it's going to be... I must say, when I was, you know, when my kids were in school and I was dealing a bit with Apple, $114 was sort of what they charged for the carrying case. Yeah. The cable, right?

That's right. If you want to... You're right. So, I actually caught... And it was a little bit like $30 for installation or something, which took them like two minutes, of course. But fine. actually caught and it was a little bit like 30 bucks for installation or something which took him like two minutes of course you know he's white out but fine so uh i paid that uh and uh that's a good segue for me to just tell people because i haven't been talking about it that there is a patreon campaign and i'm not getting rich on this i don't know if people think i'm like i used i'm still got the 99 car in the driveway a lot like comedy yeah but the page what it does is it helps

me pay for the stuff that like the hardware and the stuff like uh that hard drive and these swing arms that's got david so nicely on the mic and these microphones like all the maintenance like it's basically it doesn't even cover costs so if whatever you can afford to help fund this podcast and keep it going so i can have people like david schultz on the show to talk about Toronto and Canada sports media. Give what you can at patreon.com slash Toronto Mike or click the big orange button on torontomike.com. Oh, well, a noble cause.

I thought you were going to take out your wallet. Oh, I'm just kidding. You didn't hear a creak, did you? I want to give a special thank you to two people on the note of the Patreon campaign. This one gentleman named Cam, Cam M as in, I don't know what it was in, but it was in

Mike, I guess. Cam M, he actually said he didn't want to give monthly, because Patreon you give per month. He wanted to do a lump sum, a very good-sized lump sum. So he, I said, well, he said give monthly because patreon you give per month he wanted to do a lump sum a very good sized lump sum so he i said well he said can i email you the money through e-transfer whatever and i said sure you can and he did so a super big thanks to cam m who uh reached out to find another way to help fund this podcast awesome Mark E. Brown, he stepped up just yesterday. And Mark E. Brown, I really appreciate your contribution

to the Patreon campaign. So thanks for helping to keep Toronto Mic'd going here. That's awesome. You need to light a fire under your ad department. You know what? I'm going to fire both of them.

They're toddlers, so it's going to be an ugly scene. I'm going to need HR for that one, for sure. Hey, lately you've been writing about the Jays, I noticed. So you're like, I just wonder, what is it you do at the Globe and Mail? What is it you'd say you do at the Globe and Mail, as they said in office space? Because sometimes you're writing about the Canada sports media. That sounds like the first question in my last performance review.

Is this a Michael? We're going to segue into Michael. Well, we're a small department now. And so, yeah, you have to be prepared to do a little bit of everything. But my field these days is sports media and sports business. And I tend to work on longer projects. So I'm not in the paper five days a week like I used to be

when I was writing hockey. So, yeah, that's what I'm up to these days. Are you like an investigative reporter kind of guy? Well... Because that's a cool title. Occasionally.

I wouldn't say I'm a regular investigative reporter. It's... Yeah, I... But longer... Longer projects would require a little of that i'm but i'm hardly the textbook definition of a investigative reporter but sometimes when uh they need a body to like cover a jays game you'll step up and that yes i will fill in on the jays occasionally and uh that

would include both of their last two 19 inning games, much to my chagrin. I was at, I don't think there's been like three in the last three years or something. There's been two in the last two years and I covered both of them. Okay, the one before your first one you covered, I was at, that was 2013, I think. No, 2014, I believe.

It was the Tigers. They went 18 innings in 2013 that I was at. Definitely, I was at an 18-inning game. And then the next year, I remember they broke the record because I was kind of pissed off. My record didn't last very long. I was at the longest game in Blue Jay history. And then in 2014, the game you were at, they broke that record.

And then, of course, we just had the... Well, I would have been quite happy if you'd have maintained the record. Believe me. It's tough. I had a... I remember my son, he stuck... We all stuck it out. But that's a long game.

And they stopped serving the booze at like... Is it 7th inning? Well, for the fans, I suppose that's the biggest torture. Yeah, they stopped... Is it the 7th inning? Something like that. Like at the bottom of the 7th. There's some point where it's like last call.

Yeah, I'm not big on paying $14 for a small cup of beer, so I wouldn't know when they serve or what. You can't expense that? Well, a veteran like myself might be able to,

but these days the bean counters are a little more watchful. Oh, that's, I bet, I bet. Have you recovered yet from free agent frenzy? Which was the same day as at 19.

I had nothing to recover from because I didn't have to cover it, which was quite glorious. I've never liked free agent frenzy or trade deadline ever, even when I was doing hockey, because I just thought they were the two silliest days of the year. I will say that, because I had Duffy on here two silliest days of the year. I will say that, because I had Duffy on here and we kind of talked about

how sometimes these trade deadline days, you've got, I don't know, seven hours where you're on the air and sometimes there's big chunks of time where nothing happens. Well, that's basically the last two trade deadline days. And the last one,

I had great fun because my assignment was just to go down to TSN and be a fly on the wall and write about the whole telecast down there. So that was, yeah, that was kind of fun. Did they, when you were watching, did they bring out the monkey or had the monkey been retired? There was no sign of the monkey when I was there.

The best, the most memorable moment was, was it Kiprios fired a... But you're at TSN, right? I was at TSN. Okay. And he fired, he had an air gun. I forget what he was shooting. Some sort of projectile.

I don't think it was a football. But not Kiprios, right? Because he's never been at TSN. Well, what am I saying? Yeah, Kiprios. I'm trying to, are you sure you're at TSN? Not Kiprios.

Another former player at... Mike Johnson? Turned analyst at TSN. Not Kiprios. Another former player. Mike Johnson? Turned analyst at TSN. O-Dog. It might have. I don't know. Yeah, it might have been O-Dog. But he fired this air gun because it was a sort of break up the monotony bit. But he fired the projectile right at Jennifer Hedger as she was walking across the set.

And she made a really nice catch. Oh, yeah. Maybe it was t-shirts, I suppose. And just right in her midsection, gathered in like a good receiver. And she even fell down on the concrete floor, and she was wearing a dress and high heels. So that was a pretty amazing bit of athleticism there.

Yeah, that was the highlight of the day. And they probably replayed it a million times. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. She was... I'm sure Google it on YouTube. It's there. She was on the Lofters.

You, of course, you probably were a big fan. The Lofters was like... You remember the Lofters? Was that one of those early... Like 2000, I think. Reality series, like really bad ones, like that Train one? What did they call it? Train 48 was scripted.

They had actors, right? Oh, really? But Loft, yeah. Well, Jennifer would have been an actor, wouldn't she? No, no, no. Oh, she was a random person on a reality show? You know Real Life? You ever heard of MTV's Real Life,

and they put a bunch of people in a house? Or Big Brother, sort of? I've heard of Big Brother. I kind of checked out of pop culture in 1982. So I'm a little shaky on it. Right when the police put synchronicity out and then you were done. I usually go the other way

when a reality show pops up. The Lofters, I didn't watch it either, but I remember it was kind of this thing and it was around me and then I know Jennifer Hedger was one of the great success stories that came out at the lofters because now we see her on TSN and she's married to like some some sports desk I think she's married to Sean McCormick yes who used to be I knew

Sean he covered the Leafs for a little bit for I guess it would have been sports tent but yeah oh right. He was at Rogers. Yeah, yeah, I think. And I'm not sure what he's doing now. The last I think I came across Sean was he ran for city council. This was a while back. Okay.

It was well before Rob Ford ever ran for mayor. When I ran the Hazel 5K in Mississauga, so it's Hazel McCallion's, I almost said Hazel Mays 5Kissauga. So it's Hazel, Hazel McCallion's. I almost said, I almost said Hazel Mays 5k. That's a whole different race. Hazel McCallion's 5k, uh, Sean McCormick was the guy who, uh, cut the ribbon or something at the beginning. He made a speech and cut the ribbon. So maybe he was aspiring to be stumping them as they call it. I don't know. I didn't even connect the dots until right now. So that's pretty cool. All right, let's jump in

here, man. You're here because you cover Canada sports media. And I have a bunch of annoying questions for you. So you ready? I'm as ready as I'll ever be. Well, stop right there. Don't even say another word. That's all I want. So we're going to start.

I don't usually begin interviews by telling the person, I've got a bunch of annoying questions for you. That's what makes my show different. My annoyance factor just kind of flows. With you, it's assumed. I need to make you aware. By the way, I should point out to people that you're wearing a shirt. What do you call that?

Because I just wrote about this. You know what? I used to know what it was, and I must admit, I wore this shirt on purpose because I saw that picture on your on your website so because i i people tell me it's called a spider no i only know it has a 45 adapter that's what there is a weird sort of name for it but it is yeah it's the little adapter that we used to put in the middle of our 45 right so they play on the uh bigger stereo and seeing it now has warmed the cockles of my heart because I remember buying 45 singles in the mid-80s, I want to say.

Holy mackerel. They were still selling them then? At Chain and Bluer, there was a Sam the Record Man. And I used to walk there and buy the singles I would like from CFTR, 680, all hits. I would go buy the 45s to play on my turn table. See, now I'm feeling old. I bought my first 45, I'm going to say somewhere around 1967.

And I can remember what it was to this day. Tell me. It was Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, but it was Herb Alpert's first vocal. Okay. This guy's first vocal. Okay. This guy's in love with you. And he had a slightly nasal voice, but it was appealing in a way, and it became a hit that summer.

I don't know if it was 67, but it was sometime before I wound up buying it. So I can't tie this to the Leafs drought in any way. No, I mean, I got it because I bought this tiny little RCA record player, like the size of a portable typewriter. Cool. I don't know how many of your audience remember what those things are like. The size of a laptop, let's say. And, you know, it probably cost me $12 in those days.

And the guy threw in a couple of 45s with it, and so that was one of the ones. I remember picking that one. That was officially my first one. If I had known that, I would have loaded it into the sample. And it wasn't that I was a big Herb Alpert fan, but it was a fairly narrow selection of 45s the guy wanted to give away for free.

Hearing, like, these guys who don't normally sing and then they make a vocal, it's like Joe Sat, do you remember Joe Satriani? Well, I don't know if he's, maybe, yeah,

the guitarist, I remember buying a, I remember he had a single, it was a big hit where he sang and this was so unusual because Joe never, it was all guitar,

he never did vocals and then it was like, I think it was called Big Bad Moon, Big Bad Moon Tonight, something like that and he's singing it, anyway,

this never happened. Well, yeah, think that happens in in the music business where you know i think there's a lot of mine at Western, and he said Howlin' Wolf is playing at Fry Fogles. At that time, Fry Fogles was a big student hangout where they'd get good bands in. And I'm a big blues guy. And the guy who owned Fry Fogles, whose name I don't know, used to take advantage of the fact that blues guys, because the blues always comes in and out of popularity.

They had a big resurgence in the 60s, and it kind of pulled back in the 70s when little dweebs like me were the only ones listening to it. And they would drive from Chicago, do a club date in Detroit, and then drive to Toronto. And he would take advantage of the fact they were driving and say, hey, why don't you stop in here in London and play a gig? And so he got some of the giants, Howling Wolf among them, Muddy Waters, there's a whole list of guys who played there. And I was lucky enough to be there when Howling Wolf was there, and it was probably

about a year and a half before he died. By this time, he was about 65, had serious health problems, not too uncommon among bluesmen. And he did the whole show sitting down, but he was electrifying. It's still the single best live music thing I've ever seen in my life. He was amazing. But the thing I remembered was his guitarist, a guy named Hubert Sumlin. I didn't know this at the time, but it turned out he was a mentor to people like Keith Richards. And Howlin' Wolf, he's the guy that inspired

all the histrionics of Mick Jagger on stage. Because back in the 50s, he was the guy who would run out into the crowd with his mic and up and down the tables and all that. He wasn't doing it that night, but what a voice. But this guy was just an absolute artist on the guitar, Hubert Sumlin. And then many years later, Howlin' Wolf was long gone. Hubert had played a lot.

And he had a dream of putting out his own CD with a bunch of the guys like Eric Clapton and Keith Richards, guys who had sort of become famous learning from him. And he finally managed it. It was somewhere around 10 years ago. And he was touring to promote it and came to the old Silver Dollar. Okay. And there is a point to this story. I'm enjoying it. You're giving me the same look my wife gives me.

What are you rambling on about? Oh, I stopped recording two minutes ago. So I tell a bunch of my friends who aren't really blues people, you've got to come see this guy. He's a wizard on the guitar. He's amazing. And including our man Brad Wheeler, who is our sort of blues expert at the Globe and Mail.

So he was going because it was a one-night thing and it was Hubert Sumlin. Well, Hubert Sumlin was no dummy when it came to promoting. And he did a radio interview in town a couple days before and he just dropped the, oh yeah, the Rolling Stones, and they were in town. They were rehearsing for a tour or something. And the interviewer knew that he was buddies with Jagger and Richards.

So Hubert kind of goes, yeah, you never know. They could well show up. So, of course, you needed a crowbar to get people in the place. And it was a deathly hot night. It was in the summer. And everybody is figuring, oh, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger are going to show up and play. Of course, they never showed.

But the other reason, that didn't bother me, but the reason I was so disappointed in the evening is that somewhere along the way, someone told Hubert it was a good idea if he sang. Oh, really? Yeah. Because he opened the show with his band, and he had a vocalist in his band. Pardon me.

A pretty good blues vocalist, but no, he comes out to do the star turn, and he's singing and barely playing his guitar, and I couldn't believe it. I kept going on about it. Brad ended up writing half of what I said in his review. That's funny. But that's, I think, a fairly common malady in the music biz,

that people wander into areas they shouldn't. Yeah, just do what we like you doing and don't do anything else. All right, that was the worst segue ever, but here we're diving into Rogers hockey. I said I was going to bring my A game in. But that's all you have so you had no choice all right break this down for me now so the rogers hockey now let me set it up here okay so tell me if i'm wrong wasn't there were three kind of three heads to this um

executive beast behind rogers hockey tell me if i'm wrong but it was keith pelly scott moore and gord cutler do i have that right? No. No, that's why you're here. It was basically Gord Cutler and Scott Moore. Well, Scott Moore was the head. He is president of Sportsnet and NHL Properties, as they like to put it. Keith Pelley had moved on by this time. Actually, no. Like at the beginning, though.

At the beginning, Keith was there. Keith was the president of Rogers Media, so he would have been on top. Below him would have been Scott Moore, and then there was Gord Cutler. He was hired to run the actual production, all the hockey production. And they recruited him from TSN,

where they all know each otherSN where, you know, they all know each other very well, these guys. The broadcast biz is like a little village. And yeah, and at no small expense, I don't think. I mean, they would have had to give him a really good contract to get him over from TSN. But it was all part of their desire that their version of the hockey broadcast would be nothing like what the CBC did with Hockey Night in Canada.

And that's why Gord Cutler was brought in. And he was no fan of the CBC way of doing things. Right. In particular, Ron and Don. And that's a key detail. Right. So all those, yeah, all those elements that we found like a comfy old shoe or whatever on a Saturday night. Yeah.

You know what people tend to forget? This was pointed out to me, and it made a story, by a guy who was a veteran hockey night guy who goes back to the CBC days. And this is when the criticism was just merciless. It's always been merciless since Rogers took it over. It's always been merciless since Rogers took it over. And he said to me at one point, he said, you know, people forget that in the last two years the CBC had this show. They had unending and constant criticism. You know, he said it was just brutal.

And now you'd think it was the most wonderful show. He said, but no, we were getting on social media and emails and comments on stories. We were just getting hammered. The show's outdated, Ron and Don have been doing this shtick for 30 years. It's tiresome. Change it. And he says, so they make these changes. And Rogers did do a fair bit of market research that sort of told them, yeah, people were looking for something different. And this happens. So, yeah. So, what I remember as a guy, because I watch Hockey Night in Canada, like, well, particularly, basically what I watch, you know what I watch? I watch Leaf games and I watch playoff games. Never the two shall meet, by the way.

I think you're a pretty average Toronto viewer then. Yeah, like I don't tune in. I know that there's a lot of puck heads. I don't watch like Edmonton versus Phoenix. Well, there in a nutshell you have summed up why Rodgers has stumbled so badly with this. They really, you know, put aside all the Toronto Maple Leafs collapsing and then the rest of the Canadian teams collapsing.

Because yeah, that's basically why we're at where Rodgers is where they are right now. And George Strombolopoulos got fired is because nobody was watching. And they were watching for the most part for that reason. And when the team is lousy, people are quicker to complain about things. So they complain nonstop about George and a bunch of other stuff. But they, I think behind all of this, Rogers made one gamble that has really, really bit them in the ass. And that was they really overestimated Canadians' appetite for hockey in general.

They thought they're all going to flock to see a midweek Chicago-Pittsburgh game, for example. And on the face of it, you think, yeah, if I'm a hockey fan, well, that'd be a great game. But no, they didn't. And that's what happened in the end is that aside from these ratings calamities that they had no way of foreseeing or preventing, that they essentially made a bad bet that Canadians had a real appetite for hockey. And I think they've discovered that in the ratings for hometown hockey on Sunday nights. Their Wednesday games do better,

but hometown hockey, ratings-wise, has been a disaster. Because there's never Leafs. Well, one problem there is they get a lot of bad games. Ron McLean, which is another reason why he's bounced back, he was a really good soldier with that show and worked really hard to do a good job on it. And the big boys at Rogers, and I'm talking people like Guy Lawrence,

they love that show because aside from the ratings, they see it as a real community builder. It helps put the brand in the small towns across Canada. And Ron does a really good job. He'll show up at 11 o'clock on a Sunday morning and meet the mayor and shake hands and sign autographs. And so, you know, these are all potential Rogers Cable customers is the way the big boys see it.

So that show, it's been renewed for at least another year. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's gold forever, but it's going to live on. And that was one of the conditions when Ron came back. He said, I don't want to give this show up. He likes it, which made it, you know, therefore there's no way he could host both games on the Saturday night because he's got to travel

to, you know, split lips Saskatchewan by noon Sunday. So yeah, that's sort of the compromise they've come at. And that's David Amber. Yes, David Amber, who's a veteran broadcaster, and he's a good broadcaster. I think he'll do a good job. He does the second game, and then I don't think this has been spelled out yet,

but I'd be kind of surprised if you saw Ron and Don live in the second game, just because Ron McClain has to travel to wherever by noon the next day. Where do I bring this back? We strayed from the triumvirate at the top. It's okay. You painted a nice picture there. So when they started back in, I think it was 2013, the first year of this deal? Well, I think they landed it in 2014.

Okay. 2014-15 season was the first season. Now, what I remember, yeah, that's where I was. So I watch. I watch Leaf games and playoff games. And I watch, particularly like a Saturday night Leaf game. And me and my oldest we watch it and it's we I've been doing it forever and I enjoy it quite quite a bit and it and and I remember the

set changing so the first thing I remember is I guess they built in the CBC building downtown they built a monster like it looked like a big NFL like it seemed like they were emulating the NFL model they spent 11 million dollars on it And it was all part of the This is a new glitzy Modern show that's going to appeal to a younger demographic So they built this thing The great irony in all this

Is it was done at the CBC headquarters And these barbarians From Rogers had come in And taken over the entire 8th floor And the totally demoralized CBC Sports Department was pushed off into a corner, the surviving members. Because while this was all going on, CBC was getting rid of people left and right. And the sports department went from, I don't know,

somewhere probably around 60 or 70 people to less than 30. And producers who used to have offices on the 8th floor were pushed into a little group in an open room in a corner. Oh, yeah. It just, the CBC brass, I mean, we all know what a hash they make of just about everything given all the unrelenting scandals the last two years. But, yeah, it was just another typical fine move from these people.

And it was a great irony. And these guys came in. And a notice soon went up that, for example, if you want to use the boardroom on the eighth floor, you have to get permission now from the Rogers. Oh, no. And so is this just a deal they struck with the CBC? Because I know with the Under Harper,

there were a lot of cuts to the CBC, and they were cash-strapped, and that's why there were a lot of cuts. So basically, they sort of leased this space, and this is a way to kind of recoup some money for CBC. And the employees out to Rogers. And it's all part of a contract where Rogers pays a certain amount each year

to the CBC for that studio space and office space and for the employees. And it was interesting this spring when they were cutting people left and right because they'd overspend and they had to get their budgets in order. By the way, they weren't losing money. If you look at the Rogers financial reports, they aren't losing money, but as a public company, the shareholder is God, so they weren't making enough. They projected to make more,

and then they bought based on projections. In a public company, people pay with their jobs. Their lives are ruined. So they were getting... What happened was then they stopped using a lot of CBC people because they had exceeded what they had paid for their services come spring. They didn't budget their time properly.

So as one guy pointed out to me, yeah, they had four, I think they're called EVS operators. They're sort of a replay camera operator. At a midweek Leaf game when one or two would have done. And so come April, when the playoffs are there, they've already paid for those guys. And if they want them again, they would have to pay extra. So that became, okay, we're not paying that.

They would hire, say, a local freelancer in Pittsburgh who probably hadn't done hockey all year. Is that partially why my issue this year of the playoffs, I saw a lot of games were just used. They were just doing the simulcast of the region. Yeah, that was also a money thing, yeah, because it costs probably around $100,000 to produce your own game, send your own crew down there.

And so with no Canadian teams in the playoffs, it simply became expedient to just pick up the local feed. So they did a lot more of that than they did in the first year. And the irony about this not using CBC people in the playoffs was in the summertime when it came time to get rid of people, fire them. I don't care what Scott Moore calls it. These people were fired. They weren't laid off.

You're laid off. Laid off means when things get better, you come back. Yeah, there's a whole different connotation. And other people say, well, being fired is a matter of performance. No, it isn't. No, it's not. The boss can fire you for any reason. Right.

All he has to do is pay you severance. That's exactly right. And so these people were fired. But the CBC people, for the most part, I was told, were spared because Rogers knew they were committed to a set payment over, I believe it's four years, so it's got two more years to run. And so it's like, well, it makes no sense getting rid of these people because we're already going to have to pay for them. So then they started looking at their own staffers and other freelancers and they're the ones that got it. Okay, I know you mentioned the Scott Moore issue of semantics. Because I

have this issue too. I'll write something, somebody was fired and then somebody will say, well actually, they'll try to spin it like it's not firing. Typical corporate bullshit. And you know, they restructuring. Give me a break. You're firing people. And you're ruining their lives.

Why not face up to it? Like, some of the memos you read ahead of mass layoffs, like, they're just so tone deaf. More efficiency and... They'll say something, yeah, we're entering an exciting new era.

Yeah, well, if I'm a guy that's just been turfed after 30 years and no pension, yeah, it's real comforting to read that sort of thing. And then, no, the PR spin on it.

So Global just canceled the show 16 by 9. It's an investigative reporting show, and there's not a lot of those out there. And I remember the spin. We are more committed to investigative journalism as ever was like the sort of lead. And then that's why. So we're canceling our big investigative reporting show as if that was somehow evidence of their commitment.

It's the opposite. And in the media biz, there have been so many layoffs in the last 10 years. And so many of them begin with idiotic memos like that, where the powers that be must think you're completely stupid to believe this. And it sort of reveals their own stupidity. And to me, a lot of this is driven by HR departments. You know, say, here's how you write one of these mealy-mouthed, awful memos. And it's a rare time when an honest memo comes out

and it says, we aren't making enough money, and this is tough, but we have to shed jobs. And boy, that's one in a million when you see a memo like that. All right, so we have Keith, Scott, and Gord at the beginning. And then at some point, Keith Pelley quits for another opportunity. One thing about Keith through his history is he always gets out when the getting is good. And he's done that time and time again, which is why he's such a smart guy. He's done that time and time again, which is why he's such a smart guy.

And Nadir Mohamed was the CEO of Rogers when that deal was struck with Gary Bettman in the NHL. The three guys that made the deal were Nadir Mohamed, Keith Pelley, and Scott Moore. Keith and Scott were probably the driving forces. Nadir Mohamed certainly, you know certainly was supportive and threw all that money their way. But Nadir was the first to go. They call it retired with his fabulous golden

parachute and made way for Guy Lawrence. And I don't know the ins and outs of that one. And then the next to go was Keith, which was only partway through year one, which is kind of surprising. I think by this time, the Leafs had tanked. It would have been somewhere in the early 2015.

And then he announced he was going off to head the European PGA. Now, I will give Keith this. He's always been a real golf nut, and it's a terrific job. He's living on a golf course in a really high-toned area of London, England, and

him and his son can go out there and play golf every day, and his job is to go watch really good golf. So, yeah, I can see why he took the job. However, he was smart enough to get up. So Scott Moore is the only one left of those three. Right, so when did Gord Cutler, because he was fired, Gord Cutler.

Yes, he was. Earlier this year? And that is a very curious story to me. It was on the eve of the playoffs. So Gord was in charge of the hockey production. He was the guy that put together this whole idea of a different sort of broadcast. He was the guy that cut back Ron and Coach's Corner to a strict five minutes, no more rambling on for Don,

which, you know, everybody knows Don didn't like at first and there was a lot of complaining. Ron was cut back from the main host of the Saturday night show to Don Cherry's sidekick on Coach's Corner and he was host of Hometown Hockey. Well, all of a sudden, out of the blue, on the eve of the playoffs in April,

Gord Cutler is fired. No warning, nothing. And to me, there is something going on there. I mean, they never really gave a decent explanation. So we're sort of left to draw our own conclusions, i.e. a financial move. I find that one hard to believe. I mean, yeah, Gord Cutler made a lot of money,

but there's a reason for that. He was the big boss in charge of hockey. They recruited him from TSN for his expertise. He's a well-regarded guy in the business. I just thought, you know, you don't save money by dumping one high-ranking executive. I have some insight into this. Unnamed Sources. He's the name that comes up. And as you said, you actually confirmed part of it, which I've heard basically. He hated the CBC telecasts.

Yeah. Basically, he hated the CBC telecasts. And he, so I guess, okay. So a lot of the comfortable, sane stuff, the Ron, the Don, just the feel of the hockey in Canada that he wanted to change. According to this guy who worked for Gord, Gord hated, wanted to just change

almost for change sake and hated this style. And it seems like the dismissal for Gord, Gord hated, wanted to just change almost for change's sake and hated this style. And it seems like the dismissal of Gord potentially could be because they realized that didn't work and then we had our more recent firings kind of on the curve of that. I think, yeah,

that may have played a part in it because I think Scott Moore, like all of these moves, getting rid of Strombo, they all reek of panic. And because, oh God, the shareholders are going to be up in arms. So people don't stick with the vision they had that we're going to bring something different. However, and so maybe there was a bit of that in the sacking of Gord Cutler because he, yeah. He was the architect of him, Ron and Don

were limited in their time. It was a whole new approach. The panels were different. You had guys standing on glass monitors playing around with hockey sticks. And I'm a little old-fashioned. I remember at the beginning they would press, I can't, it was almost like they

pressed pucks or something. There were pucks that you would take out and put in a slot when you wanted a certain graphic to come up. That sort of nonsense. But that was what Gord was bringing. And so, yeah, okay, he gets fired because they've decided that this isn't working. And the criticism from the viewers was it was relentless it was continuous and it didn't drop much but i just you know i i wonder how much of that was because their teams were lousy and they were angry and and also people just hate change i hate people hate change and but

what makes me put a big butt in this is the of it. He got fired like four days before the playoffs started. Right. The most crucial part of the year. And if all this other stuff is true, why wouldn't you just do it in the summer? That's when you're going to change your broadcast around. There's no need to do that suddenly in the playoffs. Yeah.

So that's why I am, and this is just my opinion. Speculation. I will stress my opinion. I think there's more to Gord Cutler's firing than that. I think something must have happened that some really, really, you know, controversial or, you know, some sort of incident happened and that that played into it as much as these other factors because I just find the timing very very strange and you know it is a fact that after he was gone the the on-air time of Ron and Don increased in the playoffs because one of the Rodgers guys said to me after Gord was fired like the day he was fired or day after he said you watch during the playoffs. Watch how much airtime Ron and Don get. And he said, in particular, Ron.

And this guy was signaling to me, I think in his own way, he wouldn't come out and say it, that he thought Ron was ascended again and that maybe Strombo might pay the price. And that's exactly what happened. Now, okay, so outside of Rogers Enterprise, I would argue I've had more Rogers hockey people on this show than anyone else outside of Rogers.

Right. So I'll just quick rundown if people are looking, but like Strombo, McLean, Cox, Friedman, Merrick. There's probably more I'm missing here. I don't know if Chris Johnston's part of that team or not. I don't, I think he's working. He's a Rogers guy.

So, but yeah, so that's a lot, a lot of these Rogers guys have come in here and, you know, talked. So I do, when I talk about Strombo and McLean particularly,

I've, I've, I can realize I have a bias in that. I really like both people as like, they were genuine. They seem like genuinely genuine sweethearts. Really good people. Had a lot of time.

McLean couldn't have been nicer. Just did some things. Just such a sweet boy. And Strombo, too. Now, Strombo and I talked about this because he came in pretty early, like only a few months after they started Rogers Hockey.

And already, I was being, I, Toronto Mike, was being bombarded with criticism. So I can't imagine what he was getting. But people did hate. They hated Strombo. The way he dressed was one thing. I kept skinny pants.

That was the number one complaint above all was the, yeah, the skinny suits. And I got to admit, I didn't like his style of dress. Mainly because he's a 45-year-old man who's dressing like he's 21. I've always had a problem with people who do that. I know a few people like that, and I just think, dude, come on, act your age. How should... But is it true... Did you report, I believe it was you, tell me if I'm wrong, that he was nicely asked to change his wardrobe?

I think that was in Dave Festchuk's story. Where did I read that one? Okay. Yeah, and they, actually, after Dave's story came out, one of the Rogers guys said to me, he said, if you noticed, he said there were one or two times,

he didn't think it was a lot, but he said there were one or two times where George's suits were a little more conservative. And I remember long before this, back when I used to, you know, I belly ached about it in writing, I remember texting one of Strombo's on-air partners and saying, because Strombo, for whatever reason that night, happened to be wearing a more normal suit. And I texted this guy during the middle of the broadcast and said, I congratulate Strombo for dressing like an adult tonight.

But I've got to also stress that this is more of an annoyance to me. This wasn't my criticism of the guy. I don't think, I didn't hate him like some people did. I mean, I didn't get that. But people felt he wasn't a hockey guy. Yeah, that aside,

skinny suits aside, that really was the issue. And it was to me. I mean, I think he's a very good broadcaster. I think he's very talented. And he's going to end up being OK. He's going to, you know, he'll be just fine. Besides, Rodgers just had to cut him a big fat check.

So, but I do think he wasn't a hockey guy. This was, and I also have a little evidence from speaking to people who know him, that this was just regarded as another step on the career ladder, and a good one, but one that was, that was it for him. I think his, if I have to guess, his ultimate dream is to have his own talk show in the U.S., like a Jimmy Fallon kind of guy. talk show in the US, like a Jimmy Fallon kind of guy. And it seemed to me, anyway, that you could tell his heart really wasn't in hockey. And that got up the noses of your average Canadian hockey viewer. Well, just follow him on Twitter.

It's very clear. Yeah, that was a point I've made in point more than once. I said, if you don't think so, just follow his Twitter timeline. It's all about music and movies. His Sunday night show on CBC2, The Strombo Show, which is excellent by the way, you could see the passion for that show

greatly outweighs his hockey passion. I do think if you have a passion for something, it resonates on the air with the viewer. And that, to me, is why Don Cherry has lasted as long as he has. People can see that that's who he is on the air. It's not a persona he puts on like a lot of guys, you know,

like crazy grumpy old man who dresses funny. That really is the way he feels. And, and people respond to that. And, and people can see when ron mclean's on the air he eats sleeps and breathes hockey and in this country that's what they want in the host of the most famous hockey show in canada yes and you weren't getting that from

george uh too often you you'd watch him say things to elliot Kelly Haruti or Kiprios, the other guys in the panel, and you really got the sense that that was something a producer had just whispered into his earpiece. And it seemed to me a lot, he really had nothing of his own to add to the discussion. And so I thought that's where he's not becoming, you know, the all-encompassing host you want. And that was my, you know And that was my complaint with him.

To tell you the truth, I'm really not sure that bringing Ron back in the long run is going to be any sort of cure. I mean, because A, it wasn't the problem. The problem was all the Canadian teams were awful. Right. And you've seen signs now. The Leafs are probably going to be a lot better than they were last year. I don't know as they're ready to make the playoffs.

And that should goose the ratings. The Habs are going to have Carey Price back. And so what happens this season? The ratings go up in all the Rodgers brass. What are they going to stand around patting themselves on the back saying, boy, it was a good idea to bring Ron back. These are the two points. So one is, by the way, did you listen to the Ron McLean interview I had with him on this show?

Yes, I did. And I'm having trouble remembering specifics. Well, here's a specific I want to point out, which is I asked him straight out if his relationship with Bettman uh was the catalyst behind him being removed as host of hawking and canada and ron you know to his credit said yes that he believes it's because he i guess i want he has a you know ron mclean's an ethical guy and you know he struggles with the ethics of journalism and this and that and ron mclean believes that because he didn't he wouldn't give gary betman free pass, so to speak, because they're partners, Rogers and the NHL,

that Bettman was sort of behind him being removed almost as part of the deal. I believe, and I wrote that, well, it's got to be two years ago now. It was on the eve of the hockey season in 2014, and I talked to Ron. And I certainly knew from talking to people in the industry, and I mean, we all knew what the relationship was between McLean and Bettman. There was a lot of animosity there, certainly on Gary's part.

We also knew that Gary exercises great control over his, quote, partners. Right. And that Rogers was so tickled to get these rights, they were more than happy to do anything that Gary wanted. And trust me, nothing had to be spelled out about Ron McLean. Everybody kind of knows. It's like the old thing when you're working for Rogers or for TSN

and you're broadcasting a game that's where the team owner, in this case, is the same employer you have. You know it doesn't have to be spelled out to you. You know to mind your P's and Q's. Self-censorship. And it's all self-censorship because, hey, we all like to pay our mortgage,

especially when we got a job that there aren't too many of those jobs. Right. We pay a lot of money. Brunt's got kids to put through university. Come on. And where are you going to earn well into six figures anywhere else? Nowhere.

So that's what, you know, it was absolutely not a huge surprise that Ron was not going to be the host of the new show because everybody knew Gary Bettman couldn't stand him because of their interview. In fact, in 2010, after maybe their most contentious interview of all, Gary said afterwards, I am never coming back on that show as long as he's around.

And that's exactly what happened. And so I interviewed Ron back then. It would have been August or September of 2014. And I put it to him. And he basically said, yeah, probably. But he said the same thing he told you. He said he felt very strongly that, A, he believed the players had legitimate issues,

and this was a labor management thing, because they'd just come through another lockout. And so he was voicing the labor side of the equation. And you can argue whether or not he badgered Gary too mercilessly, but that's the way he approached it. And yeah, he paid a price. Definitely.

And so when they wanted to bring him back, they had to run it by Gary Beck. Sure. And that's the way things work in sports TV. The networks in the US, it's no different. When ESPN or CBS or NBC, whoever, has got a piece of the NFL pie, they certainly, because of those billions of dollars they pay the NFL, they have a huge say in the scheduling. That's where you see their influence.

But when they want to get into controversial issues or do things, they really watch their step. And that's just the way it works. So during the Stanley Cup final, at least one, maybe two of the Rodgers bigwigs, my guess would be Rick Brace and or Scott Moore, went to Gary Bettman and said, this is what we're

thinking. And there's nothing written in the contract that says Gary Bettman and the NHL have final approval on personnel. It's another one of these things that's understood. Right. But you do it at your peril. So technically, if Gary had said to them, Ron McLean will be host again over my dead body.

But Gary Bettman is not, you know, Rogers could have gone ahead and said, told him to pound sand and we're going to do it because our ratings are in the toilet and we don't care, we're in desperate trouble. Yeah, they could have gone away with it, but you'd have to think long and hard. You are now going to piss off your most important partner

and you've got 10 more years to go on this contract, you better think about that. So, but in any event, Gary went along with it. And I suspect a large part of that was because he knows, I mean, Gary Bettman is one of the smartest guys I've ever met. I mean, I don't agree with a lot of the stuff he did, but I'll tell you what, I got a huge amount of respect for his smarts and his business acumen. And he, I'm sure, said, well, you know what?

You guys have been paying us a lot of money and you've been taking it in the shorts on the ratings, and if you think this is what's going to help you, okay. But also, something else again, there's a lot that doesn't need to be said out loud. You can bet that Ron is going to have to mind his P's and Q's. Now, Ron being Ron, probably just it isn't in his DNA to do that. So I think they'll probably get around it.

And this was a question. They ended the Q&A with Scott Moore after Ron's appointment was announced before I could ask this question, which was who the heck is going to interview Gary Bepp? That's right. I suspect it won't be Ron. I got the impression that there will be others

who will be assigned to Gary Bepp. I think Elliot will step up for that one. There'll be others who will be assigned to Gary Bepp and beat. Oh, that's great. So I would say, as a viewer, Strombo was fine. I thought he was fine.

Yeah, I mean, I would have lived with him. I think Strombo thought because of what I've written that I absolutely hated him because I'm told I don't know Strombo at all. He wouldn't sit down and talk to me.

This is another thing that just sort of made me scratch my head. Towards the end of his first season, I wanted to do an overall look or I did an overall look

at how it went, and it didn't go very well. And I put in a request to interview Strombo, and he sent an answer back that, oh no, I'm not doing any print interviews right now because I'm, quote, boning up for the playoffs. And again, you know, I just said, could you

imagine Ron McLean having to bone up on hockey for the playoffs? Right. Give me a break. And so, but anyway, Strombo's a very sensitive guy, those who know him, and tell me. And so this kind of criticism has really, really hurt him. And so, yeah, this is a pretty difficult time for him in that regard. So it's fair to say as a viewer that Ron

McLean never should have been replaced in the first place. To me, it was one of those, it ain't broken, don't fix it. I thought Ron was fantastic as host of Hockey Night in Canada. Personal opinion. Yeah, I'm... I have a friendly relationship with Ron, but I will

say, I don't think he's like the world's greatest host ever. I think he did a good job, and yeah, to that, in that regard, yeah But I will say, I don't think he's like the world's greatest host ever. I think he did a good job. And yeah, to that, in that regard, yeah, I'd say that's an incident. It ain't broke. Don't fix it. But you know what? These guys wanted to put their own stamp on

the broadcast. So they can't keep status quo. Even if there wasn't the Gary Bettman factor there, Ron might not have been a guarantee to come back as host because these guys were so eager to do their own version of this show that I think everything was up for grabs. But what's interesting now about Ron coming back is that,

well, morale over there is absolutely at rock bottom. And part of it is Ron coming back because, and Ron, oh, he hates it when I talk to him about this, and he denies it up and down. But Ron was always the 800-pound gorilla in the room behind the throne. He wielded enormous power over there when the Hockey Night in Canada was run by the CBC. Not so much in the John Shannon years when John was the executive producer. John is a pretty strong personality in his own right.

But after John left, Ron came to have a great deal of influence over and just over the force of his own personality. Behind the scenes came to have great power and stuff that went on there was done because Ron wanted it to be done. And so now he's coming back. All those people that were there at the CBC in those days, a lot of them are really bummed out because especially the ones that didn't have a good relationship with Ron, because they see this as a going back to the old days where ron was in charge and nothing really happened without ron's say so now ron's argument is oh no no no i i i was just trying to help out i do this in a very collegial way i make suggestions gary betman makes suggestions

too yeah and it's like the Godfather. You just disregard them at your peril. So yeah, there are people over there that are just completely depressed and thinking, oh gosh, you know, Ron is back. And I think part of their thinking is that Ron will come back with a vengeance and think he has scores to settle. Like more power than ever, like in a movie. I really got to wonder about the leadership over there, because you let something, you know, during this whole period where first the story comes out that George is on his way out, Ron's coming back,

and then it's like, well, no, it hasn't quite happened yet, but it's being talked about. Well, suddenly, because the Rogers, Scott Moore, Rick Brace, whoever, didn't say anything. Ron suddenly has the upper hand here, because the Festchek story, and then subsequently my story and everybody else's story, was met with great applause. Right, it's like you float those balloons, right?

And it's like, oh, people love it. So somebody has floated this balloon out there to great universal applause, and suddenly it's like, uh-oh, you've got to bring the guy back now. And Ron, though, is still in the midst of negotiating the terms under which he comes back, and he's just been handed this huge hammer,

and so he can just sit there and say, yep, I want to do hometown hockey. I'll only do the first game of the Saturday night show so I can do hometown hockey. I'm going to stay with Don Cherry. And, you know, there it went. And to me, it's just another sort of a head scratcher, like, you know, what's going on over there?

As a, you know, I don't want to pretend like I'm hanging out with Ron every weekend. So I only had the two hours with him, I guess, in total. So that's my Ron McLean experience. But having that two hours with him, I am actually surprised to hear That there are people who don't like working with him It's something that surprises me

Surprisingly enough There's people who don't like working with me That shocks me even more And I don't believe it Most of them are my bosses But yeah, I mean My sense from him is He reads a lot

And he thinks a lot And I don thinks a lot and he does I don't think he makes decisions lightly like I think he really ponders the I think yeah all of that's true he's a very well-read guy and you know on a one-to-one basis I've known Ron for a long time he's very nice guy you know I like him but if you're working directly with him and you think well my boss is really person x over here

who has the title executive producer but geez what really in practice is going on is that ron is kind of running things and when ron says well i think we should do this it's it's the next thing it's basically saying this is what we will do i think people get that sort of gets up their noses a bit especially if you don't really agree with what ron uh ron is doing and so that's yeah i mean that's why that sort of thing happens gotcha all right just to some specific by the way i didn't realize we this rogers hockey was going to be the entire episode but i'm going to try to i thought that's what you told me yeah for sure but i have a bit more, but I want to just get into some specifics. So basically, Gord Cutler, you said, was fired just before the playoffs.

And then the recent announcements, in addition to George Strombolopoulos, when you spell it, you can't forget the U. There's an extra U in that Strombolopoulos. You know what? That's one thing I won't miss, is having to type his name, because all I do is go cut and paste. It's like because there's too many OU's in there and I I would never get them in the right order the first

U I forget because we call him Strombo which doesn't have the U and then you think it's gonna be Strombolopolis but you got to put a U in that first yes it's all Greek to me come on so the other guys and this is a guy people my late buddy uh who loved his leafs hated glenn healy passionately hated glenn healy you know fire healy and i never understood a lot of people agreed with him okay you probably heard how many people were happy but that's and what was i missing didn't didn't didn't yeah didn't didn't he seem kind of a, kind of funny, interesting, wasn't afraid to take a shot at the feeds or whatever? I just feel like he was kind of ideal for that, and people hated him. I love the job he did.

He got into broadcasting, aside from his natural talent, because he was the funniest guy in the NHL. And all the writers knew that. When you went into the dressing room of a team Glenn Healy was playing on, and he was usually the backup goaltender, you'd go over and talk to him because he had the most interesting things to say. That's a good quote. And you'd walk in the room and there'd be a big crowd around one locker.

And you'd sort of, if you hadn't been there before, you'd think, that must be the big star's locker. And you'd look over and know it's the backup goaltender. But that's how he essentially got into broadcasting. And I thought he did a terrific job because he didn't hesitate to say what he felt. Yeah. And he was also funny, but he was also good at analysis. And so he's the guy who gets axed.

Well, what a coincidence. Glenn Healy, George Strombolopoulos were the two biggest targets on social media. Yes. And they're the two guys, the most prominent guys off the hockey night that got the ax. Right. Wow. Do you think that had anything to do with it? You know, more than one person over at Rogers said, geez, they're running this place like

they all sit and look at Twitter all day. And it's funny because probably 1% of the viewers are actually active on Twitter. I'm making up the numbers, but that 1% is the only one that anyone hears. Social media has come to have this all-encompassing power that it really shouldn't. And I'm a guy who spends way more time on social media

than it's healthy, although I can argue it's part of my job. Sometimes it's fun. Other times I look at stuff people tweet at me after I say something. Mostly it's guys who take everything I tweet literally, and I just think, how stupid are you? Is that why your tweets have changed since your comedy career has taken off? Have they changed?

I feel, and I could be wrong, but the perception I have, maybe because I know you're doing the stand-up thing, is you're funnier on Twitter than you used to be. Not that you weren't funny before, but I feel like now you take a more comedic approach because if it's a joke, people can't sling at you. I probably can't deny that. Which, by the way, has made your Twitter feed much more interesting. But there are

certain days where it's really easy to come off with the smart-ass remarks. Usually things like free agent day or the draft or, you know, that sort of thing. Just when you start shaking your head at some of the stuff like people in my business come out with.

Oh, yeah. But no. And so, yeah, again, the firing of Healy, it's all, it's like knee-jerk reactions to social media. But there's a third one. Speaking of social media, this is a great segue. There's a third person. Yeah.

His name, I'm drawing a blank on it. But let's talk about Damien Cox for a second because... There, that's the guy. Damien Cox, they're going to spin this as Cox is now going to be

Bob McCowan's permanent co-host on Primetime Sports. So he's going to leave Rogers Hockey to do that, which is good for him. Like he's good at that, I think, and people in,

I think... Yeah. Yeah. So, but he's a polar, he's been on this show. He's a polarizing figure on social media, for sure. A lot of people hate Damien Cox. Are you aware of that?

I'm very aware of that. Yeah. Like I said, I knew there were three people. I was having trouble. I was getting to Cox, but I have another Twitter. But yeah, and again, he is a guy that's really controversial at times on social media. And so, I think, again, that's no coincidence. Now, this, again, is just my opinion.

He got, and I say pushed. I don't think Damien put up his hand. Now, Damien, I will say, has told me directly by email that he's really excited about going back to Bob. And I also will say that gives that show a much needed shot in the arm. Bob needed somebody to push him a bit. If he doesn't want Brunt, we'll take Cox. Yeah. Well, Damien was always the guy, he would push Bob a bit and he wasn't afraid to annoy

Bob, which I think is a good thing. You know, Bob needs to be woken up from time to time and said, let's do this and use all that great talent you have. So I think that show will get better. However, I also think that given his druthers, I just don't think it was something Damien would want to do because he had a pretty good job on

hockey night doing the headlines with Elliot. And that one night a week is far more high profile, I think, than being Bob's co-host for 40 weeks of the year. However, and it's also noticeable to me that of that entire group of eight on-air broadcasters who lost their jobs, only Damien wasn't, he was the only one who wasn't fired outright. And he was shifted over to radio. Now, that suggests to me that Damien probably had a pretty nice contract

with maybe a complicated buyout on it, and Rogers saw a way to solve two problems. See, I remember this, the rumors were he was going to TSN, and then, do you remember? Well, that was back then. I think he actually was at TSN for a time and then his TSN contract came up

and there were really protracted negotiations. And by this time, Keith Pelley had gone from TSN to Rogers. Right. And now Damien started out with Rogers, of course. He was Bob's co-host for a long time, but he had this little run at TSN. And so there was a lot of back and forth about his contract. Was he going to go to Rogers?

Was he going to stay at TSN? Right. And at the last minute, I think in the middle of the night, people suddenly got the impression that he was going to stay at TSN. Right. And at the very last minute, I think it was Keith Pelley jumped in and gave him this really sweet contract. So, yeah. And there was great bitterness on both sides. I think there is to this day, which is what happens when you have this kind of contract negotiation. So, I think,

I forget how long ago that was. I'm not sure if that's still the same contract he's operating on, but it certainly would have been the groundwork for a pretty nice deal i think compared to some of the you know rank and file staffers over there where maybe it was a little difficult for them to buy him out um i don't know but you know also it was an easy thing to say okay we we don't want damien on the tv anymore but you know what here's for him. Yeah, he is a good spot for him. He's done it before. He's really suited for it. So it's worked out, and you know, I think McCown's show will be better for it.

By the way, do you know why he has protected his tweets? I remember there was that famous infamous recently, it looked like it was supposed to be a DM, but he tweeted out something about somebody sending him a selfie. And then he,

then right away, because the reaction was, oh my goodness, like, it looked bad. If it wasn't bad, he should have said, you know, this is what it was. But it looked bad. And then right away, he put his tweets from, like, public to protected. So if you're not following him, you can't see his tweets. Boy, you're going way above my pay grade on Twitter there. I thought you had some insight into the

DM gate. I barely understand the ins and outs of Twitter. You know what? I don't know if I was off for a while. I somehow missed that whole whatever happened there. I really don't know. I do know this. DMs scare the crap out of me. And your buddy Simmons.

And you have a habit of sending DMs. And I've done this once or twice where I thought I was sending a DM back to somebody and it was a public tweet. Luckily, my life is so mundane. No one's sending you selfies? Well, I don't know. My life is so boring that, you know,

I've been lucky in that it's pretty innocuous stuff. Simmons used to do this a lot. He said it was the way his Twitter was set up. He used to, his DMs would go public because he would screw that up. But the most famous one

in Toronto sports media is when Kiprios tweeted those fuckers at TSN. Yeah. Well, there's a prime example. Which is, could have been worse.

Ask Cox. Yeah, that, now that's something that I would actually probably do. And that's why DMs scare the crap out of me.

All right, I'll stop DMing you. Email me. As soon as I... I forget myself sometimes and I'll reply to somebody. I do DM a lot, but I'm good at it. Usually I say to them,

get on email there. I'll move it to email from now on. They're all I have to worry about is hitting reply all. So you mentioned the eight people on air that we know of. So we already talked about Strombo, Glenn Healy, and Damien Cox.

And really quickly, one guy who I barely noticed, and no disrespect to him, but I'm not even surprised by this move, is PJ Stock. Yeah, he's another guy that seems to be a sort of flashpoint with viewers. I'm really not sure why. I know my father, who's 83 and a hockey fan, he used to go on about PJ Stock, but my dad, he's a grumpy old man. He complains about everybody.

Like father, like son. No. Well, yeah, I complain about 80% of humanity. They drive me nuts, but he's up near 100. But again, you know what? Yeah, he was another figure that got some controversy on Twitter, I guess. Or I shouldn't say controversy. A fair bit of criticism. I was never quite sure why. I thought he was good. I liked his work. And I will say this about him.

He had a diminished role when Rogers took over Hockey Night in Canada, right? He, I don't know, you might have seen him in the odd time on a panel, but he basically was shifted over to other hockey stuff. But like Ron, he was a good soldier about it. And he worked hard and did a good job. And so when I saw that he was among the people let go, I was a little surprised at that.

So the other ones, all the regional people, I wasn't surprised because I'd been, you know, the word in the industry for months is that they were really going to cut back on the regional broadcast because they thought they'd overspent. And those are all the people, yeah, that I don't, as a guy who only watches

the Leaf games and playoff games, so I didn't see a lot of like Chantelle Desjardins. Desjardins. She was the host, I guess, of the Habs regional games. Leah Hextall. She was a host of the Flames. Corey Hirsch was a sort of freelance analyst. You know what? He did good stuff.

Like if you're doing, if you're looking at this as why would they let go him? Because he did good work and he was a funny guy. I think he'll be all right. My guess is he lives down in Phoenix, I think. He'll probably get hired by one of the teams for their broadcast or maybe, I don't know, is it NBC is in the hiring mode. That's the problem with the media business nowadays. We tend to think of it in normal terms.

When you see somebody lose their job, you go, oh, yeah, well, you know. Oh, he quit the – well, the Globe will hire him. No, the Globe won't hire him because they're not hiring anybody. And that's what happens. There's only so many jobs. Yeah. And once you lose one of those jobs, you're done, especially if you're my age. But I think TV is still a bit different and there's a lot of, you know, 30 NHL teams.

And so there's a lot of local broadcasts out there that I think Corey Hirsch will be just fine or maybe NHL.com, you never know. And Billy, is it Jaffe? Billy Jaffe is the, this was sort of a sideline for him because he is the regular host, and I'm not sure if he does play-by-play as well, with I believe it's the Islanders, I think. But he's a longtime U.S. play-by-play and host.

And so he was essentially employed elsewhere, but they brought him up because he was a guy, knows hockey, and he's polished. And so this certainly isn't the end of his career by any stretch. And so there were a few other people like him that they got rid of who it wasn't really their number one job. Do you know how many in total? Because behind the scenes people who you feel the worst for, if you will, they're not the poodles.

Well, the ones we know about, I guess there's 13, I believe. There's the eight on-air guys and then there were five producers. And Scott Moore said on the conference call, less than 14. Well, in corporate speak, that means 13 or 13 and a half. Well, in corporate speak, that means 13 or 13 and a half. But there are so many, this is what people don't necessarily understand because broadcast and media is such a wonky business. There are a million job classifications out there. Yes, the semantics. Yeah.

And so a guy could sit there and say, we only got rid of 13 people and like a lawyer, not be lying it's like those are the full-time but yeah they aren't really sharing you the entire truth and so I would really like to know if you went through every job classification from local freelancer which is some guy in in Pittsburgh that you might hire for that game to run one little aspect of your show to Toronto-based freelancers or Canadian-based freelancers who are used on a regular basis. There's a ton of them. The broadcast industry is basically

runs on those kind of people. And you see them in the airport all the time going to the games. They're the same people. One day they're working on the CBC broadcast. Next day they're working on the local Leafs broadcast or whatever. That's how the business is conducted there, and that's how big broadcast companies get away with not paying benefits.

But anyway, how many of those people, and you don't fire them. You just stop using them. Right. But to them it's like being fired because that's what they count on for their income. So how many of them? Yeah. And I understand there was a bunch of them in the playoffs. They just stopped using them.

And so I would venture to say the real total is well above 13. But how that breaks down, I'm just not sure. Do you know about the play-by-play guys? Have we heard anything about, are we having the same play-by-play guys? Have we heard anything about, are we having the same play-by-play guys? As far as I know, yeah. I think this was good news for Bob Cole, Gord Cutler's

departure. You saw his ascendancy in the playoffs. He wound up doing one of the conference finals. A lot of people really liked that. Some people didn't, I guess. I don't know. Some people don't. I won't go down this road again, but I hate it. I think it's the people who like that some people didn't i guess i don't know some people don't and this is i won't go down this road again but it'll i think i hate it i think it's the people who hate some people seem to associate bob cole with maple leafs for some reason well he did this yeah he did the hockey night games for well he's sure but i mean he wasn't i didn't i didn't pick up any bias from

him you know he said you know no it's just. Yeah. Well, Don Cherry, he's the world's most famous Leaf fan. Right. But with Jeff O'Neill coming up on the outside. That's right. There's a guy you should have in here, by the way. Yeah, I think. Yeah, yeah. I like his stuff.

He's a, I got a story in the can. I'm not sure when it's going to run on Jeff. He, where were we? Bob Cole. Bob Cole. Sorry. He's the greatest living living broadcaster yeah well bob you know you associate certain voices with your team and and uh and so do other people

you know bob cole he calls those leaf games like jim houston in the canucks right i feel like you're right it's that way for a long time yeah and so i think that's the deal there in that, you know, much like we may sort of have dismissed, you know, the regional broadcasters who got dumped by Rogers. But you know what? If you're a Calgary Flames fan or a Montreal Canadiens fan, you're not taking it so well because these are people you see. And it's like now they're not going to have

separate pregame shows for their regional teams, which for Rodgers is everybody except the Winnipeg Jets. Is it the Ottawa Senators that TSN still has? I think so. So in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, you're going to get a generic pregame show that's sort of out there for everybody. And knowing, having lived in Alberta for a while, knowing the sort of regionalism there that I do,

there's going to be a lot of fans really ticked off about that. And I'm sure Rogers will hear about it later once they realize what it really means in the fall. Right. And this is unrelated to the Rodgers changes, but I think, but the Andy Frost. So Andy Frost was the PA announcer

at Leaf Games since they moved to the ACC and he won't be back this fall. Yeah. Do you have any idea who,

you have any idea? No, and that is so strange. It, you know, and I think stupid. Can you do an impression before you even?

I'm not much on impressions. A lot of people do a good Andy Frost. Oh, I've never practiced Andy Frost. Gallagher just did a pretty good Andy Frost. Yeah, I heard the Gallagher interview, and his Andy Frost is pretty good, so I wouldn't want to...

Yeah, yeah, you don't want to... It'd be the first time I ever attempted Andy. Yeah, don't do it. But I loved Andy. I mean, he was a tremendous... He had this booming voice, and there's a voice that was identified with the team like we were talking about earlier and i i just don't see any

apparent reason why they would get rid of him well the only thing i can think of is now that we have austin matthews and you know maybe marner will be back and kneelander's gonna have a full season that maybe maybe that is the voice we associate with the leaf the last 17 years and maybe brendan shanahan would like a new voice for the new era and that you know this is the new yeah well i think that's like the new logo right there's a new logo if that's the thinking then it's ridiculous i mean that's the only thing that makes sense we still have room in this world for tradition and just because andy's voice was with the it doesn't mean andy was part of a horse shit team but that's like blaming blaming Strombo for the fact no Canadian teams made the playoffs.

Well, yeah, it's sort of the same thing. Yeah. And, you know, so if that is the case, I mean, that's like the worst reason of all. I mean, I could even accept Brendan... And of course, again, nobody's got the courage over there to come out and say, well, this is why we got rid of him.

Right. They haven't said a thing. Shanahan doesn't... I feel there's times we need to hear from him and we don't hear from him. And I don't think that's a Lou Lamorello decision. Well, you never know. Lou has his fingers in many pies,

but this would be more of a Brendan Shanahan decision. And I think when you get rid of somebody that's been there that long and so many Leaf fans, and it's not just the fans who go to the games who know Andy's voice. It's like Paul Morris before him. All the people who ever watched the Leafs regularly on TV know that voice. Yes. And so, yeah, you owe the fans an explanation.

It doesn't sound like Andy himself got one, and you certainly should owe Andy an explanation. And I love Andy. I think he's a great guy and he put up with a lot over the years mainly when Ken Dryden ran things and Ken loved to sort of meddle in everything and he loved to write

the scripts Andy would have to read and they were the most turgid, overblown I can't imagine reading the Ken Dryden script. It would take you half an hour. Oh, it just, we used to just roll our eyes and howl in the, when poor Andy was having to read some overblown thing about, oh, I don't know, you know, Remembrance Day or whatever. And Ken, of course, thought this was all brilliant writing.

Good for Ken. My favorite story about that, and I put this one in my book about the Leafs. I did an anecdotal thing on the Leafs some years ago. I believe it was in 2002, and the Commonwealth Games were on, or were going to be on that

summer, and they were in Birmingham, England, I believe. So the torch for the Commonwealth Games was making its way through the Commonwealth. And on this particular night, it was a Leaf game. It was in Toronto. And these three women had brought this torch

to the game for a little publicity. And they were carrying it through the crowd up. So this is before the game. And of course, Dryden had to write the script for it. And poor Andy had to read it. Well, the torch looked like a certain part of a male's anatomy. And I saw it right away. A phallic symbol.

Yeah. I mean, it was a phallus is what the thing looked like. And maybe it was just my perverted brain, but I saw these three women holding this giant, you know, dildo. I just started, I started laughing just at the sight of that. Yeah. And it was, it was lit up somehow. It was flashing or some, you know, weird sort of thing. And, and I think they had done a little bit of a ceremony where the, you know, before the game, it was dark in, in, and these women were carrying this thing that was flashing.

And silly old Dryden had Andy making all these references to the pulsating torch. Oh, he did it on purpose. It is making its way to Birmingham. And I am just crying laughing. Like every three seconds he says pulsating torch. At least he didn't say throbbing. Well, I was waiting for that one.

So the game started, and I just think, I always knew Andy would duck out at the end of the first period for smoke. And so you knew where he was headed. And I'm still laughing by the end of the first period. So I run up the stairs, and I see Andy, and we cross paths, and I'm going, and he just points his finger at me and goes don't you start and then off he goes out for a smoke you know I uh that's uh that first of all it's amazing to me the president or whatever Dryden's title was would be writing the scripts at the PA and talk about

micromanagement are you kidding me well I think by that time, he'd been slowly cut back in the things he could do. Because Pat Quinn is pretty much in charge of everything over there. All right. Now, where are we here? We're almost 90 minutes. Holy smokes, Schultz. See, that was pretty awesome. You gave me 90 minutes. You have to give me

a late slip for the boss. Yeah. So, is that right? Are you going to be in trouble? Do I have to dismiss you? I can ask you a few rapid fire here i think i've been around long enough i can talk my way out of it that's 30 something years um real quick here uh so we talked about hebsey earlier and then so i've had on this podcast recently guys like mike toth and marty york and then john gallagher last week and these are guys i would say they happen to be guys that kind of out of these space right now, but they're interesting opinionated guys.

So is there room for guys like that anymore in our Canadian sports media scene? Are those guys been pushed out for sort of not towing the line, if you will? Some of them have, I think Mike Toth has paid the price for, for being outspoken. And he,

he's now been with both of the main broadcasters, TSN Sports, or Bell Media and Rogers Media. So to get a job again at that level would be difficult for Mike. I feel bad for Mike. Like the bridges are burned? Well, in certain respects, you know, because he's been outspoken on lots of occasions. And then he doubles.

When you give him a chance to get out, he will double down. Yeah. I've noticed. So they don't like that. So yeah, Mike would be a sort of good example of that. But Mike's a good broadcaster. I think, yeah, you may see him back again. Because some of his dinosaur views on, especially women in media, sports media and stuff, have

kind of got it going in 2016. That was one of those things. I really don't know the ins and outs, but I had the impression it was sort of like a bad joke that quickly went bad, and then he didn't back down. Yeah, he did. It just turned into a real mess. He has a chance to kind of, bad joke, sorry about that, of course, whatever, but instead

he doubles down on it. Yeah. He's still kind of beating it. So that's Mike Toth. The other guy who's been on recently, and speaking of Twitter, having Twitter and the trolls on Twitter, Marty York, who used to write with you at The Globe and Mail. Yes, he did. First of all, are you at all aware of his tweets?

I've seen a few of them. He's trying, it's clearly, he's morphed into a Twitter troll who is desperately, it seems to me, trying to get back in the business and doing it by making completely outrageous statements, accusing, I guess, all of the Toronto media of being homers. But his problem is the stuff he's doing to back it up, like saying Troy Tulewitzki can barely play baseball or whatever. And similar remarks about the Raptors. I don't want to say much about Marty, but I will say it's pretty sad that he's,

you know, it looks like he's trying to be a Twitter troll to get some attention and get back in the business. So I just tend to ignore trolls. That's probably better because he's definitely trying to incite anger from those who I would call, forget the media for a second, but the fans, like a Blue Jays fan, okay? And he will tweet things like, you know, Josh Donaldson is a one-year wonder and is having a terrible year, when the numbers would show you that that is ridiculous. Like the numbers for Josh Donaldson, I don't even know why.

You're right. Why am I arguing with a troll who's just tweeting things? Precisely. So I should stop. Yes, you should. That's your advice to me. My advice is unless said troll

is actually tweeting something thought-provoking as opposed to something ridiculous like a Josh Donaldson is a one-year wonder, just why am I wasting my time looking at this too much energy has probably already been spent I just I guess because he has the globe and male background sort of like if you went what do you call it in wrestling when it got heel like a good guy like I think Hogan did this once it's like a heel turn and you become a bad guy in wrestling yeah but there's good ways to be a heel in bad ways. And he's doing it the bad way.

What he does harp on a lot, and there's a whole history here with Nelson Millman and the Fan 590 and the dismissal. Like, I believe there's a great history here of Marty York being fired

by Rogers and then holding a grudge because he does go at Rogers differently than he goes at Bell Media for what that's worth. And I guess I'm wondering, he does often talk about one thing,

which I think is a valid concern that I'm always concerned about, which is basically when the journalist or the reporter or the analyst covering the team is paid by the same company that owns the team. This, for example, the Rogers team that broadcasts Blue Jays games, and you spoke earlier about the, what do we call it, self-censorship that goes on in that environment. But now we have it where Bell owns the Argos, and TSN has the CFL package, and Rodgers,

and this could be happening naturally or unnaturally, but it seems like Rodgers is reducing their coverage of the CFL. Have you noticed that? but it seems like Rogers is reducing their coverage of the CFL. Have you noticed that? In a general way, now, I haven't sat down and timed every segment Rogers devotes to the CFL. I just sort of look at it in a general way. One thing I did notice is that when they got deep into the playoffs

for the CFL, like the two conference or division finals, do they still call them Eastern Division? Yeah, is it conference or division? I can't remember. It's been a year since I covered the CFL. Four and four, yeah. When they got to the conference finals, Rodgers did give a fair bit of coverage.

Regular season, not so much. And, you know, I don't think we should be surprised by that. I also think, you know, there's plenty of criticism may be thrown at both sides in this in that, yeah, you know, the coverage from the Rogers side of, say, the Blue Jays, for example, is never going to be as severe in, I will say, in certain areas as you see on, well, TSN

or some of the newspapers. And, you know, for obvious reasons. This is, you know, guys who work for Rogers, no, you don't tromp on the company's product. And, you know, I think they've got a fair bit of leeway. And again, this is nothing that's written down.

It's understood. That's important. There's no memo you're going to discover. If you get out of line or what the boss has considered out of line, there will be a quiet word. Or in some cases, like Mike Willner, an actual suspension. Right. But I think, again, a lot of self-censorship. But I do think the Rodgers guys, and I'm talking about guys like Shai Davidi, Greg Zahn, Jamie Campbell, those kind of guys,

they're given a fair latitude for criticizing on the field matters, like is so-and-so having a bad year? Did he do something stupid? I think they're fairly free and easy. Where it gets a little restrictive is in the management matters above John Gibbons. And the whole Alex Anthopoulos, who you certainly saw

a marked difference in the coverage between Rogers and TSN. So is this, how big a problem for us guys who just want to consume our sports

for entertainment purposes? Because I think sports was meant to entertain. I can't remember. Yeah, we tend to forget that. But how big a problem is this convergence of sports team ownership and media? If we only can't criticize Jay's management without repercussions, then where are we at? There's a whole Rogers thing.

And I know everyone knows this, but Rogers and Bell, they co-own a few of the big teams, mainly the Raptors and the Leafs and the Marlies and TFC too, right? Yeah. It's a huge problem. Yeah, and Bell's got the Argos now and you got Rodgers has got the Jays. So you can't really escape this. You know, if you want volume of coverage, you can't complain there.

I mean, it's relentless. But if, you know, when you're talking about the type of coverage, are they going to look long and hard at what management is doing and is this in the best interest of the fans? Then you have to wonder because they're serving a single master. And to me, that's not good for the media business. And fans tend not, you know, fans are funny beasts. They, when an issue arises between a journalist and a team,

you know, over, you know, one player not liking what somebody wrote or a manager, fans invariably take the team side. Like with the hot dogs. Yeah. Well, that, yeah. Oh, never mind. Silliness. The, you know, because they're fans. Like with the hot dogs. Yeah. Well, that, yeah. Oh, never mind. Silliness. The, you know, because they're fans

of the team. They're not a fan of Damien Cox or whoever is, you know, me, whoever. So that's kind of, you know, and that's a bit off kilter because our function is to be the fans representative and we're there

to explain to the fan what's going on without a hidden agenda. And suddenly you have the same people being the boss of those representing the fan, the journalists, and the team itself. And that is not a healthy thing. However, it ain't going to change. No, it's not going to change. Should people who do on-air shilling for a team get same access to players and managers as reporters? Well, you could waste a lot of time arguing that. But the fact is they do,

and they actually probably get more access. Right. I mean, that's always been the case. Because players are humans. They aren't keen or it's a rare one who can take criticism in a sort of impassioned or dispassionate way, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So guys who were overly friendly to players on the air and kissed their butts tended to get far more access than the rest of us who were perceived as the enemy. And that's just the way it's always been. Yeah. So you got to work around that.

What are your thoughts on the trend that major media outlets are not sending reporters on the road to cover significant events or major games, but they're like, they'll literally write it off the TV. Like, they'll watch it on the TV and write it off that. It's an absolute disgrace. It cuts into my quality bar time and eating good meals and staying in fine hotels. That was stand-up comic David Schultz who made an appearance there.

I mean, geez. You should see my collection of little soaps. It disappeared. But this must be troubling, right? Yeah, seriously, it is. Because bosses may argue, well, you're just one of a large pack down there, and you're not getting anything different than you'd get on TV. And the leagues themselves have moved in the last 10 years

to really limit access. And that's why I don't really miss covering the NHL on a regular basis that much anymore, because I soon got tired of being one of 25 guys in a scrum at a freaking Leaf practice for some third-line guy to come out. They bring them out one at a time now. And so Scrub Center is doing a scrum with 25 guys because there's just nobody else around to come out. They bring them out one at a time now. And so Scrub Center is

doing a scrum with 25 guys because there's just nobody else around to talk to, you know, utters a few cliches and walks back to the room. That's just it. And then, you know, because they've all been conditioned since they were 10 by their agents and whoever, media trainers, to say nothing. Maybe they should take that Bull Durham movie. That's why Montreal didn't like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But P.K.

Subban, like. Right. So that's why a guy like P.K. Subban gets so much media love, because they come out and they got, they're refreshing. They got something interesting to say. Yeah. You know? And you know who's like that on the Leafs?

Morgan Rielly. Is he? And yeah, my last couple of years on the Leaf beat, he was a rookie. And I think I lasted one more year after that. And he wasn't as colorful as PK Subban, obviously, but he spoke his mind and gave you honest, thoughtful answers. And it sort of stuck with you.

Because the reason it stuck is we all said the same thing to each other. This kid's pretty good, a talker. But by the end of the season, the rest of them will get to him and he's going to end up with, yeah, I'm just trying to work hard. I don't think he has yet that I've noticed. Anyway, that's what we're up against now

is that the teams have moved to limit access as much as they can. And latterly, some of it's been driven by the fact they all have their own websites with their own writers. And so you're competing with that. And it you know the whole job itself uh because of things like that got less and less fun um it was always you know aside from working hard and trying to get the right story that job was it was a lot of fun and because you know you you talk to interesting people And you used to be able to, back in the day,

as those old guys say, you'd go in the Leaf room and there'd be 15 of them sitting around. And so you could wander around and just talk to them. And that's when you'd learn things, not when you pull out your notebook and say, so how do you think you played last night? That's when he goes into cliche mode. But no, just stand around talking to them. And that's

why even today with all the limited access, go back to the original question, there's still a value to being there, to being at an event and actually covering it. There are still things you see and you can report on, bring your reader or viewer or something a little extra by being there. You're not going to get that just sitting in front of the television writing what you saw, because what you saw is the same damn thing everybody else saw. This is a Twitter question for you from at SCTVman, which is a great handle.

Do you think TSN or Sportsnet has the better sports center type show? And can you tell them apart? Can you tell them? That's mine. I added on there. Yeah, they're both equally professional and well done. And I don't really have a strong feeling one way or the other. Frankly, there's so many versions of all of them that I can't say, wow, you know, boy, I got to sit down and

watch Jennifer Hedger every night. I mean, I don't even know what time she's on regularly. And same for the people on the Rogers side. So, no, I don't have a strong opinion for one side or the other. I think they both do a pretty good job outside of the issues we already talked about where it comes to criticizing. Where the Sportsnet version will kind of bury the Argos score at the end. Oh, I suppose. Yeah, the CFL.

Well, as a viewer, you should eventually get sophisticated enough to know, well, if I want CFL news, I better watch DSN. That's exactly right. And if you want to hear Barry Davis talk about the Jays game, then you got Sportsnet. Okay. Van, that's a funny guy. I can't say it. Vinefan99 on Twitter asks, who do you think is the most underrated sports media personality?

Well, I have to answer that the same way I did when he asked it on Twitter a couple of days ago. Me, of course. That's right. That was stand-up comic David Schultz who answered that one because that can't be true. And that's also, what do you call it, not an option. So is there anybody out there who we should be paying more attention to?

Underrated, paying more attention to. You know, there's so many platforms out there now that you just, it's difficult to say that there's somebody who's not being seen. Honestly, off the top of my head, I can't think of anyone. I think just about anybody in Toronto is being seen by, you know, however many people he needs to be. So you're an old, can I call you an old school journalist? I guess.

Okay, well, I just did. Like, what was it like when the shift went to online and mobile? Like, the whole scene, your whole industry has shifted from like print and the ink-stained Sunday morning read to... Yeah, it was a huge change. There have been so many huge changes since I started. I got my first full-time job in 1979. And a year later, I was one of four beat writers of the first year of the Calgary Flames. Two of the others were Eric DeHatchek and Steve Simmons.

Because they fired, Simmons fired, is this the same? No, Simmons did not fire DeHatchek. I'm talking Howard Berger. Oh, Howard Berger. That came later. Okay, that's later. Simmons did not fire Howard Berger. A guy named Les Payette did. Oh, he's taking credit for it.

I still think it's because he got up on the wrong side of bed that day. I think he fired two people before lunch that day, and one of them was Howard. I remember I was Simmons' roommate at the time. Simmons was a sports editor, and I was working on the desk, so I worked nights. And the phone rang at 10 o'clock in the morning, woke me up, and it was Howard. And I was home alone because Simmons, as a sports editor, had gone in that morning. And Howard said to me, I've been fired.

Oh, yeah, right. Simmons got him fired but didn't do the firing. Yeah, well, what happened was entirely inadvertent is that Howard was hired to be our amateur sports sort of writer. And, of course, Howie was a young, you know, uppity guy, just like the rest of us. He was a couple of years younger than me, I think at least,

maybe three or four. But our staff was so young that Howie was considered the youngst, the rookie. He was the rookie on the staff. But Howie, of course, figured he should be covering the flames and the stampeters

and writing the column. Right, right. All of us were guilty of that at one time or another. It's one of the side effects of being young. And so sometimes he didn't really want to do what he was supposed to. He'd rather be at the stampeter game or the flame game or whatever. And what happened was both papers in those days had a page on Tuesdays they called the amateur page. It was started by the Calgary Herald. I worked at the Herald and that was one

of our duties. It wasn't a real fun duty. You'd have to go out and write two or three stories on local like high school athletes or amateur athletes who were going to go to you know the Commonwealth Games. Every week you had to dream up something. It was a real pain. And trust me, it was, then the sun, when the sun came along, they did their own version, but it was much easier to fill a tabloid page than a bloody broadsheet page. Right. But that was one of Howard's duties,

is that he had to do the stories for this once a week. And on this occasion, there was a swim team in Calgary. I forget if they were a high school or a club. They were going away to some big competition in Japan, I think it was. It was overseas. And Howard was supposed to write a story about it. And lo and behold, Tuesday rolls around, and there's the Calgary Herald's amateur page with this big spread on this swim team. Or no, I've gotten ahead of myself.

That was Howard's assignment well uh on friday of before the tuesday a photographer came in the office with some photos of these swimmers and he handed them to steve and said i'm not sure what this is for and steve goes oh yeah yeah that's for howard's story and he turned to howard and said um howie how's that story coming you're gonna have it done for Tuesday? We ran our page the same day. Howie said, yeah, yeah, I'll get it done. Well, that weekend, on his own, he drove, I believe, to Edmonton

and wrote a sidebar on the Stampeders-Edmonton game, which, I mean, that's fine. They were happy to run it, but only if priority number one was done. And lo and behold, Tuesday rolls around, there's the Calgary Herald with the big spread on these amateur swimmers, and we didn't have a story. And Steve got mad, as he should have. And, you know, this isn't like, I want to stress here,

if y'all people are sitting at home saying, oh, that burger, he should have. No, it was just a mistake. It was a rookie mistake. We've all made them. I've done that, as bad as that or worse. So Steve quite rightly wrote a memo to Howard saying, you know, you went on your own and did this CFL thing.

You should have made sure that your other story was done first. That is a priority. You know, don't do it again. And that was basically the extent of the memo. It was just smarting up, Howie. And, of course, Steve made the mistake of CCing Les Payette, who was the managing editor. And, well, Les Payette is a character unto himself.

But anyway, he got mad and fired Howard. Right. And that's how Howard got fired. Then there was this huge protracted foo-for-all that Steve got caught up in. And somehow they came to a settlement and Howard went back home. Which I think in the end,

that was the best thing that happened to Howard because he made no secret of the fact, as we all did, our only ambition was to stay in Calgary long enough to get a job in Toronto. And we all did eventually, except Eric who elected to stay in Calgary long enough to get a job in Toronto. Right. And we, you know, we all did eventually, except Eric, who elected to stay in Calgary, and he's a Toronto guy. So Howard got to come home a little earlier than the rest of us, but he wound up with

a really, really good job at the fan and did a really good job for years. I mean, I don't know if he learned directly from that memo or that experience, because I'm sure it was a very upsetting experience at the time and he was unjustly fired so were a lot of other people in those days but um you know that's the sequence of what happened there with howie is there space in our you know toronto sports media world for howard burger anymore i know he's gone independent if you will with with his blog. Yeah. But is there a gig out there for Howard?

Well, there should be. But, you know, this is the problem in the media business now. When you get to a certain age, over 50, let's say, for an arbitrary number, employers lose. They're not interested in you because, you know, nobody's making any money. And, you know, the average viewer would say, well, there's Howard Berger, did the lease for years, and, you know, he should have a job. You know, this guy should hire him. Well, the way it works now is these guys have no money. And so they're not interested in hiring an experienced person

and having to, in their minds, pay him a lot more, it's easier to get rid of the experienced person and hire somebody out of school at less than half the money. That's what powers these decisions. Who is the current Leafs beat reporter for 1050, TSN Radio? They just hired someone and I know it's a young woman and I can't remember her name. So is it now, this will be purely speculative and I'm sure the young woman

is extremely talented, but the young woman would be more favorable to TSN management than Howard Berger for one reason amongst maybe there's others, but the first reason would be

she would command a much smaller salary. I think you might say that's the only reason. Speculation, of course. I mean, that's just the way of the business now. And when it comes to hiring, that's an unfortunate fact of life in our business that they are going to say, why would I go with this older, expensive person

who's going to say, I won't work for $25,000 a year, whatever. And some of the salaries, trust me, that are being paid to these younger people and they're being worked to death, some of the salaries will take your breath away. And I don't mean in a good way. Well, I met with a young, yeah,

pretty young person who's now doing things for a radio station in Toronto and doing a lot of things, like a lot of work, and it's completely unpaid. And it's because there's some loophole where if the internship is part of your future career and you're learning or something, you don't have to pay or something. But she's doing what I consider real work for a big radio station in the city. Yeah, there's a lot more than her doing it, probably. And I will say this if I want to be a snotty print guy,

the interns at the Globe are paid. Well, good. Probably helps we have a union, I don't know. And they've always been paid. But radio has a long, sorry history of unpaid interns. And I know that because of the years I used to be in favor over at Rogers and I'd be on McCown's show. And somebody would come down and get you from the parking lot was always an intern who was

unpaid. And there was just rotating ranks of them. And yeah, I bet you a lot of people think that's a good way to start their career. They're trying to get in. Well, that's the line. One day maybe you'll get paid to do that. And yeah, some of them did. You know, I think if you go back far enough,

Strombo, I think, probably started as an unpaid intern. Yeah, but he was getting coffee for people when they came in to do, yeah, like Humble and Fred show and stuff. But hey, I left a question on the table here, which I want to get in. It's by Anonymous, and it says, how many Hawaiian parrot shirts are in your wardrobe,

and have you ever thought of starting your own line? And I have to plead ignorance. I have no idea what the joke is there, but I guess you had a lot of parrot shirts are in your wardrobe and have you ever thought of starting your own line and I have to plead ignorance I have no idea what the joke is there but I guess you had a lot of parrot shirts I have one I have one in my truck right now that I'm going to put on to go to work because I can't wear this t-shirt in the office probably but I at last count have somewhere around 35 and yeah I sort of got a little reputation for wearing them. It started accidentally enough one year in the NHL playoffs. I was at Kauffman's department store in Pittsburgh in the, I don't know, mid-90s, and saw a Hawaiian shirt that caught my eye, bought it, and got so many comments,

I just kept buying them. But I had one rule. I'd never pay more than $15, and they're all polyester, so they're murder on hot days. Highly flammable. So I certainly am not ready to start a Tommy Bahama line. Do me a favor. Next time you come over, because I had a whole bunch of stuff we didn't actually get to, so next time you come over,

will you wear a Hawaiian parrot shirt? I certainly will, yes. Thank you very much. And that brings us to the end of our 180-second show. You can follow me on Twitter, at Toronto Mike, and David is at DSchultz. Schultz is S-H-O-A-L-T-S. And our friends at Great Lake Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer.

See you all next week. And it won't go away Cause everything is rolling you