Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Matt Cauz: Toronto Mike'd #410
Episode Date: December 12, 2018Mike chats with broadcaster Matt Cauz about wine, his years on TSN 1050 radio, his relationship with Macko, podcasting and more....
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Welcome to episode 410 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything.
Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Propertyinthe6.com, Paytm Canada, Palma Pasta,
Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair, and Census Design and Build.
jewelry repair and census design and build.
I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me is broadcaster and wine guy, I got questions
about this, Matthew Cause. Matthew
or Matt? Whatever you want. I'm very versatile
with the name. I usually start as Matthew
and then allow you to abbreviate but no one ever
goes no you never give a small name and they add the extra letters no one ever goes i am matt and
then they go matthew you're absolutely right because you gotta if you're better safe than
sorry you know that on birth certificates got matthew on it yeah matt honestly you go there
that's right michael right yes that's right toronto michael that's right now this is a
pleasure to finally meet you ever since i had i had mackiewicz jr on this show and he's like oh That's right, Michael. out there. I mean, you tweet me, I tweet back to most everyone. And yeah, I'm not powerful enough
yet to be elusive. That's sort of the goal. Yeah, to be like Bob McCowan, where you can ignore.
Wear sunglasses inside all the time. And be grumpy with people and get away with it. You
still have to be nice to people. Yeah, exactly. No, I hear that for sure, for sure. Now, there's
another gentleman in the room.
There's no video in this pod.
Even though you dressed up, you always dress that way?
No.
If I give the reason why, I'm going to be so on brand.
I'm going to an event.
I'm a member of this place called the National Club,
and I'm going there right after this for the Christmas brunch buffet thing.
I was wondering, what was it,
the Alec Baldwin character in 30 Rock?
30 Rock.
He was wearing a tuxedo,
and then Liz Lemon says,
you're wearing a tuxedo,
and he goes,
what am I, a farmer?
This is just how he dresses.
Wait, you almost got it.
Liz, it's after five.
What am I, a farmer?
So that's how it was.
You nailed that.
I just watched Black Klansman. This is a new Spike Lee joint. is that i want to watch that i liked it very much and um it opens with alec
baldwin does a small role in the beginning but uh before we even more we have so much to talk
about here but i want to introduce uh i called him jokingly called him your stalker when you
got to the door in case you wanted to alert your security detail. Again, I'm not powerful enough. I'm not stock-worthy enough.
I know, Dale, and we've chatted on Twitter all the time, but the people that truly get
stocked are the powerful ones.
First of all, you'd be surprised how low the bar is to get a stocker.
I'm pretty sure I got a couple.
Of course you do.
Look at this equipment.
Look at this studio.
You're stock-worthy.
Just your mics alone, you're stock-worthy.
Okay, before we introduce Dale, let's do this now.
Please spend some time praising my studio setup here.
Okay, because I came in here, and here's the best compliment I can give it.
I walked down into your studio, and I felt shame.
This feels like a real radio studio.
And Jonas Siegel was talking to me but
wanting to upgrade his equipment for the podcast he does with myrtle and he was actually looking
at the equipment i use lovingly so then i felt good i'm like god jonas suck it my equipment's
better than yours and then i come down here i'm like oh yeah no this is actually what a real
podcast studio uh should look like.
You got three mics.
You got the arms going.
Do you know I got four mics?
There's actually one hiding right here.
Oh, yeah, you do.
Because last Friday, I had three guests.
I know.
I know.
I was listening with Sofia Yurkovich, whose last name is a toughie.
Yurstakovich.
Good luck with that.
But yeah, this is a really good studio.
Also, what I appreciate, because you've got a low basement,
and it makes me feel tall, and at 5'7", I'm not.
So anytime I have to even, the threat of my forehead hitting something
always makes me feel good.
First of all, thank you for that high praise.
You read it just as I wrote it.
Thank you very much for not hearing it.
There's some typos in your script, but I was able to work through it.
And thank you so much.
I wanted big sound, and I also want to record other people's podcasts
so it sounds professional, and that was the goal.
So I went big on the mics and everything, and I like the setup right now.
Thanks so much.
Yeah, no, it's great.
Now, I know he's chomping at the bit here, and I am playing the song.
I chose this song to introduce this segment.
I couldn't think of a better song.
It's Spill the Wine.
The gentleman sitting with us is Dale Cadeau.
Welcome, Dale.
Thank you.
Glad to be here.
And let's tell people, though, on Twitter,
you don't go by the name Dale Cadeau.
No, I go by either Cujo or Hector.
I grew up in Streetsville, so
my friends here call me Hector, and then when I
moved out to Vancouver,
I got anointed with a new nickname,
Cujo, which was kind of a take
on my last name. It kind of made sense
to me, because I was a Leaf fan, and
obviously Cujo was one of my favorite goalies.
But how does Hector come out of Streetsville?
Is there a story there? You've got to be from Streetsville to get it.
High school curling.
Our gym teacher kept talking about Hector Gervais,
the famous curler,
and I was the best of a bad lot of curlers in grade 12.
I remember doing a, it was called Lifetime Gym,
and we did a different sport every week.
I know we all went golfing at Scarlet Woods or whatever.
We would do different things.
Skiing one day, all the things I had never done
before. And one day we went curling and that remains
the last time I've curled was for Lifetime Gym.
So it was fun, but I don't know.
I never went back.
Meaning my wife will not curl
or golf, unfortunately.
Now as someone who works at
TSN, I'm obligated
to ask curling questions.
Lead, skip, vice.
Well, I was skip.
You were skip?
There you are.
All right.
So you're in charge of it all.
There you are.
I like curling in the Olympics.
I'll just throw that out there.
That's great.
That's the only time I watch curling.
Yeah.
I enjoy it.
It's certainly changed now.
The physical fitness and curling, you know, now from 20 years ago or 30 years ago.
It's like, hey, can we have one sport where I look like the athlete?
Just one, and they took that away from us.
Yeah, they took it away.
Even golfers now all look, they look fit as a fiddle, and they got muscles and stuff.
That's why I watch darts.
Darts is fun.
All right, Dale, quick thank you.
First of all, thank you because, as I said on episode 400,
first of all, thank you for sending in the clip for episode 400.
Thank you very much.
And I shared the story that you're from Vancouver,
even though you're from Whitstreetsville, but you came from Vancouver today.
Correct.
Like fresh from Vancouver, like your plane just landed.
Yesterday, yep.
The helicopter landed in my backyard, I noticed.
But let me turn over the mic to you because I want to hear the story of this bet and what you're here, your purpose.
You take over.
Okay.
First of all, thanks for having me down in your studio today, Toronto Mike.
And it's a pleasure to meet Matt.
I think I had some small bit in getting him here today, even though he may not admit it.
Take all the credit for that.
I know he was getting pressured a little bit
from Mako and
on Twitter. Well, Mako was not very effective
because it was years.
Little did I know that all it took was
to offer
for me to bring out, because I knew he had been to
Mission Hill Winery in Kelowna.
You didn't actually bring a bottle.
All it took was me to
threaten to bring a bottle of Mission Hill wine.
So he tweets back and he says, oh, I'd love an Oculus or a Perpetua.
I was being sarcastic.
I thought he was.
So then I researched them.
Yeah.
And a little to my chagrin, these are pretty high-end wines.
These are expensive.
That's why I did it.
I was being a jackass.
So, you know, I'm a pretty good wine guy, but it was a little higher than my price point
that I normally buy.
Yeah.
I'll go to a $40 or $50 bottle here and there.
So I looked around and I said, well, maybe he'll settle for something a little bit less.
And then, lo and behold, in our wine cellar at work, I found a couple of bottles there.
our wine cellar at work,
I found a couple of bottles there.
And I said, well, you know,
I'm going to surprise him and shock him by bringing one all the way.
This might be highly illegal, though.
I have to check with...
With Doug Ford?
Okay, that's ridiculous.
You should not be giving me a bottle of Oculus.
That is ridiculous.
Okay, for the non-wine guys like me,
Oculus, what is Oculus exactly?
It might not be Oculus inside.
Okay, okay.
You know what?
I hope it's not because I'm like...
To me, it's just a blend.
I don't know.
It's not even a real drink.
Now I wish I had a camera set up in there.
Yes.
Okay, first off, you can't...
Now, he knows it way more than me.
I actually bought one for myself as well
that I'm going to crack open at Christmas
and actually enjoy it.
If you're going to, decant it for a minimum two hours.
Two hours?
At least two hours.
So what Oculus,
you can explain what Oculus is.
Oh, no, I didn't research it that much.
Okay, well, Mission Hill is one of the top BC wineries
located in Okanagan.
They're on the east side of the Okanagan Lake.
They specialize
in Bordeaux blend.
Bordeaux blend basically means
the grapes that are
used famously in Bordeaux in France.
Cabernet Sauvignon,
Cap Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot,
Malbec, those are the five
Bordeaux blends. So when you hear Bordeaux blend,
it just means,
depending on the weather and the soil,
they're going to use a certain percentage.
And this one's usually a Merlot dominant,
50% Merlot, then Cap Franc, Cap Sauve.
I think a little bit of Prédit Verdot in it as well. It is incredibly well-made wine, hand-picked,
from the better
vineyards, because
they want just the better grapes.
This is one of the best
examples of Canadian
red wine that can compete
with Bordeaux.
The interesting thing I found out when I was researching this wine was
you can actually buy
good Mission Hill wine here at LCBO
that you cannot buy at the BC liquor stores.
You have to get it at a specialty shop only.
Really?
Yeah.
That's odd because in BC versus Ontario, BC is much more inward looking.
They support BC wine more versus in Ontario where we don't purchase so much a smaller percentage of VQA, which just means Ontario-made wine
from Ontario grapes.
What is the sticker price
for that bottle?
This?
I need to know
what we're talking about here.
$149, $150-ish?
$150.
So you brought from Vancouver
for Matt here
a $150 bottle of wine.
What can I give you?
Don't get me in trouble with the law
here. You've done nothing wrong.
You can bring across
provincial borders. You are allowed
a certain amount. I don't know what is in Ontario
right now. Everything's all whacked up in Canada.
I remember Terry David Mulligan,
I would do a protest every year. He would walk across
the border from BC to Alberta with some
wine just to show
how stupid the law is.
We are dumb.
We are so dumb.
So amazing.
I mean, that's super generous.
I jokingly called you a stalker,
but all stalkers did that.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
It's way too generous.
I brought him one of my...
There's more wine.
This is my house wine here,
Spearhead Winery in Kelowna as well.
It's owned by a member of my club where I work.
Yeah.
And I thought this is kind of a unique blend.
I don't know if you've ever seen or tasted this kind of wine before,
so I thought you might appreciate that as well over the holiday season.
It is a white Pinot Noir, and Pinot Noir, of course, is a red wine.
But, I mean, red wine becomes red wine because once the grapes are crushed,
you allow the juice to macerate
in the skins. That's what gives it its color.
But a white
Pinot Noir is incredibly,
incredibly rare.
See, now I want to interview Dale.
Go ahead.
What is your role with Spearhead?
It's just two members of
former board members of my club.
They own that winery.
So I try to support it whenever I can.
That is really, a 2017 white Pinot Noir.
That, man, first off,
you could never get tested on this,
on any Quartermaster Somme, any sort of,
there's no way you could get tested on this
because it is so rare.
That is fascinating.
Yeah, I belong to their wine club,
so I get six every quarter.
It is so clear. Yeah, it is so rare. That is fascinating. Yeah, I belong to their wine club, so I get six every quarter. It is so clear.
Yeah, it looks like water.
This looks like water.
Even the lightest rosé, like say, you know, like Bandol, like parts of Provence, it's still going to have a little pinkish or salmon hue to it.
That is really weird looking.
My God.
You know what you've done, Dale?
You've given him these extravagant
amazing gifts. What can I give you?
I need... But I have gifts for him
soon too. You don't have a toque, do you?
No. Dale, I got
a toque for you. I got a toque for you.
I'm going to hook you up with a toque.
My gifts will be...
I don't know. He'll be underwhelmed by the gifts I'm going to
give him after these $150 bottles of wine, etc.
Amazing.
So, Matt, can you share with me a little bit about, like, you host wine events, just a little bit?
Because we're going to, obviously, we're going to do a whole TSN and sports media thing.
But I want to start with the wine stuff.
Like, what do you host, wine events?
Yeah, I got my diploma from, it's called WCET a couple years ago.
And then there's the other wine education,
the Quartermaster Sommelier.
I got the first level
and then two thirds of the certified.
I failed the service part
because I don't work in service.
And I won't go over to the minutia,
but I made a very critical mistake
early on in the service aspect.
And then it got in my head.
And as I'm trying to pour the champagne, it was really just cheap Prosecco, into the glass, it was like Niagara Falls.
Like I was getting it in the glass, in the glass.
Failed.
But anyway, yeah, I host wine events from big corporate things for like banks that we host at that club.
I'm a member of the National Club.
I've done bachelorettes, private parties in the beaches. And it's really whatever anyone wants.
It's just for people at every level. If you want to learn a little bit about wine, like at the
Stagette, I've done great wines for under 20 bucks. And early on, I realized I'm just a poorer.
I have all my notes for all the wines,
but I'm like, nope, my job is just to make sure
everyone's glass is full.
And then if I'm doing a small intimate dinner party
where people that really like wine, I'll bring a map.
I'm like, here's where the grapes are from
and this is why it tastes the way it does.
So really every level from the hardcore wine geek
to someone who wants to try a good
sparkling that isn't Prosecco
or way too expensive champagne.
It sounds
lucrative somehow. It sounds
like these wine people already have a lot
of coin lying around, no?
The exact opposite. One,
I don't
charge. I probably don't charge enough
because I'm very sheepish about offering my services.
But it's one of the big myths is that the Psalms, a small amount, will make good money
if you're in the top restaurants in New York, places like that.
But the hours are incredibly long.
What you get from being a Psalm at any sort of even decent to good restaurant,
every now and then you'll get free trips. You'll get flown to wine regions all over the world,
South Africa, South America, all over France, Italy. And every now and then you'll get to try
wines that are sometimes five, 10 times the cost of this beautiful bottle of Oculus.
So that's where it's sort of the peripheral stuff is where the benefits come from.
That's where it's sort of the peripheral stuff is where the benefits come from.
Dale, when you tweeted that you had the Oculus for Matt, you also tweeted that Michael Landsberg secretly hated this bottle.
Is that a didn't did you tweet that?
Oh, well, Landsberg, Landsberg, maybe Matt tweeted that.
No, I probably someone else who jumped in the conversation.
All right. Landsberg doesn't really drink.
I think I've seen him have three Heineken, and I've known him since 2000. Oh, I wish I had
taken down the name of the tweeter
to give him or her credit, but
I thought for some reason that was you, Dale.
Okay, so you have
all this wine. You're like a wine
expert, Matt, and you're
sharply dressed today,
making me look bad again, but also making
Dale look bad. Thank you very much for dressing down.
I would have dressed differently, but I hate being late.
I'm a time freak.
So just car gets home and then head straight over there because I'm not going to drive there because parking, traffic, and I'll have a couple glasses.
But let me give you some gifts now that will pale in comparison to the gifts Dale brought you.
So you've got the wine, but I enjoy a fresh can of craft beer locally.
Who doesn't?
Great Lakes Brewery.
You're literally 5K away from where they made those cans.
And it's always fresh at Great Lakes.
And that six pack is for you.
Thank you so much.
This is ridiculous.
Now I feel more shame.
People come on my podcast and I'm like,
well, I can slice some cucumber
in your water.
I normally don't give every guest the
$150 bottle of Oculus.
Shame on you.
Damien Cox should be really
angry that he's never got that.
Dale's normally
in Vancouver. It's difficult for him to hand deliver.
But Great Lakes Brewery, they're a
fiercely independent craft brewery
located here in Etobicoke. And
99.9% of all
Great Lakes beer remains here in Ontario.
And Dale, you came all this
way. I know you like Great Lakes beer
because I met you there once. That's correct.
And every time I'm in the vicinity,
I always stop by and pick up a six-pack.
There's a six-pack for you, too. Awesome.
Thank you very much, Mike.
And can you pull out the one in the back?
Yeah, that guy.
That one, that's a limited time.
That's here now.
What's the name of that one?
Grandpa's Old White Eggnog Stout.
Ooh!
Every can they sell, a dollar goes to the Daily Bread Food Bank.
So when you're at Great Lakes Brewery stocking up, make sure you get some Grandpa's Old White
Eggnog Stout. See, I would
get this because it combines two of my
favorite things. I love eggnog
and I love stout beers.
I always like
the darker beers.
These people that don't like
eggnog, they are just animals. I love
eggnog, but only in December.
I can't drink it outside of December. It's one of those
things. But I do love it.
Now, there's also
sorry, Dale, only
for Matt here, actually, but
I'll hook you up next time for sure.
There's some lasagna.
Meat lasagna from Palma Pasta.
That's frozen lasagna in that beautiful
white box for you. Nice. Lasagna is the
best.
So you got your read. I was about to just
No, no, no. It's not even barely a read except to tell you
it's Mississauga's best fresh pasta
in Italian food. And everybody listening
should go to palmapasta.com for a
location near you. And if you're doing any catering,
these guys are awesome. They catered my wedding.
This is the tastiest
Italian food in the GTA.
Palma's pasta. But but please tell me what wine
goes with meat lasagna
well first off meat lasagna is so good
you can put almost anything with it
you know I don't want something too light
so you know
often cases just stick with the country
stick where it's from
get a good Chianti, a good Brunello
I might not put Amarone
even though I love Amarone Amarone doesn't really go with a lot of food because it's from. Get a good Chianti, a good Brunello. I might not put Amarone, even though I love
Amarone. Amarone doesn't really go with a lot of
food because it's a higher alcohol wine. It can
sometimes overwhelm it. But just this with
a Chianti Classico, you are not
going to go wrong.
It feels like you're talking a different language, but I love it.
I'm learning so much here. I have
to admit, I know nothing about wines.
I don't drink wine. I know nothing about
it. But it sounds like it's one of those things when you get
into wine, you get deep into wine.
It's a little nerdy that way.
Is that possible, Dale? You're in the nerd club?
Is that okay? He's absolutely in the nerd club.
You brought me a white Pinot Noir.
I'm a geek and a nerd at work, but
when it comes to wines...
You know, a couple quick things.
One, I'll never consider myself
a wine expert because once you start to learn about wine,
you realize how little you know.
And there's just, there's so, so much.
But when people will ask me, oh, I don't really know a lot about wine.
I always turn it around and go, there's a lot of things you know tons about that I know
nothing about.
There's 24 hours in a day.
You can't know everything because sometimes you got to sleep and, you know, Mike, you
got kids.
And my philosophy in life is if you like everything, you love nothing.
So there's a couple things I really love.
You dive deep into those things.
Yeah.
And then there's other things where, wow, am I ignorant.
I feel I can't afford to dive deep into the wine appreciation.
Yeah, if you get into it.
When this Oculus, which has got you really excited.
Yeah, it's an incredibly well-made wine.
I mean, Dale flew from Vancouver to bring it for you,
so I knew it was important.
But when I hear that's $150,
I think maybe it's best I stay with the craft beer
from Great Lakes Brewery.
I say it all the time, and Dale, you know this as well.
When someone gets into Pinot Noir,
and then they get into France and Burgundy,
I'm like, it's going to be a tasty journey, but your wallet and your waistline are about to take a bit of a hit.
Oh, man.
So thank you, Palma Pasta.
Thank you, Great Lakes Brewery.
Just want to thank a couple more sponsors.
I want to thank Census Design and Build.
They provide architectural design, interior design, and turnkey construction services across the GTA.
design, interior design, and turnkey construction services across the GTA. To learn more about the possibilities for your home, call them at 416-931-1422 or go to censusdesignbuild.ca today
to schedule your zoning and cost project feasibility study. And I want to thank Paytm.
They've been sponsors for over a year now and and it's been great. That's an app,
Paytm, that's designed to manage all of your bills in one spot. You download the app from
paytm.ca, and when you make your first bill payment, and I pay all my bills with Paytm.
That's the truth. I'll prove it by showing Dale my empty account right now. But you can get $10
right now from Paytm, $10 in Paytm cash if you use the promo code Toronto Mike
when you make that first bill payment. And since we're talking about wine, this is a
perfect time to let Brian Gerstein, Matt, he's got a question for you.
All right.
And it's wine related, so I'm excited to hear how knowledgeable you are. Let's listen.
knowledgeable you are., December is the best time to get a great deal with less competition and motivated sellers.
Call or text me at 416-873-0292 to get the ball rolling.
Okay, Kaz, let's see if you can walk the talk.
I need you to correctly spell as you claim on your LinkedIn page, Gavortstraminer.
And as a follow-up question, when they are done right, do you find them many times superior to a Moscato?
I'm going to do the second part first.
Yes.
Moscato's nice.
It's a nice, light, Italian sparkling.
And also it's great because it's low alcohol and nice in a fruity drink.
But a good Gewurztraminer, I mean, man, A, it can age for like 20 plus years if you get a good French, Eastern European Gewurztraminer. The spice that goes on, the wild lychee, the wild
fruit, I love Gewurztraminer. It's a good blend. You can find some inexpensive Ontario blends of a Riesling
Gewurz blend for $12, $13 that really fits the bill. No, I can't spell it.
You do make the claim, though, on your LinkedIn page.
Yeah, I know. I know. But first off, about LinkedIn, I've never even used it. I feel so bad when someone says,
can I join on your LinkedIn page?
I'm like, okay.
I don't do anything.
I don't even think I have a picture.
I know it ends in T-R-A-M-I-N-E-R.
Gewurzt is like G-W-Z-E-R-T.
No, no.
And I don't even,
one of these characters,
I'm not even sure what it is. It's the U
of the two dots. Anybody know what that is?
I'd stop French after grade 9.
I took grade 9 general here in
Etobicoke, and then that was it
for me. Where did you go? I was a
Richview collegiate.
Islington and Eglinton? Is that what that's called?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Islington and Eglinton. In fact,
I'm not that far from here, and I used to...
You know, I had a girlfriend,
second of a girlfriend lived like maybe a block
away from here, so this area of the
lakeshore, I know really well. It's a really nice area.
Thank you very much.
I went to Michael Power, the old
location, so like near, it was near Islington
and Dundas, Islington and Blue Air there, so not
too far from Richview Collegiate. I know exactly
where that is. But yeah, I don't
even know how to say that word, let alone spell it, so I think you're
off the hook. You know, I can't
spell Gewurztraminer, but I highly
you know, you get a good
Alsatian
or French Gewurzt. It's
Huguel, H-U-G-E-L,
which is a fantastic producer
which you can find at the LCBO and a lot
of major wine stores. So just before we
go any further, now that tweet I copied
but didn't give it credit to anybody,
I think it might have been Stephen.
Stephen with PH.
He's a big fan of your podcast.
I think it might have been from him,
if my memory.
So we'll give him credit
and if he doesn't deserve it,
well, he's got to give it back.
Remember the time here.
Oh my goodness, Mike,
you've got a great sound
remember the time matt on this day this exact day in 1965 okay before my time I don't know if it's before anyone else's time but 1965
the Beatles play
their last concert in Great Britain
I didn't realize that
they never played again
maybe if you discount that rooftop thing
they do at the top of Apple Studios
or whatever but their last
concert in Great Britain was on this day
in 1965
which I did not know.
Don't we consider the rooftop one?
Isn't that their last?
That's their last.
Maybe that's not a concert.
Maybe that's their last performance together.
Yeah, okay, fair, fair, yeah.
Play a little Beatles.
Are you, and I think I know the answer
based on another question I asked you
before you came on, Matt,
but I want to ask both of you, you and Dale.
Beatles or Rolling Stones?
Maybe we'll start with Dale on that one. Oh, it's a tough one. I can
tell by his face. I think I'm more of a
Stones guy. I think their range...
I'm a country
music fan as well and a blues guy
as well, so I think they mesh a lot
of that music together in
a lot of their material. Yeah, especially
if you're at all country or real
blues, then you're going to be the Stones.
I mean, not even just that country honk,
but you look at the beginning of Let It Bleed
and just, you know, that head.
Well, there's so many different ones.
Yeah, I am Stones first,
and it's not that it's the Beatles.
I love the Beatles, but if I have to choose,
I grew up on the Rolling Stones.
That was the first rock band.
Same thing, I have an older brother,
like a lot of people, or parents listen to it. So Stones.
I'm going to play a Stones song for you in a minute, Matt.
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There it is.
I mean, if I'm going to do my favorite
Stones tune, it's going to be Monkey Man.
And it's not like I'm
doing this because of a hipster choice.
Also, this is a great song because if this is played on the radio,
you know, you can do it and you can hit the post
because you know when the drums are coming in.
So it's like, it's 1013 here in the morning,
the Toronto Mike Studio coming up now.
It's Monkey Man by the Rolling Stones.
Pretty good.
I mean, it depends. Do you keep talking until nick comes in right here
now sonically share with us why this is your favorite rolling stones jam um just the driving
energy of this song and what i love is the sense of anticipation
the first couple notes you're like oh what's coming and then it's slowly building building
building and then it just hits you with the raw energy and just the really dirtiness of the rolling
stones and then like later on this song you got a piano solo. You got a bleeping piano solo.
It's great.
So, yeah.
And I don't know.
It's just the energy of this song.
I remember the first time hearing it and freaking out.
And I still remember, like you did remember at the time,
sponsored by The Watch Repair.
I think it was 96.
They were at Exhibition Stadium.
It was still Exhibition Stadium on the Voodoo Lounge tour.
I never expected them to play this song.
And when they did,
I was like 20 years old,
and I was just jumping up
or freaking out in my seat.
And it was a really cool concert.
It was in the Simplify for the Devil.
The moon.
It was like a pink moon that night.
It was cool.
Wow.
I was working at the C&E
when the Steel Wheels came to town.
And I remember working that night and all the Stones fans walking by.
And I remember going and listening to them outside the grandstand.
You could stand outside the grandstand and hear the concert.
Yeah.
That's what we did.
Nice.
My dad actually took me to the Steel Wheels concert
Oh in 89
Yeah 1989
Nice
I could be wrong you'll correct me if I'm wrong
I would say that's the last album
The Stones put out that had radio hits on it
Because there's a couple
Yeah there was
Voodoo Lounge
Had a couple songs that I liked,
but I think part of it is, you know, maybe a bit of a Stones apologist.
I mean, it wasn't as bad as when Phantom Menace came out and then the star.
And you're like, no, no, no, it's good.
This movie's good.
George Lucas has still got it.
Like, I don't think it was at that level.
But yeah, I mean, let's face it.
There's no one alive that goes,
I like the Stones.
Most of their new stuff.
I find Let It Bleed not a very good album
but give me Bridges to Babylon.
That's really where they hit their stride.
Are they putting out a new album
or just touring again?
What's the status?
I know there's some announcements.
If you're up to date,
no, Dale doesn't have his,
I was going to say,
they're in the news lately.
I think they might be going back on tour or something.
I think every rock band out there is on their farewell tour now.
It's true, yeah. Elton John's on his.
But the Stones, I think they did a blues cover sort of album, I believe.
It's kind of amazing Keith Richards is not only alive, but still kicking.
That's kind of amazing, right?
It is, except this is going to
sound weird, because as a Stones fan,
but when David Bowie
died, first off, I was just
shocked. I didn't realize, you know,
because he's relatively young.
But then after being upset by that and the shock
sort of wears off, my next thought is,
bleep you, Keith.
How are you still alive?
And then Tom Petty passes away, and David Bowie's no longer with us,
and you're still around.
That's true, man.
75.
Keith Richards turned 75 a couple days ago.
If you could go back in time to that Steel Wheels Tour 89
and somebody said, okay, over under on a,
when will Keith pass?
Nobody,
nobody was 75.
Nobody picks the over on that.
Right.
And if you said,
if you just went 1989 and said,
will Keith Richards live for 20 more years?
Everybody was like,
get the bleep out of 20 more years.
And then it's like,
no,
no,
actually he's coming on to 30 more years.
He's done it for 30.
Hopefully he makes it.
That's fascinating.
Uh, okay. That's fast. Uh, now I want to ask, now i want to ask by the way i'm gonna tell people you're not here to kick out the jam some people come back to kick out the jams this is your first visit
so we kicked out that jam and i have another jam we'll kick out at the end of this uh podcast so
it's like a tease because eventually i'll get you back here to kick out the jams love to that's the
goal uh i have a question about a quick question off the top,
and then we'll dive into your sports media,
because apparently you're not just a wine guy,
you're also a sports media guy,
so I'm going to break that up.
But this question comes from Steve,
and he says,
when you have Matt Cause on your podcast,
could you ask about Scott Ferguson?
I'm pretty sure Fergie is still working at TSN Radio,
but I don't listen much.
So I guess this came up in a recent episode
where I reminisced about growing up
listening to Tom and Jerry on CJCL
and Scott Ferguson coming on afterwards
to do like the out of town scoreboard and stuff.
And I would literally many nights,
I would fall asleep with my transistor radio
to Scott's voice,
like before music of your life would kick in,
if you remember that far back.
Scott, do you know Scott Ferguson?
Yes, Scott Ferguson is still working there.
TSN does the updates.
He does more midday,
so I wouldn't really see him
because most of the time I'm doing morning radio,
but whenever I'm filling in for Scott MacArthur,
he's there, and it's always great to see him, and it's always great to hear his voice.
I remember one time, I always contend that the Ed Sprague home run is the most important.
More than Alomar, more than Carter, more than Jose Bautista.
And I don't know why we're talking about it.
It's probably just a light day in sports.
It's like, quick, let's rank Blue Jays home runs.
We need content.
And I made this complete impassioned plea to Fergie,
and he still couldn't put it number one.
I think he put Alomar's.
It's very difficult, because if you're not going with Joe Carter,
which is a lot of people's number one, because it's a walk-off.
No, but the Jays would have played.
Yeah, sorry.
No, I was going to say the Jays, even if they'd lost that game,
they still could have played a game seven.
Right.
But then the other group that would passionately argue
that Alomar's is the big one
because it brings us back in that game.
We had never got through an ALCS,
and then we could, and then we went over that hump,
and then we went back to back.
Yeah.
So you can do a great argument for Joe.
You can do a great argument for Robbie.
I always see Ed third on that list.
It's ridiculous because here's the thing.
The Jays, that was such a great win when Roberto Alomar hit that home run off accuracy.
I remember where I was.
Yep, me too.
Guess what happened the next day?
The Jays lost to the Oakland A's.
Then they won the next game and then moved on to the Atlanta Braves.
But it's like, ah, it's the big home run.
Well, they didn't end the series.
There was no, you know, the momentum died because the Jays lost the next game.
Okay, but when Ed Sprague hits the big homer to win that game,
what was the series at when that happened?
Atlanta was up 1-0 in the series.
This was game two.
They were leading.
Jeff Reardon was on the mound,
and Jeff Reardon still at that point was a damn good reliever.
And he doesn't, you know And this is a pinch hit.
He's coming in cold.
He doesn't hit that home run.
Now Atlanta's up 2-0, and yes, both those games were in Atlanta.
But Atlanta's been there, done it.
They've been in the World Series before.
Toronto, first time there.
I don't think the Jays come back and win that World Series.
And now the series is
split 1-1 and Toronto now
has home field.
I love these kind of debates because there's no
answer. Everybody has a passionate
opinion and you toss it out. It's just great fun.
That's basically like custom
made for sports radio, I would say.
It totally is. But yes, getting back to it, Fergie
is still there and
just whenever I see him, he's kind of radio royalty.
Well, he's, I mean, because of my fond memory.
Now, the history, of course, is that prior to TSN 1050,
there was the Team 1050.
And Scott leaves his job at Fan 590
to take that similar job at the Team 1050.
And then Wilner is appointed the new Scott Ferguson, Mike Wilner, on 590 to take that similar job at the team 1050 and then wilner uh is appointed the new scott
ferguson mike wilner on 590 and then we all know what happens uh at the team 1050 it doesn't go
well i think it goes maybe 18 months or something and i get a lot a lot of those guys like romanuk
and mike richards and even brunt and uh there's a long list of jim van horn jim van horn yes do
you remember the commercial with jim van horn and he said it's like a long list. Jim Van Horn? Jim Van Horn, yes. Do you remember the commercial with Jim Van Horn
and he's in,
it's like a dentist chair
and then they put like electrodes
or something to his forehead
and fills him up
with sports knowledge
or he gives out it.
I don't remember exactly
the commercial,
but it was odd.
One day, if I have time,
I'm going to do a super cut
of everybody's stories
about the day they found out
they lost their jobs
at the Team 1050
because it was apparently
a pretty awful way to do it.
And the stories are kind of epic.
We have no idea.
And again,
there was no internet then.
But I remember,
I'm a sports fan
and I like options.
Well, there was internet.
It just wasn't as mature.
But there was definitely internet.
Even I had home internet
at this time, right?
Okay, you know what?
Let me go back a second.
I'm the guy still with a Blackberry.
And so I didn't really have much internet then.
And so for me, and there isn't just the same infrastructure now of sports media reporting.
So you went one day where you're listening to Romanuk and Van Horn and sports radio.
And then moments notice, it's music.
It was very jarring.
And I remember the song they played when they
relaunched they went back to oldies at 10 50 oldies uh it was a little less conversation by elvis
which was a song right right so it's like here you go and the whole story of how it went down
is so cold and of course they were all promised like jim van horn still pissed about it like
that man's great by the way he came back and kicked out the jams and jim van horn what a legend
because he's got the two.
You have the wine and the sports media, which is
kind of diverse and amazing, actually, that you've
got these two hats you can wear.
But Jim Van Horn was a rock
jock on 1050 Chum. Oh yeah, he's a
legend. And then he's
like a, I think he's a first day
TSN guy, I think. He is.
Him, Landsberg, there's a couple of them.
The first guys from 1984. John Wells. Yeah. Yeah, that think. He is. Him, Landsberg. There's a couple of them. The first guy is from 1984.
John Wells.
Yeah.
Yeah, that list.
Amazing.
Okay, so Scott Ferguson, I got to get him on Toronto Mic'd.
Yeah.
So you kidnap him and bring him on.
You should.
I mean, I see right here you got a Toronto Sun cover,
World Champs, and it's under glass and in frame.
And I think that's the 92 one.
That's the 92 one, yeah.
Yeah, you can tell because there's Jack Morris there.
And yeah, that one never would have happened
unless Ed Sprague hit that home run in game two.
Circling back.
That's beautiful.
So tell us how did you end up at TSN 1050?
Let's go back.
All right, I'll do it quick
because every single person,
their favorite topic is them. But everyone else on the planet, their favorite topic is them.
But everyone else on the planet, their favorite topic isn't that other guy.
My dad, oh, God, now I said I'm going to keep it quick and I start with my dad.
You know, my dad, famous sports writer.
He's in the Utopico Sports Hall of Fame, the Woodbine Hall of Fame.
He was friends with Jackie Robinson.
He knew Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio.
What's your dad's name?
Lou Cause.
And he has a picture in his home
going, thank you, Lou, for our interviews.
Jackie Robinson wrote this
and had very nice things to say.
So my dad has always been in sports.
I wasn't sure what I was going to do.
And when I was in university,
I was a history and theater major.
And I started doing some radio
and started doing some sports radio
because I always liked
sports and I was an extrovert and then from there I became the first guy that did play-by-play for
the McMaster football team that eventually led to Ryerson they used to have the thing called the
two-year RTA program the radio television and arts for people that already had an undergrad degree
yes I know some people who went there. Yeah. So I did that.
And then from that, it was just a great time.
Sportsnet.
I got hired by Sportsnet with barely an interview
because they were just starting.
But also at the same time, I was doing interning at TSN.
And then I didn't love being at Sportsnet.
It was nothing.
But what did they have you doing at Sportsnet?
I was in EA. I was putting the highlights together. And it's nothing against them. I didn't love being at Sportsnet. What did they have you doing at Sportsnet?
I was in EA.
I was putting the highlights together.
And it's nothing against them.
There wasn't really one individual person,
but I just didn't really fully mesh there.
I'm sure it was more me than them.
In life, it's better to internalize and externalize.
And then soon after that, I got this TSN Best program,
which they give out to one person at Ryerson.
And somehow I got in.
I was doing the same job there.
And I was bad.
I was not a good EA.
You know when you watch the highlights and near the end of the night, it's the Royals-Twins game?
That's 32 seconds?
Right.
That's me.
If there was a Toronto-based team, get out of here, cuz.
We're not going to give you that.
Interesting.
That's funny.
What I got lucky with was that the head producer at the time was Marc Millier.
And we used to talk about the Shaw Theater Festival.
Because I was a theater major as well.
And for whatever reason, he liked me.
And I remember I left TSN for a while to do this road trip across the states
came back market you know i'd love some work and then soon after that i get a call from
bob mackiewicz who's producing it off the record they need someone to fill in for a couple days
i was recommended junior or senior uh junior we got to clarify yeah yeah sorry no that's right
no bob mackowitz junior
um and i nearly said no to going to work for these days because i was all set to go to my cottage
what a jackass i was thankfully i said yes um filled in for a couple days they liked me enough
that a couple months later i got hired full-time worked there for seven years left to go work at
the grill room casino rama groom with the the Earth Wheeler, just to do something different.
We worked together for a couple years.
I left to work for a wine consignment company.
I discovered I don't like sales.
It's a very hard job, and it doesn't fit my personality because I don't like asking for things, which is why I'm still in awe of the bottle of Oculus.
And then my next piece of luck came in,
and my girlfriend got really,
she almost gets angry by this.
I get, me and the wine consignment company,
great company, by the way, it's called Barrel Select.
Go buy their wine.
It's a great portfolio.
I'm still friends with them.
So we split ways, and I'm standing in my living room.
I'm like, huh, I've never been unemployed before.
This is weird.
Three weeks later, I'm doing weekend shows at TSN Radio.
So hopefully
that's a condensed version
of at least for a good chunk
of my career.
And that brings us to the end. No, just kidding.
Okay, lots to extract there.
Okay, so
now you had a daily show.
Was it
9 to noon?
Yeah, nine to noon.
I did a bunch of things.
I worked with Richards, did the morning show.
Well, here, slow down here.
That's good.
Let's hear.
Get specific with what you did with whom.
We'd love to hear these.
All right.
I sort of get nervous because as much of an extrovert as I can be sometimes.
Like, oh, God.
But you know this is the Matt Cause episode.
I know. This is all about you, man.
A little bit about Dale, mostly about you.
I'm usually in your seat.
I'm usually the one doing the interviews.
So when I started, I was doing a weekend show
on Saturday and Sunday.
Mike Hogan and I, we would each do three-hour shows
when they would do original programming
on Saturday and Sunday.
And I loved it.
Steph Appolito, who's now one of the main people at the station,
she was producing for both of us.
And I would tell her, all right, just give me a guest or two,
but don't worry, I can handle it all on my own.
Because I had the whole week to prep.
And I loved doing it.
I loved, like, you know, Sean McAdoo, Down Goes Brown?
He's been on this show, absolutely, yeah.
The first time he was on was on my show because I was sitting in my cottage reading the National Post.
Because even at that age, I still love reading newspapers.
I buy them all the time.
And I read one of his columns.
I'm like, damn, this guy's funny.
So that was on a Tuesday, Wednesday.
So then I emailed him.
I'm like, hey, would you like to come on the show on Saturday?
So that's where I started.
Then from there, the head
said, Matt, we'd like you to produce the morning
show. And they told me
this as I'm floating on a boat in my cottage
on a Thursday. I'm jealous of this.
Where's this cottage? Lake Muskoka.
My grandfather bought a, got a
cottage, an island and a cottage in the 40s
for like no money. I need to become friends with
this guy. That's what I'm thinking. Hey man, it's amazing.
The great, the funny thing is when people say how much is the island worth of That's what I'm thinking. Hey, man. That's amazing. The funny thing is
when people say,
how much is the island worth
of the cottage?
I'm like, zero dollars
because our entire family,
none of us could afford it now
and we ain't gonna ever sell it.
Right.
We just pay lots of taxes in it.
So then I start producing
for the morning show
and I will say this
about Mike Richards
because the old producer
was a good friend of his
and they just,
hey, this is radio.
Imagine they shake things up.
It happens often.
Mike came in and said, Matt, let's just do it.
Don't worry about it.
His friend Tim.
Tim's in a great place.
Tim's doing well.
Don't worry about Tim.
Let's just go.
Let's have a great show.
And which was so important for me,
because I felt like I was stepping into this other world
where I didn't really belong.
And I'm just, I'm the Debbie Downer. And so Mike was great. But I made a deal. I'm like, okay, I'll produce
the show, but I want to do a Saturday or Sunday show. I don't want to work seven days a week,
but I can do six. So then I do that. I do that for a while. And that was a grind.
Let's chat a little bit about Mike Richards here. I've got a lot of time for Mike. He's
been on here at least three times.
I think at least three times. In fact, he came on very
recently to announce that he's going
to be the new morning guy. I know, from Mississauga.
Yes, 960? Yeah,
in the day of Bastl. Right.
What do we call that? The Steelheads
channel or whatever. Apparently
the owner owns the Mississauga
Steelheads, apparently.
OHL team.
So that's happening, actually.
He came out and announced it was happening in November,
but it's actually happening January 7th, I believe.
It's his first day.
So Mike, of course, he also is very vocal about...
He's got very passionate ideas about maybe TSN radio
didn't give him a fair chance on the morning,
that his ratings were actually pretty good.
Yeah.
So what's your insight into that?
You had a pretty interesting perspective on the Mike Richards morning show on 1050.
The answer for this is going to be a little bit boring.
Okay.
Because there's always two sides to it.
First off, yeah, Mike and I are friends, and this isn't going to shock you.
When we chat, it's about 99% wine.
Like all we do is talk about wine.
And we've had some good nights out just being wildly indulgent.
I feel bad for how it ended.
I feel bad because you can see the passion, you know, from Mike and, you know, just everything that he went through. And I heard that
interview and, you know, he's still, you know, was still the, is it the Kolonosk? I can't pronounce.
I mean, heaven forbid I'm on the radio. He came out and said, I was kind of surprised he made
this statement, but he's of the opinion that if he didn't get cancer, he wouldn't lose his job.
Like he seems to suggest. Yeah. I don't, i can't answer that because i don't know all the inner workings but you know when he came out and was it was very vocal and very passionate
against tsn radio not on the tv side on the radio side i get where that passion would come from
because he you know went through life and death situations and then you know being moved to the
afternoon and then and then it ending. I totally get it.
I get where that passion comes from.
I don't know all the inner workings.
I remember when my show got canceled,
obviously a very different set of circumstances,
and I approached it very differently.
But, man, I'm rooting for Mike.
I like the show that he was doing with Bastl, the YouTube show they were doing.
Richards makes me laugh all the time.
There are so many of his bits that always crack me up.
And I was happy to hear that he got hired in Mississauga.
I hope it's a huge success for him.
Right, and me too. But he produces numbers, okay?
He's of the opinion that the ratings for his show
were very strong and competitive
with 590's morning show,
like these are the numbers he produces.
So is that all on the up and up?
I'm putting you on the spot here.
No, it's okay.
I don't speak ratings. You can spin these things so many different ways. I don't speak ratings either and up. I'm putting you on the spot here. No, it's okay. I don't mind. I don't speak ratings.
You can spin these things so many different ways.
I don't speak ratings either.
And here's the thing, and I shouldn't admit this, but thankfully, as my old program director,
who is a really good guy, he would bring me and Bob into the office, and he would talk about ratings.
And he would talk about when the ratings were really good for us or when the ratings were
really bad.
Right.
And what was going on through my brain was,
what am I going to have for lunch today? And then I would debate, is it going to be Thai? No, I don't feel like Thai. I want to go for a run in the car. And so I always had the feeling when
it came to ratings that it's not going to impact the job that I do. Now, if I get a lot of people
that I trust in the business say, Matt, you've got to change this or you've got to do this,
If I get a lot of people that I trust in the business say, Matt, you got to change this or you got to do this, great.
I'll listen to it and I will adjust my approach.
But I always found that if the ratings were really good or the ratings were really bad, I don't want to know because maybe that will impact my approach to the job or maybe I'd become desperate or maybe I'd become lazy.
So I always ignored the noise.
When someone said the ratings were great, I'd be like, okay.
When someone said ratings were bad, I'd be like, oh, that stinks.
Okay.
And then just move on with my day because there's only so much impact that I can individually have. I mean, sometimes ratings are good because of what you're leading or what teams that your station covers is doing well or bad.
Bingo.
And there was a freight train, a hype train, I call it,
a 2015, 2016 Blue Jay hype train.
Have you heard about this?
I'm wearing a shirt today with Batista flipping a bat.
Of course.
Those two years were awesome.
And by the way, if anyone listened to anything,
you're thinking, oh, TSN radio, they must have hated it.
I can't speak for them.
Well, there is that belief out there because
so many radios, I mentioned Tom and Jerry
earlier.
Now, Tom sadly is no longer with us, but so
many stations got turned to 590 to listen to
the Blue Jay game.
Yeah.
And then when people go to bed and they wake
up and the station's still on 590, like that
must have affected ratings.
Absolutely.
A hundred percent.
It'd be weird.
It'd be illogical to think that it didn't.
Like those, I got to tell you, just as someone who, you know, in our business, it's all about
content.
And in the dregs of summer, you know, having the J's being good was great.
Like we couldn't do a, in a three hour show show devoting 40, 50% to a single game.
I always prefer the macro of any topic. The micro bores the hell out of me. But during those runs,
especially if there wasn't a lot going on, you could talk about what the hell was going on with
Gibbons in the seventh inning. You couldn't do that. And people had an appetite for that. Yeah,
you couldn't do that 10, 11, 12, 13, 13 14 and you certainly couldn't do that the last year and a half or so when we've gone back to the team being kind of
irrelevant and right and now we're just waiting for the young guys to eventually come up so yeah
that absolutely would have affected ratings so and again this is not me trying to be politically
correct or well i work for tsn it's just i've never really cared about ratings. If I felt that if I could personally do XYZ and that would have a huge,
that would move the needle on a significant level, well, absolutely I would do it because
I like my job. I love being on radio. And quite frankly, I like all the people I work with. So
if it helps everyone, hooray. My friend Fred, who's in the business for a long time,
often says this sentence to me.
And the more I talk to radio professionals,
the more I agree with him.
He says to me, Mike, you're only as good as your call letters.
This is what he says to me.
And what he means by that is, in theory,
and this we will never know, I bet,
but you could take a Bob McCowan who gets big ratings on 590 in the afternoon drive.
In theory, you could take him off 590 and stick him on 1050.
And it doesn't necessarily mean he's getting the same ratings on 1050
because 590 had such a monster head start in the market.
Well, yeah, 1430 before and then...
It's early 90s they went all sports.
Yeah.
92 or something like that.
Oh, yeah.
Gord Stelic uh lunch bag
let down the g games right i mean come on i you know dan dunleavy um who was on the show last
week i know he was um uh you know there's so many guys i mean that's why that's who i grew up with
now i would say this from a cow and i feel i don't know that feels a little it's not giving him
enough credit because i mean listen i love poking fun of what's with the sunglasses and you know i'm tough guy grump guy on radio which clearly as
you can tell i'm the opposite um and sometimes i want to make fun of uh he's got a winery and
every now and then people said matt you should uh you should bleep talk to his wine it's it's sort
of a past aggressive attack on the fan 590 and i'm like i'm not gonna do that because there are a lot
of people that make that wine and you know if it's good wine then you know i don't i don't want to insult uh the people
involved but i think that you know mccowan he's got a great voice he knows how to structure
a conversation and ask good questions so i think mccowan i think mccowan might be the one exception
but yeah the call letters mean a lot um it's like with fox you know they jay Jay and Dan, they give them a couple years
but then the ratings aren't there. It's like
ESPN's been around forever.
You go to any bar or hotel
in the United States, ESPN
is always on.
Now Fox is there, but you
got to ask the
bartender, can you put
on Fox? And by the way,
just a quick little tangent for a half second.
Yeah.
I'm sure you guys have noticed this.
What is it about the employees of sports bars where they never know how to work the remote?
How many times do you be like, can I get the Raptor game?
And they're like, sure.
And then they're looking at the remote control like it's Sanskrit.
Like, oh.
And then they finally get the menu on and they're scrolling up or down. They're like up no no i mean no you but but down means up and then they pass it like no
no you've got to go back to the other page so annoying that's so true that's so true uh the
leave rate to talk tv so tv is the opposite so tv uh tsn had the big head start over uh sports net
yeah really that ratings the tsnSN beat Sportsnet soundly until
basically what Sportsnet ended up doing was
buying their way out of this jam, if you
will, by buying up the properties.
So they, you know, you might have heard they had a big
deal of NHL. I don't know if you caught wind of that.
Wait, wait, don't. I gotta
go back and check. Did that happen?
Yeah, that's right.
I think Schultz says it happened, David Schultz,
he told me. But
so what you have is they bought up the properties. Well, they already had, they own the Blue Jays. Yeah, that's right. I think Schultz says it happened. David Schultz, he told me.
So what you have is they bought up the properties.
Well, they already had, they own the Blue Jays.
So there you got the Blue Jays.
They bought that NHL package.
And that's sort of, now they do better,
but they spent billions and billions of dollars on having a monopoly on this content.
On the radio side, it's the opposite.
Well, Rogers eventually bought 590.
It was like Telmedia or something.
Yeah, the Capulets versus the Montagues.
Right.
But TSN comes in late.
And it's fair to say, tell me if you disagree,
it's fair to say that 590 soundly beats 1050.
And you could attribute that probably not only to them having the Blue Jays
during the two years where we all wanted to listen every night,
but also the head start.
People are creatures of habit, right?
Especially in radio.
And the funny thing about this
conversation is if I
say, well, the reason the Fan 590
is better than TSN 1050 is because they've
had a head start, what that does
is it makes it almost seem like I'm
discounting the
quality of people that are at the Fan 590,
which is ridiculous.
Dale Cadeau.
This is Dale Cadeau.
Are you elated by any chance?
I don't think we are. I'm curious, though.
Dave Cadeau is a great guy.
Eric Smith
is a great broadcaster.
There is a lot of good talent and at the producer level.
And so that's always the tricky thing of the conversation with ratings is if you say one
thing, it can get attributed like, oh, well, he's really bleep talking them.
But radio is a, it is all about creature comfort.
It's what is in your car.
It's what you're used to it's what
you've grown up with so yeah that's going to play a big part and i think it'll still take many more
years before it's almost on and even play the ratings are somewhere where it's it's even steven
um i'm incredibly confident i have no doubt that eventually that'll happen just because of the
people that are working behind
the scenes at TSN Radio.
So that is the goal, right? Because remember,
going back to Mike Richards, which I guess put us on this
line of thought here.
It's almost like
the producers for a tax write-off,
they try to make a bad
play or whatever, and then it's
a big hit or whatever. He's of the
opinion that they're sort of throwing it, that
they don't want, they're not trying
on the radio side. I don't want to put words in his
mouth. You have to listen to Mike Richards' episode.
But it's almost like he's suggesting
TSN doesn't care
about the radio. Well, no, that's
ridiculous. It's ridiculous because
I see the people that are
there working every day and
coming up with new ideas and trying to, you know, use social media more and, and, but also just,
you know, doing what they can to help like the producers helping the on-air talent and,
and Jeff McDonald helping the producers like, and also, you know, it's, it's TSN,
you know, that is a brand you don't, if you're TSN, tsn the idea of oh we don't care about one of our properties
you know is is absolutely ridiculous um could the industry be more robust of course if it was more
robust you know nine to noon the show that i did wouldn't have been taken off the air but
that wasn't because of radio that was bell cuts across canada and that was variety of you know
that's about different departments you departments all trying to balance budgets.
Whenever something happens,
it's not in a vacuum.
It's not one little thing.
Oh, it's because the radio
isn't pulling their weight.
It's so much of a bigger thing.
I said this to Mike.
You heard the episode,
so I said it to him.
But Mike Richards suggests
that they cost cutting.
That's why he's not on
Radio Mornings anymore.
To which I think that if
you're Michael Landsberg and
you've been at that station since the early 80s
or whenever that station launched,
he's not a cheap resource,
right? Michael Landsberg's not working for
minimum wage here.
To me, your morning show is,
I'm guessing, and they added Carlo
Koliakovo. You should
have heard the first time when Carlo and I did a show together, we actually put a montage of all the ways I added Carlo Koliakovo. You should have heard the first time when Carlo and I did a show together,
we actually put a montage of all the ways I screwed up Koliakovo.
It was just, it was a butchering.
But I nailed it, right, Dale?
I nailed it.
Awesome.
Thank you very much.
But, I mean, he's making real money after 100 years at TSN, right?
I would have no idea.
Here's my philosophy on money.
Right.
And I've had this my entire life.
If,
I will,
I never want to know
what anyone makes
because if you know,
and especially someone
within your work peer group,
because if you know
you're going to have two reactions,
you're going to either feel bad for them
or you're going to be angry at them.
Life is too short.
We could at some point go on to my, I have a massive death complex.
So to me, life is too short.
I live my life by that.
I don't want to know how much anyone makes.
When it comes to my own friends, I want them all to make more than me.
I want like, you know, you have people like, oh, I hate my friends got a bigger house and
a nicer car.
I'm like, hooray, look at your car.
Look at your house.
But I hear you.
But you also don't want
to be exploited. You don't want to be
taken advantage of. There is a
value to your time and passion. Oh, of course.
I've always felt, I myself have always been
very well compensated.
Financially, I've never complained
about it. More than
fair, and it's fun.
And I know that, oh, maybe you're getting
exploited. And the thing is, I know, Mike, there's a lot of people that worry maybe you're getting and the thing is i know mike you you know
there's a lot of people that worry about interns and just about them being exploited which is
absolutely a legit conversation um i've never felt it because damn what we get to do on the radio
there are very few of us and it is uh it's an honor so okay so you that you were uh producing
mike richard's show yeah and then remind me where did
you go from there again from from there um i started um uh from there they knew i always
wanted just to do my own show so then i was doing game night for a good chunk of time so that you
know after 7 p.m kind of thing um uh so i i would do the i i did shows you did that solo? yeah okay alright so
prior to the Mike Richards
experiences
when you were with
Hoagie
no no we did
separate shows
okay
we did separate shows
okay
I talk fast
because I'm like
people don't want to hear it
so I'll just
I'll just talk fast
but we would do
our own individual
like three hour blocks
oh he explained this
to me
you know Hoagie's been on
he did like two and a half hours
he was amazing
but he
he did explain that yes it, you weren't together.
It was two separate blocks.
Yeah, yeah.
And like whoever was following who would come in for a segment, you know, to tee up their show.
So, yeah, we were the anchors for the afternoon.
And you know, does TSN radio still have live local weekend programming?
Well, they have the Leafs guy.
Yeah, they got the Dark Guy. Dark Guy, they have the Leafs guy. Yeah, they got the Dark Guy.
Dark Guy, right.
The Leafs guy.
Yeah, they got Dark Guy
at, I think, at 5 o'clock.
Andy McNamara does
his Domino's
four-down football shows
and fantasy football.
So, yeah, there is
some live programming.
It's certainly not as extensive
as what it was in terms of
original programming.
There's lots, obviously,
of live events from There's lots, obviously, of live events
from Maple Leafs, Raptors.
I always struggle with which station has it, this game.
So you take turns, essentially, for Leafs and Raptors.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like even Steven.
Again, the Capulets and the Montagues.
Oh, that's a great story.
I think it was Dan DeLevy who
told this story, but that
Boston Bruins series
that you guys were taking turns,
TSN and Rogers for the radio
side, but there was some stipulation that
if it goes to game seven, you both get to
broadcast game seven. This was like in
the contract or something.
So both, yeah,
Joe Bowen, I think TSN had dibs of Joe Bowen.
Oh, okay, good.
We win.
Yeah.
We win.
We got Bowen.
They sent Dan Dunleavy to Boston to cover it
for the fan.
Yeah.
So both stations had that Game 7 Live.
Oh, that's ridiculous.
But I mean.
But okay, so is that a cost-cutting thing that
there's no longer as much?
Yeah, because.
It's kind of too bad, though, because that's a good place to cut your teeth.
Yeah.
You needed your teeth cut, but yeah.
It's a great place for the point of entry.
And yeah, it obviously is cost-cutting because the hosts and then producer and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, and I'm still hopeful, and I'm hopeful that eventually there'll be more shows there.
Eventually they'll open 9 to noon because Toronto is a huge market,
and Toronto deserves as much variety as they want.
And people will go to me, ah, you must hate the fan.
I'm like, no, if I was a sports fan, it's great to have.
You need options.
If I'm going on a rant about, um, about Kevin Durant.
Right.
And you just want to hear more about William D.
Lannery, then you don't flick over.
And, you know, I, I always love that.
You, you need options in life.
It's why every day I try to grab like the National Post and the Toronto Star or the
Toronto Sun and, and the Star and try to mix it up because I want a little bit of everything.
Do you find in this city that there's not a pressure but like
a request maybe or
some adage where
you can never talk enough about the maple
leaves? Like is this...
It's out there. Yeah, it's absolutely
out there. But it's still...
The message that I've always...
I've never been told you need
to talk about this.
You know, every now and then our program director, Jeff,
is a Tiger Woods fanatic.
So if I'm ripping on Tiger Woods,
he'll be like, hey, what are you doing?
But that's really about it.
But it's a leaf mark at first.
And I'm fine with that.
Even though I grew up,
growing up I was a much bigger basketball and baseball fan
than I was a hockey fan.
But I'll never do the chip on the shoulder. But even basketball. I was a much bigger basketball and baseball fan than I was a hockey fan. But I'll never do the chip on the shoulder.
But even basketball.
I was a Knicks fan.
I was a Knicks fan.
When John Starks dunked on Jordan and Pippen in the early 90s, I was a Knicks fan.
When they went to that playoff finals against Houston, when OJ Simpson was in his white van,
I was the one guy going, okay, enough of this.
Let me get back to the game because Ewing is actually out playing Elijah
Juan.
This is crazy.
So yeah, I was always a basketball baseball guy, but I'm not one of the
chip on the shoulder.
Oh, why are we doing more Leafs?
I get it.
You know, I think it was, I don't know if it was a program director or
if it was Bob Mackiewicz.
Someone once said, here's how it is for the Leafs.
How does Milwaukee cover the Green Bay Packers?
They got the Bucs.
They got the Brewers.
They've got other teams,
but how do they cover the Packers?
Often and early and often.
Early and often. Now, I don't believe in that year-round.
And man, the
Nylander, I mean,
you had to find new ways
of talking about Nylander because that got a little bit much even though big picture, Nylander, I mean, you had to find new ways of talking about Nylander
because that got a little bit much,
even though big picture, Nylander was such a critical story.
But yeah, it still leaves first.
And then after that, it's what's the biggest story in Toronto sports?
Yeah.
Okay, absolutely.
So where am I?
Do I have you at the 9 to noon show yet?
No.
Then after that,
and then after,
um,
the nights they said,
Matt,
we're a nine to noon.
How would you like,
um,
working with Bob Makowitz?
Right.
And I was like,
I was like,
yes,
because I've worked with a lot of great people.
Um,
you know,
uh,
love working with wheel.
I love working with Richards.
Um,
you know,
I've worked with a lot of really good people,
but I think I've always...
Michael Landsberg.
Carlo Colliacavo and I have so much fun.
I've known Michael since 2000.
It is a joy every day.
But I think Bob and I,
I always send the best with Bob
because we have similar sensibilities.
We come from more of a theatrical arts background
who just also happen to love sports.
And that always meshes with us.
So I will confess to being a 590 listener, but Macko and Cause, that show had name brand recognition.
Macko and Cause, this was a dynamic duo, like Siskel and Ebert or something like that,
where I knew of the show,
I had full awareness of Mackle and Cause,
I liked what I heard.
So it's just the chemistry was there from the get-go.
Is that right with Mackle?
Well, you know what one of the keys is,
and you find this in radio,
especially from the male side of it,
is that there's a lot of type A personalities.
And with that comes,
I got to beat you in this argument.
And that leads to a lot of blocking.
Remember earlier,
you mentioned Liz Lemon
and you mentioned 30 Rock.
Well, one of the things
she talks about all the time
and something I learned
because I did some Second City training
as well back in the day,
is yes and.
Everything is, oh, your phone went off.
I didn't practice what I practiced.
Who's the professional now with this expensive equipment?
There's an expression called yes and,
which is the number one rule with improv,
which is whatever someone gives you, you take it,
you agree to it, and then you try to make it better.
In sports talk radio, often cases, especially if it's a bunch of guys, it's like, no, I'm going to block. I you try to make it better in sports talk radio often cases if
especially if it's a bunch of guys you know it's like no i'm gonna block i'm gonna put up a wall
i'm not gonna agree with you i'm gonna disagree and what you're saying is stupid and wrong and
what i'm saying is right and good and it is ed sprague it's not alamar you're wrong when the
best conversations you can disagree with someone but but you can disagree, bring your point in, try to figure out why they're saying what they're saying.
And with Bob and I, we always had that.
It was always about improv.
It was always about yes and.
It was always about, you know, just don't throw a wall up and block a conversation because then the conversation's done.
Mako Jr. was on this show.
And I don't know, we did two hours or something.
And what I took away from it was that this is one charismatic son of a bitch.
Yeah.
Right?
Just something about him where just loads of charisma.
And I want to know why is Mako...
He did share this story.
He had some health struggles with like sleep apnea
and and various things that nature but i feel like uh we're bet we're not we're worse off in
this market that we can't tune in to terrestrial radio and hear macko and cause right now i will
not disagree it's it was the most fun most fun i had radio and that's saying something because
i've i've never not had a fun day,
and excuse the double negative there,
but just, you know, that was, you know,
that was my most, always my most enjoyable,
you know, was working with Bob.
And, you know, it's just part of,
it just goes to the bigger picture.
The cuts, you know, the bell cuts
and just everything that happened,
which is not unique to Bell Rogers.
Every company goes through downsizing. It's why I never took anything
personal. I never got angry about it because
what sort of narcissist would I be
if I got angry that I lost my permanent
job, even though I've still worked there almost
completely full-time until
September. They've been
fantastic. But yeah,
if Bob and I were
ever working full-time
in Trust Your Radio, that'd be great.
So tell me and remind me the timeline.
So Cause, sorry, your Cause.
Mackle was-
I can spell Mackowitz, by the way.
I can't spell Converge Terminator, but I can spell Mackowitz.
M-A-C-K-O-C-W-Y-C-Z.
I'm going to trust you.
That C throws you right on the Mackowitz.
Mack. There's a Mackle. Actually, I need to write it. Oh, itY-C-Z. I'm going to trust you. That C throws you right on the Mackowitz. Mack.
There's a Macko.
Actually, I need to write it.
Oh, it's like C-Z.
It's okay.
I'll fix it.
I think I might have screwed that up.
Sorry, Bob.
I can't confirm or deny your success there.
But I do.
So when Macko leaves TSN Radio, you continue on, right?
Yeah.
And in what capacity?
Is it?
Full, nine to noon, but we
just changed it to game day.
And then it was me and Gareth Wheeler.
How's he doing, by the way? Wheeler's
great. Yeah, health-wise,
Wheeler is great. Wheeler's
only bad if you bring up the
lack of physicality in the NHL.
Then Wheeler gets sad.
You know, no, no,
Wheeler's great.
Good to hear.
Yeah, 100%.
So we work together, and I always give so much credit to Gareth
because for the longest time, because of my loyalty to Bob,
you know, I always like, well, no, eventually Bob's coming back.
So Gareth had to always work with the specter of, oh,
no matter how much I invest in this or give to the show and and wheeler gave a ton to
it and a lot of great ideas and he was the one who came up with the hashtag of we the other you know
when cbs poll who's gonna win in the east and it was like or who's gonna win all these teams and
said other and they they didn't have the raptors so he did a lot of good stuff and you know a high
level professionalism for gareth to be able to do that because, you know,
part of me was always like,
no,
eventually Bob is coming back because I'm rooting for Bob and his health and,
and for him to,
you know,
for the,
get the band back together.
So then,
yeah,
it was me and Wheeler for a good,
for a long time until the,
until the,
the faithful day when they had to,
they had to cut the show.
What's,
remind me,
what's there now? What's the, what's there now is what they've had to cut the show. Remind me, what's there now?
What's there now is what they've done is the morning show goes to 10 a.m.
So instead of 5.30 to 9, it's now 6 to 10.
Then it is Dan Patrick for one hour from 10 to 11.
A syndicated program.
Yeah, syndicated.
Then from 11 to 1, it is Leafs Lunch.
And then 1 to 4, Scott MacArthur.
And then Overdrive from 4 to 7.
And by the way, Morning Show is first up, in case I didn't say the name.
Right, right.
Now, the Leafs Lunch, Andy Petrillo is still on that roster.
So, by any chance, did you listen to the episode on Friday of Toronto Mic'd,
the Diversity in Canadian Sports Media episode? Yeah, I was listening. Putting you on the spot here Mic'd, the diversity in Canadian sports media episode.
Yeah, I was listening.
Putting you on the spot here.
No, no, no.
I was listening to part of it.
I haven't heard the whole show
just because the last little while
I've been doing about five or six different interviews
for my wine podcast.
So I've been just like hustling around
all over Niagara, St. Catharines,
and Prince Edward County.
And this is Matt Talks Wine and Stuff
with Interesting People.
Yes.
Which is a fascinating little title there.
It's long and clunky.
Some people love it, some hate it.
I wanted it because I wanted people to immediately realize,
one, it's not going to be 100% wine.
Two, it's about interesting people.
It's not just about, okay, we're going to talk about...
It's like comedians in cars getting coffee.
Exactly.
It's exactly that.
It's not about coffee.
It's just that's like...
Or cars.
It's more of like that's... It's more about the person. It's more about the person.
It's more about the journey.
Anne Sperling, who is a winemaker for Southbrook in Niagara,
she also has a family winery in Okanagan
and also one in Mendoza, Argentina.
It's an incredible story.
We're going to get to podcasting very, very shortly.
Sorry, I brought it up, but I want to talk podcasting
because I want to talk about the Macon and Cause and then this new wine one.
But I also want to...
Oh, yeah.
So, Andy Petrillo has a...
She's a permanent part of the weekday lineup at TSN Radio 1050.
And I bring that up because it's an anomaly in Toronto sports radio right now in that...
How do I word this?
I'm going to word it this way.
Toronto Sports Radio right now in that,
how do I word this?
I'm going to word it this way.
She's the only non-white guy
to have a permanent spot
on a daytime show
that's on either 590 or 1050.
Yes.
So I raised this with,
who was on that show?
Scott Moore,
former executive
at the other station.
You can keep saying it.
I don't care.
I support that.
Yeah.
Okay.
Who else was on?
Shorali Najak,
who is a producer
at Hockey Night in Canada
and Sofia Yurtsukovic.
There you go.
Even if you say it real fast,
you can't say it out loud.
Sofia, of course,
is a broadcaster
and she appears on TSN radio.
Yeah.
She comes on
The Breakfast Club,
which is on Tuesday and Fridays
on First Up
on the morning show
where they bring in
two panelists from 8
to 9.30. She's
on it on a fairly regular
basis. Good for her. I think she
belongs on one of the stations.
That was the panel, and
we talked about the lack of diversity. We were
speaking specifically about 590
because it's all white guys.
Scott, to his credit,
felt that they should have done a better job diversifying the on-air lineup.
Do you have any thoughts on whether it's important
to have some diversity represented in your weekday
from like morning show to the O-Dog show there
to have someone there to speak for others' perspectives beyond white men.
First off, Brian Hayes and Jamie McLennan are very angry at you
when you call it the O-Dog show.
Here's my thought, is that it should only be white men all the time.
Wait, no, that's me speaking.
Careful.
Oh, please.
There's a couple reasons why it's important of diversity. I know. Careful. Oh, please. It is the most important.
There's a couple of reasons why it's important of diversity.
One, just from a humanity standpoint, it's important to have diversity.
For the listener, it's important because you want different perspectives.
Because the way that I view sports is going to be different than the way a female
views sports, you know, that, uh, on one level. Um, and then also why it's important to have
people that aren't just white. If you have a conversation about Madison Bumgarner beaning
mostly a play, uh, you know, mostly players from, uh, Latina, uh, from Latin America.
Well, they play baseball differently.
And it's not that Madison Baumgartner's a bigot
and goes, wait, you're not white.
Here comes a fastball.
But more that the way the game's played
and celebrated and the role of emotion is different.
The code is different.
The code is different.
And a lot of people that are white,
you know, just play the game one way, which is not the right
or the wrong way. It's a way.
So to have diversity
allows for different opinions,
different perspectives, different aspects
of empathy to come into any
conversation. So that's why diversity
is obviously important.
I agree. I agree.
That'd be great if you'd say, no, I agreed with your
earlier statement.
It should just all be 40-year-old white guys.
One of the interesting arguments I sometimes receive since I've kind of been poking at this topic
is this is essentially that listeners of sports radio
are white guys.
This is the argument I'll get.
And so there is a reflection of the listenership is reflected by having a bunch of white guys,
to which I then bring up the chicken and egg argument, which is, well, maybe all the listeners
are white guys because the only perspectives shared on the dial are white man perspectives.
Yeah, absolutely.
I remember doing segments with Kayla Gray. I always loved it.
Can I tell you that she was the first person I invited on the diversity panel,
and I think whenever I see her pop up in a Raptors game, I think she's fantastic.
She is. She's great. And she works her ass off. I love Kayla. I often thought about,
I'd love if Kayla and I did a show together because that would be female, male,
one black, one white.
She's younger than I am,
so I'll get angry at her
when I make movie references
that she doesn't get,
which just infuriates me.
God, I think it was Sophia was on this one.
There was a couple of people,
hadn't seen Pulp Fiction.
I wanted to just drop kick them in the face.
He's very young though,
but even my teenagers have seen Pulp Fiction.
It's stunned me.
People are like, what's Ghostbusters?
I'm like, I'm going to punch you now.
But yeah, I mean, I love whenever I see Kayla in any platform,
and she'd be a fun person to work with.
I think she's fantastic.
Yeah, and again, she doesn't do every Raptors game,
but every once in a while, she kind of pops up.
Maybe it's when Kate Burness is unavailable or something.
I don't know what the relationship is.
But then my first thought is that she's great at this.
We should see more of her.
All right, let's talk.
Okay, so how long has it been since you've had a regular spot on TSN 1050?
Well, the show, it was two years ago.
It was like March-ish, April.
I wish I could remember the exact day.
And the funny thing is, I could tell you a funny story about the day when the show ended.
Yeah, please.
So it was on a Friday, and our program director, Jeff McDonald, says,
Hey, can I talk to you?
And it's me and Wheeler and one of the producers.
And honestly, what was going on through my head was this.
Okay, I admit, we talked way too much
about toaster ovens on the show.
Admittedly, it got to a lot of heavy toaster oven talk.
Are you pro-toaster oven?
No, I'm anti-toaster oven.
I'm pro-cold toaster oven.
Mostly because when I was in university, every toaster oven we have,
it literally would go on fire.
Like our back wall, and it was university
living, was just like a blackened space.
Which university did you go to?
McMaster. Oh, yes.
Yeah.
And so the entire time
in the conversation, the entire time in my
head, I'm like, all right, you know what, Jeff?
In my head, I'm already having the conversation. Jeff, you're right.
I'm going to dial back the toaster oven conversation.
And then instead of going to his office, we go up these stairs.
I'm like, where are we going?
And they're like, wait, that's HR.
I'm like, oh, what?
That's it.
Sort of like, you know, in Goodfellas, when instead of getting made, you know, he goes to Joe Pesci when he gets whacked.
You know, so that was then.
But I'll say this.
Jeff McDonald, the producers,
Evan at TSM, couldn't have been better.
I was brought back as soon as possible.
I worked pretty much full-time from that time,
both doing, and also,
Jeff helped push me to get some work
at Newstalk 1010, working with Mike Bendixon.
And I love those shows
and like,
man,
those are different shows
and they get my sort of
creative juices going
and I love whenever I can do it.
I wish I could do more of it
because it's just,
it's a completely different medium.
But here's what I would like to know.
Yeah, yeah.
So you were,
were you a full-time employee?
Yes.
Okay,
so you were full-time permanent
and that comes with,
you know,
benefits and a guarantee.
Oh,
I was freelance.
Oh,
you were freelance.
I was always, I was always freelance by choice because no children, and knock on wood, I don't get sick.
So benefits didn't really, I'd rather just take a bit of a higher level of money and
the benefits I didn't really need.
Okay.
So did you have a contract?
I guess what I'm trying to find out is when they let you go and then you end up, you're
coming back in various capacities.
Are you coming back at like a discounted rate?
Okay, good for you.
No, no, no.
That's a common little thing that happens.
I'm going to make up numbers because I'm not smart, but let's say you're making $50,000 a year.
Nice round number.
Maybe it sounds a little low, but you'd be surprised.
So you're making $50,000 a year.
You're let go, and then you come back and you're
doing it for $14
an hour, right? So
that's a story I've heard in
your industry. That never happened
with me. Good. And again,
people are like, oh, you're just saying nice things because you
eventually want to be hired full-time. No.
They gave
me pretty much
permanent work for the longest time. It allowed me, they helped me pretty much as the, you know, permanent work, um, for the longest time it
allowed me, they helped get me onto stuff on news talk 10, 10, 10, 10, because that's
a monster station right there.
Yeah.
Um, I've, I've filled in, um, uh, for a Jim Richards and man, four hours on your own,
just calls and texts and emails with almost no guests.
It was great.
Um, I, I would do some, some of the night some of the night stuff, you know, Nightside a little bit here and there. Oh, yeah, the Barb DiGiulio
show. So, yeah, so I would do a bunch of stuff with them as well. So, yeah, it's like, obviously,
the best situation is, Matt, hooray, 9 to noon is open, You and Bob. But in life, you don't get the perfect situation.
That's not real in any industry.
So I've had the next best thing,
which is filling in for different shows
on both TSN and Newstalk 1010.
Cool.
And of course, we already talked about the wine stuff,
but let's talk about podcasting here.
So when Mako was on,
we talked about the Mako and Kaz podcast. And he would talk about podcasting here. So when Mako was on, we talked about the Mako and Kaz podcast.
And he would talk about your lovely home
and recording there.
And so tell me about that and the status of that
before we talk about Matt Talks Wine and Stuff
with Interesting People.
Podcast.
Podcast.
It's such a Toronto mic.
Yours is just quick to the you know um it's um it's
basically a lot of what uh of what the mac on cost show was where it's it's rooted in sports
but we go off in a lot of other directions you know uh we'll have conversations about we'll have
a 20-minute conversation about elevator etiquette um Or we'll talk about lasagna. Trust me, lasagna
has been featured many times.
Because it's really
possibly the greatest food in the world,
right? And yet people don't order it at restaurants.
When was the last time someone ordered it?
You always eat it at home, but no one ever orders it at a restaurant.
Present company accepted.
I do periodically order it. You're the outlier.
But think about this. Think about
how much you love lasagna
versus how much you order it.
That's true.
That's true.
Also, ground lamb.
Next time you're doing homemade lasagna,
try ground lamb.
Delicious.
But so the podcast is just a lot of what's going on
in our world through the basis sports.
But our next episode,
we're going to be doing Love Actually Power Rankings.
I cannot wait to do that.
That's going to be fun because Bob and I
fight about who knows that movie more.
How many years have you been doing the Macko and Coz
podcast?
Soon after the
9 to Noon show, which is called Game Day.
Soon after it was done.
We started it up.
We've got 102 episodes
in the bank.
Well, it's nice that the name of that show,
the radio show, Macklin Cause,
that those are your names.
They can't keep that.
That belongs to you, Macklin Cause.
It's going to be hilarious.
Can I tell you a funny story?
So I've done a lot of work behind the scenes
for Humble and Fred.
Humble and Fred, when they started their podcast
in October 2011, they started their podcast in 2011,
October 2011,
they started daily podcasts
and I helped design the back end and all this stuff.
And they got a cease and desist
from Chorus Entertainment.
What?
Because Chorus,
and it wasn't mean,
it was more like this.
And in fact,
I posted it on TorontoMic.com
because I got a copy from Humble,
Howard,
and I was fascinated that this was
happening because it was essentially this we chorus we own the trademark on humble and fred
you guys really should own this uh we're happy to transfer transfer it for you uh but we need
five thousand dollars like that was so so yes so it first of all i found it because i'm like well
wait a minute like um like i mean humble i, I guess there's some argument you can make that somewhere at 102.1,
Humble and Fred was trademarked because it's not Howard and Fred.
Like, you can't trademark Howard and Fred.
That's their names, I would think.
But I don't know.
I'm not a lawyer.
I should point that out.
I'm not a lawyer.
But they did end up having to pay $5,000 to Chorus to get their trademark on their name,
Humble and Fred,
which I found fascinating.
But Macko and Cause, you didn't get any
cease and desist from Bell Media.
No, but Humble and Fred, maybe
slightly larger imprint in the market
than Macko and Cause. Maybe.
Debatable. Lateral move.
You know what? You're right.
It's not the 90s anymore.
Yeah, I know.
So it's a ton of fun.
I get to work with one of my closest friends.
And a sweetheart.
Yeah.
I feel like I can say that after two hours with the man.
Oh, absolutely.
You know, his wife's awesome.
His kid, Charlotte, is great.
His family, obviously, Bob Mack with seniors, is a huge giant in the industry.
And it's so much fun to work with.
And he's doing a lot of stuff with Strombo still.
I see him popping up, helping out a lot
on all the cool Strombo stuff he's got cooking over there.
Do you ever get invited to those,
when a cool band will play an intimate show
at Strombo's house or something,
you get an invitation to that?
I have not as of yet,
but I consider George a friend as well.
I'm not as big of a music guy,
so
it probably wouldn't be my
scene as much. If you want to see something funny, I don't know if you can
find it, when George Strombopoulos
and Dikembe Mutombo were both on Off the Record,
and there's a great two-shot of them with a font
underneath of their full name.
It's basically
about a thousand letters at the bottom
of the screen. That's funny, because you were a producer
for Off the Record, right? Yeah, for
seven years. I don't even think, yeah, that's right. Let me mention
briefly. Yeah, you did, that was a very quick synopsis
of your great career.
And did you, do you want to take ownership
that you were the guy, tell me if I'm wrong,
you were the guy who threw that Tallboy
Coors Light can at
Rocket Ishmael in the 91 Grey Cup? It's one of my ultimate dreams is to find the person that threw that tall boy Coors Light can at Rocket Ishmael in the 91 Great Cup.
It's one of my ultimate dreams is to find the person that threw that can at Rocket Ishmael
and interview them. It's my first real Great Cup memory. And yeah, I want to meet that guy.
You know, that might be my first big Great Cup memory too.
Of course, John Candy.
Yeah, unless the Argos were there and I was a big Rocket fan, of course,
and the John Candy, Wayne Gretzky,
Bruce McNall, of all people, just there.
But yeah, it was quite a time in Argos history.
Yep.
For sure, especially for guys our age.
I think we're similar age.
But what do I know?
43.
1974.
Okay, so you were born in 1974.
The old man.
I felt a little closer.
So Mackle and Cause continues. Good, good, good. Keep old man. I felt a little closer. So Mackle & Cause continues.
Good, good, good.
Keep it rocking.
People need their taste of Mackle & Cause.
You've introduced it.
How long ago did you launch Matt Talks Wine and stuff with interesting people?
It was launched a couple...
I've done 12.
I'm on my 12th episode.
So a couple months ago is when I started.
It really, when they went permanently
with Michael and Carlo for the morning show,
it just meant I had a little bit,
I had more time on my hand and I'm like, okay,
well, I've been talking about developing
this podcast for a while, so let's just get it going.
So it started then.
I mean, I was in Peru in September,
and then I was in Costa Rica for a week,
so that sort of pushed things back a little bit.
But yeah, for the last couple months.
Tough life you got there.
Nope, the exact opposite.
It's a fantastic life.
I don't know why you would say tough life.
Now, is there a plan to have, for example,
a wine sponsor and monetize this?
Yeah.
It's always a plan, either winery, LCBO.
The thing is, I don't know where this is eventually going to go to.
The podcast now, there's a catering company, Enville Catering, who I'm friends with the owner.
They're putting the link up of the podcast on their, you know, for their e-blasts. And, you know, I did an interview with Daniel Speck from
Henry Appelman. They're going to do something similar. So it's like, I don't know what point
B is going to be. You know, I know I love, like sports and wine are the two things, and movies
are the things that, and food and elevators. And why do people talk in the movies uh those are things i'm talking about so um it's just i love talking to psalms bartenders winemakers wine owners i want to
talk to people in every aspect of the industry but also like celebrities i'm now and then like
jay on right dan o'toole um i eventually i want to get did you have to go to dan or did you go
to the t and you do it at the t oh no i i just. I asked Jay and Dan and I'd be like, hey, if you can't do it or if there's anything,
let me know.
But I still consider myself part of the TSN family.
And it's not like any of us are going to say anything that's going to ruin stuff.
No, no.
I mean, I guess where I'm going there is that...
So Dan did this show.
Yeah.
And then I invited him back and he said, Mike...
There's something...
I'm going to paraphrase.
But Mike, I loved that, but the commute killed me.
He says, and I'm too young to die.
I might have added that extra part to make him seem funnier.
But because he, although he does work obviously in, what do you call that?
Agent Court.
Agent Court.
Right.
Yeah.
Of course, at the complex.
9 Channel 9.
Right.
But he lives in Orono.
Yeah.
He lives far.
Far away.
Like Peter, I don't know,
isn't it Peterborough maybe?
I don't know.
But anyway,
I was just going to get jealous
if I hear he's popping over
to your place.
I'll go to him.
Okay, you'll go to him.
Oh yeah, I mean,
my equipment is good.
It's not Toronto Mike good.
So yeah, it allows me
to go to the vineyards
or go to people's homes.
When I did mine with Jay, we did it from a restaurant called Paris Paris,
like on Dundas and Ossington area, which was fantastic.
Yeah, that's in his hood.
That's cool.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
We went there, and every bottle of wine was half price.
So I'm like, okay, we're going to play with a little bit nicer selection
for our bottle for lunch.
Did you get it when he had the baby, and then there were guest Jays
I saw doing that show?
Yeah, I did one of the pods.
I did a little while ago with Tessa Banum and Dan and myself.
Very nice. Very good.
By the way, Dale,
any time, if you have any questions
about the illustrious career of Matt Coz,
you can jump on that mic just to let you know.
Do you got a question right now?
I'm going to play a song.
You're good?
Go with the song first.
Not the song he's expecting,
but I want to have a little conversation
about this because when I answered
the door,
when Matt was at the door... By the way, my Google
Home, in the morning
I say good morning to the Google Home
and then it tells me things like the time and the weather
and then it does new stuff,
but it tells me my calendar stuff,
and it said Matt C-A-U-Z.
Yeah.
So it doesn't know how to say cause, my Google Home.
That is my last name, C-A-U-Z?
Right, but you'd think it could figure out how to say cause.
Oh, how do you say?
So it went like this.
What time did we record?
It doesn't matter.
It's 9.30.
Podcast with Matt C-A-U-Z.
Really?
Couldn't say cause?
Right.
It's an easy last name.
It's the first time I've spent, I don't know.
I wonder if it can say Sophia's last name.
I'll test it later.
Good luck with that.
But when I answered the door, you said, baby, it's cold outside.
Yeah.
What are our thoughts
on this hubba-baloo,
is that a word?
Am I butchering that?
Yeah, hubba-baloo's a word.
All right.
What do we think?
You go first, Matt,
and then Dale,
I want to hear from you too.
A couple thoughts.
On one level,
I don't care at all.
My life will not at all
be impacted
by this song
not being on the radio.
I can still find it
on YouTube,
on Spotify,
whatever. So I'm not going to be someone that's going to waste much energy on it.
On the other level, this is absolutely ridiculous that they would pull the song.
You have to think of the context of when the song was done. And I believe
the songwriter wrote it for him and his wife. This also represents cowardness by management
because a couple people get upset
for them to pull this song.
Because if you're going to choose the path
of just this righteous level morality,
and by the way, there's a lot of reasons
why we should have this level of righteous level morality
to correct things.
But if you are going to choose to go down this road,
where is all the pop songs, the rock songs?
What about all the hip-hop songs where
women are degraded also but they're also not in the christmas mix i guess it's like uh but
there's a wholesome aspect to the christmas list versus the regular well then you've got to pull
them by the way um the beatles she was just 17 and you know what i mean oh i know that 17 is not
the age of consent in certain parts of the world.
So do we pull that song from the Beatles?
It's a slippery slope.
But the thing is, I don't like the moving morality.
This just feels like either cowardice by these stations,
or it's like, let's pat ourselves on the back,
because now we're making a difference when you're not really.
And you know also another problem?
Yeah.
Is that people get upset by this.
And what it means, some of the residue is when there's legitimate things with the Me Too movement.
People are like, ah, you're the same people that got rid of that song.
When 99% of people never asked for the game or the song, it could actually have some negative ramifications to dilute the message.
Now, I got a quick update. Yesterday I was reading that CBC did add it back ban the song. It dilutes the message. Now, I got a quick update.
Yesterday I was reading that CBC did add it back
to the playlist. So they pulled it and they added
it back. So I don't think you're
hearing it on CHFI, but I could
be mistaken. But Dale, any thoughts on
this important discussion?
Yeah, it's funny. I said the same thing
to Mike this morning when I arrived
as well, because it's the
talk of the town. It's just another thing
that's just madness
in the world.
The whole world's gone crazy
with these kind of issues.
Is PC run amok?
Yeah, I can't add any more
to what Matt said.
He phrased it perfectly.
Now, Dale,
was it you who told me
baby, it's cold outside
when I met you
and I attributed it to Matt
and Matt took full credit for it?
You did,
but see,
this was a thing called Yes And.
Remember earlier
about don't block?
You know what,
to me,
okay,
no,
on that topic,
I find that's an old,
that's a broadcasting thing
and I don't think
it applies to podcasts.
Like,
I feel podcast is the place
where you don't do the Yes And.
You want to be authentic.
I can't help it.
Like you could have said,
like Mike,
I said no such thing to you.
I know.
Are you on drugs?
I can't help it.
It's just,
it's part of my, now, you know. You're programming. He could have said, like, Mike, I said no such thing to you. Are you on drugs? I can't help it. It's part of my... You're programming.
If you had said, yeah, when Matt came in and then he struck my puppy violently with an open-handed slap,
at that point, I'd be like, I don't think I did that.
That's funny.
One of you came and said, baby, it's cold outside.
And I'm like, oh, it's Matt.
But then I'm like, as Dale's talking, I go, nope, that was Dale. And then I'm like, well, Matt took credit. He seemed to go with it. Yes, and i'm like oh it's matt but then i'm like as dale's talking i go nope no that was dale and then i'm like well matt took credit he seemed to go with it oh yes and i knew
where you were going with it yeah you're like don't you say because you don't want to stomp
on the bit keep moving the conversation don't stomp on the bit keep it moving yeah uh that's
terrestrial radio you're on toronto mic tier we we stomp on our bits and on this show that's what
that's what we do um yeah, I hear you guys both.
I think this is,
the pendulum swings too far,
I think, sometimes,
and it's like an overcorrection.
It's the way I've been referring to it.
But I do know CBC added it back.
And hey, I've played it in the last two episodes
of Toronto Mic,
so it's on the Ziggy episode yesterday
with Joel Goldberg and Ziggy,
and here it is again.
So clearly it hasn't been banned
from Toronto Mic yet.
But here's a song that was banned.
And speaking of banned,
what a segue this is.
There you go.
Music that was banned.
Let's listen to this
and we'll talk to Matt
about why he loves this jam.
You didn't. Well, speaking of great movies,
by the way, you and I think of similar music.
You've dropped references to Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas,
two of my top ten movies of all time.
Yeah, so now we're going Full Metal Jacket.
Now, first off, this song,
I can see why this song would be banned.
This is a horrible song.
And I'm going to tell the listeners,
I was asked, Matt, if you could pick one song, what would it be?
I'm like, okay, my favorite, Monkey Man,
The Rolling Stones. I'm like, well, what's the exact opposite?
I said, or Me So Horny.
Oh, so this was a joke. Went right over my head.
Total joke. I was being sarcastic when I said, you knowiso Horny. Oh, so this was a joke? Yes. Went right over my head. Total joke. I was being sarcastic
when I said, you know, a
classic Rolling Stones song or
Two Life Crew's Miso Horny. But do you understand
how I would not know it was a joke?
Like, I thought you just had diverse tastes.
I do have diverse tastes, but I feel
that this one, the content
was so crazy that the
sarcasm would be seen. But I can tell you
one fun story about this song yes
please i hate karaoke so much i got dragged to go into karaoke and i said i'm not going to perform
any songs and then everyone's singing like brown eyed girl and whose boots have your bed been under
so i wanted to ruin the mood i go up to the front i go to the dj and i go hey dj i want to i want to
play this i want to sing this song. And the DJ was all wacky.
Hey, everybody, welcome to another night of karaoke here at the Horseshoe.
And I play this song.
And he's like, okay, coming up next is.
Wait, you want that song?
Yeah, I want.
Are you sure?
And the best part is there was a group of women there that were hating me at that time. The only people that were enjoying it was the bartender at the back.
Because I sang this song and
I had no idea how dirty
and offensive the lyrics are.
I had no idea until I saw it on the screen.
I'm like, oh my God, do I have to sing this?
We're of an age, of course, where it was big news
that this was banned. I don't know if it
was just in the States or whatever.
Wasn't it Al Gore's wife?
Tipper Gore. You're absolutely right.
And Luther Campbell, Luke here from 2 Live Crew.
I think they're Miami.
I remember an episode of Hip Hop Evolution about these guys,
so I'm pretty sure they're Miami.
But yeah, this album was deemed obscene.
Don't let your children hear this.
And that just made me want a copy.
Now I've got to get a copy of this thing.
It went right over my head.
So I totally got the two songs from you. Yeah. want a copy like now i've got to get a copy of this thing so uh i went right over my head so um
i totally i got the two songs from you yeah and i think maybe if the you went with like
who let the dogs out or something i'd say oh he's being funny but to me this is a kind of a cool
track and maybe you had childhood memories of it or something no no i knew it because
when you listen to this at my age you're're like, oh, this is dirty. And this was before
the internet where, you know,
it was a simpler time back then.
Now, I mean, like, if you did
Eric,
not Eric Lee. Eric B. and
Rakim. Eric B. and Rakim, yeah.
I listened to a ton of
that with my
friends while playing Sega Genesis.
That was absolutely a big part.
Major, we just had two episodes ago with DJ starting from scratch, and that was a big
influence on his career.
Eric B. and Rakim were monsters.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sorry, 2 Live crew, but that was a joke that went right over my head.
I bid on it.
I bid on it.
And before we close out, because you dropped this reference
earlier, and I have to pick it up and
ask you about it, but what words
did you call it? A death complex?
Is this the... What is that?
And tell me about this
death complex. When I was
six years old, I had a dream where I was
existing just in like...
You know the red and black background
on Spider-Man, like the old Spider-Man cartoons
when he would be,
and the background would just be red and black.
So it was like that.
And I remember waking up at a very young age
and realizing, oh, wait a minute.
Eventually this is all gonna end.
And it made me really scared.
I remember like being in tears
as like six, seven years old.
And it's always sort of followed me.
Like when someone says they're not afraid of death,
I'm like, you're a liar. You're an absolute liar. And it's both benefit and bad. The bad part
is at least one point every day, a couple of times, I'll start thinking of the big picture
of maybe never existing again. And that 50,000 years from now, it'll still be never existing
again. And now I'm going to go down a wormhole of depression and angst. But then there's the
other side. I don't get angry that often.
I don't get mad.
I don't sweat the small things.
And I appreciate the living bleep
out of great moments,
out of small moments.
I suck it all in
because we're only here
for a short period of time.
So because of this fear of death,
I've turned it into a positive
where I don't take things personally.
I don't get angry when I don't need to be. And I just
appreciate every moment.
I know this sounds cheesy and sappy, but man, having a death complex,
it is a two-edged sword. I have a similar story, but it doesn't involve
the dream of the Spider-Man background or whatever, but I was watching Disney. I watch
Disney every Sunday.
It was at six o'clock
while Magic,
while World of Disney
or whatever it was called
and there was one,
I remember there was
one where the parents
died but they became
stars in the sky.
Like the mom and dad
died and they were
now stars in the sky.
It was like this movie,
this Disney movie
and I just had this
moment of like
an epiphany
and I was probably,
you were six and I was probably like maybe eight or something. Yeah, so we're on the same age. And just had this moment of like an epiphany and i was probably you you were six
and i was probably like maybe eight or something yeah so we're on the same age and i had this
moment of like oh like what they're gone forever like that was it and it was like i i realized like
death is some scary shit and i remember being i remember like crying and being scared that
everybody dies like i had this whole like realization And you're right. It's a difficult
concept because it's unknown. And the only solace I find in it is that you will be unaware. Once it
happens, the awareness, I believe the awareness disappears. So you don't have any fear or pain.
It's like you will feel the same way you felt before you were born.
I know. That's how I've kind of...
I know, and I hear that
all the time.
That's great.
And if that gets you
through the day,
good on you, my friend.
Usually what I do
is I just move on
and think about
early 90s New York Giants
or this bottle of Oculus.
You know, it's like,
all right,
we got to move on.
Oculus.
Dale.
Dale. Dale!
I want to thank you so much for doing this.
You came all the way from Vancouver to bring these bottles of wine to Matt Cullen.
Well, I actually just came to see my mom, first of all.
This was a nice byproduct of the trip.
It was a hell of a byproduct.
I've got to let me know what I can give you.
Amazing.
Amazing.
Nice to finally have you over here.
Anytime you're in town, you're welcome.
I'll get you another six-pack anytime you're in town.
Fantastic.
Enjoyed my stay here.
Oh, and Matt, you were here too.
Fantastic.
Episode 410.
I truly appreciated it.
And thanks for making the time to come here, man.
Absolutely.
Thank you for inviting me.
I'm sorry it took so long.
Love to come back whenever.
And give Matt a big hug for me.
I really like that guy.
I'll be seeing him on Friday.
We're waiting till after the Leafs-Tampa Bay game to then do the pod the next day to react to it.
Smart, smart.
And that brings us to the end of our 410th show.
You can follow me on Twitter.
I'm at Toronto Mike.
Matt is at, what are you again?
MCAUZ 56.
M-C-A-U-Z 56.
What does 56 stand for?
It's Lawrence Taylor's number.
I'm a New York Giants fan, so it comes from the old New York Giants linebacker.
He's a bad man.
Oh, my goodness.
Dale, remind me your handle on Twitter.
People want to check it out.
Very simple.
At Dale Cadeau.
At Dale Cadeau.
Yeah, for some reason, that was that Heck Cujo thing, but no, it's at Dale Cadeau.
That's right.
That's right.
Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer.
Propertyinthe6.com is at Raptor's Devotee.
Big win last night without Kawhi.
Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta.
Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair is at Fast Time WJR.
And Paytm is at Paytm Canada.
See you all, I would say, next week like normal, but I gotta tell people, tomorrow, Dave Hodge
is going to share his
100 favorite songs
of 2018.
That's gonna be a must-listen. That's great.
I just hope it doesn't overshadow
this fantastic Matt Cosner.
It'll absolutely overshadow it as it should.
See you then. And your smile is fine and it's just like mine And it won't go away
Cause everything is rosy and green