Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Scott Moore: Toronto Mike'd #385

Episode Date: October 16, 2018

Mike chats with outgoing President of Sportsnet and NHL properties for Rogers Communications Scott Moore about everything from Bob Cole to Bob McCown to Strombo.

Welcome to episode 385 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery located here in Etobicoke. Did you know that 99% of all Great Lakes beer remains here in Ontario? TLB, brewed for you, Ontario, and propertyinthesix.com, Toronto Real Estate Done Right, and Paytm, an app designed to manage all of your bills in one spot. Download the app today from paytm.ca and census design and build, providing architectural design, interior design, and turnkey construction services across the GTA. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com, and joining me, and this is a long title, so bear with me,

President of Sportsnet and NHL Properties for Rogers Communications, Scott Moore. Good morning. Welcome, Scott. Well, this is certainly the most unique place I've ever done an interview. Literally in someone's basement. And I have to say, when I talk to students in broadcast schools across the country, I tell them if they want to be in broadcasting, across the country, I tell them if they want to be in broadcasting,

they're going to probably end up doing a lot more of this than working in big media organizations. I think interesting content will come out of podcasts and blogs out of people's basements. Then the challenge is how do you get enough scale to make it pay and get sponsors? But I see you have sponsors, young Toronto Mike. I like that you call me young. To me, anyone under the age of 50 is young.

Oh, good. I do qualify then. Well, firstly and foremost, I'm a big fan of sports. I'm a sports fan. And I've always been interested in how the sausage is made. So I've always had a personal interest in sports media and the personalities there. So this is... You're a significant name in that space.

So this is quite the honor to have you here. And I want to thank you for visiting my basement. I'm sure, like you said, your first basement experience. I'm honored that it's here. I'm going to straighten things up for you a little later. Well, okay. I've been sharing it's here. I'm going to straighten things up for you a little later. Well, okay. I've been sharing. So the last two, I had Mike Zeisberger and Mo Berg are the last

two episodes. How did you fit Mike Zeisberger down here? I did not. He's significantly taller than I am. I recorded both of those episodes upstairs on my dining room table because Chris Brown from chrisbrownpainting.com was painting the studio. So you're actually the first guest in the newly painted TMDS studio space.

It's a nice color. My wife would be pleased. We're building a place up north in Thornbury, which hopefully will be done soon. And she has done, I think she has the record, according to our contractors, of the most complicated and intense painting plan. She had it.

My wife is very organized. So she had everything down to a T. It's funny because a recent guest is Jeff Woods, who was on Q107. And he still does a podcast there, Records and Rockstars. He paints houses for sport. I think he does it as like a meditation or something, but he only does it

in Thornbury. Really? He lives in Thornbury and he only paints... Oh, you have to give me his context because I'm building a man cave

where for the first time I'm allowed sports memorabilia in the house, so it will be quite something. Honestly, I will pass it on because nothing's cooler. Can you imagine? I mean, Chris Brown's great.

It's been wonderful. Imagine Jeff Woods because just having him talk and hearing that voice would be, I think, awesome. So I will pass that on for sure. I'm going to start this episode because we don't have a lot of time and I have a thousand questions. So I'm going to start this episode with a bang. Okay, here's the bang. Why are you leaving Rogers? I've been asked that a lot. Look, there's a number of reasons. Probably the biggest reason is the way I do a job, any job, but particularly this job, is all in, 365, 724. And when I first joined Rogers, we were a couple of sports networks, a couple of radio stations.

We're now seven sports channels, three radio stations, podcasts, websites, apps. And I'm at it constantly. And my advice to whomever takes over the position would be don't try and consume everything. But I wake up in the morning, I listen to our podcasts while I'm working out, then I have a breakfast meeting at eight, then I'm in the office till six or seven, out most nights, either at

events or at home watching our network at home doing emails while I'm watching the network weekends or either on the road or watching the network. And my wife said something to me about a year ago that hit home. And she probably had said it several times, but it was the first time it really, it really registered. She said, I spend a lot of my time alone. And even when I'm at home, she's alone because I'm watching Hockey Night in Canada or I'm watching our hockey or baseball broadcasts. So I just need something that's a little less intense. So that's number one. Number two is I'm 56. My dad retired when he was 58. My wife and I love to travel. So we're starting off with six weeks in Australia in 12 days, not that we're counting. Nice. closer to the product, a little closer to what I love. Over the last 10 to 12 years, I've been in

the corporate suite and that carries its own interesting challenges, but you don't get to have the fun of sitting in a control room. I tell people I could sit in a control room and produce a hockey game or studio show and be in there for 14, 16 hours straight, and at the end of it feel like a million bucks. Four hours in a boardroom doing a strategy session or budget meetings, those just kick the crap out of you. I can only imagine. But there is a rumor, I think maybe Barry's starting this rumor, but Barry Carlyle is...

There's a lot of rumors. Here's a big one. I heard a couple. Okay. Okay, where am I going? Ask him if he's going to Seattle to work with the new hockey team. Look me in the eye, Scott. It's funny.

I'll look you straight in the eye. It's funny. I had Tim Lewicki in my office the other day. Tim and I are great friends. And I said, Tim, I've heard a rumor I'm coming to work for you. But I know for a fact that he has hired his brother Todd to run that team. I love the Pacific Northwest. So maybe there'd be a position there as a studio producer or something.

But on our way to Australia, we're spending two days with the Lewickys in their place in Los Angeles. So, yeah, maybe that rumor is not true currently. Maybe it'll be true in a couple of weeks. Okay. So, Barry, you might be onto something here. It might have broken the story a little bit. I'd heard that rumor before. Why don't you tell me?

What is your favorite rumor? Is there... Because that's the only one I was fed. But the big thing I asked somebody, have you ever heard of this guy, David Schultz? Is this the name you've heard before? He wrote a book. Have you read the book?

I have read the book. Okay. I got it. I had it here, but everything's in disarray with the painting. But yeah, he's coming on in a couple weeks to chat about the book. I heard him on The Current of all places. Anna Maria. He said really nice things about me on The Current.

Apparently, I did not hear it. My father heard it. So my father finally thought that maybe I had made something of myself. But he says he has no evidence, no evidence at all, David Schultz, has no evidence that you were pushed. And you tell us you jumped. But this is the big thing. So you're here to say, for the record, of course,

that you're leaving on your own here. This is all Scott Moore deciding to leave. Is that what I'm saying? 100%. 100%. Nobody nudged you of an elbow? As a matter of fact, they tried to talk me out of it, which is a nice compliment.

But my timing, my decision, and I just think, again, I've said it on a couple of different shows. My dad is sort of my hero. He has had a wonderful, wonderful retirement. He started at 58. I don't think I can 100% retire, but I think I can slow down. I don't think I can 100% retire, but I think I can slow down. I don't think I get nearly enough credit for being lazy. So I think I can slow down fairly quickly. We'll see.

Awesome. Okay, well, that sounds really great. I have some more great things off the top. I like the lead of all the great things. Because you never know how long people are listening to a podcast. Like halfway through the podcast, you should be saying, please, please listen to more. I'll say something really exciting at the end. I was going to say, all the good stuff's at the end of this episode, so I think everybody's going to tune in to the last syllable. But before I share some thoughts from Andrew Stokely

and some guy named Jeff Merrick, I want to just ask you straight up, have you ever heard of the podcast Toronto Mic'd before? Is this on your radar at all? Were you even aware this exists i knew about you i didn't know that the podcast existed until you asked me to be on it uh then i asked a few people uh if i should go on it and the what did they say the answer was that if you're going to do an independent podcast you can do that one okay i'm now i gotta know who are those wonderful people? So, I mean, I've had countless sports personalities.

Yes, you've had a number of our people. Have any of them said anything nasty about me? Not yet. Really? Once I'm gone, then ask them. See if they still say nice things. You are in a position of power, so it could change next week. It could change very quickly. They're all lining up to come back until the, we call it

real talk. But I mean, from Friedman to Brunt to Hazel May. So, and I, what I like about being independent

is I'm just as likely to have Merrick on to talk for a couple hours than I am to have Dan O'Toole on. Like, I don't have any allegiance anywhere else.

That's great. I love you all equally. Yeah, and there's some terrific people in the business. Not just at those two big multi-platform organizations, but there's some good people in the business. Not just at those two big multi-platform organizations, but there's some good people at The Athletic.

There's some good people. Still some good people, not as many in the newspaper industry, sadly. But there are some great characters in our business. For sure, for sure. We're going to talk about a few of them. So on your way out the door, on your way to Australia, which is amazing, give an elbow uh tim and sid and tell them to do this show because they don't respond to my uh my invitation just a little elbow

to tim and sid on your way out if you don't mind i'll uh i'll have a word with them they're they have done an unbelievable job with that show i i was on with them the other day and you know that show started now give don collins credit he brought them over and put them on radio. We put them on radio and they kicked it. They were really, really terrific. And about three years ago, I met with Don and our news director at the time and said, I love the six o'clock Sportsnet Central, but that genre, that particular time slot is dying. And we'd seen it not just at our network, we'd seen it at the other network in Canada, we'd seen it at ESPN, that clearly people were not waiting until the next day to see their highlights in their sports news. So what could we do that was different?

So we had these guys in-house. They have terrific personalities. different. So we had these guys in house. They have a terrific personalities. They're as inventive and as, uh, innovative as anybody I know in the space. So we brought them into the, into my office and I had a big whiteboard and I said, guys, we're going to give you five to seven every single day. And that's your show. You get to create the show. And they did with a producer by the name of John Coleman, who we've now made our general manager of news and information. They created the show from scratch. And everything from the studio set that we built for them,

which I love. And whenever we'd give tours of Sportsnet, that and a hockey set are the two things that people love most. From that to an irreverent way of doing things. And that's a tough show to do. I was watching it yesterday. I find myself with more time to watch our content. And things break during the show. The Patterson story broke yesterday. They're able to react quickly. And they know a lot about

every sport, which is not always common. Did you ever consider making it a television show that was on the radio? Was this ever considered? Because I always found it, yes, they make a great TV show, but you had to kind of remove them from their popular radio spot. I just wondered if you ever considered some shows. You know, Duboweth, you might have noticed. No, we didn't

and here's why, because we wanted to make sure we used the visual side of the medium more and we already had a radio show that's on television with Bob and Bob really feels strongly that his show needs to be a radio show on

TV. We only have one radio station, sports radio station in Toronto. As you know, they go up against each other on the schedule and it didn't make sense to share that radio slot. Bob is the king of that radio slot in Toronto. And frankly, there's some good stories about this. We had to convince Bob, and he wasn't 100% convinced, that cannibalizing our own audiences was the right thing to do. And I can now go back to Bob and say it didn't impact his audiences at all because he has a very different show.

Is this an age thing? I just imagine Bob's audience is older than Chances. It's a little bit of an age thing. Bob is a little bit more, if you're a regular listener, he tends to be a lot more on the business side of sport as opposed to the fan side of sport or the X's and O's of sport. And he's carved out an incredible niche there. He will talk to athletes, but he doesn't talk to athletes nearly as much.

No, I think he likes to make, but he doesn't talk to athletes nearly as much. No, I think he makes a, he likes to make the statement, he doesn't talk to athletes because they have nothing to say, he would tell you. Yeah, there are exceptions. He brings people in from time to time, but his show is unique. It's got a very, very strong following and his audiences, both on radio and television, were not affected one iota by Tim and Sid. What Tim and Sid did was create a whole new audience. Their audience is younger, for sure, than Bob's audience. So I learned from a very wise man in television years ago, Yvonne Fitzsand, who used to be the president and CEO of CTV. He said, if you're going to be cannibalized, you're far better to be cannibalized by yourself than by others.

So we want to have all the slices of the demographics of sports. So having two shows on at the same time on our various different networks with two different styles, two different personalities, made a lot of sense. And you're saying Bob's bought in yet? He's bought in at this point? Or is he still... I think he has.

Okay, okay. He has respectfully accepted it. How about that? So the first time Stephen Brunt came on, wow, I have nothing but the utmost respect for Brunt. I think he's... Best in the business. I think he's the best in the business.

And Brunt came on the first time. He made the bold statement that he would... He said he would never appear on Primetime Sports again. This is what he told me. I took out the clip. We'll never believe. He said this. Whenever someone says never, you know it's not going to happen. I said, I'm pulling this clip just in case, and I had to use it.

But he said he's not coming. And according to Schultz, again, who I should full disclosure is a good friend of the show, but he even did stand-up comedy at the Toronto Mike Listener Experience at Great Lakes Brewery. Brunt did or Schultz, again, who I should full disclosure is a good friend of the show. But he even did stand-up comedy at the Toronto Mike Listener Experience at Great Leagues Brewery. Brunt did or Schultz did? No, Schultz. I want to go see Schultz because I used to do stand-up comedy too. We'll see if he's good. I want to see if he's any good.

Well, I can send you the audio. I did an episode where I just played his. And then Gear Joyce, speaking of Sportsnet, was the headliner and was really funny. I hear he's quite good. Very funny. Okay, so where am I going here? I'm going to give your listeners a little bit of advice. Sure.

If you ever want to hone your presentation skills, and if you ever want to get over any presentation fright, do either the Second City course or do some stand-up. Go on amateur nights. Because once you've done stand-up comedy and faced, in some cases, a half-empty room, there's no group that intimidates me. I've spoken to a group of all the coaches and general managers in the NBA. I've spoken to the NHL board of directors multiple times. The first time, I have to say,

you walk in and there's Glenn Sather, there's Wayne Gretzky in the back of the room, there's Luke Robitaille, Brendan Shanahan, and you go, oh my,

this is an impressive room. And as a hockey fan, you have to get a little bit of butterflies. But having done stand-up, nothing scares me. Nothing fazes me. The podcasting equivalent,

just to share with the audience, the podcasting equivalent is have Molly Johnson on your show because after that, you can handle Scott Moore. No big deal. It's really easy. Okay, so where I was going with that is Bobcat, if I may call him that, who, by the way, said he wouldn't do my show because he said

he was only doing Rogers properties. So I'm not a Rogers property. You might notice I don't get a paycheck from Rogers. So he did a couple of things with Rogers stuff, a magazine thing or something or other. But he said no, and I had Zeisberger on last week, and he's going to put in a word, but he says, Bob, I'd have to pay him.

And of course, there's no budget to pay my guests. But neither here nor there. Bobcat would be a dream guest. So when you're nudging Tim and Sid, give Bobcat a nudge too. Well, both those, all three of them, get paid to speak. And they get paid to speak at our station. So they may or may not ever accept. Because they have busy schedules too.

I accept their no, and then I stop bothering them. That's how I work. But Scott, there's, of course, the story was, I believe David Schultz broke it, is that because Brunt was appearing on Tim and Sid, he went on like a Bobcat shit list or something of this nature. I don't know if we call it

a shit list in the business, but apparently there's a Bobcat shit list and there was a falling out between, this is obviously before we announced the exciting return of Brunt,

which is fantastic. Best co-host Bob's ever had. But is there any truth to that? Are you here to tell me? Is that accurate? There was a competitive time between Bob and Tim and Sid. And I think it got exasperated by a mistake someone in our marketing department made, where there's not many hard and fast rules at Sportsnet, but one

of them is that, well, I believe it's absolutely the right strategy to have both those shows on at the exact same time for the reasons I've just, uh, I've just talked about. Uh, we do not promote Tim and Sid in Bob's show and vice versa. promote Tim and Sid in Bob's show and vice versa. Well, one day, one day, uh, a promo accidentally got on the air on Sportsnet 360 for the Tim and

Sid show during Bob's show. This set him off. And when, when Bob goes off, it is, it can be legendary. Uh, he's, he's been known to storm down the hall to my office. He calls me names on the air, which I find amusing. And Stephen Brunt was part of that whole thing for a little bit. But when we were looking for a new co-host for the show,

we decided that Stephen Brunt is, as you say, I think if not the best co-host he's ever had. He's certainly amongst the top two or three. And it was natural to put them back together, and it was far easier to put them back together than people made out to be.

So is it you didn't have to twist Brunt's arm or anything? I might have bought... Because I have that quote and I can play it. I might have bought Stephen a nice bottle of wine that we had not consumed together yet. Well, Steve's got it good.

I hope he knows because he spends his summers in Newfoundland. He has the best gig in sports. He works hard, though. He just hangs out with rock stars. He's in Arizona right now. He'll come to us and say, you know, there's a great story in Arizona. We should go and interview Vladdy Guerrero,

which he did last night. It was really good. Since we're talking about co-hosts, please tell me, what happened with Damien Cox? He was on Primetime Sports, and then suddenly he wasn't. Very vague on Twitter. By the way, I like Cox on Twitter

because he's got personality. There's a lot of tweeters that are not worth your follow, but Cox is not one of them. But can you share with us why he's no longer heard on Primetime Sports? Damien's terrific. I'm a big fan of Damien's. He does a great job for us on tennis, does a great job for us in studio. I would say that the chemistry between he and Bob just wasn't there.

But they have worked together a long time. It deteriorated at some point. The thing about doing radio, and it's similar in television, but it's not quite the same. In radio, you are together in a studio, just the two of you for hours and hours and hours on end. And it's like a good marriage. There's going to be ups and downs. I always tell people that work on Olympics with me that Olympics is similar, that it doesn't matter which side of the camera you're on, that you're together for 14, 16 hours a day. And it doesn't matter if that person is your brother, your sister, or your best friend. At some point during the Olympics, you're going to turn and look at that person and hate every fiber of their being because you've been working so hard with them.

And in radio, when you're doing a three-hour show together, there are times that you have your ups and downs. Like a lot of other people, I would not be surprised if Damien showed back up on Primetime Sports at some point. He continues to be an important part of what we do at Sportsnet. Cool. And by the way, is it your decision that you let Rogers' talent tweet whatever they want?

Because it seems like the difference between the Bell Media side and the Rogers, it seems that the Rogers' personalities can be very political. Cox is a good example. He might go off on, I don't know, Trump or something. But you don't see that same kind of tweet coming from a Bell Media personality. Yeah, I try to put as few limits on our personalities as possible. And the first, most important thing, if you're going to do that, you got to have great personalities who you trust. The only limits we put on our personalities when it comes to Twitter is that they be respectful.

And there are times that some people cross over that line. We pull them back. Clearly, you know, being respectful also means not bullying, which we feel very strongly about at Rogers, and I feel very, very strongly about, that there's no hate speech, that sort of thing. But I would say the number of times people have done anything really stupid on Twitter at our place are fairly minimal.

But it happens. Twitter is, I've done stupid things on Twitter. Oh, sure is... I've done stupid things on Twitter. Oh, sure. We all have done stupid things on Twitter. The best thing to do is think it through, whatever you're putting on that medium. The stupidest Rogers thing on Twitter ever was when Jeff Blair blocked me on Twitter for no reason.

I like Jeff Blair. What's going on there? I don't know. I bet you he's blocked you, too. No, no, he has not. He may after next Friday. I don Jeff Blair. What's going on there? I don't know. I bet you he's blocked you too. No, no, he has not. He may after next Friday. I don't know, but he has not blocked me. You know, it's interesting.

You have followers and fans, and they have some time on their hands. And somebody did go and try to figure out why was Toronto Mike blocked by Jeff Blair because I mentioned it on a podcast. I think with Brunt, I mentioned it. And they learned someone else tweeted something negative at Blair and copied a bunch of people on it, and Blair blocked all of us.

So I'm a victim. I have several rules about Twitter. One is only be positive on social media. I don't understand people who go on, especially anonymous people, and want to criticize. Criticism is one thing, but when it gets disrespectful, I don't block too many people, but when it gets disrespectful, I have, uh, I don't block too many people, but I block people who swear at me. I block people who are continually harassing

and I'll have a conversation, although I try not to too much on Twitter. I'll have a conversation with people who are respectful, but the trouble is with Twitter, particularly you cannot have an intelligent reasoned conversation in 280 characters. It's physically impossible. And you're rarely going to change the mind of somebody who feels so strongly that they're saying something nasty about you or the place you work. That's why you're in my basement now. We get more characters here. And now I'm looking at the clock. We got to burn here. And I got some housekeeping. So Andrew Stokely, great

friend of the show, he helped set me up with this, told me what hardware to buy. He wrote a note I have to read for you. It says, when you have Scott Moore on, please tell him thank you from me for 10 years of mixing J's and now seven years for Grand Slam curling, and please tell him good luck with whatever he chooses to do. So Stokely just wanted me to say thank you. That's nice.

That's nice. And one of the things I feel proud of is because I've been in the trenches as a producer, as a director, as an executive producer, I'm not as great with names as I would like to be, but I'm always down in the truck saying hi to the production staff, the technical staff, because those are the people that really do all the work. I just either get the blame for it or the credit for it. So Jeff Merrick, I heard you were coming on. He's a great friend of the show as well.

Hey, Mike, looking forward to the Scott Moore pod. I am nowhere in my career if it weren't for him. Took me to CBC and then Sportsnet. He's the main reason I went there. He's delivered on every promise he ever made me. I owe him a ton. Great guy who's taught me a lot and believed in me. Hey, I was just a...

I don't know if that's a typo or not. He says, I was just a lock radio guy. When you found me, you'll have a great time with Scott. Looking forward to hearing your convo. So Jeff is saying thanks too. Look at this. You're glad you came now. I got a lot of nice tweets and notes from people. Jeff Merrick is a great guy, a tremendous talent. I can remember Joel Darling and I meeting with him at Dunn's Restaurant on King Street,

and we were trying to convince him to come over to CBC and do Hockey Night in Canada Radio, which was an initiative we started, I want to say, in 2008. And from the moment he took over that show, it was clear to me that there's just an untapped hockey genius in there. Uh, he, his, not only his knowledge of hockey, but his knowledge of obscure writers and obscure musicians is really quite amazing. The one podcast that I never miss now is 31 Thoughts Between He and Elliot. It has a tendency to go long.

I told them that the only way I can guarantee that I have time to listen to that podcast is to quit my job. So if you really want to know why I quit my job, it's so that I can listen to their podcast because it can run, their first episode of the season ran over two hours. Hey, you're preaching to the choir there, but I

make my own rules here. I got no boss here. You know, Jeff Merrick, by the way, before he became, well, before he was a hockey guy, he was the wrestling guy. He was a wrestling guy. Of course, he's been on, live audio wrestling was his thing. But he used to work, this is back when he was very young, he

worked at Great Lakes Brewery because he went to Humberside Collegiate with a couple of the guys who were working at Great Lakes, but he got a gig there, so this is a good opportunity for me to give you a gift,

a couple of gifts. You're going to really be glad you came. This is my favorite artwork for a can ever, and I can't actually tell the story of this because I once worked for a guy who I would say this beer was named after.

It's Pompous Ass English Ale. I won't tell you who it was, but I was at the Soho house in Toronto, and I ordered a beer, and they brought pompous ass, English ale. I don't think I could say that on our own radio stations.

So I'll say it one more time. Pompous ass, ass, English ale. And even the artwork looked like this guy. So enjoy it. So I actually have some of that at home, but I may be out. Really, it's a great craft beer.

They're fiercely independent like me. I love these guys. And I threw in a, there's a pumpkin ale there. Ooh, I love pumpkin. Since it's the season. So enjoy. I had pumpkin juice yesterday at lunch.

Was it good? It was okay. I'll be interested in how the pumpkin ale is. So take that home with you. Thank you. Courtesy of Great Lakes Beer. Let me just tell people that on Saturday, December 8th, so December 8th at the brewery,

which is near Queensway in Royal York here in South Etobicoke, they're having a Christmas market at Great Lakes Brewery. So they have food, local artists and vendors. Christmas trees will be loaded in your car by Gordy Levesque wannabes and lots more. So there's more details coming, but it's December 8th at Great Lakes, their Christmas market, which will be cool.

There's also a pint glass in front of you. You got to pour the beer into something. So that's courtesy. Not at this time of the morning. Well, I've seen it happen. You ever heard of a guy named Mike Richards? He cracked open a few. That glass there.

By the way, did you ever try to get Mike Richards on the fan? I did. Okay, good. So he's not completely delusional there. It was a long time ago, but yeah, we did. So that was the initial time he came to TSN Radio when he came from Calgary. Yes.

So, okay. And you never approached him again to leave TSN for... No. Do you ever approach any TSN guys to come over? It seems like there's a... I don't want to call it collusion, because that's a bad word, but... It's a strong word.

It's a strong word, which I'm not using. See, that's how I used it, by saying I'm not using it. Yeah, and yet you did. Now, we... I'll tell you why. I was around when we started Sportsnet, and I was in charge of hiring all the talent.

Uh, and I often wonder whether this was the right decision or not, but in my mind, it was the right decision. I didn't want to poach any TSN talent because I wanted us to build the Sportsnet brand as the Sportsnet brand. Um, and you know, if you brought over a, I'm trying to think of a perfect example, a James Duffy, um, or anyone, Gina Retta, who I love, um, if you

brought them over, you're bringing over part of the, the TSN brand with you. Now it's a good part of the TSN brand, but it's, it's almost to me, it's almost like cheating. I want what I love doing. And really, this is another reason why I've left is I love building something and I love building it from scratch. And if you're taking somebody else's people who already have built in credibility, built in brands, then I think you're taking a shortcut. So the first, the first four people, the first four on-air people we hired at Sportsnet, Darren Drager, Darren Millard, Jamie Campbell, and

Kevin Quinn, uh, all without any real network affiliation and all really, really good undiscovered talent. And I, I told the story the other day about Drager. I called him, he'd been recommended to me by Larry Isaac, who is a producer out in Vancouver. I'd worked with him at the A Channel

for Oilers games, I believe. And so Drager sent me his resume and his tape. And I looked at his tape and I went, holy cow, this guy's good. And I called him up and I said, Darren, how come I've never heard of you? I thought I knew most of the top sports broadcasters in the country. He said, well, I've never sent my tape to any network because I wanted to wait until I was

ready. And I said, I got news for you. You're ready. So we flew he and his wife, Holly, into Toronto to try and get them to come to Sportsnet. And I remember this story so vividly because we toured them around the CTV. We were based at CTV then. Toured them around the CTV campus. And there's seven big studios there. There was a huge... Aging court, right? Yeah, up in aging court.

Huge newsroom. And as we're walking through, Holly said, there are more people that work here than live in the town I grew up in. So she was impressed. And then as we walked into the CTV newsroom, Lloyd Robertson was there. And Lloyd and I are good friends. And Lloyd gave me a hug. And then he said, in his great voice, who do you have here?

And I introduced Darren and Holly. And they were so impressed, I thought, okay, I've got them. Then we took them, my wife Becky and I took them out for dinner in the beaches that night. I had a contract. I won't say how much the contract was for, but I gave it to them and their eyes lit up and they said, oh, this is a great contract.

And I, I took the contract back and I said, you know what? And I crossed out the figure that, and I added $10,000 to the figure. And I said, I know you would have signed that one, but I'm telling you, you can't come and live in Toronto for that. That's a good move. So, yeah, you got a little bit more money.

Taking up some tips here. These days, couldn't have done that. With all the corporate approvals you need to do these things these days, I'm not sure you could have done that. But he came, felt good about getting a little extra money out of me, and I think he's done well since. Oh, man.

He's actually, so he's been on the show, and he tells that story. He told that story? Yeah, more or less. And then he's a rare example of a guy who crossed the parking lot, so to speak. He's a very rare example of a guy, a Sportsnet guy who switches teams

and goes to TSN. Yeah, I feel badly about that one. That one happened in the six years that I was not at Sportsnet. It's not on you, then. I think, I don't know the whole story as to why he crossed, and he's done very well over at the other side,

but I just don't think that the management that was there at the time showed him the respect i believe he deserved now i started giving you a gift so i gave you the pint glass from brian gerstein at property in the six dot com but brian actually has a question for you so i have a bunch of hockey stuff i want to get to and brian he goes against the grain he's a tennis freak so. So I'll let Brian ask his own question here. Here's Brian. Hi, Scott. Brian Gerstein here, sales representative with PSR Brokerage and proud sponsor of Toronto

Night. I have VIP first access to the hottest condo project going in 2018, King Toronto in King West. Call or text me at 416-873-0292 for floor plans and pricing. The deadline is tomorrow to get in ahead of anyone else. Scott, I'm a huge tennis and a rash fan. I would love to see a rash get to do more tennis than just Rodgers and Davis Cup. Did you bid for the ATP Tour rights in 2015 or let TSN get them without a fight due to your hockey obligations? And while you won't be there, when does TSN's contract expire? I was not able

to find it. And do you see Sportsnet going after it? Without the tennis majors, there is no doubt that TSN right now does have the upper hand. First off, congratulations on excellent product integration. Thank you. You've got your sponsors asking questions. Brian needs to know that one of the few sports I was any good at growing up was tennis. And so I'm a tennis lover. There's a great story to how we ended up getting Davis Cup on Sportsnet.

It was in the first three or four months that I'd come back to Sportsnet, so early 2011. Milos Raonic was in the semifinals of an ATP 250 event, I believe, in California, I think in San Jose. And Michael Downey, who was the president of Tennis Canada at the time, called me. I was up at our house in Thornbury, and he said, Scott, Milos is in this semifinal tonight. Do you think we can get it on the air?

We had the rights to the ATP at the time. So I called our programming person, Navid Mansouri, and said, can we get this match on the air tonight? And we could, we did. And then he made the finals of that tournament. So I'm back in the city on Sunday night, watching him win his first ever ATP event. And he was playing great. And it's the first I'd really seen of Milos and the serve. And I called Michael in the middle of the match, and I said, Michael, you must have a Davis Cup tie coming up. He said, as a matter of fact, we do.

I said, who's broadcasting it? He said, nobody's broadcast Davis Cup in Canada for many years. I said, I want the contract. Because I had worked at Davis Cup as a stats guy back at TSN way back when Andrew Schneider was playing Davis Cup. I remember Andrew. And it's a fabulous event. It's tennis meets wrestling, because the crowds go crazy. So Michael then put me on to the head of the International Tennis Federation, a guy by the name of Jan Menkenen,

who was in charge of the TV properties at the ITF. We did a deal literally the next day for Davis Cup, and we've worked that Davis Cup property for many, many years. It's been an exciting property, and you've seen some of the best young Canadian tennis stars go through that property i think now that michael's back at tennis canada because he went over to run the uk version of uh tennis canada it was called i think it's called the lawn tennis association that's the

keith pelly move yeah yeah go to the uk they all come back eventually but so michael came back to tennis canada uh UK, of course, won the Davis Cup a few years ago because they went for it. I think you'll see Canada go for it in the next two years because they've got Milos, they've got

young Vasek Pospisil, obviously, they've got Denis Shapovalov and they've got Felix. His last name I can never pronounce. They've got Denis Shapovalov and they've got Felix. Right. His last name I can never pronounce. Ajay or something like that. They've got, I think, a tremendous shot to win the Davis Cup in the next few years. And we just renewed that Davis Cup contract for two years last year. I think next year will be our last year on this contract.

And I hope it gets renewed because it's, it's a terrific event. Now, having said that, the ratings on Davis Cup are always just slightly less than I would hope for because it's, it's a complicated tournament. Nobody quite understands. That's why I opt out. I don't understand. It just seems to go forever.

Yeah. There's one Davis Cup tournament that's been going on since, uh, since I remember Daniel Nestor upsetting Steph on it. Yeah. So nobody's quite sure. There is a championship every year, but it's not well defined. They've

just made some changes to the format that the players don't like as much, but I think it'll be terrific for television. Is it next year or this year? I think it's this year that they will have the Davis Cup Finals all in one place in November, so it'll be obvious when the championship is. So the players don't like it as place in November. So it'll be obvious when the

championship is. So the players don't like it as much, but I think it'll make it a better media property. Cool. Now the majors, TSN has them and that's, well, you can't have everything, right? This is your, you've got a lot of content. Is it just you didn't have one forever? Yeah. To answer Brian's question, we did in fact go over to London in 2015, I think it was 2014 to try and bid on the ATP tour. That was at an interesting time. We had just got the NHL rights. And I think it's fair to say that the other side was going after just about everything to try and rebuild their schedule. And tennis, I have this great debate with my friend, Greg Sansoni,

who's our vice president of programming. Tennis is the most difficult sport to program because a match can go 45 minutes. It can go three and a half hours. And the other problem that I've spoken to the ATP about that makes it even more difficult to program and to promote is because of the draw, if Milos Raonic is in the semifinals of the

Gothenburg Open, you won't know when he's playing. If he makes the semifinals, you won't know until late the night before. You have no chance of promoting to your audience when it's on. So tennis has got to figure out a better way of scheduling their matches. There's a little bit more consistency and that if you're on the top of the draw, you know, you're getting the afternoon semifinal and you know that the network can promote

it that way. But what happens is on a Thursday night or Friday night, you get told, here's the schedule for Saturday. Your promotion department has no chance of getting that information out. And so your ratings suffer. Unless it's a Grand Slam, which the other

guys have, there's not a built-in audience to be able to do that. And I think you're seeing that with the way TSN schedules ATP. It's difficult. It's extremely difficult to get on your schedule. Well, this is your life, Scott. So here's a voice from your past. I'm going to play a little clip, and then we'll come back. I'll pepper you with some hockey questions. But let's hear from somebody. My favorite Scott Moore story is actually one I haven't told a whole lot um because I have a lot

of them and most of them are really funny because he likes to um fake me out with the stern face and really he's quite the prankster anyway um in 1999 in the summer of 99 he flew me out from Vancouver to do some summer fill-in and my first sort of toe in the water on the big desk was actually doing just the Pacific show, which I thought was genius because I was talking to my people because I was doing sports in Vancouver. And I was surrounded by all the great guys, man. It was Kevin Quinn and Darren Millard and Jamie Campbell and Brad Fay, and were all rooting for me and even the guys and women behind the scenes because Scott had this diverse team always has were all rooting for me too he's got like the great culture in front of the camera behind the scenes anyway so up I went

and I did the Pacific show which was from 10 to 11 Pacific time. So one in the morning and I'll never forget. I was so scared. Anyways, went up there and kind of went into automatic pilot was trying really hard, probably too hard. Anyways, I had no idea that Scott was in the control room. I'm really glad I had no idea that Scott was in the control room, but he was, it's the middle of the night in the middle of the summer. And there he is in is in Scarborough anyways so I came down off set and he met me just side stage and he said you know well done great job but it was the world's longest pause I thought I was gonna throw up he said but you kind of seemed like you were trying to be one of the guys and I didn't hire you to be one of the guys I hired going to throw up. He said, but you kind of seem like you were trying to be one of the guys. And I didn't hire you to be one of the guys. I hired you to be Jody Vance. So I'm going to ask

you to go up there next time and be 100% you. In fact, I want you to push the envelope. I want you to push it so hard that I have to pull you back. And I fully expect that you're going to step in it. I want you to step in it, and I'm telling you right now, I've got your back. I will protect you. I want 100% you. That was one of the greatest moments of my career, a great learning moment from somebody who was a great leader.

Sportsnet's going to miss you, Scott Moore. I miss you. Have a great time on your trip, and we'll see you when you get back. Wow, that's nice. Jody Vance is one of my favorites. That's a great story, and I give that advice. It's funny, I gave that advice just the other day to Kyle Bukoskis. He said, you know, don't try and be Ron McClain, because what Ron McClain does only works for Ron McClain. Don't try and be Ron McLean, because what Ron McLean does only works for Ron McLean.

Don't try and be Elliott Friedman. For Jody, don't try and be Terry Leibel, who was another pioneer in the sports broadcasting world early, early in my career. It's really important. The best broadcasters are those who can share of themselves on the air and who can have their personality come through the camera or come through the microphone. And Jody's done that really, really well over her career. It's funny

when she first started with us and the story I would tell is when we started at Sportsnet, she was working at VTV, which was the new CTV station out in Vancouver. I think she was working in promotions. I came out for a tour to see their facilities. This was about eight months before we launched Sportsnet to see what they had built out there. She ended up giving the tour. She had no idea who I was. She just thought I was this executive from Toronto. She didn't know I was in charge of Sportsnet and building it out.

And she impressed me from that moment. She had a great personality, really, really nice. She was there on a Saturday morning to tour this crazy, stupid executive through their facilities. And she had a passion for sport. So we talked about what she wanted to do over time, and we brought her in, and she was the first Sportsnet female anchor doing a solo show, and she did it beautifully. And we would joke years later that what she should really be doing,

not that she wasn't great at sports, she should be hosting a morning show, because she just had that perfect personality. I told her at the time I could see her doing the Today Show one day. Now, she ended up doing Breakfast Television in Vancouver, did a terrific job on that. And I hope that Jodi and I get a chance to work together again. She and my wife and I are still good friends. I see her most times that I'm out in Vancouver. So that was very nice. Thank you, Jody, if you're listening. She's listening for sure. And I happen, you probably don't know this, but I actually, I run my own digital services company

and I actually produce a podcast for Mark Hebbshire. So every Monday and Friday morning at 9 a.m., Hebbsy comes over here and he sits where you are now and we record Hebbsy on Sports. Hebbsyonsports.com if you want to subscribe. It's actually really good. I get to talk a little bit on it. I really like it.

But am I right that... His Scott Moore stories might not be as nice. Scott, I got them yesterday. You owe me at least a 20 for not telling those stories. But is it fair to say that to put Jody on the desk at 6, Hebsey had to go? Do I have that order? I'm trying to remember the chronology. And why did you fire my friend Hebsey?

I think we put Jody and Jim Van Horn on together after Hebsey left. I will save that Hebsey leaving story for my book because it's a good story. I got to have something to sell because I'm on a fixed income and I need something to talk about. That's right. It's tough times for Scott Moore. Okay. So I can't wait to read about the Hebsey

story and the book. It's a good story. Thanks to Brent Cardy, by the way, for tipping me off that I should contact Jody about that story. So thank you, Brent. And oh my God, we are going to go really quickly here. I need to do a couple, a bit of business. You would appreciate me having to do a little business. So I'll do this very quickly, which is that if you want $10 right now, it's super slick and easy. And this is a kick butt app that I use myself. Go to paytm.ca, download the app from Paytm Canada for your smartphone. You can pay all your bills in one place, but you get rewarded for paying these bills. When you make your first bill payment, and by the way, setting this up is super slick and easy,

but when you make that first bill payment, there's a promo code, Toronto Mike, all one word, and they will right away, they'll give you $10 in Paytm cash, which you can either like spend that right away in the reward section, like getting a Paytm cash, which you can either like spend that right away in the reward section, like getting a gift card for Tim Hortons or whatever, or you can apply that $10 to another bill and save 10 bucks on that bill. So it's $10 sitting there.

Just go to paytm.ca, download the app and use the promo code Toronto Mike. Is that a Canadian company? Yeah, well, they're an Indian company, but they have an office at Adelaide and just downtown where I've been and met the people, and they got a bunch of great smart

Toronto people. I'm assuming you sell your own ads here? I do everything. A to Z, yeah. Impressive. I'll be working with you and Jody at your next interpete. Great. I get in with Scott Moore just as he's leaving Rogers Communications. That's just my luck.

Okay. There was this $5.2 billion deal. Did you hear about this? I heard something about that. Yeah. So we don't have a lot of time and I've got a lot of questions. So let's just, I'll cut to the chase. I'm sorry to everyone who sent in questions that I'm going to now leave on the cutting room floor.

So we're not even going to talk. Yes, you were there for the launch of Sportsnet. So you had a stint at Sportsnet. Then you left to go to CBC, right? I actually left to go to Vancouver and then came back. CBC brought me back. So you were at CBC, but you left... It's fair to tell me, you left CBC for a return to Sportsnet.

Correct, in December 2010. And what's your relationship like with Keith Pelley? He's one of my best friends. He brought me over to Rogers. I hired Keith as what we used to call a flugan at TSN in 1984 or 85. And he worked for me off and on for two stints at TSN. Clearly, always one of the most passionate and creative guys you'd ever meet. And then I never got a chance to work for him until after CBC or while I was at CBC,

he called me and said he'd gone over to Rogers, was running all of their media division. And would I like to come over and run Sportsnet and City and radio? And it was, it was no brainer. I loved working at the CBC. It was a great experience. Loved the people there. But it was the opportunity of a lifetime. And to work with one of my best friends, we had nothing but laughs.

We always joked, we're not that smart, but we're very funny. Well, hey, that's something, man. So I'm going to start peppering you with some questions. But in Leifert, 1984, tip me that's something, man. So I'm going to start peppering you with some questions. But in Leifert, 1984 tipped me off to this, but I was going to ask it anyways.

But because I've had Duthie, Dreger, and McKenzie, I've had them all here, and so I've asked them all this question. And Bob McKenzie tells me he was not approached by, he tells me he wasn't approached by Roger Sportsnet, but Duthie seemed to have a different tale. Did you try to scoop any TSN talent when you got the NHL rights? We talked to James.

Talked to nobody else. And that's out of respect for James. I believe he is one of the top three broadcasters in North America. What I'd say about James is he's very, very loyal, and he felt strongly about staying at TSN. So, you know, that it was a relatively short conversation and a relatively early conversation as far as Bob and Drager, and they're terrific at what they do. And I gave, Paul Romanek and I gave Bob McKenzie his first television job working on junior hockey in 1988.

And when I was executive producer at TSN, brought Bob on full time. I think Bob's an excellent insider. And with great respect to Bob, as I said earlier, I didn't want to steal that credibility because... Well, you stole his son is what you did. Yeah.

And his son is doing extremely well. I still say we have the better looking and smarter McKenzie. But we also have, in my opinion, the best and most intelligent insider in hockey in Elliot Friedman. So to bring over Bob would have been

an insult to Elliot, although they get along well. It's like, if you're building a team, do you, if you have the best guy you could possibly have on your right wing, do you want to bring in a guy that's going to fight him for a position on that right wing when you're trying to develop the camaraderie on the team?

So, and plus Bob, Bob has stated clearly he, I think it's next year he's going to retire. Yep. And so we wouldn't have gotten the full 12 years out of Bob, whereas I'm pretty sure we'll get the full 12 years out of Elliot. And what Elliot's done for us with his insider knowledge, I think he breaks as many stories, if not more than Bob. His blog, 31 Thoughts, is always one of the top things on our website. And of course, then we turned the blog into a podcast,

which is our number one podcast. And I believe it's the number one sports podcast in the country. And we sold it to General Motors for the largest ever sponsorship of a podcast in Canada. Until Hebsey on Sports beats the record. If you can beat that record with Hebsey, God bless you.

Maybe you'll be the sales guy on the deal, now that you're available. So Duffy, I knew all that, by the way, but I wanted to hear it from you. So I want to ask you about George Strombolopoulos. Was that your decision to... I need to know a few things here. We're going to need another hour, Scott.

Sorry. So Ron McLean had run-ins with Gary Bettman. We all know about this. And it looked to us as if maybe in the deal, the big partnership for $5.2 billion, that maybe Bettman wanted part of... asked maybe Ron McLean to be removed from that position. Any truth to that?

Bettman never asked for that. Did he wink? No. Touch his nose? There was an encouragement to try some new things. And one of the things we wanted to try was, was Rogers hometown hockey. Right.

And Rogers hometown hockey was 100% developed for Ron. Because I had the advantage of working with him at CBC, saw what a great job he does with, uh, Scotiabank Hockey Day in Canada and thought if we could do that every week. So I talked to this, this part will also be in my book, the meeting that I had with Ron and Don separately in Vancouver during the Tim Hortons outdoor game. It was sort of an indoor outdoor game out in Vancouver, uh, just after the Sochi Olympics. And I talked to Ron who I know very,

very well. I know that he has a passion, not only for, for hockey, but a passion for the country. And I said, Ron, I really want you to think about doing this show,

this hometown hockey show. Uh, but in order for you to give it everything you've got, we want you to come off of Hockey Night in Canada. We're going to try something new on Hockey Night in Canada. And he was incredibly gracious. I think a lot of people would have said, what, you're going to take me off the number one show

in the country and put me on this traveling caravan? He could have told me in no uncertain terms that I was crazy. He didn't. He loved the idea because he had a book coming out called stories from hockey stories from across the country or something. I think he might've changed it to hometown hockey, the title. And he embraced hometown hockey from the word go. I think in his heart of hearts, he was probably a little disappointed that he wasn't doing Hockey Night in Canada, but he understood the fact

that we wanted to try something different. Well, he was. He came on the show and told me all about it. Yeah. But he definitely, he also said that when he came back to host again, and we'll touch on Strombo in a second, but that it was important to him

that he continue to do hometown hockey. Yeah. And when we made the change back, and here's what I'd say about Strombo. First of all, Strombo is a great broadcaster. but it was important to him that he continued to do hometown hockey. Yeah, and when we made the change back, and here's what I'd say about Strombo. First of all, Strombo is a great broadcaster and an awesome guy. He just didn't work, and it wasn't necessarily his fault. It was the fact that you've had a brand that has worked so well for so long. It should have worked. it should have been easier but people don't like change as much as they as they say they do and

what's funny and schultz talks about this in his book that when i was at cbc and before i was at cbc people loved criticizing hockey night in canada they said it'd gotten too stale things needed to change. But when you actually do change, people realize how much they love what they had. So after, really for me, after a year, it was fairly obvious that that wasn't working and that we would have to make a change. We didn't get, because at the time Keith Pelley was leaving, Rick Brace was coming in. We had a new CEO. I tried to make the change after a year. It, uh, it didn't happen then. So after the second year we made the change, I talked to Ron to come back. He, he said he would only come back. And I've said this many times.

He would only come back if you got to do both, which logistical challenge. And then talking to George, that was, That was incredibly difficult because George put his heart and soul into that show. He tried to do it differently. He tried to do some different things, some of which worked, some of which didn't. But it was a huge disappointment for George. And unfortunately, he and I have not spoken since that day. I wondered, as you know, no Canadian teams made the playoffs, as you might be aware. And I often wondered whether Strombol had enough of a chance to succeed. Because people don't like change.

When the pen gets flipped and Hodge is gone and then this young kid named McLean takes over, it was the same kind of outcry. Maybe they didn't have Twitter back then, but the same spirit or whatever. People don't like change. And then with no... I feel like the ratings were going to be crap without a Canadian team. And there's one Canadian team in particular that needs to be good and competitive to spike ratings, my Toronto, my beliefs.

And so I feel like... Montreal Canadiens help too. Vancouver Canucks, all the big markets. We like all the Canadian teams. But yeah, I think there was a certain... I speak for Toronto Mike. I think there was a certain amount that because no Canadian teams made the playoffs that year, you could say that some of that negativity also rubbed off on George. I don't think that's fair.

And I don't think it's 100% percent accurate to, uh, George is a strong personality and George did things his way. Um, you know, he worked within our, uh, our format, but at the end of the day, he's, as I've said, an outstanding broadcaster, but the audience just didn't accept him. And that's who we work for. I can say I work for Rogers, but if I'm going to be successful working for Rogers, the people I really work for are the audience. And if they're telling us clearly that this isn't working, then you got to listen. Now, so many people wanted me to ask this topic, then you got to listen. Now, so many people wanted me to ask this topic, Chris, Steve P., Russ Morgan. So thank you all of you. But Bob Cole, was it your decision to retire him,

essentially? Is that an okay phrasing? Yeah. I'll say this. I get credit for a lot of things. I get blame for a lot of things. There are a lot of things that are my decision, a lot of things. I get blamed for a lot of things. There are a lot of things that are my decision, a lot of things that are the decision of people above me or below me, but I will always take responsibility for the decisions. And Bob is a passion project for me. I've worked with Bob for many, many years. He is a legend. He may be, and I have a tiny bias,

but he may be the greatest hockey play-by-play guy ever. I'm also a Danny Gallivan fan because I'm a Montreal Canadiens fan. But Bob's of an age. And we've talked from all the way back when I first arrived at CBC in 2007, there was a hue and cry amongst a certain group of people inside and outside the network that it was time for Bob to retire.

And Bob and I have talked about this over many years and over many seasons about when the right time to retire is. And the reality is for Bob, he never wants to retire. Right. Never. Right. And that as an executive who has to, A, make sure that the show is great and B, has to

work on succession plans and making sure we have other broadcaster. That's, that's a difficult, it's a difficult thing to hear. I'm, I don't ever want to retire. I'll know when I, when it's time. And I've had that conversations with others. And the reality is you will not know when your skills are starting to dwindle. And my message to Bob is always, let's go out on a high. So last year, there was a lot of talk about Bob not doing playoffs.

Yes. That was my decision in conjunction with others. And the reality is, at his age, the physical demands of doing seven games in 14 nights are such that whether he said he could do it or not, I was not going to allow him to do it. And I stand by that decision. But we said to him at the time, look, we want you to come back next year. It would be his 50th year this year. And we want to do something for you. Now, Bob doesn't want to be celebrated.

He doesn't ever want, and he will do his final game sometime in December. And. Is it a Leaf game? I don't believe I'm at liberty to say, but. It better be. I'd be surprised if it wasn't. And in that game,

if I were still around, I would want to do maybe not the whole show around him, but you'd want to do a bunch. That's going to take some convincing for Bob because Bob, one of his greatest skills, and there are a few play by play people that could still learn from him, but one of his greatest skills and and there are a few play-by-play people that could still learn from him but one of his greatest skills is he even though he always is part of the story he doesn't want to be the story he wants the game and the stars and the players to be the story and when

that last game comes i hope that he will agree to have people fet him a little because he deserves it. He absolutely deserves it. Man, you're preaching to the choir on that one. He's my favorite. Yeah. Now, Bob was the best ever in his 40s, 50s, 60s, early 70s. He's, and I will never ever say

that his skills are dwindling, but he's in his 80s. What people don't appreciate for any play-by-play guy is you are up in the rafters. Even the best play-by-play guys have trouble seeing the ice and seeing who's carrying the puck. And every play-by-play guys have trouble seeing the ice and seeing who's carrying the puck. And every play-by-play guy makes the odd mistake. So when people get on Bob about misidentifying

players from time to time, all play-by-play guys do that. But it's the other stuff around the play-by-play, the travel, the long hours, the other things now that all our play-by-play guys have to do. They have to do radio. They have to do online. Those are tough to ask of anybody, much less of a living legend at 84, 85, or 86, whatever Bob is. Oh, yeah.

We're going to miss Bob. A couple of quick hits, too. So you mentioned Danny Gallivan. And Paul Romanuk came on the show to talk about how much he loved listening to Danny Gallivan call Habs games, because I guess he grew up in Peterborough or something. He got those games. I can't remember. But Paul Romanuk is no longer on the roster.

I guess that was your call as well. By the way, I like that you own these things, because someone in your position is going to have to, let's face it, you're going to have to fire people. At least you don't take it lightly and you own it. Yeah, the buck stops with me, right? So, Romy,

where's my pal Romy? Yeah, you will never know, because I don't even think I would write it in my book. You will never know which of these decisions were truly mine and which I'm accepting the recommendation of somebody below me or accepting the direction of somebody above me. But because this is the president of the network, I'm the guy that makes the decision. Right. And all I'll say about Romy was that that discussion with Paul might have been the most difficult discussion of my career. And that's because Paul and I went to college together. Paul and I started junior hockey together at TSN in 1988. He convinced me to come and produce those games.

We started a company together. And so we have this long, long history and sitting across from one of your oldest friends and saying, this, uh, this is it is gut wrenching. Now, probably more for him than for me, but I would say, uh, you, you, if you're a decent executive and I, I'll, I'll hope that at least I'm that, you lose sleep over these things, you agonize over the decisions, but again, at the end of the day, you've got to listen to your audience.

What surprised me is that just last season he called a conference final. So it seems like a rapid... I'm on Twitter too. I love Twitter. I know... We'll leave that. It was a tough decision for you.

I personally enjoyed how he called the game. Maybe I'm in the minority there. So there's another gentleman, Joe Bowen, who calls your radio games regional Leafs games for radio. And I have a number of people who are basically begging me to force you before you leave for Australia. They want Bowen to call the regional Sportsnet games. Yeah, there's a really good reason why he doesn't. And here's the reason.

When the regional TV deal got split up between TSN and Sportsnet, TSN decided to have their announcers do their games. It's either Gord or Chris, right? Right, yeah. So Joe would have done just half of those games, half of those regional games, and those would have just been the Sportsnet games. I think that Joe Bowen is one of the top three or four best home radio play-by-play guys. And if you listen, and people don't necessarily make the distinction that I do around radio versus TV. But if you listen to radio play-by-play guys across the country, many of them, if not most of them, are in the Joe mold.

Homers. Holy mackinac, Scott. Yes, they're homers and they are characters. Bless you boys, I remember once, okay? Homers and characters. And in my opinion, and it's not just my opinion, but I would say in my opinion, I would rather have Joe call every single game on radio,

which is an agreement that we came to with TSN radio, and that fans know exactly where to find him on every single game because I think that's what he's best at. Not that he's not a very good play-by-play guy on television, but his type of play-by-play is not as successful on television as it is on radio. We're almost done here. Don't worry. Listen, are they going to fire you, Scott?

Is that the fear? You're going to be late for a meeting? I can give you like 10 more minutes. Don't worry. I know. Listen, who's going to... Are they going to fire you, Scott? Is that the fear? You're going to be late for a meeting? I can give you like 10 more minutes. Okay, okay. Thank you so much. And then I got to be in the office by 11. All right. Then I'm going to just cut to it.

Jerry Howarth retired, and he was the voice of the Blue Jays. Well, you know the story of Jerry Howarth. Been there a long time. I have a question about Mike Wilner, who would fill in for a couple innings here and there, and I thought sounded pretty good doing play-by-play. Was Mike Wilner given a fair shot at the play-by-play gig

when Jerry announced his retirement? Absolutely. And he's now, along with Ben Wagner, doing play-by-play, which I think is the right decision. Mike's an excellent broadcaster, and I've told him many times that he, what he ended up doing really, really well was hosting Jay's talk.

And what he was really good at was what a good radio host should do, and that's create a little controversy. Yes, he does. He can tell listeners in no uncertain terms that they're asking a stupid question. And that makes you a certain type of guy. I call it being a little bit of sandpaper. And doing play-by-play is a very different skill. And Jerry Howarth probably is the best example of it in this market of someone who is beloved

because of their style, because he's just easy to listen to. And baseball particularly, you are with that play-by-play person 162 times a year on radio and you need to be loved. Mike needed to transition from that talk show host, which is one thing, to a play-by-play guy. Now I listened to his play-by-play guy, play-by-play when he was, when he was doing the odd fill-in. And I think he's a very, very good play-by-play guy. And I think he'll become great. But he needed to change his on-air personality, which is not as easy to do, by the way.

And I think he's doing a terrific job. And I think the combination of he and Ben is turning out really, really good. So Steve Simmons wrote... Steve Simmons. Steve Simmons. This is not about the note, by the way. Steve Simmons wrote... Steve Simmons. Steve Simmons. This is not about the note, by the way. Steve Simmons is...

I knew you'd ask me about Steve Simmons. I would say on many issues, Steve Simmons has no credibility. And I might even take the on many issues out. But whenever he writes about us, and if you're going to ask me about something he's written about us, I'm just not going to answer it.

And here's why. Because Steve Simmons works for the other guys. His editors should not allow him to write about the competition. You can talk about either network because you don't work there. Steve Simmons has said many critical things about Sportsnet while

taking a paycheck from TSN. So I have no time for any criticism or comments that Steve Simmons has to make about us then I will say I'll leave Steve

out of this although if you ever have 90 minutes to kill he kicks out the jams with me we play and discuss his 10 favorite songs

of all time and that might be the Steve Simmons you can tolerate and there's no hot dog talk oh I'm sure I could tolerate him

on many levels but when a guy who works for the other network uses his column to write and criticize his competition, that to me has no credibility. But at the same breath, and since you gave me an extra 10 minutes here, one of the knocks about Sportsnet covering Blue Jays,

let's use Blue Jays as the example, although you guys own a part of like every team? Because you do own a part of the Argos right now? Yeah. It's hard to say, right? Through MLSC. Okay, yeah. Through MLSC.

Okay. So, a lot of people will say that the coverage of the Blue Jays at Sportsnet, a lot of people, not me necessarily, but they'll say there's an inherent bias there because the paycheck going to, I don't know, name it, Arash Madani, we'll say, picking on somebody, or Jamie Campbell is from Rogers, and Rogers owns the Blue Jays team. So I won't go into the Steve Simmons stuff except to ask you, and I believe... I know what you're asking. So here's... Yeah.

Let me try and put the lie to this once and for all. Because by you saying that, by Steve Simmons saying that, by anybody else saying that, that is the ultimate insult to Arash Madani, Jamie Campbell, Bob McCowan, Shai Davidi, name any number of 15 or 20 people we have covering the Blue Jays who are extraordinarily good at what they do and have never been told at any time what to write or say about the Blue Jays other than as we say to them about anything they write to be fair and to be balanced which by the way Steve Simmons could take a a note from but we have never influenced what they write and And if you want proof of that, listen to Bob McCowan, read Shai Davidi. These guys are the best in the business. And I don't

care if you insult me and say that I do it, which I don't, but you are insulting some of the best writers we have. And sadly on the Blue Jays beat now, there are very few, there are almost no newspaper writers that travel with the team anymore. Because of the economics of the media business, it has come down to us and a few, maybe a few people from TSN, a few people from the athletic. So we are the place that you're going to get the best Blue Jays information. And look at the range of voices that we have on all our platforms,

and I defy you to find any time where we are shilling for the Blue Jays. Okay, so the content remains unbiased, but I have a question about the time allotted to each. For example, before there was any involvement Rogers had with... So the CFL, the big CFL TV contract is with TSN. And the Argos used to be owned by Bell Media.

I know there's some new change there. But would you, for example, would you ever give less time to the CFL coverage because it's owned by the other guys? We don't. We give the CFL, and particularly,

and I've talked to our staff about this, if we're not covering the stories that are most important to our fans, then we're not doing a good enough job. And I happen to believe the CFL is incredibly important to the fabric of the Canadian sporting landscape. Having said that,

do we have a show dedicated to the CFL? No, we don't because we don't own those rights. Do we make sure that we're covering the CFL? Absolutely. And when the CFL is the top story, I'd like to think it's the top story on Sportsnet Central when it should be. Now, in this marketplace, we're not in the business, as the other guys are, of blowing the tires of the Argos. And we'll tell it a little bit slightly differently than they do. And by the way, I don't know if I hear the same criticism about TSN and the Argos, but they certainly have a much greater reason to alter the

way they cover it. And I would not ever accuse them of doing that. I think they probably give the Argos slightly more coverage, especially on the radio stations, than the Argos probably deserve based on their attendance figures. But, hey, that's part of what we all do. We're all trying to promote the properties. Of course it's a business.

And that's what people forget. It is a business. Okay. Last two things. Pitch talks, hoop talks, puck talks, these things often featured many sports net personalities. Why are they no longer permitted to appear at those events? One major reason, and that's that, and I think those events are great,

but when they started broadcasting them, when they started putting them on Twitter and video, then they're using our talent, not only to draw people to the event, but then they're competing with us with our own talent. And that was the turning point. There were lots of discussions about whether or not we should allow our people in the, in these events, uh, before they started broadcasting them. My feeling at the time was, hey, it's good promotion for the network. It's good promotion for the individuals. They weren't getting paid particularly a lot of money to do it,

but they all, for the most part, liked doing it. But as soon as they got into broadcasting, then they're actually competing with us, And that was a non-starter. Yeah. So once Toronto Mic'd becomes like all sports all the time, we'll have to ban the Sportsnet personnel from Toronto Mic'd because I'll be deemed competition as well. Okay. The last thing here, because we heard from Jody Vance earlier,

and she has nothing but extremely positive things to say about you. And I'm going to ask you about something here that I noticed. Fan 590 put out a picture. It looked like The Last Supper, but Bob's in the middle. And then this is back before Andrew Walker went to Vancouver. So he was still there. But still, it doesn't change, actually. But everybody at the table, what I noticed, because it was very clear, is that everybody was a white guy.

All white guys. Is it important to you that the people with daytime shifts at the Fan 590, that the people represent the diversity of Toronto, which is the most diverse city in the world, I think? Diversity is incredibly important to us. And I don't think looking at just one of our platforms is the way to judge us on diversity. It's been really important to us to get more women in the business, to get more people from different backgrounds into the business. Having said that, you know, I've heard your criticism before. Oh, you have, haven't you? It's not unwarranted. Um, I think we need to do a better job to make

sure that on radio, particularly there are more voices. Um, having said that, uh, I've been approached, I've probably done dozens and dozens of interviews, uh, hundreds of interviews with people who want to get into the business. And it's incredibly rare for a young woman to come into my office and say what she really wants to do is sports radio. And I'm not sure why that is. I think maybe it's that the reality of our media is that television pays more. pays more. And the other thing is sports radio is probably open to more criticism for the anchors than any other part of the media, because it's a very personal medium. And that may be one of the reasons, but it's something that we're trying to work with. And I think you've seen Dave Cadeau, our program director, work at getting more,

particularly female voices on the air. And so in your opinion, under your internal budget, obviously, you have the best radio hosts you could find working at the Fan 590. I'd like to think so. And, you know, those radio hosts will evolve over time.

But I'm really pleased with the fan. And they have survived the onslaught of competition. They're still number one by a long shot in this marketplace. And that's tough to do. It's tough to be number one for as long as they have been. Scott, I took a lot of extra time, and I owe you. And thanks so much for doing this. Enjoy your trip to Australia and whatever's next for you.

Thanks very much for doing this. This was a great pleasure for me. And that brings us to the end of our 385th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Scott is at Moore. Scott Moore. Our friends at Great Lakes. Scott is at Moore, Scott Moore. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Propertyinthe6.com is at

Raptors Devotee and Paytm is at Paytm Canada. See you all next week. Thank you.