Many many moons ago (mid 80's), during our yearly trip from NW Ontario to Toronto, somehow convinced my Mom to take me all the way out to CFTO (which seemed like a 2 hour subway ride and then transfers to 13 different busses from downtown) to see a taping of a game show. Wish I could remember which one.  It was March but wouldn't air until that October - so when it came to revealing what the contestant won - it was silence because they didn't know what they'd be giving away until later in the year!
Same thing, floor director had us acting like they had just won a gazillion dollars when they came back from the insert.  If I recall correctly, when it finally aired, it was a set of cookbooks!   
But I did get to see myself in the audience for 2 seconds, and was "famous" at school for a day.    LOL

So apparently Bell Media wasn't completely heartless - just ahead of the curve - when they conducted their last round of cuts via conference calls.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/05/business/better-ceo-fires-employees/index.html



 

It will be interesting to see who emerges as the #2 play-by-play voice.  Cuthbert was going to be well suited in the spot if Jim had continued, but with CC in the lead spot now, I'm not sure who the front runner is.  
Harnarayan Singh just doesn't seem strong enough yet to be calling games on a national level yet.  Randorf or like him or not Romaniuk would have been good fits, but they're not an option any more.

My guess is they use Cuthbert mostly on the Toronto 7pm game, Bartlett & Singh on the other games in the early window and use the "western guys" (Shorthouse/Ball) at 10 

Unless there's another defection in the works...

There's ARGUABLY two big events when it comes to the Canadian sports TV calendar. The NHL & CFL championships

I'm trying to think of another announcer that has called a Stanley Cup Final and Grey Cup, aside from Chris Cuthbert.

The list of HNIC #1 announcers is pretty short - the Hewitts, Gallivan, Cole, Hughson - but I don't think they did much football.
Don Whitman was the voice of the CFL for years, but I don't recall him ever doing past a Campbell Conference Final.  John Wells was mostly a host for HNIC.

Unless there's someone from CTV that called the Grey Cup when both CBC & CTV had the game and then worked those couple of weird years in the 80's when CTV did some of the Stanley Cup games, but I seem to recall they usually brought Dan Kelly in for that.  Ron Reusch might be the only possible name, but again I don't recall him doing play by play on a Stanley Cup.

If so, congratulations to Chris on the Canadian Broadcasting milestone.   If not, I'd love to hear who I'm not thinking of.

MJ Vancouver wrote:

turkeytop wrote:

markow202 wrote:

Used to be TV up there with CKCO repeater in Wiarton/Lions Head and was a flamethrower in the analog days!  

So, I suppose it's gone now. When we left that area in 1996 there was local coverage from CTV, CBC, Global and TVO. I guess all of them are gone now. Someone without a dish won't get any TV.

From my understanding Global is still there - they converted the Owen Sound transmitter (channel 4) to digital. Not sure how far it reaches.

I get Global near Port Elgin.  Occasionally handy if recording 2 things on the PVR or if the dish is out. But that's the only signal left here.
 

So I guess this is Cuthbert's chance to call the Final this year?

Unless Hughson is going to return from a studio in Vancouver? 

Bartlett and Galley have been doing a pretty good job remotely (and saving a lot of travel) but you can still tell the difference between someone calling it from in the building . I was watching an NBCSN broadcast & they had to guess if the goalie had been pulled on a couple of occasions, or if a player was back on the bench from an injury.

Makes you wonder if the NHL didn't want to schedule around the Junos or if Rogers didn't try to schedule around them.

Conspiracy theorists would say it's a test for dropping the CBC simulcasts at some point in the rights deal.

That being said, I was surprised they didn't put it on City - but maybe that isn't part of the playoff rights.