1 of 1- RadioActive
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What Does Sports Radio Do After The Shutdown Finally Ends?
You might not think the end of this sports drought would be a big problem and that stations will welcome the return of all the teams. But here’s a scenario that’s not all that implausible. With so much time to make up, there’s an excellent possibility that – if the shutdown ends in the next few months – we could see the Leafs, the Jays, the Raptors, the Argos and the NFL – never mind pro-soccer – all playing at the same time to make up for the lost part of their respective seasons.
I can see how the multiple TSNs and Sportsnet stations on cable might cope with this logjam, but what happens on the more limited radio waves?
Supposing the Leafs, Raptors, Argos and Jays were all playing on the same night at the same time. There aren’t enough sports radio stations in the city to cover them all. And MLB is toying with the idea of playing 7 inning double headers to make up the season. So in one scenario, The Fan would have to take those, leaving the Leafs and the Raptors to TSN. But which one do they cover? Does Bell co-opt CFRB and Rogers interrupt 680 News for the overflow? What about TSN 1150? And what if there are four teams playing at once? Someone gets left out. And how long could this continue?
I suppose in the end they’d prefer that kind of chaos to the endless boredom that’s going on now. (On one of the Fan’s shows this weekend, the topic was “what was your favourite athlete’s best movie role?” Barrel meet “bottom of the”…)
But it still portends the exact opposite problem they have now – too much sports instead of not enough. It's an interesting scenario. I wonder if it will ever come to pass.
- Saul
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Re: What Does Sports Radio Do After The Shutdown Finally Ends?
RadioActive wrote:
You might not think the end of this sports drought would be a big problem and that stations will welcome the return of all the teams. But here’s a scenario that’s not all that implausible. With so much time to make up, there’s an excellent possibility that – if the shutdown ends in the next few months – we could see the Leafs, the Jays, the Raptors, the Argos and the NFL – never mind pro-soccer – all playing at the same time to make up for the lost part of their respective seasons.
I can see how the multiple TSNs and Sportsnet stations on cable might cope with this logjam, but what happens on the more limited radio waves?
Supposing the Leafs, Raptors, Argos and Jays were all playing on the same night at the same time. There aren’t enough sports radio stations in the city to cover them all. And MLB is toying with the idea of playing 7 inning double headers to make up the season. So in one scenario, The Fan would have to take those, leaving the Leafs and the Raptors to TSN. But which one do they cover? Does Bell co-opt CFRB and Rogers interrupt 680 News for the overflow? What about TSN 1150? And what if there are four teams playing at once? Someone gets left out. And how long could this continue?
Let's have this unbearable problem as soon as possible!
- RadioActive
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Re: What Does Sports Radio Do After The Shutdown Finally Ends?
There actually was something this crazy and it happened in the early 80s. The late, great Clint Nickerson, an old friend of mine, was at CJCL during its talk format days and told me this story.
At the time, the station was owned by Telemedia. The only money they really made was from their sports content, and they owned the rights to both the Leafs and the Jays. I’m not sure how it happened, but one night, there was a huge scheduling screw-up and the Jays and Buds were playing on the same night – and had accidentally been scheduled to air on 1430 at the exact same time!
Obviously, that wasn’t possible, so as the supervising producer and the fact the Jays still had priority, Clint made the impossible decision of putting baseball on live, while tape delaying the Leafs until after the Jays were done. (At the time, Tom & Jerry both used the 1430 signal as their on air monitor and they had to be able to hear themselves, so they needed the live coverage.)
Of course, with the length of an average nine inning game, that meant the Leafs wouldn’t make it to air in their home city until well after 10:30 or 11 PM.
Meanwhile, both games were feeding out at the same time on the network, with other stations taking one or the other.
Of course, back then there was no digital storage of anything, which meant that the Leafs had to be put on one hour reel-to-reel tapes. The guy doing the taping was paranoid that the reel would run out just as someone scored a goal and there were questions about how they would play it all back seamlessly without a gap to go from one tape to another.
Needless to say, the entire night was chaos, and the Leafs were not too happy to have their game delayed. And the one thing you can count on is that then-owner Harold Ballard would inevitably have something nasty to say about it, one of many times he threatened to pull the rights to the broadcasts, which was really all that was keeping the place afloat. (The other time came when sports host Earl McRae made a fool of then G.M. Gerry McNamara in a live interview, prompting another threat from Harold - and an unfortunate and totally unfair on-air two week suspension for the sports scribe.)
In the end, after a lot of sweat and confusion, they somehow managed to pull it all off, but I recall Clint – who had a lengthy career in radio and TV – calling it the most confusing day he ever spent in either medium.
And although technology will make it a lot easier now, imagine doing that X4 and you can see how insane it could all get.
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Thread Starter- mace
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Re: What Does Sports Radio Do After The Shutdown Finally Ends?
There was a situation a year or two ago in April where the Leafs, Raptors, Jays and FC were all playing on the same night. Leafs were well into their playoff series, Raptors were just beginning their series. Jays and FC were in the very early stages of their season.
- RadioActive
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Re: What Does Sports Radio Do After The Shutdown Finally Ends?
Seems I wasn't the only one pondering the scenario I asked about to start this thread.
"Teams from specific sports could be encouraged to essentially schedule mini-tournaments involving a group of teams in one location. Teams in the same city could co-ordinate themselves into sharing individual days with staggered starting times. For example, in Toronto, you could have a Saturday with the Raptors at noon, the Jays at three, Toronto FC at 6 p.m. and the Leafs at 8:30."
Toronto Star: Will the professional sports world need a commissioner of commissioners when it returns?
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Thread Starter