Satellite radio merger would benefit sports fans

There's a good chance the world of satellite radio in Canada will become a lot smaller very soon, which means it could become a lot bigger. And that would be good news for those who prefer to get their sports extra-terrestrially rather than through the old terrestrial radio system.

While both Sirius Canada and XM Radio Canada won't divulge anything more than their intentions to do what's best for their respective companies, sources say they will soon follow the path of their American counterparts and merge into one gigantic satellite radio company.

When it happens, sports fans will no longer have to choose between brands. Right now, a hard-core hockey fan has to decide whether he wants NHL play-by-play as offered by XM or the NHL talk supplied by Sirius. If you want to hear both NFL and NHL games, you either have to buy both or decide which one is more important to you.

That could all change with a merger that many say makes a lot more economic sense than operating two systems in a country one-tenth the population of one that couldn't support both.

Right now, XM seems more open to a marriage.

``The reality is that there have been discussions," said XM Canada president and CEO Michael Moskowitz . ``We will ultimately do what’s right for our shareholders.

``I think there are tremendous synergies … to help drive profitability, but we need to do the right thing.

We can succeed alone, but we believe there are synergies that could enhance this."

XM is the Phil Mickelson to Sirius' Tiger Woods, without all the girlfriends. While XM has about 500,000 subscribers in Canada, Sirius has more than 800,000.

That may explain why Sirius is a little less enthusiastic about a union, at least for publication.

``Our overall subscription base is considerably larger than XM’s and our shareholders and our board are pretty pleased with our success to date," said Sirius Canada president and CEO Mark Redmond. ``We’re just going to continue running our business until we see that there are opportunities to increase shareholder value, whatever that potential may be."

Sports, of course, constitute a small part of a satellite radio world driven mainly by music. But it plays a large role.

Redmond says its sweaty offerings, from football to NASCAR to general sports talk, ranks in the top third of what subscribers want. Moskowitz says XM's NHL games and hockey talk are consistently among the top 10 draws for customers.

A merger could kill some of those Canadian-based sports channels -- after all, what's the point of a merger without some trimming? --  but there will still be plenty to go around. If there's a downside to a possible merger, it's that prices could go up.

They did in the U.S. and, generally, less competition usually dictates a larger price tag. Still, for sports fans a merger could be a victory.

OTHER STUFF: XM has added former NHLer Darren McCarty to its hockey talk roster. He'll appear weekly on the afternoon Power Play show. ... The National Film Board is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the classic hockey film The Sweater by Roch Carrier and Sheldon Cohen. You can watch it at nfb.ca, or see it here.

 

Curling sweeps weekend ratings

While it's a given which sport will draw the greatest number of Canadian eyeballs at the Vancouver Olympics -- that's hockey, if you just arrived from Zimbabwe -- there is equally no doubt about which sports is going to be a close second.

That's curling, which produced awesome ratings for last week's Olympic trials. Sunday's men's final, for example, hit 1.2 million even though the game wasn't exactly a cliff-hanger. TSN calls it a record and even though just about everything is a record under the new ratings system, the audience numbers were impressive.

When curling pre-game shows can attract more than 400,000 viewers, you know you've got something. TSN got an extra benefit from its curling coverage: SportsCentre .

Here are the top-rated weekend sports shows in English Canada, according to BBM Canada overnight ratings: SportsCentre drew 381,000 viewers on the heels of Saturday's women's final.

1. NHL, Caps-Leafs/Canes-Sens/Thrashers-Habs, Saturday, CBC: 1,758,000

2. Curling, Olympic trials men's final, Sunday, TSN: 1,213,000

3. Curling, Olympic trials men's semifinal, Saturday, TSN: 843,000

4. Curling, Olympic trials women's final, Saturday, TSN: 832,000

5. NHL, Wild at Canucks, Saturday, CBC: 818,000

6. NFL, Early games, Sunday, CTV: 802,000

7. Curling, Olympic trials women's semifinal, Friday, TSN: 729,000

8. NHL, Hockey Night In Canada pre-game show, Saturday, CBC: 641,000

9. NFL, Late games, Sunday, Citytv: 585,000

10. NFL, Eagles at Giants, Sunday, TSN: 566,000*

11. Curling, Olympic trials men's final pre-game show, Sunday, TSN: 415,000

12. Curling, Olympic trials women's final pre-game show, Saturday, TSN: 406,000

13. NFL, NFL Countdown, Sunday, TSN: 291,000

14. Skiing, Men's Super-G, Saturday, CBC: 188,000

15. NFL, Late games, Sunday, Sportsnet: 169,000

* NBC viewers not calculated

OTHER STUFF: For sale: One Tiger-cam. Overused, but still in good working condition. Warning: Focuses only on Tiger Woods. Call NBC Sports. ... Still operating, though, is CBC's Burke-cam. Does the network honestly think hockey fans are interested in watching Leafs GM Brian Burke's reaction to what's happening on the ice? ``Hey, Martha, come see this? Brian Burke's sitting down!" ...  TSN's curling crew deserves credit for not trying to hype Glenn Howard's chances in Sunday's men's final. When Kevin Martin grabbed a big early lead, they all agreed that Howard was in big trouble. ... Shameless plug of the week: Don Cherry shilling for his fight-filled hockey videos during Saturday's intermission orgy of self-promotion.

The Score's Drafted: One guy's dream come true

I'm still not sure if The Score's Drafted: The Search for Canada's Next Sportscaster was a unique way of hiring staff or a thinly disguised excuse to let a sponsor (Gillette) plug its products in the middle of a show week after week.

But Drafted made for pretty good television at times, especially when it demonstrated that being a sportscaster isn't as easy as it looks. And any project that attracts more than 3,000 entries certainly served to raise The Score's profile.

The winner of the series is Paul Brothers, who gets a full-time job out of the deal and some sort of contract to plug Gillette products. Apparently, with Tiger Woods on the outs, sponsors are looking everywhere.

For Brothers, who beat out four other finalists Tuesday night, it's a dream come true.

``It's the culmination of a 15-year journey," says the 28-year-old native of Bishop's Falls, Newfoundland, a town of 3,000 he says is so small you have to leave town to buy socks. ``I’ve wanted to be a sportscaster for a long time."

The journey began when he launched an FM radio station at his high school. After Ryerson University rejected him as a candidate for its radio-television program, Brothers worked in radio and television news before landing a job as a videographer for MuchMusic in Halifax.

He enjoyed the jobs, but says they couldn't fill his ``passion bucket" the way sportscasting could. A big Bob Cole fan, Brothers says, ``I probably know more about sportscasters than I do about athletes."

He's pretty familiar with one athlete, though: his girlfriend is Jillian Mouzar, a member of the reigning national mixed curling team.

Brothers was laid off last November and has been looking for work ever since. He accepted a job selling insurance, but changed his mind after his father told him he was meant for better things.

Through it all, he never gave up on his dream to be a sportscaster and that's when The Score came along. Like most of the contestants, he showed some rough edges (no doubt easily treatable with any Gillette skin-care product) but stood out for his down-home personality.

The Score says he'll be on the air soon, though his role hasn't been specified.We can presume that he'll be clean-shaven and have supple skin.

THE MADNESS CONTINUES: The NBA announced Wednesday that CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer will be ``a guest tweeter" for the league's Twitter feed during Thursday's Wizards-Celtics game. It didn't explain why. ... Canadians who enjoyed the work of Peter Gammons on ESPN baseball broadcasts won't get an opportunity to see him next season. Gammons is now with MLB Network and NESN. ... November was a great month for the Canadian Football League online. The league reports that its website registered more than 1 million unique visitors in November, a record for cfl.ca. In all, visits were up 78 per cent over last November. Add that to soaring television ratings and 2009 was a very, very good year for the CFL, the Toronto Argonauts excepted.

News Media vs. The Leagues: The Battle Continues

If you've been wondering how that West Indies-Australia cricket test series has been going, you won't be able to find out by reading the Toronto Star. Nor will you be able to get results from any other Canadian newspaper.(For those who haven't been able to find out what's happening, the second test ended in a draw Tuesday.)

The reason you can't get newspaper coverage here is that the never-ending battle between mainstream news outlets and sports leagues has been ratcheted up once again. At issue are Cricket Australia's demands for accreditation, which offended the likes of The Associated Press so much that the news outlet has pulled the plug on coverage. Since The Canadian Press relies on AP for news from abroad, that means Canadian newspapers are part of the boycott, which also includes Reuters and Agence France-Press.

``The AP would be our normal provider of such coverage and we have not looked to alternate sources," Canadian Press sports editor Neil Davidson told The Star. ``The issues that concern The Associated Press also trouble us, so we respect and support their stand."

If this story sounds familiar, the news agencies boycotted the 2008-09 Australian cricket series involving South Africa and New Zealand.

In short, Cricket Australia has demanded the right to see the news agencies' list of clients in case it wants to deny photos and news to any newspaper it deems unworthy. It also wants limits on the use of text and photos on newspaper web sites.

The agencies, rightfully so, declined to comply. If news providers start knuckling under to these kinds of demands, they'll find themselves on the slippery slope to oblivion.

So, if you want results, you pretty much have to go online or -- and this is pertinent -- go to the Cricket Australia website.

While this may seem irrelevant to all but cricket fans in North America, the fact is that there's an uneasy truce in this part of the world over restrictions on the coverage of hockey, baseball, football and basketball. But a battle over who gets to show what isn't far off.

CP, and member newspapers such as The Star, haven't signed agreements with the NHL, NBA or Major League Baseball because they can't agree to limitations on coverage -- specifically on what's allowed to be posted on web sites.

``The Canadian Press has never signed a sports credential that would prevent us from carrying out what we feel is our traditional and legitimate right to cover a sports team," says CP editor-in-chief Scott White. ``We think it's wrong for a league to say we can do whatever we want in print, but for digital reporting and newsgathering, there are certain restrictions."

The leagues haven't banned anybody from covering games and, frankly, there's not much chance they ever will because they're not dumb enough to cut off all the free publicity the mainstream media provide. But they aren't likely to bend far on what they see as an invasion of their turf.

The leagues make big bucks off their web sites -- MLB brings in $400 million U.S. every year from its web operations -- and don't want anyone treading on their territory. That's bunk, says White.

``I would strongly suggest any coverage by traditional media only drives traffic to the `official' sites because fans are sophisticated enough to know there are different types of information on a team site vs. a news site," he says. ``Fans want both."

But they also would love some day to be the sole source of sports highlights, video, photos and news. Kudos to those trying to fight that.

THE NUMBERS GAME: Last week's Buffalo Bills game in Toronto fared well for Rogers Sportsnet, with an average audience of 524,000 tuning in to what was a pretty dull exhibition of football. ... Monday's Thrashers-Leafs game pulled in 711,000 to Sportsnet, outpointing Monday Night Football on TSN by 140,000 viewers.v

It's hockey's turn at the top of the sports ratings again

Now that the CFL playoffs are out of the way, hockey has reclaimed its rightful place as the top audience draw in this country.

While the strength of hockey ratings is seldom a surprise, Friday night did provide one. CBC's coverage of one of the Montreal Canadiens' frequent celebrations of their history drew 1.2 million viewers -- more than the game that followed it.

Maybe it was Viggo Mortensen who kept viewers glued to their seats.

The other shocker was that the  ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on Jimmy ``The Greek" Snyder pulled in an average of 327,000 viewers Saturday night on TSN. That was 124,000 more than the Raptors game that followed managed to attract.

 Here are the most-watched sports broadcasts on English-language television for the past weekend, according to BBM Canada overnight ratings.

1. NHL, Maple Leafs at Bruins, Saturday, CBC: 1,453,000

2. NHL, Montreal Canadiens centennial ceremony, Friday, CBC: 1,203,000

3. NHL, Bruins at Canadiens, Friday, CBC: 1,101,000

4. NHL, Flames at Sharks, Saturday, CBC: 810,000

5. NFL, Late games, Sunday, Citytv: 633,000

6. NFL, Early games, Sunday, CTV: 615,000

7. NFL, Vikings at Cardinals, Sunday, TSN: 539,000*

8. Curling, Roar of the Rings, Sunday, TSN: 524,000

9. NHL, Hockey Night In Canada pre-game, Saturday, CBC: 523,000

10. NFL, Sunday night pre-game, Sunday, TSN: 457,000*

11. Curling, Road of the Rings, Sunday, TSN2: 333,000

12. Documentary, ESPN 30 for 30 (Jimmy the Greek), Saturday, TSN: 327,000

13. NBA, Raptors at Wizards, Friday, TSN: 219,000

14. NFL, Late games, Sunday, Sportsnet: 217,000

15. Speed skating, World Cup, Saturday, CBC: 213,000

16. NBA, Raptors at Bulls, Saturday, TSN: 203,000

* NBC viewers not calculated

CHANGES AT CFRB: Veteran sports announcer Rick Hodge, who joined CFRB last year, is out in what's been described as ``a parting of the ways," which usually means the station decided it wanted to part with somebody. Former Sportsnet/FAN 590 talker Mike Toth is filling in until RB decides what to do. ... Here's another amazing fact about the Grey Cup: It was the most-watched television show in the country last week and that applied in the Toronto-Hamilton region, where it attracted 875,000 viewers. That was almost double the number who watched last Wednesday's Montreal-Toronto hockey game in this area (454,000 of the 1.4 million who tuned into TSN's coverage.)

FAN boss Nelson Millman heads to Sportsnet, Mike English heads out

Wednesday marked a day of some big developments in the Rogers sports family.

Nelson Millman, the man who piloted The FAN 590 through its first 15 years of existence, is moving over to Rogers Sportsnet.

The sports channel confirmed Wednesday that Millman, who was a vice-president and general manager at the all-sports radio station, will be taking the title of executive producer of studio productions. That means he'll be overseeing everything that Sportsnet produces in-house, from Sportsnet Connected to hockey pre-game shows.

He will replace news director Mike English, who is now out of a job.

``We are all stunned," said one Sportsnet staff member.

Millman, who has spent 37 years on the radio side of the business, will be handling television for the first time. That sounds like a monumental task, but Millman says he's prepared for it.

``The platform for delivery is entirely different, but it's still about performance, presentation and entertainment," said Millman, who will also continue to run the CTV-Rogers Olympic consortium's radio operations. ``I'm facing a pretty big learning curve, but change is never a bad thing."

So what does this all mean? Like most of Rogers media properties, both the FAN and Sportsnet were hit hard by the recession. Millman says he wanted a change. It's possible he may have wanted that change to get away from the pressure of trying to make a business work in a tough economy.

As for English, most likely he was ousted for the same reason most people in his position lose their jobs: the ratings weren't good enough.

That's a problem Millman will now face, and one that English's predecessors faced. It won't be easy.

Millman takes over at Sportsnet on Dec. 7. His replacement hasn't been announced, but he or she will also have some big challenges.

A great end to a great TV year for the CFL

Sunday was a pretty good day for the Canadian Football League, even if its public image took a hit with the revelation that some its teams can't count to 13. Not only did the Grey Cup game score the highest ratings of anything on Canadian television this year -- 5 million plus on TSN and another million on French-language RDS -- but some of the programming surrounding the game hit lofty heights, too.

An average of 2.2 million people watched the half-hour pre-game show, a number that ranks with ratings king Hockey Night In Canada. Even more amazing, an average of 374,000 souls watched the five-hour pre-pre-game show Sunday afternoon. Taped coverage of the CFL awards pulled in more than 200,000 viewers.

It was a good weekend all-around for Canadian football, with the Vanier Cup attracting 399,000 viewers on TSN despite some awful technical glitches and generally spotty coverage.

The weekend capped an amazing year for the CFL, which appears to be the sport that has benefitted most from the new ratings system. While all sports ratings are up with the new personal people meters, the CFL's are way up.

As for the reasons, that's pretty much a guess. It could be that the old system missed a lot of CFL fans, many of whom apparently were hiding their interest in Canadian football as if it were a crack addiction. But, assuming the ratings system is accurate -- and that always requires a leap of faith -- CFL numbers have been consistently at or near the top all season.

And that means TSN and the league will have some pretty strong ammunition when they talk to sponsors about the 2010 season. It also must have them dreaming of what could be if the Toronto Argonauts could get their act together again.

Here are the top-rated English-languge sports broadcasts of the past weekend, according to BBM Canada overnight ratings.

1. CFL, Grey Cup, Alouettes vs. Roughriders, Sunday, TSN: 5,087,000

2. CFL, Grey Cup Countdown to Kickoff, Sunday, TSN: 2,200,000

3. NHL, Caps-Habs/Bruins-Sens/Flames-Avs, Saturday, CBC: 1,783,000

4.  NHL, Canucks at Oilers, Saturday, CBC: 1,202,000

5. NFL, Patriots at Saints, Monday, TSN: 1,002,000

6, NFL, Early games, Sunday, CTV: 735,000

7. NFL, Late games, Sunday, Citytv: 472,000

8. NHL, Hockey Night In Canada pre-game, Saturday, CBC: 644,000

9. Figure skating, Skate Canada gala, Saturday, CBC: 425,000

10. CIS, Vanier Cup, Queens vs. Calgary, Saturday, TSN: 399,000

11. CFL, Grey Cup pre-game, Sunday, TSN: 374,000

12. NBA, Suns at Raptors, Sunday, CBC: 334,000

13. NBA, Raptors at Celtics, Friday, TSN: 223,000

14. CFL, Players Awards, Saturday, TSN: 212,000

15. NFL, Steelers at Ravens, Sunday, TSN2: 205,000*

16. Skiing, Aspen women's GS, Saturday, CBC: 199,000

* NBC viewers not calculated

The pretty good and pretty bad of Grey Cup weekend

The 2009 Grey Cup will go down in history for no other reason than for demonstrating the importance of mathematics. Counting to 12 apparently isn't something that should be taken for granted.

As for counting, I kind of lost count of how many hours TSN's Grey Cup coverage lasted. Or was it days?. Some of it was very good and some not so much. Here are the observations that didn't make the cut for my Monday dead-tree column.

THE PROUDFOOT STORY: Rogers Sportsnet's Arash Madani's piece on former CFL defensive back Tony Proudfoot and his battle against ALS was one of the most touching and inspiring reports I've seen. It covered all the bases and never tried to tug at your heart.

YA GOTTA LOVE HIM: ESPN's Chris Berman can be a bit over the top at times (no more baseball, please) but you have to like an American who's got a soft spot for the CFL. He included the Grey Cup in Sunday's NFL Countdown segment on picking the winners and the panel played along, except for Mike Ditka. Da Coach showed as much disdain for the CFL as he did to defensive backs when he played and kickers when he coached.

GREAT STUFF: TSN's piece on a 108-year-old Stampeders fan was one of those feel-good features that a Grey Cup needs. ... Loved those Moments With The Cup spots on TSN, especially Sandy Annunziata and his wacky home videos. ... Inducting late TSN producer Paul McLean into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame reporters wing was a great move. ... Calgary quarterback Henry Burris showed some promise as an interviewer. He wasn't Mike Wallace, but he was entertaining. ... TSN got some pretty good moments from the coaches' pre-game speeches, though these things aren't quite the same as Hollywood portrays them. ... Thank God TSN avoided doing that annual story on the old Baltimore Stallions fans who trek to Grey Cup.

NOT-SO-GREAT STUFF: You know TSN's  pre-game show has gone on too long when you hear a report on how much sleep Anthony Calvillo usually gets and how much he's getting prior to the big game. (Obviously, it was not enough as he didn't wake up until the second half.) ... Rod Smith and Darren Dutchyshen spent far too much time talking during Sunday afternoon's endless pre-game show. And who decided to put the studio in a space that had no more than a couple of dozen fans milling about? ... Maybe it was overload, but TSN didn't cover itself in glory with its Vanier Cup work. The worst moment came at half-time when TSN abandoned the CIS to promote the Grey Cup.

 PLEASE BE GENEROUS: I have had the pleasure of deliving Star Santa Claus Fund gift boxes, something that opened my eyes. Just seeing the kids' reactions to getting something, anything, for Christmas was something I'll never forget. If you can afford anything, please make a donation. Go to http://www.thestar.com/santaclausfund and give generously to The Star's Santa Claus Fund.

Can TSN survive the Grey Cup?

It might be overkill to call this the worst week in TSN's history, but it certainly has been seven days of nightmarish events for the sports channel.

Last Sunday, a technical glitch with a satellite uplink in Regina caused TSN to miss the first five minutes of the West final. Now, these kind of things happen but they seldom happen to TSN, especially in one of its biggest broadcasts of the year. Or so we thought.

On Saturday, disaster struck again as TSN viewers missed chunks of the Vanier Cup. The channel called ot a ``last-minute technical malfunction with transmission equipment at the stadium."

``It was a supplier issue beyond our control," said TSN spokesman Greg McIsaac. Hmm, TSN is victimized two weeks in a row by events beyond their control.

But here's one that was under TSN's control. During Sunday morning's TSN The Reporters with Dave Hodge, a graphic popped up promoting the rest of the channel's lineup for the day. Included was the following: ``2009 Grey Cup, Blue Jays vs. Tigers."

What's going on at Canada's biggest sports channel and how many bottles of Tums were being gobbled before Sunday's Grey Cup game? That would be the one between the Alouettes and Roughriders, not the Jays and Tigers.

A couch potato's guide to the Grey Cup weekend

Stop if you've heard this already, but the Grey Cup game is on TSN Sunday evening. You may have seen a promo or two on TSN, which is setting some sort of record with 17 hours of pre-game buildup starting Saturday morning.

By the time the game is over, TSN will have dedicated almost an entire day to the 97th handing off of Earl Grey's mug. That might be a tad excessive, but it's all part of TSN's master plan to promote the heck out of what will probably be its biggest show of the year. (The world junior hockey tournament is the other contender.)

But if you're looking for a break from three-down football, there are some interesting alternatives that aren't part of the sports mainstream:

FIGHT NIGHT, OR FRIGHT NIGHT: The Fight Network is airing a couple of documentaries that have created a bit of a stir elsewhere. On Saturday (8 p.m.), it will show Strictly Baby Fight Club. It's a British documentary about parents who start training their kids to box at -- get this -- age 4. Nothing like toughening them up early. Next Saturday, it will show Bum Fights, which isn't quite as suggestive as it sounds. Sounding suspiciously like that episode of The Simpsons in which Homer takes on a bunch of skid-row types, the documentary looks at a group of California entrepreneurs who filmed fights between derelicts and then sold about 300,000 DVDs to people who apparently have very little in their lives.

HOCKEY SHOWDOWN: As part of its relentless promotion of all things related to the Vancouver Olympics, CTV is airing a two-part special entitled Sid The Kid V. Alexander The Great. It's a look at what drives these two hockey stars and what makes them so good. It's well-done, but you have to wonder who'll be watching because Part I airs at 7 p.m. Saturday, just when most hockey fans will be watching Hockey Night In Canada.

OLYMPIAN STUFF: The CTV-Rogers Olympic consortium continues rolling out its pre-Vancouver stuff with a one-hour documentary on how athletes are training for the Games. It airs Sunday at 7 p.m. on OMNI1. If you miss it, the consortium will show it again on seven other channels.