The perils of being live and thinking you're on tape

If Rogers Sportsnet reporter Roger Millions was looking for fame, he's found it. His appearance on Sportsnet last night has assured him eternity on YouTube.

Millions started giving a report to the Sportsnet hockey panel, tripped over his words and let out one of those multisyllabic words usually heard in locker rooms. That ended the report, but the best was yet to come.

If you watch the clip, which should carry a parental warning, wait for the looks on the faces of the Sportsnet panel when the cameras go back to them. 

Sportsnet immediately issued an apology.

Subscription to Sportsnet: $2 a month

Reporter's slip: Free

Look on the face of panelist Nick Kypreos: priceless.

Comments

[Tom]

Ummm...clearly it was on tape and the whoever edited it used the wrong take. That was not live.

[majorsportsjunkie]

He was totally on tape, you could tell that there wasn't anyone screaming "we're live we're live" in his ear! Poor guy was hung out to dry by someone. It is kind of cool how Jimmy Kimmel and a bunch of US types are having fun with it. Yet one more example at how Canadians love to get down on a guy and assume the worst when sports fans get a kick out of this stuff and actually feel like they know Roger better and would now be able to say they have "shot the sh&t" together.

[Mike]

Hey Chris, could you look into the Sportsnet Jays schedule and why they're messing with it this year? According to the schedule, for many games this year, parts of the country won't see the Jays but a different game. Like on Tuesday, Ontario and Pacific only get the Jays vs. Texas, while West gets NY vs Oakland and East gets to watch Boston vs. Minnesota.

Does this make any sense to you? I understand that the Jays wouldn't draw that much (maybe 40,000 from west), but I gotta think more people in Alberta are fans of them than the Yankees. Plus, Rogers owns both of them! Why would they cut off exposure to their own team in favour of 2 American ones? You wouldn't see this happening on YES or NESN ever. It took years trying to build up a national fan base and now they tell fans in half the country that you can't watch the games?

I just don't get it. No wonder Sportsnet is so much worse than TSN.

[Josh O'Donnell]

It makes sense to air Red Sox games over Jays games in Atlantic Canada and Quebec. I'm not really sure about the Yankees. I'm surprised they are allowed to do that though. I guess when you own the team, you can broadcast games to as small an area as you like.

Of course you'd never see it on YES or NESN, because they are regional channels. Where NESN broadcasts, the Red Sox are the biggest team. In BC, the Mariners have more fans than the Jays and east of Ontario, the Red Sox do. I'm not really sure about the prairies.

The only reason that it makes sense is because a larger and larger amount of people have digital or satellite now I guess.

If people in NB and Newfoundland who can't get Rogers digital, switch to Bell or Star Choice, then it would be pretty funny though.

[majorsportsjunkie]

Majorsportsjunkie:

Ghe answer is "selling cable" .. they will say, "if you have all four regions you will see all games as we don't black out"...they want you to buy in.

Cash grab. Can you blame them?

[JP]

A lot of people outside Ontario resent being forced to watch a Toronto team over a potentially better game (see: HNIC). The Red Sox are practically the local team here in the Maritimes, and I've lost count of the number of times I've had to miss Sox-Yankees because the Jays were playing the Royals or whatever. I'm surprised they didn't do this earlier.

[Jim F]

Anyone who has digital cable or satellite can easily watch the other Sportsnet channels outside of your region.

I'm happy that Sportsnet is doing this (showing different games on different channels). A lot of people are BASEBALL fans, not exclusively Blue Jays fans, and want to have a choice of flipping between games. What is the point of having the exact same game on four different channels?

Rogers Sportsnet is the rightsholder for all of MLB in Canada, not just the Blue Jays, so they should be showing games for different teams.

[Mike]

The Red Sox might have some fans in the Maritimes but so what. I'm sure the Jays fans there are pretty pissed off about missing a bunch of games this year. Either way some people are not going to be happy.

And again, it's Rogers team!! Their interest are not aligned when they practically admit that their team is not worth watching over the insanely over-hyped Red Sox or Yankees. All they're doing is contributing to the self-fulfilling prophecy around both those teams coming out of the American media.

The big difference with HNIC is they don't bump the leafs to show Boston vs. Chicago or New York vs. Philly. They put on Montreal, another Canadian team, that has roughly the same fan base across the country.

I agree that this is basically solved by digital cable but not entirely. If you have HD, you're only getting the local game on 502 (or whatever the channel on bell is). And why isn't the situation the other way around? Rogers could set it up so that the main region on analog cable shows the Jays but if you have digital, one of the other feeds will pipe in the Red Sox or the Yankees. That way both fan bases can be satisfied and Rogers doesn't alienate their own fans who either can't afford the digital package or don't want to get it just for the games.

[Ted - Baseball fan]

Mike, analog cable on Rogers will likely be disappearing within the next 3 years anyways (to make the bandwidth available for additional channels), so people that still only have legacy analog cable may as well just switch to digital now. Consumer cost between going from analog to digital is minimal (or in some cases, the cost is actually lower, as I actually found out for my account when I switched to digital), and you get way more channels.

As Jim mentioned above, Sportsnet is the rightsholder for all of MLB in Canada, not just the Jays, so they do have a commitment and responsibility to all baseball fans and MLB to highlight all of the teams.
(as Canadians don't legally have access to U.S. national cable MLB rightsholders ESPN, TBS, or the MLB Network (until it gets launched here), all of whom allows U.S. fans to watch MLB teams other than their local one, Sportsnet has to fill this role here).

[Ballfan]

These posts have seemingly gone off on a tangent. While I don't know this for a fact, I am guessing Sportsnet will not be displacing the Jays broadcast on Tuesday night (as suggested by majorsportsjunkie). Simply put, the commercial value of a national broadcast is ... well ... too valuable. More likely then not, the Jays game will be carried from coast-to-coast-to-coast on viewers "home" Sportsnet channel while those that subscribe to more then one Sportsnet service [i.e. digital cable, BellTV (ExpressVu), Shaw Direct (Starchoice) etc] will have the option to watch one of the Jays or the Yankees or the Red Sox.

As for Millions, I feel bad for the guy ... particularly since this mistake seemingly happened back in the studio. But he gets to take the lion’s share of the blame (I guess that comes with the territory of being an on-air personality). However, I wonder if the show producer, director and technicians who are actually responsible for putting the content to air will get anything other then a slap on the wrists.

[Josh O'Donnell]

I got an answer from the Sportsnet. The games that will be "regional" are the 26 that they picked up that aired on CBC last year. They didn't say why they are doing it though.

[Steve Fleschman]

Chris,

I don't understand this blog. You cover sports media. That wasn't even close to being a live shot. They clearly edited on the wrong version. Why wouldn't you call someone and ask? Millions messed up but his mistake was small compared to the giant ones that were committed to allow that version to make it to air.

[Clarkie 90210]

You people are missing the point. We know Roger Millions was not live, but the show was on the air live. That's what Mr. Zelkovich meant. Read the blog before jumping to erroneous, nit picking conclusions. The lesson is always assume that your microphone could be live, particularly in this age of YouTube.

I feel bad for Mr. Millions. He's a respected reporter who does his job, and just slipped up like we all do.