Thursday's midseason firing of Bill Watters as hockey analyst on Rogers Sportsnet seemed to indicate that crossover media commentators were going on David Suzuki's list of most endangered creatures great and small. Watters – till last week a member of Sportsnet's Hockey Central panel – does a sports radio program on AM640 in Toronto which directly competes with Rogers's Prime Time Sports in the afternoon drive slot in Toronto. Conflict.
One eminent source said that Watters's demise was the first domino to fall as loyalties were demanded from Rogers and TSN in the run-up to a possible radio war. (Wait, that was us.)
In any event, Scott Moore, president of Rogers Broadcasting, wants us to know that our prediction was a tad alarmist. "We have no issues with TSN personalities on The Fan," Moore wrote in an e-mail. "I can't speak for them, but I would expect that they value the promotion of appearing on the station." The pay cheques are nice, too, no doubt – although sources tell Usual Suspects that the budget for freelancers at the FAN 590 has been significantly cut back recently.
Well, that clears that up. Still, there will be some sorting out of corporate connections if TSN gets its radio station concept off the ground. Hard to see them letting Pierre McGuire or Darren Dreger appear on The Fan or AM640 if the competing networks go the mattresses. Bell/CTV/TSN executives are set to meet this week to discuss the possibilities of a challenge to The Fan. First option is branding CHUM's all-sports radio stations as TSN Radio in markets outside Toronto.
Feaster Famine
Hockey Night In Canada's Hot Stove panel took Calgary interim general manager Jay Feaster to say in his interview with Elliotte Friedman that he wasn't going to trade Jarome Iginla. But Usual Suspects heard Feaster say he didn't have any plans to trade his captain. Plans can change. Big difference.
Talking Heads:
With brutal winter weather coast-to-coast it was a perfect weekend to experience NFL playoffs saturation. As usual with the No Fun League, when all is said and done, much more gets said than done. The NFL Network's pregame show seems to start Thursday, with ESPN breaking out of perpetual pregame analysis on Saturday to begin the Pregame Show with more pregame analysis. (Of course, with the NFL's soaring ratings, why not piggyback on success?) Which opens the door for the motor mouths who broadcast the games themselves. In both Saturday games there was one half of drama and one half of looking forward to Sunday's games. (Sunday's Bears win was a full snooze.)
Blessed relief:
Brett Favre was only mentioned in alternate sentences by prostrate network types instead of at each breath.
So just how much is spoken and who does the talking in the game booth? Funny you should ask because the Wall Street Journal studied the issue this season, analyzing the first 15 minutes of every game from Week 1. And your winner is the CBS pair of Kevin Harlan and Solomon Wilcots, who amassed 189.2 words per minute in the WSJ study. (Even if Harlan's words sound mostly to be from Marv Albert).
Just a few parenthetical thoughts back was the ESPN trio of Chatty Cathys – Mike Tirico, Jon Gruden and Ron Jaworski – at 168.73 wpm. The most taciturn combo was the sterling Sunday night NBC duo of Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth who clocked in at just 137.33 words per minute. (Some soccer announcers don't use that many in an entire half). Speaking of Marv, son Kenny was the least gabby play-by-play guy at 55.4 words a minute.
WSJ provided a little perspective: Pat Summerall and John Madden articulated a Trappist-like 118.2 wpm during Super Bowl XXIV. The sainted Monday Night Football trio of Frank Gifford, Howard Cosell and Don Meredith blathered for 175.5 wpm in a 1979 game. In a stunning surprise, comedian Dennis Miller said only 15.8 wpm in a 2000 broadcast. However, "those words accounted for roughly one million syllables" jabbed the WSJ's Dave Biderman.