Political footballs: If Zirin's following the money, you may as well

A lot of people, not necessarily those left-of-centre, read Dave Zirin from The Edge of Sports, since is kind of a latter-day "I never played the game" type who will give you something to think about.

All that said, it might not be easy to reconcile reading what was in The Washington Times about Zirin working for a lobby group, excuse me, "coalition that claims to give sports fans a voice on Capitol Hill" but is receiving it "initial funding would come from satellite television and other companies that compete with the rival cable industry." That's a little odd coming from someone whose sell is being incorruptible and uncompromised (something not practised under the CTV/TSN/Globe & Mail corporate umbrella, he did not add as a parenthetical dig). Apparently, Zirin hates the Bowl Championship Series that much; he said he's not taking money and just believes what the satellite providers want jibes with getting rid of the BCS, which is propped by Big Cable.

Persons invited to serve on the coalition's main board of directors include Brad Blakeman, a Republican political consultant; Ed Garvey, a lawyer and former executive director of the NFL Players Association; Dave Zirin, the sports editor of the Nation magazine; Gigi Sohn, executive director of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit digital advocacy group; Mark Walsh, the chief executive officer of marketing consultant GeniusRocket.com; and Burt Emmer, a lawyer." (Emphasis mine.)

No doubt some of Zirin's fans are as disappointed as his critics on the right are delighted, just as some Canadian chatterati are stunned about TSN's Brian Williams and Michael Landsberg and globesports.com's Stephen Brunt — along with Carol-Ann Meehan from CTV Ottawa — being Olympic torchbearers. Honestly, it should be in one ear, out the other, really.

Hate to say it, but it's the way of world. It just old-media thinking writ large to think those on the editorial side should be isolated and cut off from the dollars-and-cents side of the equation. It's a sacred cow, and you can't drag along sacred cows, except for that Stephen Brunt is awesome, regardless. Brunt should have benefit of the doubt.

That thinking is a big part of their broken business models; you have all these people working in the media who have never had to figure out whether their product is selling (and Brunt's words sell very well). They're cocooned from supply and demand. It's more honest to have people who are part of selling the Olympics -- do you think for a second it would be in Canada if Big Media wasn't interesting in making a buck off it -- taking part in it. I don't have a problem with it.

It comes back to Chuck Klosterman's line about the media, as a whole, having more ethics and less common sense than the average Joe. The ethics side is you shouldn't be promoting an event you're covering, blah blah blah. For every journo and media junkie pointing this out, though, there are three useful people who would say you're crazy to pass up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be in the Olympic torch run.

The only reason to be irked about CTV putting media personalities in the torch run is that it means fewer athletes (active and past) and community organizers, the essential people in the grand equation get to participate. That and only that is valid.

It's understandable where it's coming from. Williams has been around long enough to get the venerable tag. Brunt is a god walking among mere mortals, as his new book Gretzky's Tears confirms (as a personal branding exercise, this means I will post a review tomorrow). How can they be out there shillin' for the Olympics? As William Houston writes, "They’re supposed to be journalists. They will be at the Olympics as reporters and commentators. They’re expected to be objective and independent. They are not supposed to be part of the Olympic cheerleading torch procession.

"Nevertheless, over the next few months, off they’ll go, boosting the International Olympic Committee and VANOC as they prance across the country, torch in hand."

Independent? As Barney Stinson used to say, Please. Williams works for a commercial network. Brunt, God love him, is the best there ever was, bar none. He's thrived beyond most wildest dreams within an institution like the Globe. It doesn't take a Malcolm Gladwell to know that's a game-changer. It's easier to get noticed. Brunt would be Brunt at the Hamilton Spectator or any place, but not as many people would notice.

Really, with what Brunt, Williams, et al., have done bringing the corporate billboard that is the Olympics home, maybe this their just desserts, the same way a company might send its top-selling sales rep to Hawai'i. Why shouldn't the get it? They lend the the Olympics gravitas, which is a bigger part of its sell than who's going to win the two-man skeleton and all those other events you don't care about for the three years and 348 days in between Olympiads. If anything, they are aware of the optics and know they'll get scrutinized closer by some obsessive media consumers, which might make it more likely they'll be objective and independent come February. (The same can't be said of some people with a lot less talent and self-awareness.)

Look at it this way. Even in journalism, you're selling something, to some extent. You're convincing someone to buy a Globe instead of an Ottawa Sun or Toronto Star, or listen to your podcast instead of the other person's. It's business. People should not get hot and bothered at blending the two, when acting like it's separate is part of why traditional media is struggling.

A businessperson wants to sell something, she visits more clients, whatever. A writer wants to sell something, well, it's exceedingly more difficult, you have to sit down at the keyboard and open a vein, as Red Smith said. A guy who does it as well as Brunt has should be trusted on this one.

Far as anyone should be concerned, we're all compromised to an extent, except for Dave Zirin, who could leave himself open to being called a corporate waterboy. If Zirin seems willing to bend on where the money is coming from to fund a coalition, the rest of you can follow the money. It's called being adult about the whole thing. Go, Canada, Go.

Sportsnet: One suggestion for how it could get it right

Rogers Sportsnet ought to see if it can turn into a hardcore sex channel so gradually that no one even notices.

It's bound to work better than what they've been doing. In a space about 15 minutes late Sunday night during the Philadelphia Phillies' win over the Colorado Rockies, Sportsnet ...

• ... Aired a promo for Game 4 of the American League Division Series between the "never-say-die Twins" and the New York Yankees. The Yankees had wrapped up the series in three games. Sportsnet could not have been expected to know this since the entire series aired on their network.


• Evanka Osmak — who is probably the best anchor they have — plugged a sponsor by saying the fans in frigid Denver could "use a shot of Wiser's to warm up." It is cheesy to plug the sponsor again after it was already introduced.
  
  (Secondly, it is a myth alcohol warms the body. It actually constricts blood vessels. There's an irony an English major pointing this out about something said about a graduate of the Faculty of Applied Science at Queen's University.)
  


• Sportsnet waited oh about 30 seconds after the final out to go to Sportsnet Connected so people could see the same highlights which already had been on every other channel hours earlier. Canadian viewers are just as entitled to see the post-game interviews. Apparently TBS let a clearly audible F-bomb make it to the airwaves.
  
  That was a missed chance to start gradually turning into a hardcore sex channel.
  

This is mainly worth pointing out to say last week's media uproar over Sportsnet keeping the Tigers-Twins tiebreaker game off the air in much of the country and sniffing consumers were at fault for not buying more channels was entirely justified. It's a joke. Chris Zelkovich noted in his Toronto Star column this was a huge screw-you to fixed-income seniors who make up a lot of baseball's viewership. Ball fans are getting screwed over. Please keep in mind Rogers has a lot to do with MLB Network being unavailable in Canada.

A better question from the young old farts is why doesn't Sportsnet stream all playoff games, so ball fans aren't put out when there's a conflict with hockey? Tonight, the Pittsburgh Penguins-Senators game is on the East channel at the same time as Rockies-Phillies. Anyone in Ottawa who has access to only one Sportsnet won't be able to get the ballgame.

Let people register with their account number and go from there, that way they're not giving it away for free. A leading telecom such as Rogers should be able to make it happen. Just a thought.

It feels bad to mention Osmak when 30 other nameless jagovs are responsible for these editorial policies, so-called. For her, it might be like the epiphany Robin Scherbatsky once had: "And that was when your Aunt Robin realized that even the bosses at Metro News One didn't watch Metro News One." That was on Season 1 of How I Met Your Mother, which on tonight as the same time as the baseball game Rogers customers cannot watch.

Hoserdome: Kevin Weekes on 'Hockey Night' cannot be understated

Most of the reporting on Hockey Night in Canada's new hires have focused on Glenn Healy returning to TV and Guy Carbonneau finding a way station to bide time between coaching jobs.

It feels like a significant story is being underplayed. Kevin Weekes, the former goalie who has worked for NHL Network, will be the first Afro-Canadian commentator on HNIC. That matters since it was kind of the last barrier for Canadian sports broadcasters who are visible minority, plus it shows that has finally dawned on CBC Sports that maintaining the illusion that the Canada of 1981 still exists is a sure path to obsolescence.

About a year ago, the Toronto Star's Chris Zelkovich, during a radio interview with my friend Tyler King, said the rub with HNIC is that you know what you're getting. That has two sides.

The NHL has opened a season in Stockholm, a team with seven Swedes has won a Stanley Cup, a player may tweet his own trade and the league is micturating all over antitrust law to keep Jim Balsillie from owning a team and do the bidding of some corporate crooks, but goddamn it, Hockey Night in Canada must sustain an illusion of permanency. It should feel like not all that has much changed since the days of the Original Six.

That has its good qualities, although like in anything, if you do something the same way you did five, 10, 20 years ago, it doesn't mean you're stable, it means you're stuck in a rut.

The flip side is lot of us feel like outsiders looking in on the conversation which takes place every Saturday between a bunch of white guys named Ron, Don and Mike. It feels like a bunch of guys having a bull session down at the Legion in Anytown, Canada, in 1975. That has its pluses, but perhaps that created the vacuum that led to Mike Milbury's idiotic "pansification" comment last season. Granted, Milbury's track record with the New York Islanders suggests his idiocy was a pre-existing condition.

Point being, it is also glaring who HNIC's has put on the air (and don't forget the hue-and-cry when Cassie Campbell pinch-hit as a colour commentator one night three years ago when Harry Neale was snowbound).

Almost every other broadcast outlet i Canada has commentators who are visible minority: Jock Climie and Duane Forde on TSN's CFL package; TSN reporters John Lu, Farhan Lalji and Jermain Franklin; Rogers Sportsnet's Ian Mendes and Paul Jones; Leafs TV/Raptors NBA TV's Adnan Virk; The Score's D.J. Bennett and Cabral (Cabbie) Richards.

Not to put words in anyone's mouth, but HNIC is still the holy grail, even if TSN does a better job of staying current with the NHL. . Perhaps it has changed, but back in the day the 18-year-old who dreamed of doing play-by-play said, "I'm going to be on Hockey Night in Canada," not, "I'm going to be on TSN."

That's why it is huge Weekes has been hired. He has to be judged on his own merits. One could certainly detect a sickly scent of the jockocracy since Weekes is stepping straight from the ice into a TV role (then again, Tie Domi did it three years ago and no one objected, until they actually saw him on the air).

We also know CBC Sports and Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment, Ltd., are oh-so-joined at the hip. MLSE has lost a lot of the generation coming up to other sports.

Ultimately, though, the big positive is that an important door has been opened. Weekes wrote a column in February that talked about Caribbean and Afro Canadians becoming a bigger part of the mainstream in Canada.

"Finance, government, arts, hospitality, community service, medicine, architecture and design, education and media are just a few of the sectors in which we've made inroads but certainly have yet to maximize our growth and impact. We can and must continue to advance in these and many other 'non-traditional' sectors.

"There are countless examples of us paving the way in these sectors: Governor General Michaelle Jean, Toronto Deputy Chief of Police Keith Forde, Executive Chairman of AIC Limited, Michael Lee-Chin, Musician Kardinal Offishall, V.P of Blackmont Capital Steven Conville and retired Toronto Argonauts Player and Current President 'Pinball' Clemons."

Well, what's more mainstream than Hockey Night in Canada? That is why any "great, another goalie getting an analyst job" reactions miss the point.

Related:
New Voices At Hockey Night In Canada (Toronto Sports Media)

DanyWatch: Talking about the game for a change ... but there's a time and place

How about that: On Saturday, when Ottawa Senators designated quitter Dany Heatley dominated in headlines and on sports networks, the Ottawa Citizen dedicated an editorial to sports. Only it was about Dave Smart and the Carleton Ravens!

It is freakin' sweet to see the "Eastern Ontario Ravens" get that kind of love. Carleton could not buy that kind of publicity. When else will Odessa be mentioned in the editorial page of a newspaper in Canada's capital city? Effin' A. It would not do to soak the blanket, wring it out and rant about sports being on the editorial page, or why newspapers still have editorial pages. That seems to be where this is headed. Come along, let's all be contrarian bastards!

First off, the op-ed pages are a huge space-waster. People make up their own minds rightly or wrongly. The Simpsons nailed it 10 years ago when Ned Flanders told Lisa he read everything in the newspaper, "but the opinion page. I don't need to be told what to think — by anyone living."

What Spencer Hall recently said at The Sporting Blog about the death of the general sports columnist goes triple for the op-ed pages. (Pete Toms, always an early adopter, pointed out in conversation a couple years ago there was no reason for him to read a general sports columnist.)

"... the audience is no longer captive. They can roam the internet looking for whatever they like, and if they're under 40, they're not waiting for it to come to them on their doorstep. They are still prisoner to one constant, however: the hunger for quality ... it's not because the audience lost the taste for something necessary. It is because they were making do all along with what they had, and left the instant they got a better offer.

There are practical reasons. Reporters and editors are having a tough time finding enough space for good storytelling. The high cost of paper, for instance, has meant some newspapers have reduced their paper size. The Ottawa Sun recently lost an inch.

Day after day, though, two perfectly good "opens" (newsroom argot for pages with no ads) are tossed away for no good reason other than it's always been done that way. To hell with that. First and foremost, op-ed pages do nothing for advertisers, due to the outdated view advertising and editorial must be separate. Meantime, it is inefficient use of space:

• Editorials: A media outlet's stance can be expressed by betting blending analysis and insight into the articles at the front of the paper. There is a reporter at the Simcoe (Ont.) Reformer, Monte Sonnenberg, who has always worked on that principle. Monte always had his facts together while realizing it is more fun and rewarding for all if the reporter lends a certain philosophical bent to the process (to borrow Heatley's favourite word). .
  
  Monte won a National Newspaper Award recently in the local reporting category. It was not by happenstance. It was something he built up to by refining his pitch.
  
  
• Letters to the editor: Put them on the Internet or direct users to message boards which is what newspapers should have started doing in 1995. Instead, they got started about 10 years late trying to democratize the media and even then, stopped about a quarter of the way.
  
  
• Opinion columists: 95 per cent of the time, any reader worth having knows what the opinion columnist is going to say just by the headline. Most just preach to the converted. To borrow some Flandersese, they have become that gosh-darn pre-dilly-ictable. It is the media equivalent of plain white bread with a glass of water for dippin'.
  

You see the irony. The era of the general sports columnist is over because people can get sports opinions so fast and furious. Yet newspapers, and the Citizen is not being singled out here because it happens quite often, are putting sports opinions in place of news coverage. They are chasing a percentage they cannot catch. What a waste.

Normally, what the Citizen puts in editorials would not matter much to me. It only came to attention via cishoops.ca. That kind of proves the point. As Hall says, the model now for opinion writing is "a devoted specialist ... or even a tangent-hopping single-topic writer ... or heaven forbid, writers who didn't write about sports at all."

An editorial on a sports really should be reserved for when it will affect people who don't follow sports. A good example is when politicians are mulling whether to spend taxpayers' money on a new stadium (and isn't that a going concern in Ottawa right now?)

This more about the mentality, than the Citizen's choice of topic. It was ballsy for it to break the Hockey Reflex. It was a bit of an oasis at a time when the hockey sweater Canada will wear at the Vancouver Olympics is a lead story on a CBC national newscast (take it away, TSM).

There is the argument that media outlets should be more responsive to readers' issues. The Globe & Mail's profile of thetyee.ca's founder, David Beers, mentioned how it once "posted a request for donations, with the twist that donors could vote for which political issues they would like the site to cover, with the money divided accordingly. Over $10,000 poured in."

In Ottawa's case, everyone and her/his cat allegedly wanted to hear about what's to be done with this Dany Heatley. All summer, anything Heatley-related has usually been one of the most popular stories on ottawasun.com.

It does not matter that nothing new whatsoever came out of Friday's clusterfudge. It is even more irrelevant that expecting anything of worth to come out of an athlete's conference call is absurd and anyone who tried to trade off should feel ashamed. Dany Heatley needs to ask his agents what his opinion is on toothpaste, so why are we wasting our beautiful minds hanging on his every word? There is still a far greater audience for Senators non-news than there is for Canadian university basketball. And that's fine.

It was wicked to read about the Eastern Ontario Ravens. Never mind that someone working for free coined the phrase "flinty Eastern Ontario toughness" before the Kingston trio of Rob Saunders, Stu Turnbull and Aaron Doornekamp completed their eligibility. It can also be excused that Syracuse was not included among the big-time Big East basketball schools, even though it did have NBA lottery pick Jonny Flynn playing for them last season.

This is Dave Smart's due, for certain:

"There is the sportsmanship that the team shows in its wins and rare losses. And there is also the pedigree of the players. If you look down the Ravens roster, you will see, not unlike other years, that of the 14 listed players on the program, only two are from outside Eastern Ontario. They are not the Carleton Ravens but the Eastern Ontario Ravens. They are players grown at home.

" ... Smart suffers no fools, accepts no mistakes, will not countenance any bad sportsmanship on the court. He rides referees like cowboy on a bronco. He is single-willed and accepts nothing less from his players. You must be a patient man to play for Smart but the rewards are great and he garners respect from his charges. He makes his players better people."

OK, so here's a simple answer about the article that seemed to be the spur under one's fingernail: Carleton cannot buy that kind of publicity.

Of course, that's because op-ed pages don't bring in any advertisers and don't add any value. You see the artificially created dilemma.

He's a Dowbboy who lives in a bubble

You sort of have to admire what Bruce Dowbiggin has done with the place since he moved into William Houston's former digs as sports media critic.

Dowbboy has done a reno. The place has been converted to one part bully pulpit to use on people who didn't graduate from his school of journalism. The other half is an echo chamber for people who want reassurance they are not living through a media revolution.

• Erin Andrews calling 911 because a couple paparazzi were skulking around her home after dark "demonstrates that the ESPN star ... clearly has no idea how people in her business chase a story." (July 31)


• The Score tweaking its format to focus on "the chatter, the personalities" means that the network "has in mind what TMZ and Deadspin and a raft of social websites have done to redefine the relationship between those being covered and those doing the covering," (Aug. 5) since those sites are so, so evil for giving people what they want to see. Plus there are all those stupid young people who want to know whom Reggie Bush is dating.
  


• Most recently, Chicago Blackhawks hockey star Patrick Kane being arrested and charged with assault last weekend "was not exactly a shining moment for the integrity of bloggers" (Aug. 12) because people joked, passed judgment and gossiped about it on blogs, Twitter, Facebook and the like, just like they have always joked, passed judgment and gossiped.

It's pretty clear: Dowbiggin's generation has a monopoly on good taste and substance. We get it.

Sorry to pop that secure little bubble of boomer conceit, but that is hogwash. Next to no one is prattling on about the "blogosphere" in 2009, really. The two sides came together. They locked swords. No one really got anywhere. They called a truce. Eventually, they realized they actually had a lot in common, kind of like Canada and the U.S. since the end of the War of 1812.

One should be grateful for the good sports journalists who share the experience extends to their audience. It might have been best to let this slide for that reason alone. Besides, who knows what if any overlap there is between who reads this and who reads a sports media column on globesports.com. Nevertheless, batter up:

"While Usual Suspects commiserates with Andrews' fragile state of mind after being spied upon, the tape demonstrates that the ESPN star, who has struggled to overcome the reputation as a sideline cupcake, clearly has no idea how people in her business chase a story. Gated community or not, reporters are supposed to go and knock on doors of celebrities, relatives of car-crash victims, defrauded investors, fraud artists and, yes, people who’ve had their privacy violated. It’s called getting the other side of the story."

Erin Andrews calling 911 to get rid of some paparazzi could have had more to do with only wanting the good stuff which comes with being famous during a period when she was also feeling vulnerable.

"Levy has in mind what TMZ and Deadspin and a raft of social websites have done to redefine the relationship between those being covered and those doing the covering. With Twitter and camera phones, fans can engage their heroes in new and - sometimes - frightening ways for traditionalists ... It also means putting younger people on the air who may not have experience but do connect with the target audience.

"... And having both Cabbie (Cabral Richards) and Al Strachan working in the same format is often too jarring a concept to contemplate for Usual Suspects."

Frightening for traditionalists? Too jarring? That's not an M.P., that's a Y.P, your problem. There also seems to be an assumption that everyone in that 18-34 demographic is interested in whom is dating whom and what Chris Bosh Tweeted. Personal experience suggests the contrary.

There are many sports writers born after 1970 who can go in depth about a topic with humour and wit, and without putting themselves above the audience. Just to a name a few, there are Jeff Pearlman, Jonah Keri, Kurtenblog, Jerry Brewer at the Seattle Times , and so on. The same goes for the writers in their 20s, like those at cisblog.ca (present company excluded).

Then there's those bad, bad bloggers unleashing a "torrent of abuse" on poor Patrick Kane:

"The question of whether independent bloggers should have equal status with mainstream media is a hot topic in the industry. But the alleged Patrick Kane robbery and battery of a cabby was not exactly a shining moment for the integrity of bloggers. The release of the police charges Monday morning (actually, it was Sunday) brought an immediate torrent of abuse in the blogosphere for Kane, who was accused of beating a hapless Buffalo cabby for a 20-cent tip. Before Kane could explain his side, sites were saying 'How could Kane be this stupid?...

"Patrick Kane is a stuck-up, rich, spoiled, bratty punk... this punk kid needs a ass beating... The best possible light for Kane is that he is a mean drunk, a guy who is not above physically abusing a 62 year old man after a stupid prank went awry.' You get the flavour."

That is what people do when hit with bits of uncomfortable news. They make jokes. The cracks people post on Twitter are in the same ballpark with the sick jokes people told after the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, when I was nine. It is the culture, for good or ill.

With respect to sports discussion, what Dowbiggin seems unwilling to reconcile is that the barriers have come down. That's TS for anyone who feels threatened (note that the good ones do not).

With regard to only bloggers looking bad on the Kane story, please. Some would say the thrust of the headlines on James Mirtle's post on Monday and Steve Simmons' Sun Media column on Tuesday were virtually identical: "Patrick Kane: A reputation ruined in an instant" and "No doubt Kane will pay; In court of public opinion, young star's reputation is tarnished by cabbie incident."

That is not to disagree with either Mr. Mirtle or Mr. Simmons. The younger cross-platformer and the older columnist (who does some TV) each said his piece very well and anyone is free to agree or disagree. It's simply that there is no us and them, and it's tiresome to have the "blogosphere" being treated as a bogeyman.

Mirtle also linked to a piece from Second City Hockey which cut to the heart of how "the Kane story ... could be useful in shattering some stories and myths we tell ourselves":

"The big one is 'hockey players are different.' No, they're not. Sorry. You know why you don't see as many athlete/criminal stories about hockey? Because there's less attention. There's less people following them to clubs, recognizing them, flashing pictures on their phones. The gossip pages tend to stay away, because no one cares about hockey players. But to suggest these guys are a different breed, that's asinine. They're rich, young kids, and those can add up to be bad combinations ... These guys are not angels, they're just people. People with freakish DNA and more money than you or I. Sure, maybe there are less of these stories in the NHL than other sports, but it's percentage points, not a wide chasm."

That might come closer to the truth than anything else published on the subjuct of "20 Cent." Hey, guess what? It was on a blog. If anyone had that kind of nuanced take in a newspaper, it passed by like a warm summer day.

Perhaps Kane and the Senators' situation with Dany Heatley each belie the culture of exceptionalism that is part of Canada's Hockey Reflex.

One would think Dowbiggin, having written a really well-received book called The Meaning of Puck, might take this into account instead of playing shoot-the-messenger. It's like what a film critic (this came across the ol' Google Reader during the process of putting this together) said about the tendency of veteran film critics, even Roger Ebert, to indulge in get-off-my-lawn techniques: "Often, the old guard sees the new guard as suspect, their tastes as lacking, and culture waning, no matter what the reality is. In the end, the thing that disappoints me most is that Roger used this moment to take what I consider a profoundly cheap shot."

Meantime, it is understood that perhaps a younger writer should not worry about Dowbiggin. The people on the blogs should just forget what's in the paper. The excellent Toronto Sun Family recently stated "aging baby boomers who grew up with print newspapers in their hands should be considered the demographics of choice ... Canada's 10 million or so baby boomers should be sufficient to carry print newspapers that are adequately staffed and focused on community affairs."

That reasoning is not entirely off. One might wonder about the argument that you should only be paid for your work if you pander to a certain demographic. What happens to anyone who wants to stay current and with it? Do they just get left with the scraps?

Point being, if Bruce Dowbiggin wants to pander to the older audience which still gets the paper, fine. He can do it without cheap shots and condescension. It would be a riot.

Fronts: Radio silence from now on?

Kingston Frontenacs fans have always appreciated irony (just Google "coping mechanism"), so they'll like this: a team whose arena bears the name of a hometown radio station might not have a hometown radio broadcaster this season.

International man of mystery Tyler King posted on Fronts Talk he has "had three reliable people" inform him Corus Entertainment did not renew its radio rights to the Frontenacs. This would potentially cut off fans, since some road games are not telecast and not everyone who wants to tune in subscribes to TVCogeco (you can stream OHL games on the league's website, but it'll cost you). This is an opportunity, not another chance to bash.

The hierachy of needs here are 1) offering some ideas if indeed this is the case and 2) concern for the team's long-time radio voice, Jim Gilchrist, who deserves much better than being shunted aside with no one trying to find a solution.

It is hard to see the Frontenacs finding a taker among the six commercial FM stations in Kingston, not simply because Springer and GM Larry Mavety (get well soon, Mav) have alienated so much of the team's potential audience over the past decade.

In the larger picture, big media is all about "the next cost-cutting move in journalism" (Sports Biz With Darren Rovell, July 23). It's part the economy, part greed, too. In the NHL, at least three teams are simply simulcasting the TV audio this season, as Puck Daddy noted earlier this week. CTVGlobeMedia, as the CFL rights holder in Canada, does something similar on The Team 1200 in Ottawa. If you turn on the radio right now, there is the TSN commentary from Rod Black and Duane Forde, a few seconds behind the TV.

Close to home, Kingston's radio fare is a pretty good reflection of the ridiculous level of media concentration in Canada. Corus, Rogers Media and CTVGlobeMedia each own two FM stations. It is hard to the other two stepping in, especially if there is little promise of big ratings. Puck Daddy put hockey radio broadcasts into perspective.

"It doesn't have the romanticism of baseball radio. It doesn't have the necessity of football radio, a fact to which any fanatic husband or wife asked to run an errand on an autumn Sunday can attest.

"But hockey radio is vital to fans who can't catch the game on television (especially if they're in a market with untelevised games) or in the arena. It's also vital as an ancillary, or at times alternative, source of commentary and news for a given team. If the homers in the TV booth are insufferable, turn down the volume and pop on the headphones, right?"

The two Rogers-owned stations (K-Rock 105.7 and KIX 93.5) are likely a non-starter, since the latter station already carries the Ottawa Senators, which would create conflicts.

CTVGlobeMedia owns an adult contempary station (FLY-FM, 98.3) and a modern rock station (98.9 The Drive). One can't see hockey being a good mesh with those formats, plus as we saw throughout this spring, that company's you know their definition of "local" seems to infer that everyone lives up the street from a television studio in California.

There is 88.7 FM in Napanee. It's a 6,000-watt station, though. Can you even get it from downtown Kingston?

Translation: The Fronts could be SOL. It is not entirely their fault, although if the team had gone 40-18-10 instead 18-40-10 last season, do you think this would be happening? It is more the nature of the radio beast. A major junior team whose market includes an all-sports station or an AM station which is still going strong (such as CFRA in Ottawa or AM980 in London, where Norman James' two-hour sports show debuted on Friday.

1. Work with TVCogeco by streaming its commentary and make it available in the K-Rock Centre. You know how at a drive-in theatre, you tune your car radio to get the audio? They could do that for the fans who bring portable radios to home games.
   
   
2. Partner with K-Rock 105.7 to stream games online. For home games, doing a 15-minute long pre- and/or post-game show over the air is also an option, since it adds something of value for people as they arrive at the arena or wait for their cars to warm up after leaving.
   
   The bonus is there are people in place if the team makes a playoff run and there is enough widespread interest to justify putting the games on a FM station.
   
   
3. Put the games on CFRC 101.9 FM the year after Kinger graduates from Queen's, just to mess with him. That is not a serious suggestion.
   

All of this seems pretty reasonable, if a deal can't be struck with a radio station. It's important to have a contingency plan and a major sports operator such as Springer has an obligation to help provide a media product that offers something of added value to fans. The Rogers Jays do this with their excellent radio team of Alan Ashby, Jerry Howarth and Mike Wilner.

Not having a broadcast alternative to people who don't get TVCogeco further weakens the Kingston Frontenacs brand, which has been weakened considerably in recent years by the team's lack of success and anger at Springer for refusing to make fundamental changes in the organization. The point in writing this is to offer some reasonable ideas such as working with existing partners to better serve the fans. Another hope larger media will realize it is a story if Jim Gilchrist, who has commentated Kingston games for 22 seasons, is sidelined.

It was newsworthy in the past when CFRC, which has a very small but fiercely loyal audience, had its future hanging in the balance. This is newsworthy, too, even if the Frontenacs in characteristic fashion don't want people to know their business.

(To be clear, that is just stating a preference as a reader, making it known. The media is stretched thin these days, which makes it harder to do stories outside of game coverage and features, because there is an opportunity cost, but people want to read 'em.)

Anyway, to the Frontenacs, don't be closed off to the notion of an Internet-only broadcast if doesn't work out with a commercial station (and one hopes it does). It might be swinging with the times and it build ties to the community. It's publicity. You fellas have not been drawing them in the way you have in the past.

It's time to get creative, and no, that doesn't include making the players model in fashion shows. (Language not safe for work, nor endorsed by this site.)

Death of a legend

Walter Cronkite's death today at the age of 92 gives most in the industry reason to reflect on where it is going. Here's three ways Cronkite had influence on journalism and what the sports world can learn from him.


1. Cronkite was big, but never bigger than the story.
Here's where many in today's media industry get it wrong, in a day and age where you have to market yourself to the point where you are the story just to sell more ads. Cronkite covered all the biggest stories and I'd argue he never cast a bigger shadow that the story. Yet Cronkite's influence can't be questioned.
What do you see in sports now? Dick Vitale screaming his had off, grabbing as much attention as he can while building "a brand" so he can scream his head off some more.
Vitale is far from the only one guilty of this. There's plenty of others (Hello Pierre McGuire and Doug McLean), but they make me appreciate those who can do their jobs without all of that hyperbole and use their influence to tell the story in a spellbinding way. Like Vin Scully, Dan Schulman, Jim Hughson, and Dave Van Horn.
I've always wondered if you had to scream that much to get your point across, were you were worth listening to? Cronkite's death makes it clear.
The answer is no.

2. Cronkite didn't bend ethical rules to get access.
He didn't need to. We shouldn't need to either. He would speak out if there were issues regarding access, such as the routine roadblocks the Winnipeg Blue Bombers put in the way of Winnipeg beat reporters (save for the radio rights holder). Like the Winnipeg reporters now do with the Bombers, Cronkite would simply find another way in. Athletes, coaches and sports adminisrators often think of themselves as god-like figures and can shove their weight around. Those walls deserve to be torn down as those walls don't just block our access, but that of the fans that pay the freight so the athletes can play.

3. Cronkite was allowed to cover those stories the way they should be covered, and made the most of it.
Far too often, media organizations have cut staff and budgets and take the view that one story spread across a country is better than many viewpoints. Those of us who like to consider other points of view certainly disagree with that, but as sports budgets shrink, that's not possible anymore unless you look to the world of blogs. This is one of the better ones, which is why I agreed to write for it. However, not all are created equal.

That's the way it is.