We have known unofficially that Ron MacLean would replace George Stroumboulopoulos as host of Hockey Night in Canada. We knew there was a hiccup as to how MacLean could do all of Saturday night and Hometown Hockey on Sundays. The other shoe in this case is David Amber, who will host the late game on Saturday night while MacLean works his way to Hometown Hockey.
What Rogers didn't officially announce is the bigger news of more substantial cuts.
Glenn Healy, P.J. Stock, Billy Jaffe, Chantal Desjardins, Corey Hirsch, and Leah Hextall: gone. Damien Cox is also gone from Hockey Night in Canada, but has a new job (besides his Toronto Star day job) as Bob McCown’s co-host on Sportsnet 590 The Fan’s afternoon show. The 5 pm pregame show, which was the better of the two pregames last year, is also gone.
Rogers is eliminating pregame shows for the local games. The Canadiens telecasts will need an on-ice host: Desjardins was that host before being relocated to Toronto. "What we’ve done today is ask (our employees) to … focus more on quality over quantity," said Scott Moore, President of Sportsnet & NHL Properties, Rogers, about removing the pregame shows.
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On a staff with very few women on the air, getting rid of both Chantal Desjardins and Leah Hextall is a bit extreme. Stock contributed more to the 5 pm pregame but did work on some local pregames. Let's not forget the 5 full-time production staffers and 14 contract workers let go by Rogers.
Not a big fan of Cox's presence but not as worried about him since he still has 2 jobs. Hirsch and Jaffe were freelancers so they didn't cost too much money; Jaffe has plenty of work in the United States.
The biggest loss is Healy, who was part of the #1 crew on Hockey Night in Canada. You would think Rogers would want to protect that part of the investment. The Healy firing is reportedly due to money, the one thing Rogers cares about more than anything else.
The rest of the 6:30 pm Saturday pregame will stay. How Glenn Healy gets fired and Nick Kypreos stays on must involve blackmail pictures. You could have kept Healy in the studio and cut back on Kelly Hrudey flying back and forth from Calgary to Toronto each week.
Healy also was the last on-air person who would actually speak up on issues concerning the NHL or Gary Bettman. Rogers has incredulously gone out of its way to not say anything remotely negative about the thin-skinned Bettman or the league.
Healy's options are to go back to TSN to work on the panel or on the ice for the #2 team for Maple Leafs and Senators games. He could also work for NBC as the #2 colour option or in the studio. The other option is one of mine where the CBC runs a Friday night hockey show and hires Healy and Stock to talk NHL.
CBC should give Don Cherry 30 minutes on Friday nights
David Amber gets a well-deserved promotion. Ron MacLean will have a comfortable familiar chair on Saturday nights. Someone will step in to be an on-ice reporter for Amber on Saturday nights. And Cox is gone from Saturday Headlines with Elliotte Friedman.
"We are continually evaluating and evolving our broadcasts to deliver the best experience for fans." said Moore.
But what has the viewer gained by these moves? The #1 on-ice crew has been broken up. The more substantial pregame is gone. Local pregames and intermissions are sharply reduced.
There is a notion that Rogers was forced to make these moves because no Canadian team made the Stanley Cup playoffs. This ignores the fact that Rogers has helped to tune out people who want to like Hockey Night in Canada. Nothing in these changes is designed to improve the viewer experience.
Rogers didn't clean house the way the company wanted to in 2014. They wanted to be seen as compassionate. If Rogers had its way in 2014, Healy and Stock would have likely disappeared then. Perhaps pressure lead them to hire Desjardins and Hextall, though they turned out to be good moves. Minus the Strombo experiment, this is perhaps how Rogers would have set things up in the first place.
George Stroumboulopoulos is new host, new face of Hockey Night in Canada
Keith Olbermann, of whom I am a huge fan, is a huge fan of what George Stroumboulopoulos did with the Rogers Sportsnet version of Hockey Night in Canada. Olbermann was upset about the news that Stroumboulopoulos was being forced out, calling it "the dumbest thing I’ve seen in 36 years in TV sports." That remark preceded yesterday's moves. Check out this collection of Olbermann tweets or Olbermann's Twitter feed to see what he thought of Scott Moore.
Stroumboulopoulos was never used to his full potential in the 2 years as the host. Strombo wasn't really well-suited for the role but if Rogers let him be himself, the studio time would have been better spent by viewers. In the first season, Stroumboulopoulos did more interviews. Last year, Strombo would ask the first question in a roundtable for interviews. The red chairs was just for the time after the second game on Saturdays. The crew seemed way more comfortable and loose in the red chairs than on the regular set, but that also might have been the late hour.
He gets to leave the sinking ship. Quite frankly, what Stroumboulopoulos will do next is more important than any change on Hockey Night in Canada.
Whether you are happy that the Hockey Night in Canada host is a hockey expert such as Ron MacLean or you were happier with an entertainer such as George Stroumboulopoulos, the biggest part of this story has nothing to do with hockey. This move means George Stroumboulopoulos is able to go back to doing something productive for the Canadian TV landscape.
Stroumboulopoulos did keep The Strombo Show music program Sunday nights on CBC Radio 2. But that likely won't be enough for him come October.
He can't rely on guest appearances such as the one on the penultimate episode of Season 4 of Orphan Black.
The CBC has had a late-night TV opening since Stroumboulopoulos left for Hockey Night in Canada. Strombo ran The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos from 2005-2010 and a half-hour version George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight until leaving for HNIC. The CNN experiment was not a success mostly due to CNN inconsistencies.
We completely understand if he didn't want to return to that kind of grind, but Stroumboulopoulos could create a late-night format mix of music and talk, maybe taking a more behind-the-scenes role or splitting on-air time by grooming someone else to jump into late-night.
CBC would give him carte blanche to create something amazing in that time slot. The network literally has zero options outside of reruns.
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We noted earlier this year about the lack of late-night programming produced in Canada. The country's weirdness (a good thing) needs a showcase. Right now, Canadians are watching U.S. late-night shows because, well, they're good. But they are also watching by default.
Even if the CBC ran atypical shows, such as reruns of Strange Empire and Young Drunk Punk, late at night, that would be an effort to promote something that fits in with that audience. The Baroness von Sketch Show could be another candidate for a late-night run this fall. And who knows, you might get a chance to grow the next George Stroumboulopoulos or something totally different.
The CBC is very risk-averse, as most TV outlets are. NBC threw in David Letterman as a way to fill the time after Johnny Carson cut his show to an hour. That planted seed grew into developing late-night programming in the United States. Canada needs a similar type seed. And Strombo can be Canada's Johnny Appleseed.
photos credit: Rogers Sportsnet // Twitter @strombo @KeithOlbermann
Great blog, especially the point about cutting the few women they still had as part of their coverage. Basically just Cassie Campbell-Pascall and maybe Sophia Jurksztowicz remain unless I'm forgetting someone. Given the social media noise about Strombo, Healy and Stock, it's interesting to see these decisions. It kind of looks like Rogers is buckling to social media pressure. Perhaps the first we've seen of this in Canada. In the U.S., it seems ESPN has been forced to make changes because of online backlash.
Posted by: Tyler | June 29, 2016 at 10:36 AM
ESPN, like Rogers, is losing money though for different reasons. I was fascinated by Hockey Night in Canada years ago not for the hockey as much but the pageantry that surrounded it. When that is gone and the hockey isn't that good, watching becomes less likely. Their coverage really needs to get better.
Posted by: Chad | July 02, 2016 at 11:49 PM
Pageantry is a good way of putting it. It doesn't seem like destination viewing anymore. The one thing that's good is the choice of games. That has definitely been a plus but the rest of it amounts to: things that should have been changed were not and things that should not have been changed were.
Posted by: Tyler | July 03, 2016 at 07:47 PM
Hometown Hockey has the pageantry. I was concerned that it would be too much each week but haven't found that to be true. If the latest deal has been CBC, TSN, and Rogers with Hometown Hockey, the latter company might have improved their perception.
Posted by: Chad | July 05, 2016 at 11:21 AM