This Week’s Podcast: Olympics Out, Leno In

We take one last lap on the Olympic oval this week with CHML’s Scott Thompson. Scott says he never watched so much Olympics in his life and that makes two of us. CTV made it so easy, offering consecutive coverage on the main network, TSN and Sportsnet, giving viewers the option to flip back and forth and find the live sporting event they were most interested in seeing. All you need to know about the dominance of the Olympic coverage is the fact that TSN and Sportsnet were the No. 2 and 3 networks in Canada the last two weeks, ahead of Global, CBC and Citytv.
Making the most of their time on the main stage were TSN SportsCentre host Jennifer Hedger and TSN hockey host James Duthie. Hedger’s always been easy on the eyes but she brought charm and skill to her Whistler village posting, whether she was egging on skeleton gold medalist Jon Montgomery and his beer auction or hanging with U.S. ski hotties Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso.
Duthie almost immediately grew beyond his hockey persona and seemed right at home at the Olympic afternoon anchor desk next to news veteran Lisa LaFlamme.
Also getting reviewed on the weekly radio rap: Leno’s return to the Tonight Show this week. I dunno if using the same 10 o’clock set was such a great idea; it still has a whiff of failure to it. Just painting over the “10” Leno used to stand on doesn’t fool anybody.
We also yak about Jerry Seinfeld’s new reality show The Marriage Ref (officially premiering Thursday night at 10 p.m. on NBC), which tries to blend the cool classiness of vintage panel shows like What’s My Line? with the humiliating trashiness of The Jerry Springer Show. You can listen in here.