All things must pass, and so we are into the new reality on Saturday night’s in Canada. After 74 years, a tradition dating back to 1952, there are no more “free” Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts. Rogers no longer shares their primetime weekend showcase with the public broadcaster. Viewers instead can subscribe to Sportsnet to
There are billions of reasons why, come the fall, CBC will break with tradition and will no longer be carrying NHL games on Saturday nights in Canada. It all comes down to one multi-billion dollar NHL rights deal ending and another just beginning, The old deal, signed in 2013, saw Rogers’ Sportsnet end CBC’s grip
At one time jokingly self-billed as “The World’s Slowest-rising Comedian,” Ronnie Schell is rising no more. The actor/comedian passed away Friday in Los Angeles. He was 94. A native of northern California, Schell played semi-pro baseball and then served four years in the U.S. Air Force. He first caught the showbiz bug at iconic Bay-area
This week on brioux.tv: the podcast, please welcome a veteran sports reporter and host who, in my opinion, has been better on his feet and in the moment than anybody else in a rink or on a field. I’m talking of course about Scott Oake, who recently announced his retirement from Sportsnet and Hockey Night in
The folks at CBC Radio Noon Quebec in Montreal asked me to weigh in Wednesday on whether or not Don Cherry should be awarded the Order of Canada. Ontario premier Doug Ford and others are calling for this. Shawn Apel was the radio host; you can hear our exchange here. I have to admit I
Where do documentary filmmakers go to find that historic clip or interview nobody else has? Many turn to the CBC Archives in Toronto. The vast, climate controlled vaults at the CBC Broadcast Centre are home to approximately 1.5 million hours of digitized material. Those restored holdings are drawn from over 90,000 cans of film, 215,000
“TORONTO GOAL SCORED BY NUMBER 27, DARRYL SITTLER…TIME, FIVE-O-FOUR. UNASSISTED… TOMORROW AFTERNOON THE MARLIES PLAY HOST TO THE PETERBOROUGH PETES…” Paul Morris’s straight forward goal announcing still rings in my ears to this day even though he ceased to be the Toronto Maple Leafs’ public address announcer at the end of the last century. He
If you listened to the 1972 Canada-Soviet Union Summit Series over the radio — as some of us did with a wire running up one arm and into an ear speaker while pretending to pay attention in a classroom — it wasn’t the voice of Hockey Hall of Famer Foster Hewitt calling the play-by-play. It