Tag Archives: cbc

Healy Makes it Up. Again. And we pay $1 billion a year for CBC?

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

In a country that is desperate to build new hockey rinks and football stadiums, we continue to waste $1 billion a year on the CBC.

Now, there was definitely a time when this nation needed the CBC, but that time has long passed. As a Junior Hockey broadcaster who sends plenty of time in the north, the existence of the CBC has become meaningless in this country. The people in remote parts of Canada now have satellite dishes and internet connections and more often than not, the CBC is ignored in these once forgotten towns. Frankly, the CBC is as meaningless to remote communities as it is to the country’s major centres (check the national ratings, other than Hockey Night in Canada, not many Canadians are watching the CBC).

That’s why the comments made by Hockey Night in Canada bingo caller Glenn Healy just pissed me off last week. Healy, who is certainly a mouthpiece for the NHLPA and therefore has some ties to the league’s union members, claimed that NHL players are now telling their owners that they won’t accept a trade to Atlanta because the Thrashers might — in the next decade, perhaps — move to Winnipeg.

What an incredibly absurd statement.

Healy seemed to suggest that players don’t want to go to Atlanta because there are rumours on top of rumours hinting that maybe the Thrashers are finished as a franchise and are headed to Winnipeg, oh, next week — even though they just gave GM Rick Dudley a contract extension.

Here’s Healy’s quote: “Guess what name is appearing on a lot of players’ no-move teams? Atlanta. Why? Because if the team goes to Winnipeg, it’s not a desirable place for them to play their winters.”

And Pittsburgh, Edmonton and Detroit are desirable? What a crock. Healy made it clear to CBC viewers that he’s already seen the players contracts and they are all heading into the GM’s office to re-negotiate right now, in the middle of the season. Even though many minor pro baseball players actually ask to sign in Winnipeg (see the story in the Spring Edition of ONE Magazine), hockey players are too dumb to understand that Winnipeg is a pretty good place to play and raise a family. He forgot that NHLers Dale Hawerchuk, Scott Arniel, Keith Tkachuk and Shane Hnidy all arrived in Winnipeg and married Winnipeg girls. It’s a nice town.

Healy is certainly entitled to his own opinion, but he’s not entitled to his own facts. As the franchise-saving deal in Phoenix continues to crater, are players now telling their GMs they’ll never go to Phoenix because maybe, sometime in the next 30 years, the Coyotes will move back to Winnipeg? In fact, there are strugglung franchises in Sunrise, Fla., on Long Island, in Denver, Dallas and Nashville. Are players saying they won’t go there, either? If these alleged players are worried about Winnipeg, they might want to tell their GMs they just won’t accept a trade anywhere.

It was a stupid comment by a stupid man, but what bothered me most was that not one person on the Hockey Night in Canada panel challenged the idiocy of the statement. Everyone let the stupidity pass and, in the process, looked stupid themselves. On a Canadian TV network paid for by Canadian taxpayers, nobody stood up for a city of 750,000 people that was named the best city to invest in in all of Canada in 2010.

The Federal Government needs to wean the CBC off its annual taxpayer gift of $1 billion. What happened last Saturday was bad for the country and taxpayers should no longer be forced to pay for such drivel.

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Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s Rip of the CFL is Gutless and Misguided

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

The Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation gives me a pain in the rump.

By definition, the CTF is supposed to be a watchdog for wasteful tax spending by government. They say they whine moan and cry about how we, as Canadians, pay too much tax.

Frankly, I’m behind that. But what drives me crazy is how this organization nit-picks, moans and groans and pisses and whines over little crappy examples of what they consider poor public funding, but will NOT go after the biggest waste of money in our country. And that’s just gutless, pure and simple.

This week, the CTF attacked the government for providing  $800,000 to help the Canadian Football League hold a game in Moncton, N.B. The federation then demanded that the government turn down funding requests for the 2012 Grey Cup festival and for a new stadium in Regina. They said nothing about the $15 million going into the new stadium in Winnipeg. One suspects they didn’t know.

Would somebody put a sock on these gutless whiners?

The CFL is a Canadian institution that desperately needs to expand across the country and build new stadiums in order to maintain what it already has. There is no institution in this country that is (a) more Canadian, (b) brings more Canadians together or (c) garners as much national media interest as the Canadian Football League.

But the CTF, the same gutless wonders who NEVER ever complain about the existence of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation  in the 21st Century, suddenly had the stones to suggest that awarding $800,000 to the CFL to take a game to Moncton was a waste of money.

The CBC, a national broadcaster who gets its news wrong as often as it gets it right, and refuses to correct errors on its website, receives almost $1 billion per year from the tax payer. That’s right ONE BILLION DOLLARS per year!

Can you imagine the infrastructure and nation building that could be done with $1 billion per year? (How about the real estate assets that the CBC already owns?) Instead, all of  that money goes to a far-left-wing broadcasting corporation at a time when technology now allows people in all remote regions of the country to get instant news and information. If the CBC wants to become the same as every other broadcaster in Canada — that means be self-sufficient and sell it’s own advertising — then fine. But to continue to chew at the trough of government is an abomination.

To its undying credit, the CFL stood up for itself in a story by Mark Masters that appeared in the National Post this week:

“If you look at the Grey Cup that just passed, it was the [fourth] week of November with low temperatures in Edmonton and we had hotels and restaurants full of people,” Rob Assimakopoulos, the CFL’s senior vice-president of marketing and commercial assets, told the National Post. “People were travelling, spending money, celebrating and enjoying themselves. Where else will you have that many Canadians engaged at once?”

As long as there is a CBC, spending relatively small amounts of public money on projects with national significance, is not a bad thing. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has no right to criticize anything in this country until it pulls down its sleeves and forces the government to reform spending on the CBC.

After all, the gutless CTF, is the same bunch that criticized a lunch bill from Winnipeg city councillor Harry Lazarenko. That organization is all hot air with absolutely no credibility.

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Anyone Really Surprised by the Cost of a New Football Stadium.

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. — So David Asper and his real estate development firm, Creswin Properties Ltd., has determined that the cost for a new football stadium in Winnipeg will be about $160 million — give or take.

Does that surprise anyone?

When Asper first presented his proposal to construct a new stadium for the Bombers, the cost was estimated at $115 million. Didn’t sound like much, but everyone assumed Asper had done his homework.

Trouble was, the original stadium plan was presented to the Blue Bombers board in January of 2007. That’s almost four years ago. Times have changed dramatically since then. Did anyone out there think costs would go down over the last four years?

Evidently some people did, proving once again that what you read in newspapers can often be much more surprising than the truth.

Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger said on Friday that would meet with Asper and  Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz and find out how the increased costs would be covered. Whew?! Selinger didn’t think the costs for a stadium would rise in four years? Ouch.

To his credit, Selinger says he is still committed to a building new stadium for the Bombers simply because the current structure, Canad Inns Stadium, is a 55-year-old dinosaur that provides little or no parking or concession revenue for the club and is cracking at its foundations and along the sides of its second decks. Like Winnipeg’s aging infrastructure, Canad Inns Stadium needs more than a simple overhaul.

Naturally, people will whine about “the taxpayer getting gouged for more money,” but until the taxpayer tells the federal government to stop spending $1 billion per year on the CBC, those complaints ring hollow to me. I’d much sooner pay for a football stadium in my home town than a gargantuan national media company that tends to lean farther to the left than the NDP and far too often replaces facts with opinion.

Under an agreement signed last year, Creswin Properties would pay for most of the project, with the federal and provincial governments coming up with a combined $35 million dollars ($15 million goes directly to the University of Manitoba as its share in the stadium partnership). It’s unlikely Asper or Creswin has the dough to pick up an extra $40 million to $50 million.

Maybe we could call the new building: “NDP Government Stadium.”

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Another Week in the Trenches. Atlanta, Parity, Lousy Officiating and Broke Owners.

Posted on April 18, 2010 by Scott Taylor| 2 Comments

In a week in which the Stanley Cup playoffs started, Jerry Reinsdorf was given an NHL franchise, Colorado’s Ubaldo Jimenez pitched a no-hitter, the Blue Bombers released one of the team’s best players and HD TV proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that baseball umpires aren’t very good, there was more talk about Atlanta heading to Winnipeg, Ben Roethlisberger’s transgressions and the city’s reluctance to just give David Asper a free pass.

1) The Blue Bombers released Sideeq Shabazz, a fan favourite and clearly one of the best players in the CFL last season.

The Bombers feel they have to get younger and that’s true. Shabazz is 29 and heaven knows, you’re just about done at 29, but more importantly, the Bombers have serious financial problems.

When Brendan Taman was running the team, he signed some contracts with players that he knew he was going to have to pay later.  Last year, the Bombers started the season $460,000 over the cap. In other words, the only way the football club could stay within the $4.2 million Cdn that is the salary management system’s player payroll cap, was to keep costs down and still hope to be able to compete.

When Mike Kelly took over the club, he was in a bind. The team was still paying Kevin Glenn, Charles Roberts and Milt Stegall (among others) and it was going to have to make it on $3.74 million. It didn’t. Not quite anyway. In the end, the Bombers finished $44,000 over the cap and they were penalized.

So now, still in a financial quagmire, still paying former players, the Bombers have to dump as many veterans as they can — within some kind of competitive plan for 2010 — and try to make it with a load of kids. Especially if they intend to pay quarterback Buck Pierce and veterans like Terrance Edwards, Doug Brown and Fred Reid.

It isn’t easy running the Bombers these days. Last year, the club lost $1.2 million on operations. This year, the team still has cap trouble. If the Bombers go 6-12, fans can consider it a successful year.

2) Watched 12 hours of baseball on Saturday. From the Twins and Blue Jays, to the Indians win over Chicago, the Tigers loss to Seattle and seven hours of St. Louis and the Mets, my wife Sally and I also watched the final two innings of Ubaldo Jimenez’s no-hitter against the Braves. There is nothing better than MLB TV live to HD TV through your computer.

Through it all, I spent much of that time yelling at my gigantic, room-dwarfing HD TV. “Can’t anybody call these stining games properly anymore!!?”

In the Cleveland-Chicago game, the first base umpire called Cleveland’s Shin-Soo Choo out on an appeal play for missing first base while he legged out a double. The replay clearly showed that Choo touched the corner of the bag. It was a horrible call and the more I watched the replay, the more I realized that only a blind guy (or someone with a bet on the game) could call Choo out.

As the day went on, there were half a dozen bad calls at second base on attempted steals and even worse, the strike zone is now a moving, living thing that can be deciphered only by the plate umpire at hat exact moment. Players keep saying all they ask for is consistency. That’s just silly. There has never been consistency and there certainly isn’t any today.

Baseball desperately needs replay for every close play and technology should replace the homeplate umpire when it comes to calling balls and strikes.

3)  In Winnipeg, it seems everyone is doing what it takes to make the new football stadium deal feel politically palatable. “Don’t give David Asper too much. Couch it so that taxpayers feel protected. Make sure anyone who criticizes the deal is marginalized. And if you’re a politician, don’t really give anyone the facts of the deal so that you can change it later.”

What no one seems to have grasped is this: Winnipeg needs a new football stadium, the old one is eventually going to fall down, the community-owned football team can’t make money in that old dump and at some point, somebody is going to have to spend some public money on a new building. The longer we wait, the more expensive it gets.

And frankly, I don’t have any trouble with taxpayers’ money being spent on a new football stadium — anywhere in Canada. I have no trouble honouring all the agreements made with Asper and even with the $90 million-plus loan that’s been offered.

That’s because I believe this: As long as $1 billion in federal taxes is GIVEN to the CBC every single year, the rest of the government’s spending is relatively unimportant. I’m forced to pay taxes to give $1 billion every single year to a broadcasting company that leans far to the left (not just left, but stunningly far, far left), refuses to tell the truth on its website even when its asked to make changes based on fact and hires people who turn into pompous, over-bearing Toronto-centric fools who have no concept of how Canadians live. It also sucks advertising money out of the economy and  yet it still can’t balance its books.

Until the federal government stops funding the CBC, I believe they owe Winnipeg a football stadium. In fact, I believe the entire $135 million bill should be paid for by the feds. As long as the CBC exists in its current form, any argument over how federal taxpayers’ money is spent is just silly and distracting.

4) We tend to go on about small crowds and financial losses in non-traditional NHL markets, but who would ever have thought that the Liverpool Football Club of the English Premier League was $500 million US in the glue.

This past week, Liverpool’s American owners formally put the club up for sale, as both Tom Hicks (who also has to sell the NHL’s Dallas Stars in order to pay his debts) and George Gillett Jr. admitted they no longer have the financial resources to improve the team or build a much-needed new stadium.

The fact the Bombers lost $1.2 million on operations last year (a lot of it to pay back former president Lyle Bauer for all the money he deferred over the years in order to keep the books balanced), is a pittance compared to the losses suffered by Liverpool.

When you consider that the operation of the NBA this season will fall $400 million short of break-even, it’s becoming apparent that all major professional sport — not just the shaky NHL and CFL — is in financial trouble. The recession is deeper than people think and it will be interesting to see what happens in the next decade.

5) I love all the talk about the NFL suspending Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Roethlisberger, 28, was not charged with any crime for a night at a college bar with a 20-year-old female. There are all sorts of nasty media stories about Roethlisberger’s behaviour that night. There are all sorts of pundits and commentators who like to call Roethlisberger names and, of course, want him punished.

But as the police and the district attorney’s office have made clear, he broke no laws. It appears that the media, and the media alone, have now admitted to something that many of us have known for a long time. The only thing the mainstream media does well is hurt people and that screaming for punishment, even for people who don’t break laws, is what the American mainstream media does best.

6) Speaking of the mainstream media, I wonder how they responded to Andy Sutton’s elbow to the head of Jordan Leopold on Saturday night. After screaming for months about increasing the severity of penalties to get head shots out of the game, the media watched as Sutton drilled an unprotected Leopold in the head with a vicious elbow on Saturday night.

No penalty was called and I haven’t heard any screaming today. In fact, many mainstream media members I’ve read this morning have called the check “clean.” Ouch.

It’s great to scream and yell about concussions and other injuries, but hockey is a collision sport and if you are going to play it, you sign up for danger. That was a dreadful hit by a man hoping to injure another player, a player who was in a vulnerable position, fighting off a check from one of Sutton’s teammates. However, it was no different than any number of hits in any number of games this year.

Sutton’s physical destruction of Jordan Leopold was a textbook case for creating special head-hunting penalties. But there was no penalty at all on the play and no one seems terribly concerned by that. The message was clear: Quit whining and play.

7) Walking through the Home Depot on Saturday morning, one of the store’s employees approached me and politely asked, “When are the Atlanta Thrashers coming to Winnipeg?”

He’d been at a family gathering and one of his family members happens to work for the Manitoba Moose. That family member said he had been told by Moose brass to prepare for the arrival of the Thrashers and to be ready to move with the AHL team. Perhaps even to Saskatoon.

This is not the first time a hockey fan in Winnipeg has been told this story by someone who seemed honest and sincere. While Moose brass don’t want to admit it, the rumours of the NHL’s return to Winnipeg are being stoked by people who are working at MTS Centre.

The rumours will not go away until someone at the top of the pecking order at True North Sports and Entertainment stands up and says, “The NHL is NOT, ever, returning to Winnipeg.”

Right now, I for one, just can’t escape the talk and frankly, I continue to find it fascinating.

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Please Don’t Ever Complain About Government Spending Until We Get Rid of the CBC.

Posted on January 19, 2010 by Scott Taylor| 2 Comments

I love it when the folks at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation start complaining about a city councillor’s $45.00 lunch tab at a downtown restaurant. The CTF complains a lot about nickel-dime government spending, but there is never a peep from these folks about the $1 billion per year — that’s $1 BILLION per-freakin’-year — our federal government spends on the CBC.

It’s an amount of money that is appalling, at least when one stops to consider the nonsense that is far too often spewed by the wealthy, taxpayer-paid commentators at the CBC.

I bring this up because of the dreadful piece of garbage that Ron McLean handed us last Saturday night when he eviscerated former Manitoba Moose forward Alexandre Burrows, simply because Burrows, now with the Vancouver Canucks, had the audacity to criticize an official.

McLean, an official himself, used his pulpit at the CBC to embarrass and ridicule Burrows who was simply putting into a very clear perspective what referee Stephane Auger did last week.

Auger made two calls in the Vancouver – Nashville game last Monday that looked — at least to any bookie who cares about the NHL, and granted, there aren’t very many of them — as if the fix was in. The calls were horrendous, an embarrassment to the NHL, and they ultimately cost Vancouver a hockey game.

After the debacle, Burrows claimed that in a pre-game “conversation” that was on video all over the world, Auger said he would “get” Burrows for an incident that had taken place back on Dec. 8. Auger is alleged to have accused Burrows of taking a dive in a game against Nashville and according to Burrows — who has no reason (nor any history) to lie — Auger was going to exact his revenge.

He did. Obviously. Clearly. On viral video. And yet, the NHL fined Burrows $2,500 for criticizing an official and let Auger — the same guy who slandered the very Christian Shane Doan for a comment that Auger wanted to make more sinister than it was — off the hook. Not a surprising decision, of course, when one considers that the NHL must support its officials or have another work-stoppage on its hands.

Sadly, by the time this entire incident reached the CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada bully pulpit, it was all Burrows’ fault and Auger was as clean as the driven snow. McLean attacked Burrows and gave Auger a free-ride in one of the worst examples of one-sided television “journalism,” in Canadian sports history.

The Burrows family is, naturally, angry. Frankly, they should sue. It was slander and McLean needs to apologize. If he doesn’t, then it’s clear that the CBC does not represent Canadians. It simply represents the musings of its high-priced help and as a taxpayer, I’m sick to my stomach that my hard-earned cash has to help pay for it.

Too bad the CTF hasn’t got the collective cojones to take on the worst example of taxpayer-supported corporate welfare in our country. The CBC is an embarrassment to Canadians who believe in honesty, balance and fair play.

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TIGER’S IN SEX REHAB. OH, REALLY?

The mainstream media is at it again. The morons of the microphone, the kooks of the keyboards and the crazies with the cameras now want us to believe that Tiger Woods is in a sex-rehab clinic in Mississippi.

Where does this stuff come from? Oh, the New York Daily News. Why, of course, a daily newspaper.

Anyone who believes ANY of the Tiger Woods reports these days probably believes that, indeed, Dwayne Johnson is the Tooth Fairy.

In fact, anyone who believes a word coming out of the mainstream media has a brain the size of a peanut. Whatever happened to editors? Is the business in so much trouble that this kind of crap has to be passed off as a legitimate news story?

Sometimes it’s hard not to think that the sooner the daily newspaper industry just collapses under the weight of its own mismanagement and hubris, the smarter we’ll all be.

UPDATE (Jan. 20): Wonder if they got it right this time?

This alleged Mississippi clinic is, allegedly, the THIRD sex rehab centre that Woods has allegedly checked into. Allegedly.

The interwebs now say there are alleged pictures of Tiger, allegedly at Pine Grove Behavioral Centre in Hattiesburg, Miss. Allegedly, he’s now even allowed to masturbate. Allegedly.

Wow! After guaranteeing that Woods was in a rehab centre in Arizona and then one in South Africa, the media might have finally got it right. Congrats. Keep throwing cowpatties at the wall, one might stick.

UPDATE (Jan. 22): Wrong again.

Turns out the alleged pictures of an alleged Tiger Woods at an alleged Sex Rehab Drive-In in Hattiesburg, Miss., turned out to be nothing more than photos of an employee on a coffee break.

Another cow patty failed to stick. Wonder what’s next?

Gawd, if you want it late or you want it wrong, buy a newspaper.

Allegedly.

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The Mainstream Media Lunacy Just Gets Crazier. At this Rate, we’ll Never Run Out of Things to Write About.

Posted on November 17, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

MINNEAPOLIS — We have a crisis of intelligence in this world. It seems that the more you read a newspaper, the dumber you get.

It was Thomas Jefferson who said: “As for what is not true, you will always find abundance in the newspapers,” and that has never been more evident than it has been this week.

And hey, it’s only Tuesday.

1) A headline in USA Today on Tuesday read: “NFL Replay: Fourth-Down call Stain on Belichick’s Record.”

Stain? What, are newspaper reporters doing now? Pouring tomato juice on people’s hoodies? A stain? It was a call late in a regular season game that ended up backfiring and costing the Patriots the game. A game. One game. Big effin’ deal. The Pats will still be no worse than 12-4 this season.

Stain? What kind of media-created bull-crap is that? A stain on Belichick’s record was the time he spent in Cleveland screwing up the Browns. Taking a chance on Tom Brady is not a stain. It’s not even a blip.

The Pats are 6-3 and still in first place. All that decision did was guarantee that when the two teams meet again in the AFC Championship game, the TV ratings will be right through the freakin’ roof.

2) The Ottawa Sun just cracks me up. This is the newspaper that either can’t get a trade rumour right or simply makes these rumours up.

I know that suggesting a newspaper makes things up is about the worst thing you can say, but goodness gracious, the trade rumours started in Ottawa would be comical if they weren’t so sad. These guys can’t even get a lie straight.

We’ve spent some time chronicling their errors, but let it go because it just got so silly. This week, however, we just couldn’t resist.

Now, for most of this season, the Ottawa Sun has been reporting – and I use the word reporting lightly – that the Chicago Blackhawks were on the verge of trading either Jonathan Toews or Patrick Kane or both. The Sun claimed the Hawks had a cap problem and needed  to move one of their stars. We’ve already called that rumour a crock.

Then, yesterday, word filtered out of Chicago that the Hawks were on the verge of signing both Toews and Kane  to new contracts. At least eight years each according to my source inside the Hawks.

Wow! How can one newspaper be so wrong so often and still sell copies of their newspaper? Are people that stupid? Or are they just looking for a good morning laugh?

3) Newspapers from coast-to-coast, desperate to write about some mundane NHL issue other than the copy to the headline: “The Leafs are Lousy Again,” have had a big month writing about head shots and all the horrible bodychecks being tossed out in the NHL.

NHL general managers are looking at the issue and might come down hard on the league’s headhunters. But there is one thing our newspaper-employed tall foreheads forgot. They forgot to ask an NHL GM who is an expert on the subject.

This week, before I did my radio hit with Eric Nelson on WCCO in Minneapolis, Eric’s guest was Minnesota Wild GM Chuck Fletcher. Fletcher said he didn’t much like checks to the head, but he also said the NHL will put the issue into perspective.

“During the course of the season there are about 46,000 bodychecks,” Fletcher pointed out. “In a bad year, 10 are head shots. We want them out of the game, but there isn’t a big panic over this. The numbers suggest there isn’t a problem at all.”

Of course, he’s right and the fearmongers with the truck loads of ink trying to make up stories where none exist are wrong. Again.

4) I just love Canada’s network TV weasels, don’t you?

According to Canadian Press:  “Canada’s largest private broadcaster laid out a scorched earth scenario Monday if it doesn’t get paid for its signals, suggesting more station closings and even yanking signals from cable.”

Wow! “Yanking signals from cable.” That means because nobody watches it now on cable, Canadians would be sure to watch it when the only way they can receive it is with rabbit ears.

“‘We are not going to be here operating conventional TV unless we can make a business of it,’ CTVglobemedia president Ivan Fecan told the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.”

That makes sense. But why can’t you make a business of it? Is it because so few people actually watch it that selling overpriced commercial time is now damn near impossible?

I love listening to people like Fecan tell us that he’ll have to dump local television if he doesn’t get money from the cable companies. If Fecan gets money from the cable companies, this is how it will go: First he’ll line his owners pockets, then his pockets and then the pockets of his executive buddies. At that point, he’ll used what’s left over to go out and buy more shows from the United States that we already watch on U.S. stations.

How’s this for a response to that malarkey? Take your stupid signal off cable and let’s replace it with ESPN. I’d love to see ESPN HD on Channel 210 on my Shaw HD service.

I don’t know about most of you, but if CTV pulled the plug tomorrow, I wouldn’t miss it. In fact, just like CBC and its $1 billion per year in taxpayer-funded welfare, can’t say as I watch it now.

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Another Made Up Mainstream Media Rumour Forces Everyone into Denial.

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Saturday night on Hockey Night in Canada, Al Strachan was at it again. Strachan told a breathless audience that “two Toronto businessmen are close to purchasing the Atlanta Thrashers so they can move them to Winnipeg.”

How many different ways can you say, “crock of crap?”

Strachan was once a big-time hockey writer with Sun Media. He had an inside line to agent Don Meehan and in order to keep that line free, he publicly promoted the demands of the NHL Players (read: Agents) Association. Far too much of Strachan’s scribbling wasn’t based in reality so it was not surprising when he cooked up this rumour.

Now to be fair, the sale of the Thrashers is not particularly far-fetched. The team is a complete disaster in Atlanta so why not sell it to somebody who can make the thing work. Canada is obviously the only place where big-time hockey can work and even though Canadian teams playing in the United States seem to be the scourge of American hockey marketers, it’s already been proven that six Canadian teams generate about 33 per cent of the NHL’s total revenue.  The NHL needs more Canadian-based teams, not fewer.

So, naturally, the Thrashers denied that the team was for sale and got rather testy when www.rivercitysportsblog.com asked if the team was being sold to “a couple of guys from Toronto,” who had plans to move it to Winnipeg.

“Completely false,” said Thrashers GM Don Waddell.

While it IS likely the Thrashers are for sale and eventually will be sold to new owners, who may or may not ask to re-locate the team, Atlanta is not the launching pad that will generate Winnipeg’s next NHL franchise.

The launching pad is still Phoenix. The Coyotes will probably lose upwards of $100 million this season. The Coyotes don’t play at home until Saturday night and et they’ve already started reducing ticket prices to $25 in the lower bowl. The NHL will soon take over ownership of this mess in the desert and you can bet they won’t be flushing money down that giant toilet for more than one year.

To their credit, the Thompson family from Osmington Inc. and Thompson Reuters, the people who own the majority of shares in True North Sports and Entertainment, have been working quietly and professionally to bring the NHL to Winnipeg. They will succeed.

But when you start believing the gibberish that is generated at Hockey Night in Canada, you will be stuck believing things that simply aren’t going to happen.

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New Football Stadium in Winnipeg a Good Deal All Around

Posted on April 4, 2009 by Scott Taylor| 2 Comments

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers will get a new owner in 2010 and a new stadium in 2011.

It’s probably the two best things that could happen to the franchise.

 

The Bombers are a proud franchise that continues to lose money and continues to lose football games. Although the team went to the Grey Cup in 1992, 1993, 2001 and 2007, the Bombers have not won a Grey Cup championship since 1990. Frankly, in an eight-team league, every team should win at least one championship in 18 years just by dumb luck.

 

There is no dumb luck in Winnipeg. Just when it looks like this team has the horses and is red-hot at the right something like, oh, a starting quarterback’s broken arm douses the flame.

 

In the meantime, the 55-year-old stadium, located in the centre of a commercial district in the west end of town, has become more of an eyesore than a destination. The most popular aspect of Canada Inns Stadium is the Appleton’s Rum Shack. In fact, it’s often more popular than the team. 

 

So when media baron and property developer David Asper came forward 14 months ago with an idea to build a new stadium and take over ownership — and fiscal responsibility — from the community board that has run the team for almost 80 years, it seemed like the right thing to do.

 

Still, Asper has spent the last 14 months doing everything possible to sell his idea to the community. He’s run an interactive web site, www.blueandgold.ca; he’s held open forums, both public and with special interest groups; and he’s acquiesced to the demands of federal, provincial and civic politicians. 

 

He has done everything in good faith.

 

But at the news conference on Wednesday to announce the deal, the new members of the old media (we’re not talking about the veteran reporters such as the Free Press’ s Randy Turner and Ed Tait, the Sun’s Kirk Penton, Global’s Joe Pascucci or CJOB’s Bob Irving, but this group of children who don’t Google and don’t read the printed material that’s handed out) gave a virtuoso performance of ignorance and attempts at, well, hubris.

 

It started when a young child from CBC television opened with a question impugning Asper about his business acumen. She suggested that because the family business, Canwest Communications was struggling, Asper himself was somehow going to go broke and default on his responsibilities.

 

Now I would not have thought anything of that question coming from, say CJOB, a Corus radio station that is and always has done quite well financially, but for CBC to send out its child reporter to suggest that Asper, who is using his own money (not Canwest’s money) to build the stadium, would soon go broke and we’d have a helluva mess is patently outrageous.

 

This, from a taxpayer-funded operation that has outlived its usefulness and contributed mightily to the recent problems faced by the Asper family and by the country’s other major television network, CTV. The CBC receives $1 billion a year from the federal government — one freakin’ BILLION, not million, BILLION — and can sell TV advertising on top of that and yet it still can’t balance its books. Instead, after losing $171 million in 2008, it went back to the feds asking for something called a “bridge loan.” Bridge to what? The CBC was never going to actually pay back the $171 million. They were looking for another handout.  

 

This time the feds said, “Not a chance, you boobs,” and so last week, the public broadcaster announced 800 layoffs. 

 

Still, despite all of its own incompetence, some CBC news producer sent out a little girl with an attitude to suggest Asper was somehow going to fail miserably. Had she only bothered to use Google, she might have learned that Creswin Properties and Canwest Communications are two different companies run by two different people. Leonard Asper is not involved in this deal.

 

Stunning.

 

From that point on, the news conference was loaded with questions that were already answered on the printed handout that was given to every media member when he or she entered the room. 

 

Sad, but true. And the mainstream media is wondering why its days are numbered.

 

Here are the facts. The deal is tremendous. Asper pays $100 million out of his own pocket to build the stadium and take over the team. No other person on the planet — no one, nobody, period — would step up and do the same for a community or its CFL team. And besides, the new owner not only bleeds Bomber blue, but Bison brown and so the university will get a marvelous facility as well. (For those folks who live near the university, they will notice that the traffic will be a little busier 10 or 11 times per year.)

 

The new stadium will be fine — although after watching the Dallas Cowboys spend a billion dollars (there’s that B-word again) on their new building I sometimes wonder what we’ll really get for $140 million. Still, the old stadium is done. Let’s hope that by 2011 when the new building is finished, the upper decks in the old one haven’t fallen down on someone. 

 

The days of public bailouts, which include right now to a certain extent, should be over. This is a good deal for everyone involved, especially the folks who buy tickets to Bomber games. Just go to www.blueandgold.ca for all the details.

 

It’s just too bad that so many people in the media don’t get it. Because they don’t get it and can’t explain it, far too many members of the public — who didn’t bother to show up at Asper’s public forums — don’t really get it, either.

 

 

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More Reasons for the Death of the Mainstream Newspaper: No news. No commitment to reading what used to be news.

Posted on March 21, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

TAMPA — So here we are in Tampa’s St. Pete Times Forum watching Alexander Ovechkin score his 50th goal of the season when all of a sudden he’s warming his hands over his red-hot stick.

Almost immediately, as one looked around the press box, you could assume someone was going to be pissed right off. Ovechkin’s little post-goal, Tony Award-winning celebration combined with the look on the face of Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Rick Tocchet clearly suggested that there would be words in the post-game scrum.

 

No one was disappointed.

 

“It’s hard for me to accept, just to see that happen in our building,” Tocchet said. “I grew up as a player in the days of the old Spectrum in Philly and if that happened in the first period at the Spectrum, it would have been a three-hour period.” 

 

Great, so why didn’t it happen at the Forum in downtown Tampa? Well, for one thing, the Lightning are done and most of them don’t care and for another, you can’t hurt Ovechkin.

 

And that’s what has made all this fuss about Don Cherry’s remarks on CBC a month ago, and I’m paraphrasing, that “Somebody is going to get Ovechkin.” It’s a complete crock.

 

That’s because Cherry, and all the knobs in the print media, forgot that Ovechkin has already been got.

 

Hey boys, ever wonder why Alex doesn’t have any teeth when he does post-game interviews? That’s because, on Dec. 30, 2006, Colton Orr of the New York Rangers cross-checked Ovechkin in the mouth and took out his front teeth. For his oh, so violent act, Orr was suspended five games. 

 

So why did Orr do it? Ironically, not because of anything Ovechkin did. He did it because he told the Caps Donald Brashear that if he goes after Brendan Shanahan again, “I’m going after Ovechkin.”

 

Well, sure enough, Brashear punched Shanahan after a whistle. So on Orr’s next shift, he jumped over the bench, cross-checked Ovechkin and rattled his chiclets. 

 

Ovechkin was stunned, but got up and continued playing. Orr was handed a minor penalty and two days later, the suspension. But everyone marveled at Ovechkin’s toughness.

 

The guy is not afraid and you can’t hurt him.

 

But still, the old guy who wears clown suits on TV, gets ripped by the national print media for suggesting someone’s going to go after Ovechkin. Sadly, no one in the print media remembered (or bothered to look up) the Orr incident. 

 

So not only was Cherry wrong, but the entire mainstream media was wrong for simply assuming ol’ Don knew what he was talking about. And, hey, we even helped ‘em get it right by talking about Colton Orr’s cross-check on radio stations in Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg. Sadly, the mainstream newspaper industry is hopeless.

 

In the old days, someone in the print media would have looked up “any incidents involving Alexander Ovechkin” before going off half-cocked. Now, the people who rip bloggers for having no editors, don’t even bother doing what they were taught in J-school.

 

The mainstream media is dying not just because newsprint prices are rising or labour costs are increasing, but because the content is weak.

 

Alexander Ovechkin is one of the greatest players in all of hockey. When he’s done, he’ll be remembered as one of the greatest of all time. But he shouldn’t have been showboating in Tampa. Like Teemu Selanne’s penchant for shooting down his glove with his stick after a big goal at Winnipeg Arena, Ovechkin’s little performance was a home town dance, not a road taunt. 

 

If Colton Orr was playing for the Lightning in Tampa — in last place or not — he’d have made Rick Tocchet happy.

 

Meanwhile, it seems that every time I read a newspaper, I just feel dumber for the effort.  

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Renney gone, Koskie on Team Canada, New CFL Rules… the banging in my head goes on unabated…

Posted on February 24, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

What’s that clanging around in my noggin? 

 

Must admit, can’t think that anyone was surprised when Tom Renney was fired as head coach of the New York Rangers. Great guy, excellent coach, wrong team, wrong time.

 

At the start of the season it appeared as if the Rangers were going to run away and hide, but as the playoffs approach and the Blueshirts have lost 10 of 12 and fallen to within two points of ninth place in the East. Losing to the Leafs on Sunday night was the end of the road for Renney.

 

It’s been clear for awhile that Glen Sather was going to make a change and the move to John Tortorella, a hard-ass, native New Yorker, was so painfully obvious, it bordered on cliche.

 

Tortorella won a Cup in Tampa and also finished last. Of course, he won the Cup with Nikolai Khabibulin in goal and finished last without his Russian netminder, In the end, it always comes down to goaltending and if the Rangers intend to turn this swoon around, Henri Lundqvist had better be ready to carry the load.  

 

2) On the baseball front, Team Canada manager Ernie Whitt confirmed yesterday that Anola, Manitoba’s Corey Koskie, who hasn’t played a game in anger since July 5, 2006, would indeed be one of the 28 players named Tuesday to Team Canada’s preliminary roster for the 2009 World Baseball Classic. Team Canada opens camp March 2 in Dunedin.

 

We first reported this story here at rivercitysportsblog.com at 10:03 a.m. CDT on Sunday, Feb. 22. Later in the day, a story on Koskie’s good fortune appeared on the St. Paul Pioneer Press’s website and the next day the story appeared at cbc.ca. Of course, cbc.ca — which only occasionally gets things right — wouldn’t credit rivercitysportsblog.com. 

 

The mainstream media continues to act despicably. One can only hope the Harper government one day shuts down the CBC, a $1 billion-plus waste of taxpayers money. We live in a time when private broadcasters — the people in this country who pay their own way — are struggling to survive and yet we toss public money down that big CBC toilet.

 

That has to stop. And soon.

 

3) Meanwhile, in the CFL, for the first time, Canadian Football League fans are being asked to propose rule changes that can “make our great game even better,” according to commissioner Mark Cohon’s comments on cfl.ca. 

 

Fans are asked to send their ideas by visiting CFL.ca/rules or by e-mailing rules@cfl.ca by this coming Friday.

 

My suggestion was simple. If a CFL team employs a Canadian as its No. 3 quarterback, then that team should get to use an import starter at another position. It’s time CIS quarterbacks got some training at the pro level in their own country.

 

Interestingly, I’ve heard from a number of 92-CITI-FM listeners who suggested we simply play NFL football in Canada. “One game on one continent,” said our friend Fort Rouge Ted.

 

It’s certainly not patriotic, but it does make sense. 

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