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"I'M THE SPORTS REPORTER, and you're the people who didn't set this up very well," says Gerry Dee, deadpan, observing an audience that has been awkwardly bifurcated by a big, fat pillar.

Mr. Dee has one of those "Who is that guy?" faces. And then you think, snap, he's the fellow from the Rogers commercial (very funny) and the one for Wiser's whisky (also funny), and you wonder: So why is he playing warm-up act at an annual meeting in downtown Toronto? Is this company not aware that the chill, steel-encased heart of the city's business establishment doesn't do funny?

There's your answer, right there. Score Media Inc. is not part of the Canadian establishment and thus can issue its annual report trussed in a jockstrap, as it did last year, and hand out knuckle-busting faux-silver Team Score Super Shareholder MVS bling rings, as it has this afternoon. Score investors aren't just shareholders. No. They are, says this year's amusingly rendered annual report, "an exclusive club of champions that will make you the envy of all of your friends." (A pie chart illustrates that fact: 46% of non-shareholding friends will feel envy, 24% will register jealousy, 23% will feel hatred and, frighteningly, 7% will express rage.)

Mr. Dee is an on-air personality for The Score Television Network, Score Media's anchor asset, which broadcasts sports news, WWE RAW (World Wrestling Entertainment is the biggest ratings draw for the network), NBA games, some soccer, horse-racing and various inter-university events. You could say his job is to help define the Score brand—which skews, you will not be surprised to hear, to young men—as irreverent, idiosyncratic, unconventional…anti-establishment. So he stares down the gathering of investors and an analyst or two, and expresses the dedication of the hard-core Score team thusly: "I did an interview with Steve Yzerman. I was hung over. I'm not going to lie…I came in and did the interview. That's what a lot of people do here."

Standing stage left is John Levy, Score Media's top dog. (Well, if the company is going to be so relaxed in its presentation, then so am I.) The black and glass face of the Score's HD broadcasting studio rises behind him, with its gargantuan television screen, its ticker-taped sports scores, its brazenness that yells out to the streetscape and to far larger competitors TSN and Sportsnet and to the wider world: Time to kick some ass.

You may laugh, but John Levy has built something here. He has extended the Score brand to Hardcore Sports Radio on Sirius Satellite Radio, Score Mobile and Score Poker. There are modest profits (EBITDA of $5.9 million on revenue of $36.4 million for the year ended Aug. 31). And growing name recognition with such on-air interviewers as Cabral (Cabbie) Richards, who recently had a chat with comedian Will Ferrell in the men's room of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas (Ferrell was wearing a women's "100% Himalayan house cat" coat at the time), and who repeatedly manages to land one-on-ones with L.A. Laker Kobe Bryant. (Bryant seems to enjoy Cabbie's offbeat, Can-I-Come-Visit-You-At-Your-House interviewing technique.)

Step back a sec. It's days before the AGM, and Levy is leaning back in his white leather office chair, which makes him look like the Dean Martin of sports broadcasting. He's pointing across the room to a screen upon which Cabbie's mug is being broadcast. "You see this guy right here?" he asks. "That's us. He gets interviews and does interviews like nobody else in North America.…He doesn't ask the same stupid, redundant questions everybody else asks."

"Everybody else" would include TSN. "TSN is ESPN north," says Levy. "They look the same. They wear the same ties." He's not being nasty. This is good…sport. "Everybody here appreciates the fact that we will only survive by being different and continuing to provide something that other people aren't providing."

Levy is 55, lean as a whippet and dressed in a green and pink striped shirt that matches his eyes (the green, not the pink). He has the unfussed, unguarded entrepreneurial air of someone from an earlier time. This is rooted in childhood, from the days he spent accompanying his dad on car trips around Hamilton, looking for storm-tossed TV antennas. "He used to take down the address and send a salesperson out and say, 'Instead of spending $100 to replace the antenna, give us $100 and we'll put cable in and you'll never see an antenna again.'"

Dad was a cable guy like Ted Rogers was a cable guy. Cecil Levy's company was Western Co-Axial Ltd., which dated back to 1959 and which, 40 years later, John Levy would sell to Cogeco Cable for $162.5 million.

By that time, Levy had invested in a company that streamed sports scores on air. He stuck the content on Channel 70 or something—he can't precisely remember—and wondered: Where can someone go with the germ of an idea like this?

He wanted to add video highlights, so he applied to the CRTC for a licence. He applied for a horse-racing channel at the same time. "What happened was, you had to cut deals with all the horsemen...and they came in and actually intervened against me. They thought it was going to cannibalize the off-track stuff. Terribly short-sighted." The chair of the commission said to Levy: "How the hell do you expect me to give you a licence when the guys you're relying on for your programming don't even want to race for ya?"

So that died.

The specialty sports channel was approved. Given more space, I could more fully document various excitements that followed, including the reverse takeover of a shell company controlled by Frank Mersch in the fall of 2000, launching the sports media company onto the stock exchange. The stock came out at three bucks and then, says Levy, "the market kaboomed, and the stock went down, $2.40, $2.20, $2.10." Mersch is no longer on the scene. "Frank loses interest pretty fast. He's all about one thing: making money. He's really good at that. But when you stop making money, he's not so happy. Like, he's mad."

Other colourful passages include the launch of PrideVisionTV, "the world's first 24/7 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered television network." Big idea. Expensive programming. Scant viewership. "It must have cost us $15 million to $20 million, start to finish," says Levy, "finish" being the moment in December, 2003, when he struck a deal to sell the station to Bill Craig for $2.6 million. "It was really an amazing moment when we got the licence," he says. "It was our mini Obama moment. I hope [Obama] does better than PrideVision did."

Like most entrepreneurs, Levy sees not "mistakes" but learning experiences. Some people, he says, would deem Score Media's deal to broadcast live major league baseball a "mistake," particularly as the contract was premised on being granted a hefty increase in subscriber rates. Levy had already cut a $12-million cheque to exit the baseball arrangement when the CRTC granted the company a paltry four-cent hike. "What's that expression? If it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger? That was one of those," he says. Still, he adds, "It almost did sink us at the time." Lesson: "We can't throw a whole bunch of money all over the place and hope something sticks."

While not a "mistake," one might say the company's decision to put itself on the block in June, 2007, exhibited a lack of finesse. Alliance Atlantis Communications had 22% of Score Media. When CanWest Global Communications took over Alliance, it inherited its piece of The Score. Levy figured that for $2.90 a share, or $280 million, the Aspers might like to buy the whole company. "I honestly thought it was going to go," he says. Five months later, the For Sale sign came down. What happened to the Aspers? "They decided not to," he says. The Aspers, through CW Media, remain the company's second-largest shareholder.

The silence on the sale appeared, well, awkward. So The Score started to make noise, especially by investing $15 million in a brash overhaul of its Toronto studio. Levy remains in control, with 55.7% of the voting shares. He offers a tour of the studio. There's no imperial aura. Not a whiff of arrogance. Just a guy with a big idea. "I think we're going to blow the hell out of those other guys," he says. Game on.

SMACKDOWN: How The Score stacks up against its two Canadian rivals

THE SCORE
Launched: 1997 (officially)
Owner: Score Media Inc.
2007 subscribers: 6.15 million
Motto: "Home for the Hardcore." Broadcasts a seemingly endless stream of scores and highlights, and programming skews way young: wrestling, late-night poker, NBA games, Canadian university football and NCAA basketball
Apparent Philosophy: Sports! Right here! In your face! Common Criticism: At times, too much like turning on a camera in a frat house
Star power: Cabral (Cabbie) Richards, the likable and ebullient host of Cabbie Unlimited, excels at getting NBA superstars to let their guards down

TSN
Launched: Sept. 1, 1984
Owner: CTVglobemedia (80%) and ESPN (20%)
2007 subscribers: 8.62 million
Motto: "Canada's Sports Leader." TSN has led the market in Canadian sports programming for two-plus decades. Its affiliation with ESPN helps give it a polished look. Tends to have all the big games and events, and holds exclusive rights to CFL games
Apparent Philosophy: Sports are majestic and beautiful, full of great characters and deep meaning!
Common Criticism: The "Toronto Sports Network," as it's often called, only cares about Hogtown teams
Star power: Michael Landsberg, the arrogant, brash but undeniably intelligent host of Off the Record

SPORTSNET
Launched: Oct. 9, 1998
Owner: Rogers Communications Inc.
2007 subscribers: 8.47 million
Motto: "Your Home Team. First." Sportsnet's four regional channels each has its own focus and broadcast deals with the local NHL and CHL teams. It's the home of Blue Jays baseball, because Rogers owns the team. Outside Toronto, it's probably your default choice for in-depth reporting on your local team
Apparent Philosophy: Sports are a serious business—no amount of navel-gazing is too much!
Common Criticism: Lacks the consistently high production values of TSN
Star power: Bob McCown, the crusty radio host whose call-in show on The Fan 590 is simulcast on Sportsnet for those (in his own words) "who do not own radios"