Once in a blue moon — and we use the word blue for good reason — sports broadcasting heads off in a new direction.
The destination, in this case, is a place where sports talk on the radio will include four-letter words.
In January, Sirius Canada's Hardcore Sports Radio, a news and information satellite radio channel produced by the Score Television Network, will relaunch by adding a talk component.
The faint of heart may need to cover their ears.
Richard Garner, a former producer at Rogers Sportsnet and now executive producer of Hardcore, calls it edgy but smart talk. And it will include profanity.
"There will be a level of intelligence to the conversation," Garner said. "I guarantee you that. It has to be, because the fact you can drop an f-bomb here and there doesn't guarantee success."
Sports talk, fair and foul, is Garner's vision. But to execute the vision he hired away from The Fan 590 in Toronto perhaps the best sports-radio producer in the country.
Mike Gentile has taken his Rolodex and left Bob McCown's afternoon drive to become supervising producer of Hardcore, with special attention to a new afternoon-drive show.
Hosts and guests will be free to use four-letter words, because satellite radio isn't controlled by all federal broadcasting guidelines. But Garner insists the goal is authenticity, not shock.
"It won't be gratuitous or exploitive," he said. "The hosts will speak the way they would if they were in a bar with their buddies or just sitting around having a conversation.
"Nobody says Terrell Owens is a malcontent or that a game was uneventful. Guys don't talk that way.
"So, we'll have the ability to tell it like it is, as Howard Cosell used to say 30 years ago. Thirty years later, we truly can."
One of the Cosell disciples will be the Score's Steve Kouleas, who will be host of a new show called Hardcore Hockey Talk. Garner said Kouleas's energy makes him perfect for the new format.
"Steve's passion is crazy, almost pathological, "Garner said. "You put that guy, unleashed, on a service that allows for complete freedom, and you just wind him up and let him go."
The revamped Hardcore channel will be carried not only by Sirius Canada, but also the U.S. Sirius service. More on this later.
Contentious move
The hiring of an American to be head of production for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic host broadcast came under fire from critics who felt the job should have gone to a producer in this country.
Canadians, after all, have an excellent reputation worldwide for producing Winter Games content.
Sports TV executives interviewed yesterday gave a mixed reaction to the International Olympic Committee's decision to hire Brian Douglas as director of production for the Vancouver host broadcast.
Douglas did the same job at Salt Lake in 2002 and Turin in 2006, and, therefore, has a working relationship with Manolo Romero, the all-important Spanish head of the IOC host broadcast operation.
John Shannon, the National Hockey League's senior vice-president of broadcasting, worked with Douglas on the host broadcast of the 1998 Nagano Games and believes he's qualified for the job.
"This is the era of free trade and the global village, and you go out and get the best people," Shannon said. "Brian has a huge amount of Olympic experience. I don't think you can discount that. And quite frankly, he knows how Manolo works."
But a broadcaster, requesting anonymity, said that eight or nine Canadian producers could do the job as well or better than Douglas.
"He did an average job at Salt Lake and in Italy," he said. "It's not like he blew the doors off and is a must-have. He's doing average to normal work. So, why wouldn't you, for a number of reasons, hire a Canadian?"
A call to Nancy Lee, who will be Douglas's boss and Romero's No. 2 at Vancouver, was not returned.
Rick Chisholm, senior vice-president of programming and production for TSN, felt that Douglas's Olympic experience was the clincher.
"It would be nice to have a Canadian in the job, but if I was Manolo, I would probably have made the same decision," Chisholm said. "I don't think it's a slight. All things being equal, there are certainly a number of Canadians who are qualified to do that position. But you weigh the size of the job and it's awful hard to turn your back on that experience."
