HOW DOES THE NEXT CHL BROADCASTING DEAL LOOK? A TWO PART SERIES
- Steve Clark
- 12 hours ago
- 10 min read
PART ONE- AN INCOMPLETE BROADCASTING HISTORY OF THE OHA/OHL/CHL
Deep breath, because this might be a long one! That said, I'm going to try and make it engaging and entertaining as offer up a brief history of the at least the OHL and how they have looked at broadcasts independent of their local coverage. And do not worry, the local broadcasts will get their monster push in Part 2 because, well, I broadcast for local TV!
TSN's deal with the CHL is up at the conclusion of this year's Memorial Cup. They had the CHL for three years and tried various methods of coverage over the course of the deal. How that deal might look and what it should include will be covered in Part Two of this series of articles
First up is a history of broadcasting in the OHA/OHL/CHL. Now, there are gaps in parts of the 80's and 90's and between 2002-2007 but I have managed to research and find information and clips from the earlier incarnations of broadcasting from sources like CHCH, TSN, CTV and others! Thank you to YouTube for providing some much needed content!
If you have hung in here for all the pre-amble, thank you! Lets take a look at the evolution of both the OHL and the CHL as a broadcasting entity. As I said before, his might be a little incomplete, but it gives you a good and broad look at how broadcasting worked back in the day.
CHCH AND THE OHA
Details are few and far between and dates are a little sketchy but before the OHL there was the OHA and they had games broadcasted on CHCH TV in Hamilton, normally on a Thursday and Sunday and normally repeat broadcasts not live ones. The Hamilton Jr Red Wings played out of the Hamilton Forum. The less said about the condition of the Forum the better, but it was deemed to be an embarassment to the city when they hosted the Memorial Cup one year. I do not know what it is with Hamilton and potential Memorial Cup embarassments. There was this and then 1990 when Hamilton was set to host the Memorial Cup but their OHL team the Dukes (of Hamillton0 ugh) were so dreadful they had to pull out of hosting duties. The Dukes are mentioned again later inthis reading. That's my disclaimer for the article! Hamilton legend Norm Marshall, as he did with most sports in the Hammer, was at the forefront of the broadcasts. CHCH, as the poster indicates, had quite a robust sports schedule as Junior hockey, wrestling and bowling all were covered by the station. I imagine it was nothing but a ratings bonanza if you had a bowling/Jr Hockey doubleheader.
TSN'S CHL GAME OF THE WEEK ON SUNDAY LATE 80'S EARLY 90'S
Going down a YouTube rabbit hole can sometimes be a dangerous thing because there are times you get little return and spend a whole lot of time tunneling through said rabbit holes. Other times you strike gold and invest more time because you cannot stop watching old videos!
Thanks to a YouTube channel called the OHL Archive I found out that at least in 1990 TSN had a Sunday CHL game of the week and the year before CTV broadcasted the Memorial Cup. I will be honest with you, I do not know when this particular entity began and ended but I do know that they were awfully lucky to have the rights in 1990. That year featured one of the best Memorial Cup Finals of all time as Oshawa beat Kingston in 3OT. People will remember this version of the Oshawa Generals because of Eric Lindros. However the game itself was a classic. Fred Braithwaite and Mike Torchia had a goalie duel for the ages and unheralded D man Bill Armstrong scored a goal on a screen shot that floated in from the point and eluded the stunned Torchia. The Sunday CHL Game of the Week featured Paul Romanuk on play-by-play and Bob Mackenzie was the colour analyst as you can see in this introduction to the broadcast the youthful versions of a couple of broadcasters who would become legendary at TSN and beyond.
TSN SUNDAY CHL GAME OF THE WEEK
Also noteworthy, outside of the fantastic salad on Bobby Mac and the sartorial splendour of the TSN jackets, was the fact that this broadcast featured the long-lamented Hamilton Dukes and the Ottawa 67's. The Dukes, of course, were widely known for being the hosts of the Memorial Cup but having to forfit their opporunity to participage due to their extremely poor record. As a regular attender of the Dukes of Hamilton at Copps Coliseum, I still have flashbacks and PTSD from some of the dreadful performances put on by them. I am not 100% sure how long the Sunday CHL Game of the Week was on in the late 80's and early 90's, but I am guessing it had a loyal audience that you would not find today given the dominance of Sunday Night Football. Even Rogers/Sportsnet tried to capture some of the Sunday night audience with Hometown Hockey, an NHL game centered around the history and legacy of a particular city. Eventually it moved to Monday and night and then was scrapped altogether.
Other parts of this excellent website called the OHL Archive was a feature on the NCAA vs CHL education debate, something extremely relevant in today's junior hockey landscape. Also, there was an intermission with veteran referee Jim Lever, and haven't hockey fans been long-complaining that they would like to hear from the officials when it comes to conroversial calls. The careers of play-by-play broadcaster Paul Romanuk and Bob McKenzie would really be cemented after this with Romanuk becoming the voice of the World Juniors, a number of NHL teams and an early morning radio host with the TEAM 1050. Not a bad career for a guy who started with the Oshawa Generals as a local TV broadcaster (more on them later). McKenzie, of course, would go on to be hockey's first "insider" and would be widely respected until his official retirement back in 2025.
He's also the answer to the great trivial question "Which TSN broadaster had his own mixed alcoholic drink?" Yep, it's Bob McKenzie who promoted and endorsed a line of margarita's called "Bobby Margarita". I wonder if Bobby Mac ever found his flip flops and lost shaker of salt.
Here's a "Commentators Introduction With Paul Romanuk and Bob McKenzie
Highlights of the 1990 Memorial Cup at a sold out Copps Coliseum
THE OHL GAME OF THE WEEK ON GLOBAL
Trying to pinpoint the exact time this started was difficult, but my research indicated that it was as early as 1984 and ran until approximately 2002. There is a chance I might those dates slightly off but it did run for a number of years and featured the likes of Jack Miller, Dave Quinn, Sherry Bassin, and Jim Tatti, among others. The 1984 game I found on the OHL YouTube page a very young Jim Hughson and Gary Green, who was his regular partner in those days, including mid-week Maple Leaf games. The iconic Hughson would be the #1 broadcaster on Hockey Night in Canada for years while Green enjoyed a long broadcasting career. Miller just wrapped up an iconic 51 year career, largely built in Belleville with the Bulls and later the Belleville Senators witha sprinkling of calling games for the Ottawa Senators. He was also the sports director at 820 CJBQ, a local radio station in Belleville. Casual fans would remember him from not only the OHL Game of the Week but also as a longtime colour commontator on the national radio broadcasts of the World Junior Hockey Championship. Oh, and the Belleville Senators arena press box is called the Jack Miller Media and Broadcast Center. He had a voice that pretty much would be the envy of anyone who had any interest in dipping their toe in the world of sportscasting. His deep, resonating baritone was THE authority on junior hockey and beyond. I have had a chance to meet Jack on a few occasions and he is a gentleman, and one of the genuinely nicest people you could ever meet.
I have always said that a weekly presence on commercial or network television is incredibly vital to the visibility of not only the league but also the individual teams. It is a presence that is currently missing from the junior hockey landscape. I will address that more when I write about what a broadcasting deal should look like.
The Global OHL Game of the Week had a strong presence, led by popular sports broadcaster Jim Tatti. Jim, who still works in radio today as a talk show host on TSN1050 and the pre/intermission and post game host of Leafs and Raptors radio broadasts. He was the sports director at Global TV and was one-half of the wildly popular Sportsline television show with Mark Hebscher. Later Tatti would be joined by a number of different hosts after Hebscher left. The show was irreverant and really ahead of its time blending highlights with humour, great chemistry and well-known catch phrases and nicknames such as "Yes Guy" "duck snort" (for a blooper basehit), "The Shoe Salesman" Ivan Calderone (after Calderone shoes).
Having someone with the star presence of Tatti gave the broadcasts instant credibility, and the product itself was engaging to the point it had national and very credible sponsors that you can see on some of the clips below. Some may frown on the fact that hockey played by teenagers being sponsored by Molson was a little off-base, but last year Carlsberg sponsored the Ontario Hockey League so it really isn't that egregious. Global, from what I could see, did not appear to favour one team or another as they showed a wide variety of games from a wide variety of arenas. Global held rights until 2002 when it was said that the games were sold to CFMT. I'll be honest, I cannot find any trace of what CFMT did with their coverage. The former channel 47, cable 4 had a number of different soccer shows to satiate the fans of premier league soccer.
the Soo and Hamilton Steelhawks brawl I love this clip for the simple reason that the organ plays all the way through the brawl!
For this clip GO DIRECTLY TO THE 9 MINUTE MARK FOR ROB THE PYRO GUY AND HIS MAGNIFICENT, AND I MEAN MAGNIFICENT HEAD OF HAIR. It's also the start of Brampton vs Oshawa from Brampton, where the seats are pretty full!
Here's Belleville and Oshawa in a high scoring game with an introduction by Jack Miller and Jim Tatti before the 2nd period
It was a model that really was perfected by CHCH when they did Canadian university games of the week and did football in the fall and basketball in the fall/winter. They also covered the playoffs and gave the then OUAA (now OUA) a much needed weekly presence that helped the national profile when TSN took over for the Vanier Cup and the men's university basketball championship. Global was an outstanding partner for the OHL and really delivered a quality product with voices that had a lot of credibility with fans.
There is a bit of a gap between 2002 and 2007 which was when Sportsnet took over the national rights for junior hockey and held them all the through to 2021 which was when TSN took over.
SPORTSNET 2007-2022 AND TSN 2022- PRESENT
For younger fans of the OHL, you might mostly remember Sportsnet's all encompassing coverage of the CHL. Armed with a 12 year national hockey rights deal, Rogers decided to complelment its NHL coverage with CHL coverage, choosing Friday nights as the day they tried to establish junior hockey. Sportsnet did a really good job of giving the CHL product great visibility and they also used some of their top talent. Play-by-Play was handled firstly by Peter Loubardias and then Sportsnet Day One employee R.J. Broadhead. Sam Cosentino was a staple of the coverage and was a panelist, and later on the colour commontator. Sam is still at Sportsnet doing colour, being on an intermission panel and also as their main draft researcher and insider. You will see Sam a lot as he is an integral part of Rogers NHL Draft coverage. Jeff Marek did a lot of the hosting and intermission duties and he was a staple at Sportsnet's coverage of the NHL Draft and hockey in general as he had a national radio hockey show. Even today in his regular gig with the Daily Faceoff, Marek breaks junior hockey stories, and is a respected voice in the hockey broadcasting world. It was a very strong on-air crew Sportsnet covered all three leagues and then the Memorial Cup. It was good television but never drew the audience both the league and the network coveted. Largely a regional/local presence, the games did not have a whole lot of national appeal and even a move to Saturday afternoon's failed to boost the profile or the ratings. They let the rights deal lapse and TSN took over.
GIven that I'll be talking a lot about TSN in the main post, I'll make this one brief. The first year of the rights deal saw CBC broadcast a handful of games along with a TSN game of the week leading to sporadic coverage of the playoffs and full coverage of the Memorial Cup. Like Sportsnet, the national footprint just was not there so TSN switched to special events like the Top Prospects Games followed by full coverage of the league championship finals and then the Memorial Cup. It definitely was a risk and also a marked departure from the Game of the Week format. If you were hoping for this to be a continuation of the World Junior coverage, you were disappointed. There was no Gord Miller, Mike Johnson, Jeff "O'Dog" O'Neill or Bob McKenzie. Younger, emerging talent was used like Victor Findlay, Frank Corrado, Laura Diakun, Julia Tocheri and Carlo Colaivacco. The rights are done after this Memorial Cup, and that' leaves us at where we are now.
We are a little bit of a crossroads with Junior hockey. Huge changes to the on-air product are colliding with new ways of consuming content. It will be a challenge for the CHL to find its niche.
I hope you enjoyed this stroll down memory lane because I sure enjoyed researching it! Any gaps you can fill would be appreciated.
For Part 2, I will look at the expiration of the current national broadcasting agreement with Bell/TSN and try to predict what a future broadcasting deal looks like in a world in which media and broadcasting are changing much quicker than usual!
Steve Clark