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The on-again, off-again television agreement between the Toronto Blue Jays and the CBC will be completed by the end of the week, according to sources close to negotiations.
Barring an 11th-hour change, the CBC will air eight Blue Jays games this season, probably starting with back-to-back weekend games at home against the Colorado Rockies on June 23 and 24.
The agreement, which was expected to be announced before the start of the baseball season, hit a snag over advertising issues.
Insiders say the Jays and CBC could sign a multiyear deal that would have the schedule increase to 20 or 25 games in 2008, when the network will be without Canadian Football League content.
Related Information
Hockey Night in Canada announcer Jim Hughson will be the play-by-play voice on the Blue Jays telecasts. Hughson is one of the top announcers in the business and called Jays games for TSN in the 1980s, when Scott Moore, the CBC's new head of sports, worked as a senior producer at TSN.
TV's second round
You don't yell at the referee in the hope he will change a call, but rather in the hope he will think twice the next time.
Perhaps that's what happened after CBC's Moore complained to the National Hockey League about not giving Hockey Night its traditional Saturday night slot on the opening weekend of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
The NHL schedule-maker certainly came through for the CBC in the second round.
The CBC will get Game 2 of the Ottawa Senators-New Jersey Devils series in prime time on Saturday. Game 5, if necessary, on the following Saturday, is also scheduled for the evening.
"We're ecstatic," said Terry Ludwick, director of programming for CBC Sports. "Two Canadian teams [Ottawa and the Vancouver Canucks] made it through [to the second round]. And all our games will be in prime. So it gives us 14 opportunities [if both series go the distance] for hockey games in the evening. We have a series in the East and West, and we think it's a great balance."
In addition to the CBC's coverage of the Vancouver-Anaheim Ducks and Ottawa-New Jersey series, TSN will carry the New York Rangers-Buffalo Sabres and San Jose Sharks-Detroit Red Wings in the second round.
TSN will shoot all games in high-definition television. The CBC will provide HDTV for the Ottawa series and shoot the Canucks' home dates in HDTV.
Raptors playoff TV
The Score and TSN have divided the remaining Toronto Raptors first-round National Basketball Association playoff games against the New Jersey Nets.
The Score will air Game 3 on Friday at 7 p.m. (EDT). TSN will pick up Game 4 on Sunday at 7:30 p.m., with the Score returning for Games 5 and 6 (if necessary), and then TSN coming in for a seventh (if necessary).
Given a choice, Raptors owner Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment would have placed all the games on TSN. However, the network has a heavy schedule of NHL second-round telecasts that conflict with most of the Raptors' dates.
All Raptors playoff games on TSN and the Score will be shot in HDTV. TSN Broadband will carry pregame and postgame coverage online. The Score, along with Raptors NBA TV, is providing a 30-minute pregame show before each telecast.
CBC's hockey numbers
Hockey Night drew 2 million viewers for Monday's Game 7 of the Dallas Stars-Vancouver Canucks series. That was the largest Canadian audience of the playoffs.
But the CBC's first-round average audience of 1.179 million is down 8 per cent from 2006. The decline is attributable largely to CBC airing three series involving Canadian teams this year compared with four last year.
Low audiences for the Tampa Bay Lightning-New Jersey Devils series helped pull down the overall number. Stars-Canucks averaged 1.5 million; Ottawa Senators-Pittsburgh Penguins, 1.4 million; Calgary Flames-Detroit Red Wings, 1.1 million; and Lightning-Devils 652,000.
On journalism
From a speech by David Halberstam to the Columbia School of Journalism in 2005:
"One of the things I learned, the easiest of lessons, was that the better you do your job, often going against conventional mores, the less popular you are likely to be. So, if you seek popularity, this is probably not the profession for you. … There are a few things I would like to pass on to you as I come near to the end of my career. One: It's not about fame. By and large, the more famous you are, the less of a journalist you are. Besides, fame does not last. At its best, it is about being paid to learn."
Halberstam, whose Summer of '49 is among the finest books written about American sport, died in a car accident on Monday.
