Why won't Rogers let radio announcers go on the road?
I feel for Joe Bowen and Jim Ralph. They can't even travel to Ottawa to call the games. It can't be because of money, can it?
Maple Leafs radio announcers Jim Ralph and Joe Bowen in 2016 at Chicago’s United Center.
The other day in this space, I called out Turner Broadcasting (TNT, TBS) for not sending their play-by-play announcers to Winnipeg for game one of the Jets-Blues series. They saved a couple of thousand dollars but were called out by many for being bush league and cheap. The viewer deserved better. Turner vowed not to do it again.
This is a regular occurrence for Toronto Maple Leafs fans who enjoy listening to the games on the radio. But, since the pandemic of 2020, announcers Joe Bowen and Jim Ralph have remained at home, even when the team is on the road. Now, you would think they’d lift the travel ban for this series in Ottawa, but no. The radio duo called yesterday’s third game from the same studio off the same monitor they’ve been using all season. That’s ridiculous. Absurd, even. Ottawa is a four-hour drive away, yet the two broadcasters who have been calling Leaf games for decades aren’t allowed to go. Except for a second-round series against Florida two years ago, Joe and Jim have not travelled in the past five years. There are very few other radio broadcasters who don’t travel to road games, but Rogers Sportsnet seems to have cornered the market on this troubling trend.
It’s been years since they’ve allowed their Toronto Blue Jays announcers to travel to road games as well. First, it was Ben Wagner, and now Ben Shulman and Chris Leroux announce the away games from a similar Rogers studio that Bowen and Ralph work out of. This week, Shulman the younger was doing the Jays TV games in Houston, but Eric Smith and Leroux remained back in Toronto for the radio call. In that studio, there is a huge monitor that has the game feed, and a couple of smaller screens that have isolated shots, but it doesn’t compare to being at the game. You miss stuff that happens on the bench or in the dugout or beyond the parameters of the TV cameras. In hockey, you can’t see what happens behind the play. You can’t pick out what’s going on in the crowd. It’s very tough to create an environment when you’re not there to experience it, especially when you’re at the mercy of the out-of-town TV production. Bowen and Ralph have become so adept at calling games off a monitor, you can barely recognize that they’re doing it remotely.
For a couple of seasons in the 1990s, I was Bowen’s colour man on the radio doing Maple Leafs games. We travelled to every road game back then. When we got to a road venue, we would always seek out the team’s play by play and colour broadcasters, as well as the local beat writers and media people. That information, gathered from face-to-face discussions, proved invaluable on our live broadcast. As well, when you travel with a team, you see people in a different light. Maybe you share a meal with a player or coach or have a beer after the game or talk about family and aspirations on the plane or on the bus. If you’re always around the team, you’ll glean tons more than if you’re in a studio back home.
Nobody at Rogers has ever explained why the Maple Leafs and BlueJays radio announcers don’t travel to road games. I mean, it can’t be money, can it? Why would a multi-billion-dollar company nickel-and-dime its customers so they can’t receive the best possible coverage? It’s baffling, it’s troubling and it’s a big reason why TSN is the preferred sports channel in this country.
Just look at the coverage of the “London 5”, the trial of junior hockey players charged with sexual assault in London, Ontario. TSN is all over it, thanks to senior correspondent Rick Westhead. He’s been covering the story from the beginning, and his reports are seen frequently on TSN and updated often on TSN.ca. As well, he has the support and resources from CTV News. Rogers, which owns the NHL rights, prefers not to cover this trial. There was nothing on any of their sportscasts yesterday or today to suggest that they’re even interested in covering a story that might put the NHL or NHL players in a bad light. Nothing on their website either, except for a paragraph written by someone I’ve never heard of, and a few tweets from a producer who has 500 followers.
Interestingly, TSN, which owns the rights to Junior Hockey (CHL, WJC), feels an obligation to its viewers to report on important issues, like criminal charges, away from the rink about their sport. Rogers, which no longer is associated with junior hockey, feels no such obligation. They have eliminated a lot jobs and no longer have the personnel to cover news stories. There’s not an investigative reporter to be found at One Mount Pleasant, but if you’re looking for talented announcers who must stay home to call a road game, there are plenty. Will Rogers Sportsnet ever come clean and tell us why they do the things they do?
**
I hate to brag, but I called the overtime winner last night in the Leafs-Ottawa game. With the faceoff in the Senators zone, some fans started chanting “Go Sens Go” even before the puck was dropped. I feel if you’re going to chant this, it would be best to do it when your team has the puck and is attacking. Certainly not when you’re taking a faceoff in the defensive zone. As soon as I heard the chant, I told my partner, “The Leafs are going to score right here.” And they did. You see, there’s a time and a place for everything. In baseball, for example, you don’t start “the wave” when the other team is at bat. You wait for your team to come up and then you get the crowd going. In basketball, the crowd can yell “Defense”, when the other team has the ball, but you never hear any hockey fans yelling that when their team is killing a penalty. Those fans who began the “Go Sens Go” chant at the worst possible time should be banned from appearing at any future games. That was just dumb.
**
The NHL and NBA playoffs continue this weekend with six games tonight, eight games on Saturday and eight games on Sunday. I’ll be paying close attention to the Montreal-Washington series tonight, as it should be a wild scene at the Bell Centre. As well, I expect the Maple Leafs to sweep the Senators after my reverse-jinx prediction the other day and the fact that Toronto has never lost a playoff series after winning the first two games. When the Leafs went up 2-0 early in game one on Sunday, I made my real prediction.
The sweep will be complete on Saturday night. Too bad Joe and Jim won’t be in Ottawa to call the game. If Rogers wants to make amends, they’ll send them on the road in the next series, the same way they did in 2023 when the Leafs won the first round over Tampa in six games before succumbing to Florida in five games.
Have a great weekend!