TRUTH & RUMOURS: BROADCASTING

Jays get boost on CBC, but viewers shy away from Sportsnet

by WILLIAM HOUSTON
Globe & Mail
August 14, 2007

The Toronto Blue Jays' audiences are up on CBC. And at TSN, the numbers are pretty much the same as they were at this time last year.

Rogers Sportsnet is a different story.

After 80 telecasts, Sportsnet, the main Jays carrier, is averaging 290,000 viewers a game for a decline of 26 per cent over last year at this time when the average was 389,000.

That's a big drop. Team performance influences audiences more than any other factor. The Jays, two games over .500 before last night's game, are enjoying less success than a year ago when they were eight games over.

An up-and-down season that started poorly and improved slightly after the all-star break is the main reason for the audience drop-off.

But is the quality of the Sportsnet telecast at the level it should be?

Play-by-play announcer Jamie Campbell has plenty of critics, although he has improved over the three years he has been in the booth.

The system of rotating game analysts doesn't work well. It's also worth asking if Sam Cosentino, a university baseball player, is at a point in his career where he should be providing major-league colour commentary.

TSN's numbers are down a small amount. The network is averaging 421,000 viewers over 22 games for a drop of 3.4 per cent from 436,000 a year ago.

The CBC, airing Jays games for the first time since 2002, has done pretty well with six telecasts, averaging 324,000 viewers, up 13 per cent from the 2002 average of 287,000.

The CBC and TSN have a wider distribution than Sportsnet and much smaller Jays schedules. Still, the fact the CBC and TSN audiences are considerably higher raises questions about Sportsnet's telecasts.

Sleeper signing

The CBC's hiring of TSN hockey producer Doug Walton last week flew under the radar when Craig Simpson was announced as a new Hockey Night in Canada game analyst and Sherali Najak was appointed executive producer.

But the sleeper acquisition was Walton, who joins HNIC as a senior producer. Those who know him speak in glowing terms.

Walton's decision to leave TSN for the CBC appears to have been sudden. A few days before the announcement, he was still planning to fly to Moscow to produce the TSN-Sportsnet coverage of the Canada-Russia junior tournament this month.

Insiders say Scott Moore, the head of CBC Sports, made Walton an offer he couldn't reject. In other words, big dollars were involved.

Walton is described as well liked and innovative. The network's one-up, one-down system of calling games, in which Gord Miller is in the booth and Pierre McGuire at ice level, was his creation.