Anchorboy (10 page)

B
ACK IN
T
ORONTO
, I
WAS
thriving career-wise. I was appearing on TSN every night. The NHL even flew a crew out to the All-Star Game in Los Angeles to cover the festivities. I had a chance to interview NHL commissioner Gary Bettman back when he wasn’t despised by everyone in hockey except the owners. It was amazing to be a part of a start-up network with so many young writers and producers. It was like a dream. But after the NHL season was over, I had very little work to do. We packaged together several “fill” shows for the network to run that summer that I had to host, so I couldn’t just take off for July and August or anything. I was bored out of my mind most “work” days, rambling around downtown Toronto, having lunch with friends, and occasionally wandering over to the gym to half-heartedly work out. I realized I wasn’t quite ready for early retirement, so I called up my old friend Mark Milliere—the same Mark Milliere who had ignored me while I stood right next to his computer years before as a writer in the newsroom. Since then Mark had ascended in the ranks of the network and was now in
charge of all news and information production at TSN. He was also responsible for choosing the hosts for
SportsCentre
.

I mentioned to Mark that I was bored and that if he needed someone to fill in on
SportsCentre
while other hosts took their summer vacations, I would be more than happy to do so. I also pointed out that the network was already paying me, so I was happy to come in for work whenever he needed. I just wanted to get my face out there in front of a few more eyeballs and have something to do. Mark took note of my suggestion and I figured he might forget about it, but just two days later he called me at home and asked me to fill in the next week. Suddenly, I was filling in on several editions of the show throughout the summer and enjoying it thoroughly. I even hosted my first show with Darren Dutchyshen, a truly surreal experience to host the show I had always wanted with the broadcaster I had always admired. It was a fun summer, but I knew I was set to return to the NHL Network in the fall.

That fall, TSN was set to begin rebroadcasting national NHL games on their network for the first time since Sportsnet outbid them for the hockey cable package back in 1998. Sportsnet was essentially able to launch their network based on landing that cable package, and while it hadn’t been devastating for TSN, there was much joy at the network when TSN won the rights back. I was among many employees at the network who participated in focus groups led by then TSN president Keith Pelley. Keith wanted to find out if there was another, better way of presenting the hockey broadcast during intermissions. CBC had a rock-solid formula with Ron and Don
and the Hot Stove. Keith wanted to do something completely different from that. Problem is, hockey fans don’t want something different from that. They are hockey fans. During the commercial breaks they want guys to talk about hockey.

But Keith was determined to find a better way, so months before hockey returned to the airwaves, he would corral eight to ten of us at a time into a boardroom. Keith would throw out ideas: “How about bands? What if a band played during intermission? How about a comedian? Maybe a few comedians?” It all sounded like a bad idea to me. I didn’t think hockey audiences would go for it. Pretty much everyone in the focus groups I attended made it very clear that we all felt the same way. Everyone strongly suggested that TSN simply try to hire the best hockey people they could find, have them talk about hockey, and leave it at that.

The powers that be listened to our suggestion, ignored it, and then promptly brought in the puppets. Actual puppets operated by actual puppeteers that they planned to use to entertain viewers between periods. The puppets apparently cost a fortune to commission, and they consisted of two puppet buddies sitting in their basement watching the
NHL on TSN
and commenting on the game and the broadcast. In hindsight it was amazing how ballsy TSN was being with their choices. They were trying stuff. Most of it wasn’t going to work, but they didn’t want to do the same old thing.

And then there was Linda Freeman. Had Linda not been hired, and then subsequently fired, as TSN’s new hockey host, I would never have been given the opportunity to host
SportsCentre
full time. I owe my career to her as much as anyone.

TSN wanted to hire the first female hockey host in the country’s history. I thought it was a great idea. The country was absolutely ready for a female host of a major hockey broadcast, and there were definitely several worthy candidates whom TSN could have hired at the time. The network decided to go in a completely different
direction and hire Linda, who had last worked as a host on CTV Vancouver’s morning show and had gained most of her on-air experience at The Weather Network. She was a completely capable broadcaster, very attractive, and seemed like a good fit. She was not a hockey expert, which TSN was quick to point out, but that wasn’t what TSN wanted for this job anyway. TSN needed a ringleader for their new forward-thinking intermission show. A more general host who could throw it over to the hockey experts for hockey talk but also introduce the bands and comedians and, yes, the puppets.

TSN put a ton of money behind Linda throughout the summer. Billboards all over the country featured Linda with her flowing red hair and gorgeous smile. Radio ads across the country touted her as a groundbreaker who was going to hit the airwaves that fall. TSN had invested a lot in the Linda Freeman brand. But after several weeks of rehearsals and just four days before the network’s first regular-season broadcast, TSN decided it just wasn’t working. Linda would continue to be involved in the broadcast as a roving reporter, and James Duthie would move from hosting the 10:00 Eastern Standard Time (EST) edition of
SportsCentre
to serve as the new host of the
NHL on TSN
. Blake Price would move from co-hosting the 11:00 Pacific Time (PT) edition of
SportsCentre
to the 10:00 EST edition. Those series of moves left Jennifer Hedger without a co-host. So many capable people were already waiting for that co-host spot in-house: David Amber, Dan Pollard, Cory Woron, all of them excellent broadcasters who really should have been given the gig. Instead, based on my two months of hosting during the summer, Mark immediately placed me next to Jennifer in the 11:00 PT slot Monday to Friday. Amazingly the other anchors did not shun me, and they took the news with grace and class, something that could not be said about me when I didn’t get the
Olympic Morning
hosting gig on CTV during the London Games. You’d think I would’ve learned from them.

Now I was hosting with Jennifer every day and loving it. She and I were about the same age, we got along great, and we had the same sense of humour. I knew, however, that Jen was just starting to make a huge splash on the Canadian sports broadcasting scene and that if I was to work with her for several years, I was destined to be the “guy next to the beautiful blonde on
SportsCentre
.” It was time to let my personality come out and do the show the way I had always wanted: with a mix of absurd humour and spontaneity, the same attributes I had admired in David Letterman all those years ago. I was going to change sportscasting, not necessarily for the better, and not overnight, but I was going to leave my mark.

T
WO YEARS LATER
, B
LAKE
P
RICE
returned to the west coast to raise his family in his hometown, Jennifer Hedger moved up to the 10:00 show with Dutchy, and I was paired with Dan O’Toole on the 11:00 p.m. PT edition of
SportsCentre
in a moment that many sports media critics refer to as the death of the medium in our country.

The chemistry was there right away, but the show as you know it now did not happen overnight.

Just as I had hosted my first edition of
SportsCentre
with Dutchy, Dan hosted his first edition of
SportsCentre
with me. It was not long after I started to work with Jennifer, approximately December of 2002. Dan had just joined the network after a stint in Vancouver as a sports anchor at Citytv.

Dan arrived in Toronto like every Vancouverite: lamenting the lack of scenery and ocean at their front door. I remember for the first couple of weeks I’d pass Dan at a desk in the newsroom and he’d be looking at a live camera shot of Grouse Mountain on The Weather Network website. It was pretty pathetic, actually. But I
was absolutely blown away by Dan’s talent during our first show together. He didn’t seem nervous in the least, and his performance during that first show had me convinced he would go places at TSN. As it turns out the poor guy was going places all right: He was going to have to work with me every day.

When we were first paired together, we didn’t start turning
SportsCentre
into “the Ha Ha Hut” right away. That’s what Mark Milliere liked to call our show when he thought it was getting too far into the comedy realm and didn’t have enough sports content for his liking. The truth is we just really like the same stuff when it comes to comedy, so when one of us came up with an idea for the show that involved Dan getting attacked by a bat drawn on cardboard attached to a string on the end of a hockey stick, we both thought that idea was hilarious and worked to convince the crew to “go with it.” Up until that point, our crew (director, camera operators, technical director, and so on) was used to producing a very conventional newscast-style show: single-camera shots of the anchor reading off a teleprompter, reading highlights. You know, sportscasting.

For whatever reason, even though I knew we would alienate a large part of the audience with our shenanigans, I was utterly convinced we were taking the show in the right direction. Streaming videos on the Web was starting to take off. Soon people would have access to highlights on their tablets and phones whenever and wherever they wanted. No need to wait until 1:00 a.m. eastern time for your day’s sports highlights anymore. We needed to deliver something more, give the viewers another reason to tune in. That’s what led me to cut a Phantom of the Opera mask out of lined paper and sing “Music of the Night.”

It was actually pretty early on in the time that Dan and I hosted the show together. You can tell by the fact that Dan has 78 percent less grey hair and looks twelve years old. We were still “figuring out
the show” to a large extent, and our crew was not used to elaborate sketches being performed on what was supposed to be a traditional late-night sports highlight show.

That evening our nightly Top 10 category was “National Anthems.” We had already done this Top 10 several times before with all the usual suspects: Carl Lewis butchering the American anthem at a Chicago Bulls–New Jersey Nets game (“uh-oh,” he famously said after his voice cracked on a high note); Dennis (K.C.) Parks turning “O Canada” into “O Tannenbaum” at the very first Las Vegas Posse game in the Canadian Football League. This time, however, our Top 10 was inspired by a recently mangled anthem: the star of a local Baltimore production of
The Phantom of the Opera
treating the singing of the “Star-Spangled Banner” at an Orioles game like it was his audition for
American Idol
. Holding the final note for an obnoxiously long time at an obnoxiously high pitch. The crowd didn’t know whether to clap or plug their ears.

Knowing that we would play this clip leading into my introduction of the Top 10, I decided to make use of my two years of musical theatre training in Athabasca, the home of all major musical theatre productions. I confiscated a black cloth “shawl” that our camera operators use to “colour correct” the TV cameras before every show (I don’t know what that means either). That would be my cape. Then using skills I had acquired in kindergarten, I found a piece of regular lined paper and cut out a Phantom mask with scissors. I found several Phantom masks online and tried to draw the best one I could, poking a hole in it so I would be able to see the teleprompter. I used Scotch tape to fasten it to my hair, which would result in the painful removal of the mask moments after the shot was completed. I also soon realized that I couldn’t fasten the other side of the mask to the other side of my head or it would lose its effect, so the mask sat fastened to only one side of my head like a cottage screen door that was permanently flapping in the breeze.

I tried to remember some lines from the musical to sing for the early part of the intro. My parents had taken my sister and me to the show at the Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton, so I was somewhat familiar with the material. “Music of the niiiiiiight” and “Christine, Christine” was about the best I could come up with. Later, viewers commented that I had a nice timbre to my voice, which I really appreciated. I was no Colm Wilkinson, but it was important to get this character just right.

The intro featured me (as the Phantom) expressing outrage at the anthem singer in Baltimore, judging him “unfit to wear my mask” and dismissing his performance outright while mentioning I was a big fan of the Philadelphia Flyers’ American Hockey League affiliate … the Phantoms.

As Dan pointed out during the intro, this was supposed to be a sports highlight show. I thought I might receive negative feedback or be told by my bosses at TSN to leave the costumes to the experts, but to my surprise and delight I heard nothing from my bosses and nothing but praise ever since from viewers. It was a bit of a TSN Turning Point in the show for us, proof that we could let these silly little ideas we had behind the scenes come to fruition on screen, breaking up the show a bit and separating ourselves from other shows of the same genre.

I started to branch out with Dan a bit more. Growing up in northern Alberta watching and following sports, my friends and I began to take special pride in athletes who played and excelled in sports most Canadians didn’t traditionally excel at, like Larry Walker in Major League Baseball. Every time we’d watch Larry play outfield for the Montreal Expos and later the Colorado Rockies, we’d yell “Canadian!” in a high-pitched voice. I carried that tradition over to the show when I would voice a highlight pack and yell “Canadian!” when we featured someone like Toronto-born-and-raised Joey Votto of the Cincinnati Reds or Victoria-born-and-raised
Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns. I knew it was resonating when people started yelling “Canadian!” at me on the street. But now when I walk anywhere around Canada, the thing most people yell at me is “BOBROVSKY!”

There isn’t much of a story to it. In 2010, the Philadelphia Flyers signed as their backup goaltender a twenty-two-year-old from Novokuznetsk, Russia, named Sergei Bobrovsky. The first time I heard his last name it sounded like the last name of a rogue cop on the edge from a 1970s William Friedkin–directed movie such as
The French Connection
. A cop who regularly got called into his sergeant’s office and told to “turn in your badge and gun!” or he would be “off the case.” That was honestly it. There was nothing else to it. So whenever Bobrovsky got some rare playing time, I would ask Producer Tim to let me read the highlight package so I could come up with a different way of describing Bobrovsky every time (“You’re an embarrassment to the force, Bobrovsky!”) For whatever reason, this may go down as the most famous thing I ever do in my career. Two seasons later, Bobrovsky was traded to Columbus and became a sensation, putting together a Vezina Trophy–winning season with the Blue Jackets and landing on the cover of video game boxes. I was subsequently given much undeserved credit for the young goaltender’s success, even though, to this day, I have still never met the man.

We were having fun. Our show repeated over and over in the morning the next day, so if we made a mistake we would have to fix it before it ran incorrectly another ten times. Eventually we realized it was a lot easier to create a segment where we simply acknowledged
those mistakes. It would save us time and effort and potentially deliver a few laughs. That’s how our “Ya Blew It!” segment was born, where we simply list our errors at the end of the show and apologize for them. We called it “Ya Blew It!” as a tribute to two of our comedy heroes, Tim and Eric. Tim Heidecker used the line during one of their sketches on
Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
It seemed like the perfect title.

People started to take notice of what Dan and I were doing, and we gained a little bit of a following. Mark Milliere’s idea was that because our late-night show repeated several times in the morning, kids would grow up watching us and continue to watch us as they got older, presumably ending up by tuning in at college when they returned from the bar late at night. It worked. We started to get people coming up to us on the streets telling us we were a major part of their childhood. Working with Dan was easy and fun. It didn’t feel like work. It still doesn’t.