Anchorboy (5 page)

I
MENTIONED THE OTHER INTERN
brought in that semester in 1996 was the man who would eventually be known as Producer Tim. He wouldn’t be given this nickname until years later, when he became a regular producer for Dan O’Toole and me on
SportsCentre
. The question I get asked most wherever I go is “Is Producer Tim real?” The answer is yes, he is absolutely a real person. I think because you never actually see him, people assume we’ve made him up as some sort of character on our show. He’s definitely a character, but he’s also definitely not make-believe. Tim is a human—the most stressed-out human who ever lived on the planet Earth.

It was Dan who started to mention Producer Tim on TV during the actual show, and that’s because Dan and Tim have a hilarious, contentious relationship that Tim accuses me of facilitating with my devious ways. Tim is a full-on stress case. Even when Tim and I started as interns at the network in the same week, I quickly came to the realization that Tim was not a man who took things lightly. As much as I try to pretend otherwise, I am pretty much exactly the
same way, and that’s probably one of the many reasons why Tim and I have always, for the most part, gotten along well.

Tim is a
planner
. He is a man who puts his show lineup together nice and early and gets extremely stressed out when he has to change it. This is not a good trait for a television producer in terms of stress, because a TV news show’s lineup will change several times a night. It’s
news
. You can’t really plan it. You have to adapt on the fly. Tim would prefer that the news adapt around him. Dan has a pretty good nickname for him: The Man Who Hates When Things Happen. It will probably be the title of Tim’s tell-all book when he decides to expose us for the high-maintenance “poodles” we are someday.

When Dan started to mention Producer Tim on the show, I was initially a little apprehensive.
Is this a little too inside
? I wondered. It was supposed to be a sports news show after all. But we had already blurred the line from a strictly
sports
show to a
sports show with heavy dollops of absurdity
, and there was no turning back now. Especially since Mark Milliere seemed to love the idea instantly. Maybe it was because Mark himself had been a show producer, and he appreciated the idea of Tim becoming a recurring “character” on the program. Mark is also the kind of person who seems to have a particular fondness for people who have the potential to publicly freak out about things. I think it amuses him.

Four months after Tim and I started at the network back in 1996, I learned first-hand that one mistake on the Row can end your career at TSN almost immediately.

I was working one Friday night, and we were leading off our show with Toronto Argonauts highlights. Much to my chagrin, a fellow intern who had just been brought in was given the assignment of watching the game and writing the highlight script. (We’ll call him “Mike” to protect his identity, and also because about 50 percent of TSN male employees are named Mike anyway.) Trying
to contain my jealousy that I hadn’t been given the top story, I continued to work on what was likely an Atlanta Hawks–New Jersey Nets barnburner at the old Omni in Georgia. Hours later I looked up at one of our in-house monitors and noticed the show was starting. I had already pretty much finished my script and was just kicking back, enjoying the final, inconsequential seconds of the Hawks game, when I noticed that something was amiss …

One of the show’s anchors that night, Brendan Connor, seemed to be stalling for a long time. A
very long
time. Keep in mind that in television a long time is thirty seconds. Thirty seconds in the real world is not a long time. Thirty seconds in television is an eternity, and it was
very
clear that something was amiss with Mr. Connor. I wondered what was happening since I knew Mike had been assigned to that lead highlight package. He happened to be sitting two pods next to me, so I wandered over.

“Hey, Mike,” I said.

“Hey,” he said.

“Did you put together the Argos pack?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s done. What’s the problem?”

I looked down at his desk, and there was the tape that the pack had been recorded on. Mike had forgotten to actually give the tape to our master control operator so they could, you know, play it during the show. He looked up at me in horror.

“FUCK ME!” he screamed, sprinting into the master control room, waving the tape. “FUCK ME!”

But by then it was too late. Brendan had run out of things to say about the Toronto Argonauts, and the show’s producer made the decision to show a scoreboard of the game in progress and then move on to another highlight package. Mike’s internship ended then and there.

While Mike didn’t survive that summer, I somehow managed to stay on as a freelance story editor while attending Ryerson. My days
back then were an absolute dream. I would take a half-hour subway ride, then a half-hour bus ride to the studio. I loved the solitude of public transit, and this was even before the days when iPhones were there to entertain you. I would arrive at TSN and be assigned a couple of games to watch and write highlights for. My sports knowledge was not even close to the level of most of my colleagues, but it improved immensely just by virtue of the fact that I was watching so many games. And did I mention I was
watching television and getting paid for it
? I honestly couldn’t believe it. I was also writing highlights for
Sportsdesk
’s new anchor team, Darren Dutchyshen, my hero, and Mike Toth.

I actually ended up really bonding with Mike. Mostly, he was just weird and made me laugh, and I’ve always loved weird people who make me laugh. He once told me that while hosting prime-time highlight shows on TSN and Sportsnet, he would often write the show in an hour, then leave the newsroom and head to a nearby theatre to catch a movie, returning just in time to host his live show. His reasoning: “They’re paying me to do the show; they’re not paying me to get
ready
for the show.”

Years later when I was trying to decide whether or not to leave
The Big Breakfast
in Winnipeg and join the NHL Network I asked Mike for advice, and he recommended that I not take the job. His main reason: the NHL Network was a digital cable network at a time when not many people had digital cable. Why make the move to sit in front of so few eyeballs? When I eventually took the job anyway and ended up appearing nightly on TSN at midnight to host
That’s Hockey 2
, Mike called me and said, “Good thing you didn’t take my advice!”

A
FTER A YEAR AT
TSN, when I had successfully established a place for myself at the network, I started to inquire about the possibility of following our local Toronto reporters around to gain some experience in the field. Between full-time school and almost full-time work (I was pulling about four shifts a week), it wasn’t easy to find time to do this. Especially since I had no money, no car, and basically no brains. Luckily, the Toronto Maple Leafs were still playing at Maple Leaf Gardens, and the Gardens was only a two-block walk from my place at Ryerson. Rod Smith, Lisa Bowes, and Susan Rogers were our regular Toronto reporters at the time. Ask any veteran TSN cameraman who the best reporter in the history of the network is and they will almost always have Rod at or near the top of the list. He was not only born with a voice that would be appropriate for that of God in a stage adaptation of
The Ten Commandments
, but he is an outstanding journalist and writer as well. Rod is also an exceptionally kind-hearted man, and he never cringed, at least outwardly, when I’d show up at the Gardens for Leafs practice and ask if I could “pull cable” for him.

I realize that if you’ve never worked in the television broadcasting industry the term “pulling cable”, may sound like slang for gay sex. I can assure you that no gay sex occurred between Rod and me—though, let’s be honest, I would have done
anything
for a chance at an on-air gig. Pulling cable is really just keeping a hold on the cables that the camera and microphone might be attached to so no one trips and dies. In the case of field journalism, a cable puller is rarely required because the camera is powered by a battery, but that didn’t stop me from pretending my presence at Leafs practices was necessary.

I’d show up at the Gardens wearing one of two blazers I had purchased from International Clothiers. Both jackets had been purchased for a total of $99 and were made of fabric that could best be described as “likely flammable.” After pulling cable for Rod or Lisa while they gathered story clips from players and shot their own stand-up for the story (the part of the story when the reporter literally stands up and talks into the camera, usually at the end), Rod would then hand the microphone over to me and allow me to basically say what he had just said. Albeit wearing a much, much cheaper jacket.

The first couple of times were terrifying, and like all rookie reporters I would make the mistake of memorizing what I was going to say instead of simply making sure I knew my key talking points and trying to articulate them. Still, after a few trips to the Gardens and the SkyDome with Rod, I started to get more comfortable.

I had ordered a horribly written book by two aspiring sports broadcasters titled, appropriately,
How to Make It in Sports Broadcasting
. I say it was a “book,” but it was really about as thick as a leaflet when it arrived at my door at 182 Mutual Street in Toronto sometime in the fall of 1997. But I did take one important aspect from the “book,” which I likely finished during one prolonged bowel movement: In the television broadcasting industry, a person’s demo
tape should be no longer than five minutes, the first minute consisting of a montage of fifteen-second stand-ups and desk reads, ideally two of each to get to the minute mark. The opening montage served to remind everyone that television was, in the end, a visual medium. No sense in presenting your brilliant two-minute story right off the top if the news director you were applying to didn’t like the way you looked. The opening montage allowed news directors to see what you looked like on camera and hear your voice; if they liked what they saw or heard, then they could continue to watch and see if you were a good storyteller. If they didn’t like the way you looked or sounded, no amount of storytelling brilliance was going to get you that job.

So I continued to try to get my “reps” in following Rod and Lisa and Susan around town. I remember once I was sent, alone, to Maple Leaf Gardens to interview then Leafs-owner Steve Stavro about the hiring of Ken Dryden as new Leafs president. In addition to being one of the greatest goaltenders to have ever played in the National Hockey League, Mr. Dryden has a reputation for being a
tinge
long-winded when he speaks in public. This day would be no exception. As Mr. Dryden went on and on about “completing his career” by “helping the Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup,” I thought about writing a commercial spoof for
Saturday Night Live
called the “Ken Dryden Sleep Inducer,” which would simply have been a small playback machine with a speaker that spoke to you in Ken’s dulcet tones until you were lulled into a peaceful slumber. Listening to Ken Dryden speak in public is a little like listening to Ben Stein in
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
.

When Mr. Dryden had finished speaking and answering questions, a scrum of reporters gathered around Mr. Stavro to ask him about the hiring of Ken Dryden. I was first up. Or rather, I blurted my question out like an idiot before anyone with real credentials would get a chance to do so. And I began my question
by addressing the Leafs owner and multi-millionaire at the top of my lungs:

“STEVE …” I started.

My camera operator, Tim Moses, a veteran of thousands and thousands of sports shoots, tapped me on the shoulder and in front of the entire Toronto media at the time corrected me:

“MISSSSTER Stavro.”

I was humiliated.
What a douche I am
, I thought. I recovered quickly and likely asked him how soon he expected to break their Stanley Cup jinx. Two years? Three years? Surely it wouldn’t take more than five. This was 1996.

Meanwhile, back in the newsroom I was still working as an editorial assistant. I was kept on at the network throughout my final two school years at Ryerson. I would work nights, usually until midnight or 2:00 a.m., and then return home to an old rat-infested house I shared with my college roommates near the corner of Jarvis and Gerrard in downtown Toronto. Those of you familiar with Toronto may know the corner of Jarvis and Gerrard as the location of “Hooker Harvey’s,” a Harvey’s restaurant frequented by the ladies who walked the nearby streets of what was then Toronto’s thriving red-light district. Many a night I would return home from work at TSN, get off the subway, and be greeted on Carlton Street by a steady line of leather- and latex-clad prostitutes, who started to recognize me and couldn’t have been sweeter even though they were plainly aware I didn’t have the cash to spend an hour in their company.

I’d get home and settle on the front porch with one of my roommates, drinking a few beers. You could see the back of Hooker Harvey’s from that porch, and we would laugh as we watched the hookers give out hand jobs behind the restaurant. This was the real definition of “pulling cable.” Guys would pull their jeans halfway down their legs, and the prostitutes would half-heartedly yank
away like they were playing the slots in Vegas. If I had a nickel for every time I saw a guy get an awkward standing hand job from a lady of the night, I’d be a rich man by now. It was like having the world’s worst live sex show performed just for you every night. Life was pretty good!

In addition to allowing me to record fake stand-ups for my demo tape, TSN was also gracious enough to let me bribe one of our editors with booze to help me put together a couple of actual stories for my demo. This merely involved taking a story that Rod or Lisa had already done, rewriting it in my own, less eloquent words, and tacking my stand-up on the end. Same clips, different voice, different reporter. The stories weren’t spectacular but the camera work was wonderful, and boy, did it look great to see me holding a TSN microphone. I still needed to do some desk work, however.

I was terrified the first time I did a demo on the actual desk at
Sportsdesk
. Dennis Beram is currently the most senior show producer at TSN and the person who knows more about sports than anyone I know. He was producing all the “
Sportsdesk
Updates” that night, the one-minute sports package that would run at the top of every hour and still does on TSN to this day. I approached Dennis about stepping behind the desk and simply doing the exact same update Brendan Connor would have just done. The crew all reluctantly agreed to let me do it, just as all television crews reluctantly agree to work with me to this day.

Once again, I grabbed one of my International Clothiers jackets, and with my palms sweaty and my brain running a million miles an hour, I waited as the
Sportsdesk
crew set up in the control room and made sure one of my co-workers was available to run the teleprompter. Thank God it took only one take. I made it through an all-important Milwaukee Brewers highlight package, smiled at the end, and signed off. After it was over Dennis came up to me and said, “That was pretty good!” It wasn’t an encouraging, nurturing
“pretty good” like my mom would have given me. It was an “I can’t believe that was pretty good ‘pretty good.’” Coming from someone like Dennis, who held all sports anchors to very high standards, it was the greatest compliment I could have received. I ended up doing a couple more demos on the desk, and suddenly with my stand-ups, fake stories, and one-minute updates I had plenty of material to put together a respectable demo tape. The question was: Would there be a job for me when it was all done?