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If you got up this morning expecting to listen to Mike Halford and Jason Brough on Sportsnet 650 this morning, you know by now they were absent from the airwaves.
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Instead of the popular morning show, listeners heard Westwood One syndicated programming.
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Rumours have circulated for some time that the station’s future was uncertain, even after the Vancouver Canucks renewed with the station as the team’s official radio voice.
The team and Rogers signed a 10-year deal four years ago, which runs through 2032-33, covering TV and radio rights in one catch-all bundle. Presumably that structure meant that Rogers could broadcast as they saw fit.
Postmedia understands station staff have been called for an all-hands meeting this morning at 10 a.m. where the future of the station will be announced. It’s widely expected that changes will be drastic, with heavy cuts; how the radio broadcasts will carry on is not yet known, or even if any of the station’s shows will survive. If local programming is shut down, the station might keep broadcasting with programming from the Toronto Fan 590 station and perhaps keeping the Canucks play-by-play broadcasts.
Eerily, with the station still broadcasting Tuesday morning but not using its usual local programming, 650 was still running its usual slate of ads, read by the likes of Jason Brough, Mike Halford and Joey Kenward.
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Cam Barra, program manager at 650, declined to comment and referred Postmedia to Sportsnet’s management team in Toronto. How many of the station’s employees may be affected is not yet known, though not every on-air voice was a full-time employee of Rogers; some were contractors.
A request for comment from Rogers’ PR department has been responded to as of yet.
In related news, Rogers Sports & Media, which owns the station, on Monday completed its purchase of the final 25 per cent of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment on Monday, paying Larry Tanenbaum $4.3 billion.
It has been just over five years since TSN 1040 was suddenly closed by Bell Media, with Halford and Brough actually on air and totally unaware that the station’s time was coming to an end. They went to break and never came back as control of the station’s broadcast was taken over remotely.
The loss of Sportsnet 650 would be a devastating blow to local sports media. AM radio has been in great decline over the past decade, as technology moved past the century-old broadcast format.
In many ways, it’s perhaps surprising 650 held on as long as it did; the remaining radio stations in the Vancouver market area are almost entirely on FM frequencies.
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In addition to possibly ending programming at 650, it’s believed that Sportsnet 960 in Calgary will also be affected in similar fashion, although unlike 650, 960’s morning show was on air this morning.
Sportsnet 650 launched in 2017 as a rival to TSN 1040, a powerhouse at the time. As part of their launch, they’d snatched away the Canucks broadcast rights and brought a whole new array of voices to airwaves.
The station still struggled to make an impact in the ratings, even after 1040 closed, as listeners moved more and more towards podcasts and streaming audio and away from traditional radio.
More to come …
Pjohnston@postmedia.com
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