TORONTO – Yeah, we know it wasn’t called "Sportsline" anymore, but that’s how Ontario sports fans of a certain age will remember it.
We fondly recall the years in which Jim Tatti (the dignified one with the cool delivery) and Mark Hebscher (the kooky one with the oft-intense delivery) were the co-hosts. It was a fun show highlighting the best of every day at a time when sports wasn’t so, well, big.
Yesterday, CanWest Global cancelled its 11:30 p.m. sports show after 25 years on the air (which had changed its name to "Global Sports" a while back) and let Tatti go. Hebscher left long ago and is actually one of the news hosts at Global’s CH in Hamilton.
Also fired were a producer and a writer. Contrary to some reports elsewhere in the cybersphere, Global does retain a sports division whose reporters, such as Don Martin, remain, to file on the Toronto sports scene.
The demise of the show is more a sign of the times than anything else. "Late night audiences aren’t the same as they used to be," a Global spokesperson told Cartt.ca.
With 24-hour sports the norm nowadays and with Rogers Sportsnet, TSN and The Score blanketing the sports market in Canada, a half hour on sports late at night provided ever-shrinking value to hard core sports viewers, and advertisers trying to reach them.
In fact, many broadcasters who had such a show in the past have already altered course and now offer segments or even weekly shows on nothing but local sports – such as the minor hockey, university sports and minor pro scene. One could even say there’s a hole in the Toronto market right now because there doesn’t appear to be any Hogtown broadcaster offering a full show on just local sports (and by that we mean beyond the Blue Jays, Maple Leafs, Raptors and Argos).
Beginning this evening, Entertainment Tonight Canada will run in its place, said the spokesperson.
– Greg O’Brien
