The sports broadcast industry has undergone significant changes over the past several years, and it now appears to have finally impacted the Ottawa Senators.
For the first time in this organization’s history, the Senators’ official English radio broadcast partner will not be travelling on the road to cover games live.
The Senators’ radio broadcasts originally appeared on the talk-radio station CFRA for the team’s inaugural season. Games were broadcast live on the station until 1998, when an AM commercial rock station pivoted to an all-sports radio format and became Ottawa Sports Radio 1200 (OSR 1200). The following year, CHUM acquired the radio station and rebranded it under their ‘Team’ network, and the station maintained this branding until 2007, when CHUM sold it to what is now Bell Media.
In 2013, the radio station underwent another name change, bringing it in line under the TSN umbrella to the familiar TSN 1200 that continues to exist to this day.
While the radio station has undergone several changes, its on-air talent has remained a constant. Dean Brown and Gord Wilson have been the Senators’ respective play-by-play and colour commentators since the franchise’s modern return to the NHL.
According to sources, as part of the Senators’ current regional broadcast agreement that it signed with Bell Media in 2014, the organization was uniquely on the hook for some expenses. Rather than having Bell pay for the travel and expenses while the pair were on the road, which includes a daily per diem paid in U.S. dollars, the Senators covered these costs.
The same sources indicated that the Senators approached Bell Media this offseason about eliminating these obligations from the current contract, and the broadcasting company eventually agreed.
The savings would be significant for the small-market Senators over the course of a season. The elimination of flights, five-star hotel rooms and the daily per diems would easily represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings.
Why would Bell agree to do that?
The most obvious possibility is that the Senators’ broadcast agreement with Bell Media expires at the conclusion of the 2025-26 season. Perhaps they could use the gesture as goodwill or leverage in the next round of broadcast rights negotiations.
Whatever the case, the Canadian broadcasting giant is not willing to pick up the tab either, necessitating a pivot to a remote broadcast solution in which Brown and Wilson will watch the television feed and relay their own interpretation of the game from TSN 1200’s downtown George Street broadcast studio. And, if they are lucky, they could also have isolated feeds from TSN’s regional television broadcast that offer them more context.
Emails were sent to Bell and the Ottawa Senators to comment on the matter, and the Senators released this statement:
“We can confirm that the radio broadcasting team will not be travelling for road games this season. It was not a decision that was taken lightly, but our radio audience will still be served with access to live broadcasts of each road game.”
Calling sports events remotely is not a new phenomenon, but it has gained momentum since the COVID-19 pandemic, when health and safety restrictions fostered isolation policies and limited travel.
It also afforded broadcast companies an opportunity for significant cost savings, but it also represents a cost-saving measure for the Ottawa Senators.
The transition to a remote broadcast will inevitably offer the duo some challenges. Hockey television broadcasts follow the puck, but it is a sport where what happens away from the puck can often be as important as what happens with it. Seeing what happens behind the play, reading the energy of the crowd or picking up what is happening on the benches only helps to create a higher quality product.
Most importantly, being on the road allows for the experience of having in-person conversations with players, the opposition’s broadcasters and media, which is essential. The information and anecdotes gleaned from those discussions only help to augment the broadcast experience for listeners.
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Jonah Sigel, who has been covering the Toronto sports media landscape and sports business for almost 20 years on his YYZ Sports Media and now the Toronto Star, reflected on the problems created by these remote broadcasts.
“The issue isn’t that they’re not there to call the games,” Sigel explained. “It’s no different than a newspaper reporter not going. The issue is the same. First of all, there is a technical component that is missing from watching it on a monitor. We’ve seen that during simulcasts all the time.
“The bigger issue is an erosion of the relationship between media and player, and therefore media and fan. Having a reporter sitting in a press box watching the game doesn’t help them write the story. What helps is seeing somebody in the hotel lobby, seeing somebody at a restaurant, walking with somebody on the street, developing that kind of relationship. That’s where this erosion really comes into effect, because the older generation of media had that relationship with the player. It doesn’t happen anymore. It’s so arms-length that they don’t get to see them on a day-to-day basis. The place where, without being cliché, hair gets let down is on the road. If the media isn’t doing it, we, the fans, don’t get the same level of coverage that we used to get, and there’s just no question about that.”
Adding another layer of intrigue is the fact that the Senators’ radio broadcast agreement with TSN 1200 expires at the conclusion of the 2025-26 season. Bell Media shuttered its TSN stations in Vancouver, Hamilton and Winnipeg in 2021 before following suit in Edmonton just two years later.
These cost-cutting measures will do nothing to curb the speculation regarding sports talk radio’s future in this city.
Unfortunately, such business decisions for broadcast companies have become a trend. Earlier this offseason, the St. Louis Blues were revealed to be moving to a simulcast model for the 2025-26 season and had parted ways with long-time television broadcaster John Kelly. Their simulcasts will now use their radio play-by-play man Chris Kerber, and analyst Joey Vitale as their voices for both television and radio.
Rogers, the other multi-billion-dollar Canadian broadcasting giant, and Bell share the Toronto Maple Leafs’ television and radio rights. Jointly, they continue not to send the radio broadcast team of Joe Bowen and Jim Ralph on the road to call the Maple Leafs’ games.
When two large companies, including one that spent $11 billion to secure the NHL’s television rights for the next 12 years, refuse to spend a comparatively modest sum allowing Bowen and Ralph to call games for what is arguably the biggest sports franchise in Canada, it does not instill much confidence in the medium’s future.
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At the very least, when the companies serving the biggest sports markets pivot to remote broadcasts, it establishes a standard that smaller markets and teams will inevitably follow.
Streaming services and cellphones have unquestionably ushered in an era that has negatively impacted the size of radio’s audience. But, in the Ottawa market especially, the absence of Brown and Wilson on road trips raises the issue that no one will be covering the team on the road.
The 2023-24 season was the first in which Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch stopped travelling, with 2024-25 marking the first time in his career that he missed a Senators postseason game on the road. Sportsnet’s Alex Adams does not travel to cover the team. The Athletic’s Julian McKenzie travelled more than any other reporter last season. Except for a few games in the nearby Toronto and Montreal, he went on three separate road trips and attended every postseason game.
How will the Senators get covered when the team goes on the road?
As it presently stands, there will be an exclusive dependency on the Senators to deliver the news and information that fans crave.
“The biggest danger is the maker of the news is now in control of the news,” said Sigel. “If a coach doesn’t want to show up for practice, or a player doesn’t want to speak at practice, that’s no longer news because nobody’s there covering it except the team.
“If that’s going to paint somebody in a bad light, they’re not going to report it. So where’s the criticism? Where’s the accountability? Where’s all that if the only media outlet covering the team is the team?”
Sigel’s not wrong.
Fans are the lifeblood of any sports organization. Any erosion in that connection between a team and its fans risks disrupting the emotional bond that fosters engagement, creating a passionate and loyal community.
One of the best ways to spur and improve engagement is to improve relationships with the fans by using the media as a proxy.
Where does the future lie?
“I want to be really clear that radio is just a label,” expressed Sigel. “That label is dying, but sports audio consumption has not gone anywhere, and it’s not denigrating in any way, shape or form.
“So for game broadcasts, I keep hammering this point. Sooner or later, more and more people will have to return to the office, and they’re going to want to catch part of the game on the radio.”
That is the hope for the medium, anyway.
If there is an encouraging sign, the Toronto Maple Leafs, as one of the largest sports franchises in this country, have recognized a shortcoming.
“Keith Pelley, who’s now running Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment, had his press conference announcing that they let Brendan Shanahan go,” explained Sigel. “There, he said, ‘We need to improve the relationship with the media and the relationship with the fans.’
“That’s a good sign. One way to do that is to get local media to travel with the teams again, and that includes your local radio broadcasters.”
By Graeme Nichols
This article was first published at The Hockey News-Ottawa
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