For those of you who think that Bob Irving's only media gig has been with CJOB, you might be interested to know about a brief experiment in the late 80's where he did television play by play.

The Canadian Football Network was a league run syndication that was developed partly due to CTV dropping their CFL rights.

I believe the broadcast pairings rotated, but one memory I do have is the pairing of Irving and Nick Bastaja. These two provided some of the most articulate commentary (Don Criqui and Bob Trumpy are still my favorites) I've heard since.

Dave Hodge, Dan Kepley, and Neil Lumsden were also involved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Football_Network

yeah ive seen some of the old games like this. Mostly from what i recall in the eskes era. 

I remember the CFN Network. That was after CTV told the league to go shove it after (if you can believe it) the network wanted to televise more games Friday nights & the league said no. They actually wanted to make Friday nights the night to watch the CFL but the league balked. CBC & TSN (in their infancy) didn't want to televise all the games so the CFL quickly organized their own league. I think it lasted just a year. Johnny Esaw the head of sports at CTV vowed that they would never, ever televise another game on their network. If you know who Esaw was, he loved the CFL. But business is business, I guess. The CFL really pissed him off  The league was its own worst enemy the last 40 years making some real short sighted decisions over that time.

I noticed the last year CFN operated was 1990 ... the Bombers won their last Cup that year ... hmmm ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THAT'S IT!!!! 

35 minutes ago, IC Khari said:

I noticed the last year CFN operated was 1990 ... the Bombers won their last Cup that year ... hmmm ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THAT'S IT!!!! 

I hadn't realized the CFN was around that long.

just watched a game from 1990 - Bombers and Lions - on ESPN Classic.  Dave Hodge and Nick Bastaja were the broadcast team. 

CFL=Canadian content something u rarely see on CTV these days. Sad.

TSN is CTV

Ya, what happened was the advent of speciality sports channels, so you don't carry that stuff on your main network. 

Tonite might just be one of the very worst broadcasts ever to lace Canadian TV screens. I imagine Rod Black and/or Dewey Forde are involved in at least 18 of the worst 20 - - - - - - John Wells still has a couple rancorous outings when he was heavily on the bottle!

Other than the half-time panel being somewhat professional and Mattieu Scanetti on the sidelines the entire broadcast is crappable. And not just Black - the officiating is spot-awful and the direction is poor.

Never seen a pair of broadcasters where one guy is way too over-enthusiastic and the other dude is way under-enthusiastic.

5 hours ago, Root said:

Tonite might just be one of the very worst broadcasts ever to lace Canadian TV screens. I imagine Rod Black and/or Dewey Forde are involved in at least 18 of the worst 20 - - - - - - John Wells still has a couple rancorous outings when he was heavily on the bottle!

Other than the half-time panel being somewhat professional and Mattieu Scanetti on the sidelines the entire broadcast is crappable. And not just Black - the officiating is spot-awful and the direction is poor.

I started watching the game about half an hour after it started & after about 5 minutes I said to my wife that Black was just sounding just gawd awful. The guy has to be removed from the broadcasts.

Edited July 14, 20169 yr by iso_55

Here's Knuckles calling the 1987 East Final on CFN. Alas, one of the most disappointing losses in Bomber history as well as Tom Clements' and Willard Reaves' swan songs.  I didn't have time to seek out a happy game.

Good lord, the pick Clements threw at 1:29:20 was freakish. Dude was a real gunslinger, he always threw lots of picks.

tho I gotta say that in a way it was good for the Argos to win this one and go to the Grey Cup. 1987 was one of the top three Grey Cups in my life.

 

Edited July 14, 20169 yr by johnzo