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Bruce Dowbiggin

Manning The Broadcast Booth Proves A Winner

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Call it other revenge of the little brother. Or “pipe down, I’m watching the game:” However you characterize it, the emergence of the Manning Brothers, Peyton and Eli, on Monday Night Football has breathed life into a stale broadcast format and shown that All In The Family doesn’t always mean Archie Bunker calling Mike Stivic a Meathead.

For some time IDLM has railed about the reticence of network TV sports executives in evolving the experience of watching football— most sports in fact— from the classic MNF 1970s booth formula of Howard Cosell (the scribe), Frank Gifford (the eloquent jock) and Don Meredith (the homespun jock) to something that fits today’s zeitgeist.

Along the way we’ve seen experiments ranging from comedian Dennis Miller, political guy Rush Limbaugh and future murderer O.J. Simpson— all lacking the chemistry of the original trio. Since ESPN took over the MNF slot the results have been progressively more irritating, culminating in the lamentable staccato of Joe Tessitore, Jason Witten and Booger McFarland.

The current trio of loud talkers— Tony Bruno, Brian Griese and Louis Riddick— is only slightly less concussive. The solution that escapes ESPN is that the Gifford/ Cosell/ Meredith trio treated the show as a conversation, not an oxygen-depletion exercise. You can see how this more subtle style works with NBC’s Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth. They massage the game, not wring its neck.

The talk-till-you’re-blue formula has invaded other sports, too. Again, ESPN has been a major transgressor here with the “Dickie V Wall of Noise” style being adopted by everyone in the trade. The “Yeeeah, baby” and “Posterized!!!” fit nicely into highlight packs later ,but in real time they are wearisome.

Not all sports are created equal. Hockey and basketball produce fewer pauses for conversation, while football and baseball have plenty of room to breathe. In none of these sports, however, does the fan want to be assaulted by hyperbolic chalk talks or battles for air time among the talking heads.

Which brings us to the emergence of Peyton and Eli. Originally ESPN wanted Peyton for a traditional role in the MNF booth. But the elder brother is a media savvy guy who managed to triumph as host on Saturday Night Live (before it became a Democratic Party PSA). He didn’t want the circus of trotting from city to city to be a stereotyped analyst. He had other things in mind.

Desperate to get Peyton, the Worldwide Woke Network allowed him to customize an entirely different broadcast. (Typically they wouldn’t put it on the main network for fear of offending whomever they see as their target audience these days.) Peyton wanted something more like his experience watching a game at home in his man cave.

He wanted a comfort zone and some guests to watch the game with him. He didn’t want to work every game. And he wanted Eli. What has emerged is a runaway success (TSN has finally picked up the alternate cast lately) with U.S. ratings through five shows hitting 1.6 million viewers. (The show is a partnership between ESPN and Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions. This is the first of a three-year deal for them to do 10 games per season. )

What sells the format is the sibling chemistry. Five-time NFL MVP Peyton the tape wonk, the searing, candid reaction to boneheadedness and the unbreakable self confidence. Eli, meanwhile, the modest foil sniping at Peyton about everything from the size of his forehead to how he eats chicken without breathing.

Eli— who won two Super Bowls in NYC to Peyton’s one in Indy and one in Denver— explains that what you see is reality dating back to their boyhood with older brother Cooper. As he told USA Today: “I didn’t have time to tell the big, long story, to analyze everything. I could just give little jabs and bring them back down a little bit….

“That’s how we are in real life. He’s going to be the one in control, he’s going to be the one talking and be the one in charge, and it’s just my job for when he’s getting all the praise and he’s feeling on top of the mountain and he’s the best— I can get my little jabs and take my shots at him and bring him down just to make sure he’s in neutral.”

They spice the show with a steady stream of guests from football and the entertainment world. Comedian Jon Stewart came on to lament the awfulness of his New York Giants and Marshawn Lynch came on to swear like a rapper. “Marshawn, I probably should have … handled him,” explained Peyton. “We apologize for that. Anyway, let’s get back to some football here.”

The show has even generated its own curse: Every active NFL player who’s come on has lost the following week, Buffalo’s Josh Allen being the latest.

The success of the Mannings begs the question: Have they re-invented the gamely broadcast experience? Yes and no. They’ve shown a format that can draw more eyeballs than the cookie-cutter announce crews. But it takes the certain something of sibling sniping and insider humour to make it work.

So who could you see doing something similar? In hockey we’d like to see Kevin Bieksa and Ryan Kesler do the slash-and-burn version of HNIC. Baseball? How about Pedro Martinez and Curt Schilling. Basketball? Just take Shaq and Charles Barkley off the big set, stick them in a casino suite and let it rip.

Who will have the courage do do so? Don’t hold your breath.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand has been nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan is called InExact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Wayne’s World Has Moved South. Canadians Are Appalled. Again.

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Welcome to Canada’s Bedlam 2025. A petition is circulating in Edmonton demanding that Wayne Gretzky’s name be stripped from the eponymous boulevard honouring his status as an Edmonton/ Canadian hero and hockey icon. His crime? Supporting Donald Trump, who’s demanding Canada pay for its own defence, among other outstanding bills.

Meanwhile the kaffiyeh-wearing NDP members who support the scum who massacred mothers and babies in an unprovoked attack on Oct. 7, 2023, are still referred to as honourable members. Go figure. (Lest we forget the same Canadian Mensheviks out for Gretzky also want to strip Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship for similarly hanging out with Trump and firing useless bureaucrats.)

There was a time when Gretzky was the holiest of holies. So above criticism that, when he got himself snared in a gambling scandal, the Canadian media and fans bought a story about his wife being the degenerated gambler. That’s an untouchable. In a nation where no one is disciplined for foisting untested vaccines on an unsuspecting public he was a made man.

Or so we thought, till a picture appeared of him and his family celebrating Donald Trump’s re-election in November.

Canada’s reflexive Left (see above) recoiled in disgust that No. 99 would sully his name and record by supporting Trump at the moment he was about to serve Canada with the bill for riding in first class while paying economy. When he did nothing to repent to the kaffiyeh brigade— as is his obligation apparently— they primed their attacks on the No. 1A player to ever don skates in Canada.

The final straw came when Canada and the U.S. engaged in their epic, brawling two-game set for supremacy of… a title the NHL made up a month before. No matter. An unchastened Gretzky was introduced as the honorary captain for Team Canada for the final game. It was the heretical excommunication moment for those orchestrating a coup, replacing PM Justin Trudeau for dour banker Mark Carney.

Forget Winnipeg chantoozie Chantal Krevaziuk massacring O Canada before millions of TV viewers. Gretzky’s failure to bend a knee before the Charlie Angus demographic was the real betrayal. Even though he’s lived as an American citizen since the epic trade of 1988 (all his kids are American) he’s obliged to honour the diktats of the Canadian Liberal cult.

As we wrote last November Gretzky has company in Canada’s penalty box with his only rival for greatness, Bobby Orr who has become a non-person in Canada for getting too close to Trump. “In Orr’s case it was his published endorsement of Trump’s losing 2020 campaign that led to the shade being drawn over the greatest defenceman (IMO player) ever. “He’s the kind of teammate I want”. 

“Much like the Gretzky tsunami of condemnation, Orr took it in the cup… and we don’t mean Stanley… Here was Vancouver columnist Daniel Wagner: “In other words, Orr faces no harm from a Trump administration and is likely insulated from the harm that others have experienced. That doesn’t excuse his endorsement, but goes a long way towards explaining it.”  In the Hockey News Ken Campbell tied Orr to the Jan. 6 riots.  “Bobby Orr Was Part of the Problem. Now He Can Be Part of the Solution”.  

In our column of Nov. 8, 2020, we pointed the wee hypocrisy of the liberal-left  press box. “Just weeks after giving LeBron James’ political activism a tongue bath, the Globe & Mail sent in the goons for Orr. “Neither Bobby Orr nor any other athletes should be leading the political conversation” thundered Cathal Kelly. 

Sure. Leave it to us.  Other Canadian sports media called Trump a “monster”, a “racist” and “a totalitarian”. You could heat most of the GTA with the steam emitted by their indignation at Orr having the temerity to speak out. Others swore to sell off their precious Orr memorabilia as if Orr had been accused of throwing a Stanley Cup Final.

A bitter Orr has taken a low profile since as even some in his hometown of Parry Sound wants nothing to do with him. “Poor Parry Sound,” tweeted Mary Lou George on Oct. 31, 2020. “What a disgrace #BobbyOrr has turned out to be. Guess he believes bragging about assaulting women really is just locker room talk since he wants Trump on his team. Sad.”

Longtime fans in Parry Sound dumped on him. “I just assumed that he was a good guy. Honestly it was heartbreaking for me to learn this about him. It just shattered my impression – I guess it was an illusion – it just shattered it… It kind of now, makes me rethink a lot of my hockey heroes … it’s just disappointing.”

The message is that in progressive Canada, suspended in its 1970s  it doesn’t pay for even the greatest hockey heroes to diverge from their Trudeaupian orthodoxy. As Canadiens star goalie Carey Price learned when he dared to disagree with Trudeau’s plans to seize guns.

But the message is clear. Whether you’re Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr or Carey Price, Canada’s Woke chorus will not abide insubordination to their cause. That includes much of the media. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men, they can’t handle the truth. So shut up and pass the puck.”

At this rate Canada may run out of hockey gods who decamp to America. And heaven forbid Canadians ask how it is that their stars who have a chance to look at the True North from a different view come away with a new perspective.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

With Carney On Horizon This Is No Time For Poilievre To Soften His Message

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Canada awaits the outcome of Canada/ USA Hockey Armageddon II it’s fair to assess just how much a single hockey game has sharpened the focus on the political line brawl between the the nations. The proxies on skates have revealed a few truths about contemporary Canada.

While the Liberal party has suspended reality so that it can pretty-up Mark Carney, Canada’s media instead fawns over conflicting polls showing a Kamala Harris-like ascension of Carney to contender status. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s Canadian rhetoric gets more belligerent as his 30-day tariff reprieve runs out. Finally, Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary has advised Trump to delay the tariff Apocalypse till Canada can get an election done.

The common denominator in all this is Conservative leader Pierre Polievre. Or, at least, the mystery of Pierre Poliievre. There are several Poilievres in circulation. There is the Liberal/ NDP version of a nasty wolverine who savages innocent reporters and talks down his nose to opponents.; Next, there is the sunset media’s version of an untested slogan-reciting automaton.

And finally there is the Paul Ryan nerd clone who thrives on explaining kitchen-table economics to people awash in debt and despairing of ever getting ahead in DEI land. Which is the real deal? And does Poilievre himself know who he is anymore?

This distinction is important because, barring a charisma implant for Mark Carney, Poilievre will be the next prime minister, likely with a healthy majority. Neither of the first two Poilievre constructs will disappear soon, of course. The comms teams on the Left are determined to ride over Poilievre, however bad the polls. You need only look at the how the vanquished Left in the U.S. still acts as if they, not Trump, won a mandate last November to understand that Liberals are loath to accept any public rebuke.

The best place to answer the question of who is PP does not come from his apple-eating defenestration of the hapless reporter in B.C. While the MAGA right worshipped that moment and other slap-downs of the press— and the Left demonized him for it— it seems that the Poliievre being groomed by his advisors is meant to be softer and more statesmanlike.

His Saturday rally in Ottawa, shortly before the Canada/ USA hockey brawl, was a good place to start. In the face of Trump’s imminent tariff threat gone was the pitiless street fighter and in came the statesman, full of talk about the glories of Canada and why America needs us.

He seemed intent on tying up the Boomer vote with this speech. Oh wait. Boomers still love Liberals and Carney. Why is Poilievre going after that unwinnable demographic? Isn’t that the quicksand every Conservative, save Steven Harper, has floundered in? But there was Poilievre wandering into Liberal Speak, trying to list the benefits of the nation’s past.

Real Canadians– eg those not voting for Carney– know what a great place it can be. They don’t need to be given a Tourism Canada commercial. And as we wrote last week younger Canadians need a reason to reject Trump’s offer of citizenship. Poilievre needed to level with Canadians about what happened the past decade on defence, crime, DEI. He needed to be frank about money laundering, fentanyl production and the penetration of China’s Communists into the fabric of the land.

While his handlers seemingly urged him to go statesman,  Canadians were willing to hear the truth, not another Carney eye glazer. He needed to channel Harry “Give ‘Em Hell” Truman (“I tell my opponents the truth and it feels like hell.” ) He needed to say he’ll be pitiless in his treatment of those (media, PSA) who stand in the way of a bright new day. As so often happens it was CPC playing on Liberals turf instead of staking out their own. Canada already has Doug Ford, they’re saying. We don’t need another mushy Tory.

Poilievre concluded with a Churchill barb about how America will always do the right thing— after they’ve exhausted the other possibilities. It was an unnecessary and provocative one liner from a guy who’s try to establish his bonafides as the capable negotiator for Canada O’Leary is promising he’ll be. Did he and his brain trust think the thin-skinned Trump would simply slough off the jibe?

It is performances like these that leave Canadians wondering if they’re voting for Poilievre or simply voting against Trudeau and the thoroughly corrupt Liberal/ NDP coalition. Wobbly performances like this will lead to vote leakage to Liberals and to Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada. Bernier has urged a realistic assessment of Canada’s precarious position vis a vis the USA.

Instead of perpetuating the shopworn homilies to 1970s Canada that have expired, Bernier suggests looking at the opportunities of closer economic— not cultural— cooperation with the Americans. Let Liberal/ NDP moan about collaboration. They’re like the three little pigs expecting their houses of straw and twigs will survive the ongoing attacks of China and international money laundering.

Poilievre has to stop pretending that a heavily indebted and structurally crumbling Canada can withstand the next four years of Trump bombast. He must have an intervention with the Canadian public to bring them to the bracing reality they face. Only when they know which side is up, away from Trudeau, will they start to climb out of this mess.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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