Live: Check out Edm/Tor CFL on CBC

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This is the game being broadcast without announcers and using management as a production crew. I'm taping it for my video collection. Absasmurfley brutal.

If I was the CFL I'd be having my lawyers using a microscope to check the TV contract. Not a real great advertisement for the CFL.

I'm being overly critical because I did that as a career, but it is bad. Watch it just to appreciate when the usual crews come back.

[sstackho]

What's wrong about a game without announcers? There aren't announcers when you see a game live. People on this board have previously clamoured for an option of watching a match with just stadium sounds using SAP.

Now if there was only an option to watch a match without that damn family in the Canadian Tire ads...

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quote:Originally posted by sstackho

What's wrong about a game without announcers? There aren't announcers when you see a game live. People on this board have previously clamoured for an option of watching a match with just stadium sounds using SAP.

Now if there was only an option to watch a match without that damn family in the Canadian Tire ads...

It's the video and direction more than anything. Actually it's starting to settle a bit after a rough first five minutes.

I got a thing for the Crappy Tire chick

Edit: As for announcers, I just saw a highlight reel candidate for Play of the Year (Baker vaulting tackler to go 91 yds for TD) Just wasn't the same without an announcer to really bring it home.

Apparently football players like the word mother%$&*@! Hearing it a fair amount.

[sstackho]

That was a great hurdle!!

And the profanity is much fun.

Wow. A thing for the Canadian Tire mom. wow.... i don't know what to say...... ... wow... [:0]

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They've got Steve Armitage doing a pseudo pbp on the PA system. I wonder how the brotherhood feel about that. He's obviously not in the same union or most likely a non union contracted hand.

It's kind of like being at the stadium, I felt bad when they were looking for the lost kid. Then Steve just announced they found him and a big cheer went up from the crowd.

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I guess it wasn't Steve Armitage doing the pbp over the PA but it sure sounded like him and that there were two guys over the PA.

CBC to air Esks' play-by-play

By BOB WEBER

http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Edmonton/2005/08/19/1180226-cp.html

EDMONTON (CP) - When Edmonton Eskimo kicker Sean Fleming boots one through the uprights, everyone at Commonwealth Stadium knows what comes next.

Now, CFL viewers across the country may get a chance to join the stadium crowd in chanting along with announcer Al Stafford's time-honoured phrase: "Another football into the end zone for HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL!!"

With its regular CFL broadcasts hamstrung by a lockout, the CBC is offering TV football fans a seat in the stands.

Sort of.

The public broadcaster will air Stafford's stadium announcer play-by-play during Saturday's Edmonton-Toronto matchup (9 p.m. ET) - along with crowd noise and ambience - in hopes fans won't miss the analysis from sportscasters now concerned more with picket lines than offensive lines.

"I've been excited about it ever since I found out about it a couple days ago," said Stafford, who's been calling Eskimo games at Commonwealth Stadium since 1998.

"The games are so much fun to work to begin with, this will just add to that."

Sportscasters are paid to be neutral. Partisanship, however, is part of the stadium announcer's job and the 43-year-old Stafford is an unabashed Eskimos fan.

"I grew up cheering the Ticats. But I had no problem changing allegiances when I moved out West," he said. "In some respects you become a bit of crowd-pumper and I like that.

"I suspect they're going to ask me to scale that back a little bit. I'm not convinced the national television audience wants to hear a homer all afternoon."

In addition to the ball on the field, Stafford will have a few of his own to juggle. He'll have to give the TV audience as much analysis as he can while following the rules for stadium announcers.

That means no noise after the huddle breaks.

"If you watch a television broadcast, those guys are talking about formations, what the defence sets up like, right until the quarterback steps up to the ball and is even calling signals," said Stafford.

"I won't be allowed to do all that. We're going to have to be quiet at some point and pick things up at the end of the play. There's not going to be a whole lot of time to do a lot of stuff after each and every play."

And someone will have to do the promos and announcements.

"That's going to be a difficult taffy pull," he said. "We have sponsors in the stadium that we're responsible for. There may be some handing off of some of those duties so the national television audience isn't exposed to some of those local sponsors."

Viewers will get most of the usual visuals, with normal camera angles, "bugs" in the corner of the screen presenting the quarter, score and time clock, and instant replay of significant plays.

CBC spokesman Jason McDonald hopes fans get into the spirit.

"We think the audience is going to enjoy it. It's a different way of watching football. You're enjoying the stadium experience from home."

Well, it's better than no sound at all, says CFL spokeswoman Alexis Redmond.

"We recognize that this is a challenging situation," she said. "We have been working with the CBC all along to try and create the best possible solution under the circumstances."

Redmond said a number of options were considered, but couldn't say what they were.

Although the CFL season is only half over, neither Redmond nor McDonald wanted to discuss whether Saturday's broadcast could be duplicated in future games.

"We're looking at this weekend," said Redmond. "We hope that a resolution to this lockout comes quickly."

"Let's get through Saturday," McDonald said. "We recognize it's going to be different, we recognize this is a novel way of doing it, but we also think that it's going to be fun and we think that fans will enjoy it so let's watch and see."

[sstackho]

quote:Originally posted by n/a

It's the video and direction more than anything. Actually it's starting to settle a bit after a rough first five minutes.

I got a thing for the Crappy Tire chick

Yes!!

The most irritating Canadian goes off air

JOHN DOYLE

In the annals of Canadian infamy, he was a colossus.

He represented so much to so many people. He was the utterly unacceptable face of the mild-mannered Canadian male. He was a stalwart symbol of the neutered, new male. He was everybody's idea of the irritating neighbour. He was the smiling, smug, know-it-all guy with the cool tools and the always-working, automatic garage-door opener.

He was no Joe Canada, of I Am Canadian fame, that's for sure. He looked like he'd never had a brewski or even worn a tuque. His flannel work shirt was always way too clean. His Canada was limited to Canadian Tire. He was the Canadian Tire Guy.

Now he is no more. Yesterday, it was announced that Canadian Tire would launch a new advertising campaign with a new advertising agency. The Canadian Tire Guy (played by actor Ted Simonett) and Mrs. Canadian Tire Guy (played by Gloria Slade) will not be part of it. It is truly the end of an era.

Like Don Cherry or the health-care system, the Canadian Tire Guy was a subject on which every Canadian had an opinion. He was with us for almost a decade. As a television critic, I felt that I knew him well.

He was not a man's man. He was nobody's man. Except, that is, for his long-suffering wife.

As so often happens in real life, people hated him and felt sorry for his wife. They felt protective about her. They wondered how she put up with him.

He seemed to have turned her into an automaton. Her smile was forced and her words of agreement about some new wrench or air mattress rang false.

Many Canadians expected to wake up one day and read that the Canadian Tire Guy had been found dead, the victim of a severe beating with windshield-wiper blades. His wife was being questioned.

Canadians would sigh and say they saw it coming. If only she had gotten out earlier.

His hobbies were camping and bothering people.

In fact, the tipping point in his notoriety came when he started bothering people. At first, he talked to TV viewers or, more likely, to himself. Then friends and neighbours were suddenly being pestered about new Canadian Tire products.

The equipment owned and used by other people was always useless. The Canadian Tire Guy has the good stuff. Those friends and neighbours thanked him for the advice, but everyone knew that behind his back they loathed him. The super-trimmed beard, the smile, the smug attitude, it was enough to put anyone on edge.

It was notable that the neighbours who were the victims of his advice were never seen again. They'd moved away, as anybody would.

Before he started bothering people, he was merely a nuisance. His creators, the advertising agency Doner Canada, even won awards for the Canadian Tire Guy's escapades.

He was benign and, for TV viewers, better company than the cackling Scrooge who came every winter to tell us to buy like Santa and save like Scrooge at Canadian Tire. When he began pestering people, the tide turned against him.

Some saw him as a symbol of rampant wussiness. Real men feared being compared with him. All Canadian men avoided looking like him. Canadian comedians found him a gold mine of material. Along with his long-suffering wife, he appeared on Royal Canadian Air Farce. Rick Mercer extrapolated from his work and created devastatingly funny comedy.

In the Canadian TV industry, where cynicism reigns, insiders were surprised that CBC failed to offer the Canadian Tire Guy his own series.

Newspaper and magazine columnists began to turn to him for inspiration during those days and weeks when there was nothing to write about. He was an easy target because everyone knew him and despised him.

In April, 2004, this columnist invited readers to vote on the matter of Most Irritating Canadian (television-related) and, from the first day, the Canadian Tire Guy led the field. Only a new season of Canadian Idol brought true competition, in the form of Ben Mulroney, but it was the Canadian Tire Guy who really stirred venom from readers. Readers fantasized about murdering him. It was always a very grisly end involving power tools.

One reader e-mailed many times to vote for the Canadian Tire Guy. Each e-mail merely had "The Canadian Tire Guy" written hundreds of times. In the final tally, the Canadian Tire Guy was, officially, the Most Irritating Canadian (television-related).

Today, Canadian comedians and columnists mourn his passing. His like will not be seen again. Now, there is no one left to hate.