by Jay Onrait
“No problem, Mark.”
He turned away again.
That would be all I would see or hear from Mark for the next three hours, right up until 6:00.
At that time we were still recording our stories, highlights, and features on Beta tape. This may seem archaic, but Beta was the format of choice for years in broadcast news because of the quality of the picture. So instead of having all the video exist on a hard drive as it does today, we would have multiple tapes for each show. By the time 6:00 p.m. rolled around, we were a half-hour to showtime. In a normal newsroom all the tapes that would be used in that show would mostly be gone, either already handed in to master control for playback or in use by one of our editors, perhaps putting the finishing touches on our lead item. Mark worked a bit differently.
I started to notice that every single day, right around 6:00, almost all of the tapes would still be sitting on a table near Mark’s desk, waiting to be assigned. This was different from other editions of Sportsdesk that I would work on, where the tapes would be assigned much earlier, like at the beginning of our shift, so we knew what we were actually supposed to be doing. Mark’s was the only show where a half-hour before we were scheduled to go live across the country most of the items in the show had not been assigned yet and a large stack of tapes sat next to his desk, unclaimed. I wondered about this but decided it was above my pay grade (my pay being nothing), and therefore I shouldn’t worry about it. I began to realize that Mark thrived on chaos. When the clock struck six, it was as if an alarm bell went off in Mark’s head. Suddenly, he would jump out of his chair and begin to assign stories and items in the show to people in a seemingly random fashion, throwing the Beta tapes at us like footballs. It was never boring. The shows were always great and every tape made it to air. It was his way of operating, and it worked for him.
Now he’s in charge of TSN’s network content, and that’s working out pretty well for him, too. Unfortunately for Mark, he was also in charge of my show. But fortunately for me and Dan, he always supported it. The fact that I worked for him all those years ago as an intern and then as a story editor convinced him to trust me when, years later, I would come up with ideas like having one of our own writers get slapped by Dan on live television. I never fully appreciated all the freedom Mark gave me to be creative until I went to work for someone else. You need to have someone who has your back in this business, and Mark always did.
CHAPTER 6
We Are All Nerds
IT WASN’T LONG AFTER I joined TSN as a writer back in 1996 that I started to realize that professional wrestling wasn’t dead.
In the popular culture of the day, pro wrestling was indeed dead, about as uncool as an entertainment genre could be at the time. The stars of the ’80s, like Hulk Hogan and the Iron Sheik, were getting older, and those of us who had grown up in wrestling’s incredible nadir surrounding the first three WrestleManias had now also gotten older. Too old to continue watching men throw each other around in a ring and brandish their considerable freestyle skills on the microphone. For me at the time, the concept of watching wrestling was as ridiculous as the concept of playing with the Star Wars action figures I had collected as a kid. Sure, I would have enjoyed the tugging on my heartstrings of nostalgia for a moment, but ultimately, I was a grown-up, and watching wrestling was supposed to be for kids.
How naïve I was.
Soon after being brought into the network as an intern I met Steve Argintaru, who rose through the ranks to the position he holds as of this writing: executive producer of SportsCentre. Steve is a smart, hard-working guy and a talented broadcaster, but it became very clear to me very quickly that as much as he loved professional sports, his true passion was professional wrestling.
Steve was a few years older than me and seemed like a nice and normal guy, so imagine my shock when he told me that in his spare time he was a freelance photographer for Pro Wrestling Illustrated, a trade magazine that peaked in popularity during the ’80s by ranking the wrestlers and tag teams of the era in top-ten formats, regardless of organizational affiliation. I was under the impression that Pro Wrestling Illustrated had probably folded years ago, but that wasn’t the case. In fact, Steve wasn’t the only wrestling fan in the Sportsdesk newsroom; it turned out that the people in the newsroom were a great example of a sports nerd microculture, and that to many of them wrestling was still a fun way to kill an hour or two on a weekend.
Soon after I arrived at TSN, wrestling experienced a comeback with the likes of The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin leading the way, and I’m sure Steve felt vindicated for sticking with his beloved men in tights, as he should have. It was the first time I began to really feel at home in a television newsroom, a place where nerds thrive and jocks can sometimes feel left out. The newsroom is almost the opposite of a pro sports dressing room: Suddenly no one cares about their prowess on the ice or the court. They’re more curious whether anybody watched the previous Sunday’s episode of Game of Thrones after catching that double overtime between the Hawks and Celtics.
I met more nerds in the TSN Sportsdesk newsroom in the early ‘90s, but these nerds were not interested in wrestling—they were too high-minded for that. These nerds were into music. They were into music as much as they were into sports! They were just like me! In fact, they were better nerds than me. Way better. Now at work on Sportsdesk in between innings of my Cubs–Cardinals afternoon game, I suddenly found myself chatting with my fellow writers about whether Len would be more than just a one-hit wonder (they weren’t; it didn’t take a nerd to figure that out).
One of the reasons I enjoy the writing of Chuck Klosterman so much is that I feel like we have such similar backgrounds. Chuck grew up in rural North Dakota, loved hair metal bands growing up (he even wrote a book about them called Fargo Rock City), and most importantly, he actually played sports in high school like I did. There was a simple reason why Chuck played sports and didn’t just watch them like most nerds. When you grow up in a small town there are fewer kids competing to be on the local sports teams, and you get opportunities that city kids might not get. That was certainly the case for me, though I was also lucky to be tall and semi-athletic (notice I said “semi-athletic”), so I was able to play hockey and volleyball and even basketball, a sport I loved to watch but didn’t love to play. When you are over six-foot-five in a town of fewer than 2,000 people, there is a very good chance you will be playing on the high school basketball team. I’m glad there wasn’t a football team for me to try out for. I would have likely ended up with some sort of severe injury.
If you’re familiar with Klosterman’s work you know he is almost as comfortable writing about sports as he is about music and pop culture. Sports and music pretty comfortably fall under the banner of pop culture these days because they’re all about entertainment, and if you’re even younger than Chuck and me, then you are probably even more comfortable combining everything under that banner because all your information, music, and possibly even television and movies are coming from one place: the Internet. It’s safe to say that Klosterman could be classified as a nerd. He looks like a nerd. He certainly sounds like a nerd. And he writes with nerd-like obsession about subjects he is passionate about. That’s my message to you aspiring sports broadcasters and journalists out there: Embrace your nerd-dom. The best way to prepare yourself to stay employed through the ever-changing ways we deliver information to the public is to be a nerd: someone who is so vastly knowledgeable about a subject that he or she transcends all the mediums it might be delivered through. The medium is no longer the message, the message is the message! Suck it, Marshall McLuhan.
So when I arrive at a newsroom for work, the first subject of conversation will likely be the games we are watching on the monitors. Some guys might talk about fantasy pools they’re currently in; others might talk about sports news they heard about that day that is now seven hours old, practically ancient history by modern media standards. Then talk inevitably moves to television and whi
ch shows we’re watching, because every single person in that newsroom isn’t just a sports television nerd, they’re a television nerd, period. Shows like The Wire and Game of Thrones are held in particularly high regard because, being as obsessive as we are about the medium, we seek out only the very best from it. Not to mention the fact that once one group in the newsroom starts watching a show you can’t fall behind, because that group will inevitably want to discuss said show at work the next day, and there’s an excellent chance those shows will be spoiled for you if you haven’t watched them.
Then there’s movie talk: Producer Tim is a particularly big fan of discussing the latest Hollywood blockbusters. He is a moderate Michael Bay apologist, which is still completely unacceptable to me to this day. Finally, talk often drifts to music with certain people in the room, the music nerds. The sports nerds who unwind after a day of watching three baseball games by putting My Morning Jacket’s It Still Moves on their Bose Wave music player while they finish off the last beer of the day. I tend to gravitate toward these nerds in the newsroom, and they tend to be the people I attend concerts with, just as they are also likely the people I would attend an afternoon Blue Jays game with. Nerds are nerds are nerds. The people running the Canadian television sports networks are some of the biggest nerds in the world. I should know, because I work for them, and they speak my language.
So if you’re the kind of person who thinks you might want to become a sports broadcaster, here’s a tip: Lock yourself in your room with your TV or iPad or computer and about six or seven great sports books about subjects that interest you, and just start devouring knowledge like an ancient Greek philosopher. Jump on YouTube and check out clips of games you’ve heard about but never seen. Watch as much sports as you possibly can without alienating friends and family. Heck, invite your friends and family over to watch sports. Don’t forget to make nachos. Every single day, read every single sports writer whom you respect and admire, and even some of the ones you don’t admire. And maybe even start a blog and a Twitter account and start writing yourself.
I still maintain that the ability to write well is the single most important tool that will help you succeed in this business. In the past you didn’t have many outlets to allow you to practise writing in a professional style. Now with every great sports writer published online, you can follow your favourites and try to develop your own style, maybe even get some feedback along the way. The next generation of sports broadcasters and journalists will be much more informed than we were, thanks to the wealth of knowledge available to them, literally, at their fingertips. By the way, you realize what I’m saying here, right? I’m telling you that the way to succeed in my business is to just watch sports. That’s it. Could anything be more simple and awesome than that?
CHAPTER 7
The Man Who Hates When Things Happen
I MENTIONED THE OTHER INTERN brought in that semester in 1996 was the man who would eventually be known as Producer Tim. He wouldn’t be given this nickname until years later, when he became a regular producer for Dan O’Toole and me on SportsCentre. The question I get asked most wherever I go is “Is Producer Tim real?” The answer is yes, he is absolutely a real person. I think because you never actually see him, people assume we’ve made him up as some sort of character on our show. He’s definitely a character, but he’s also definitely not make-believe. Tim is a human—the most stressed-out human who ever lived on the planet Earth.
It was Dan who started to mention Producer Tim on TV during the actual show, and that’s because Dan and Tim have a hilarious, contentious relationship that Tim accuses me of facilitating with my devious ways. Tim is a full-on stress case. Even when Tim and I started as interns at the network in the same week, I quickly came to the realization that Tim was not a man who took things lightly. As much as I try to pretend otherwise, I am pretty much exactly the same way, and that’s probably one of the many reasons why Tim and I have always, for the most part, gotten along well.
Tim is a planner. He is a man who puts his show lineup together nice and early and gets extremely stressed out when he has to change it. This is not a good trait for a television producer in terms of stress, because a TV news show’s lineup will change several times a night. It’s news. You can’t really plan it. You have to adapt on the fly. Tim would prefer that the news adapt around him. Dan has a pretty good nickname for him: The Man Who Hates When Things Happen. It will probably be the title of Tim’s tell-all book when he decides to expose us for the high-maintenance “poodles” we are someday.
When Dan started to mention Producer Tim on the show, I was initially a little apprehensive. Is this a little too inside? I wondered. It was supposed to be a sports news show after all. But we had already blurred the line from a strictly sports show to a sports show with heavy dollops of absurdity, and there was no turning back now. Especially since Mark Milliere seemed to love the idea instantly. Maybe it was because Mark himself had been a show producer, and he appreciated the idea of Tim becoming a recurring “character” on the program. Mark is also the kind of person who seems to have a particular fondness for people who have the potential to publicly freak out about things. I think it amuses him.
Four months after Tim and I started at the network back in 1996, I learned first-hand that one mistake on the Row can end your career at TSN almost immediately.
I was working one Friday night, and we were leading off our show with Toronto Argonauts highlights. Much to my chagrin, a fellow intern who had just been brought in was given the assignment of watching the game and writing the highlight script. (We’ll call him “Mike” to protect his identity, and also because about 50 percent of TSN male employees are named Mike anyway.) Trying to contain my jealousy that I hadn’t been given the top story, I continued to work on what was likely an Atlanta Hawks–New Jersey Nets barnburner at the old Omni in Georgia. Hours later I looked up at one of our in-house monitors and noticed the show was starting. I had already pretty much finished my script and was just kicking back, enjoying the final, inconsequential seconds of the Hawks game, when I noticed that something was amiss …
One of the show’s anchors that night, Brendan Connor, seemed to be stalling for a long time. A very long time. Keep in mind that in television a long time is thirty seconds. Thirty seconds in the real world is not a long time. Thirty seconds in television is an eternity, and it was very clear that something was amiss with Mr. Connor. I wondered what was happening since I knew Mike had been assigned to that lead highlight package. He happened to be sitting two pods next to me, so I wandered over.
“Hey, Mike,” I said.
“Hey,” he said.
“Did you put together the Argos pack?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s done. What’s the problem?”
I looked down at his desk, and there was the tape that the pack had been recorded on. Mike had forgotten to actually give the tape to our master control operator so they could, you know, play it during the show. He looked up at me in horror.
“FUCK ME!” he screamed, sprinting into the master control room, waving the tape. “FUCK ME!”
But by then it was too late. Brendan had run out of things to say about the Toronto Argonauts, and the show’s producer made the decision to show a scoreboard of the game in progress and then move on to another highlight package. Mike’s internship ended then and there.
While Mike didn’t survive that summer, I somehow managed to stay on as a freelance story editor while attending Ryerson. My days back then were an absolute dream. I would take a half-hour subway ride, then a half-hour bus ride to the studio. I loved the solitude of public transit, and this was even before the days when iPhones were there to entertain you. I would arrive at TSN and be assigned a couple of games to watch and write highlights for. My sports knowledge was not even close to the level of most of my colleagues, but it improved immensely just by virtue of the fact that I was watching so many games. And did I mention I was watching television and getting paid for it? I hone
stly couldn’t believe it. I was also writing highlights for Sportsdesk’s new anchor team, Darren Dutchyshen, my hero, and Mike Toth.
I actually ended up really bonding with Mike. Mostly, he was just weird and made me laugh, and I’ve always loved weird people who make me laugh. He once told me that while hosting prime-time highlight shows on TSN and Sportsnet, he would often write the show in an hour, then leave the newsroom and head to a nearby theatre to catch a movie, returning just in time to host his live show. His reasoning: “They’re paying me to do the show; they’re not paying me to get ready for the show.”
Years later when I was trying to decide whether or not to leave The Big Breakfast in Winnipeg and join the NHL Network I asked Mike for advice, and he recommended that I not take the job. His main reason: the NHL Network was a digital cable network at a time when not many people had digital cable. Why make the move to sit in front of so few eyeballs? When I eventually took the job anyway and ended up appearing nightly on TSN at midnight to host That’s Hockey 2, Mike called me and said, “Good thing you didn’t take my advice!”
CHAPTER 8
I’ll Pull Your Cable Anytime
AFTER A YEAR AT TSN, when I had successfully established a place for myself at the network, I started to inquire about the possibility of following our local Toronto reporters around to gain some experience in the field. Between full-time school and almost full-time work (I was pulling about four shifts a week), it wasn’t easy to find time to do this. Especially since I had no money, no car, and basically no brains. Luckily, the Toronto Maple Leafs were still playing at Maple Leaf Gardens, and the Gardens was only a two-block walk from my place at Ryerson. Rod Smith, Lisa Bowes, and Susan Rogers were our regular Toronto reporters at the time. Ask any veteran TSN cameraman who the best reporter in the history of the network is and they will almost always have Rod at or near the top of the list. He was not only born with a voice that would be appropriate for that of God in a stage adaptation of The Ten Commandments, but he is an outstanding journalist and writer as well. Rod is also an exceptionally kind-hearted man, and he never cringed, at least outwardly, when I’d show up at the Gardens for Leafs practice and ask if I could “pull cable” for him.