It really hasn't sunk in yet but the sports broadcast that began on TSN Radio before it became a sports radio network has been dropped from the 1290 AM dial.
Why? I have no idea. It could have come from the Goldeyes or TSN. In the end, it probably does matter.
The broadcast itself won't really change. Paul Edmonds remains at that the helm for this 20th season as the radio broadcast switches from AM to FM. Compared to hockey and football, baseball play by play guys are Iron Men when it comes to broadcasting. Edmonds will call 100 games plus pre and post game shows with an additional four extra baseball episodes tossed in. That's a lot of hours.
In some respect it is too bad that baseball left TSN Radio. Edmonds sometimes was brought in for other sports duties and he was able to guest on a number of the local sports talk shows on the network. In truth, no other broadcaster has the knowledge or the love of the sport that he does.
I first thought that TSN had to let baseball go because of schedule conflicts with some of their other properties. Alas, TSN has picked up 100+ Toronto Bluejays broadcasts. It would seem timeslots were not the issue.
It is very possible that the Goldeyes simply wanted a FM station to broadcast from. Hard to say.
There is probably confusion about what FM station 100.7 is. There is a distinct lack of a call sign in the announcement. The owner of the station Evanov went to the CRTC to change formats. The company already had a successful launch of Energy 106, a hit radio station. They also own 810 CKJS, the successful ethic radio broadcaster.
In the end, we now have three radio station covering the three main sports in Winnipeg. CJOB has football. TSN has hockey and now 100.7 has baseball. I'd say that is good for competition.
More than likely it came down to how much TSN/Bell was going to charge for air time and the Goldeyes decided to go elsewhere.
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