Get woke, go broke! Ron MacLean cancelled!

Our National Sports (As Long As It's Hockey) Editor, Poor Len Canayen, has some excellent breaking news! 

Canadian hockey fans are rejoicing today at the announcement by Sportsnet that they will see less of Ron MacLean next season. Hometown Hockey, the much-unloved show featuring the biggest woke3st pussy in sportscasting, has been cancelled!

For those who never saw the show, it was what marketers called a line extension of the popular "Coach's Corner" segment of Hockey Night in Canada, which featured MacLean as straight man to Don Cherry, the real star of the little between-periods show. For eight seasons, Hometown Hockey travelled to a different part of Canada each week. It originally aired on Sundays but was eventually moved to the graveyard of Monday night, where it died.

The official reason given for the cancellation is that the weekly production was "an expensive line on the corporate ledger" and became tough to justify in a time where the sports media industry is undergoing change and cuts. Yah, shure.

What really happened was that Canuck hockey-lovers were incensed by MacLean's betrayal of Don Cherry after he (Cherry) got busted by the PC police for calling out, just before Remembrance Day of 2019, "you people" who ought to be wearing poppies to honour those who gave their lives for freedom, but aren't doing so. Click here to see the video.

The snowflakes, SJW's and pro-immigration lobby dropped the shithammer, and the CBC (the propaganda arm of Canada's Liberal government) put pressure on Sportsnet to get rid of Cherry. Which they did. On Remembrance Day itself. See: "The Hockey Guy comments on Don Cherry's firing" (includes video), WWW 11/11/19. 

MacLean's grovelling apology -- "I should have caught that sooner" -- the following Saturday was enough to gag a maggot. But what followed in the 2 1/2 years since was even worse. 

"Coach's Corner" was cancelled, of course, since it was impossible to find anyone (not even the perpetually over-refreshed Brian Burke), who could call BS when he saw it as could Don Cherry. Ron MacLean now hosts a between-periods panel, as well as the rest of the show, and devotes himself assiduously to promoting inclusivity, diversity, women's hockey, the contribution to the sport of those wonderful BIPOCs, etc etc. 

HNIC is just as woke as all get out, and that same wokeness pervaded Hometown Hockey, where there were no real hockey guys like Kelly Hrudey or Kevin Bieksa to tell MacLean how full of politically correct shit he is. 

So Hometown Hokey [misspelling intentional. Ed.] is gone. Get woke, go broke! But the malady lingers on. MacLean will still be a fixture on Saturday nights, at Hockey Night in Canada. He says a new contract has not been finalized but has been agreed to "in principal". 

Yah, shure! Don't stay tuned.I predict that, as sponsors wake up to the fact that more and more viewers take a 15-minute beer-and-bathroom break during the intermissions, they'll start putting pressure on Sportsnet to "revamp" HNIC PDQ. As Sam Goldwyn said, "If you want to send a message, go to Western Union." 

VIDEO: Toronto Sun talks with Don Cherry about "You people"

SportsNet's firing of Don Cherry from the "Coach's Corner" segment of Hockey Night in Canada has dominated the news in Canuckistan since it was announced on Sunday. Even the never-Trumpers at the CBC were forced to talk about it ahead of reports from the witch-hunt. All the (((controlled media))) ran short interviews with "Grapes", but only the Toronto Sun gave him over ten minutes to say his piece in full. Here's the video.



Further reading:
"Poor Len Canayen calls Cherry firing an insult to Canadians", WWW 12/11/19.
"Don Cherry was both right and wrong", by Tarek Fatah, Toronto Sun, 13/11/19.

1-minute video: Pro-Don Cherry protest, Toronto, Nov. 13th

"Mike from Simcoe-Grey County-Clearwater Township" is another of the tens of thousands of Canadians outraged by the firing of Canadian icon Don Cherry from the "Coach's Corner" segment of Hockey Night in Canada. He's spreading the word of a protest to be held tomorrow, November 13th, at 1300 EST, at the SportsNet studios in the heart of the Little Green Apple (Woke Mayor John Tory, Prop.)



It's too far for Walt to attend, but I'll be there in spirit, and wish all you fans of free speech (and foes of political correctness) the best of luck. You'll need it!

Poor Len Canayen calls Cherry firing an insult to Canadians

Ed. here. Poor Len Canayen called to say that when he saw we were posting a video with comments from The Hockey Guy on Don Cherry's firing for political incorrectness, he wondered how we could do it since he hadn't made any video. Then he realized there's another "hockey guy". Now our hockey guy wants to speak for himself. Over to you, Len....

Tank youse, Hed. And tank youse for including me in the last paragraph of your introduction to The Other Hockey Guy's video. I do agree, and have to say that I watch THG regularly and appreciate his hard work and fair comments, even though he's no fan of La Sainte Flannelle. Now den, about the craven decision of SportsNet et al. to get rid of Don Cherry just because he said something that might be perceived as "divisive" or "offensive" to some people... I think booting him and Coach's Corner off Hockey Night in Canada is shameful and stupid!

What's really stupid is that by pandering to the multiculti crowd and caving to the PC police, Rogers/SportsNet/CBC/HNIC have managed to alienate 1000s of Canadian hockey fans -- the kind of people who actually watched (note past tense) "Coach's Corner". When Don Cherry referred to "you people" -- note: that's the term he used, not "immigrants" -- he wasn't talking about your typical Canadian hockey fan. "Those people" don't watch HNIC. They don't like hockey! They prefer football (not real football but the kind where you can't use your hands), basketball, and, dare I say it, cricket. No hockey for them.

If you don't believe me, keep your eyes open when the TV cameras pan across the crowds at the hockey games. (This applies not just to Canada but the Excited States of America.) You'd more likely see a black bear or brown bear in Nunavut than you would a person of colour at a hockey game. The people you see in the stands are the kind of people who watch Don Cherry... and wear poppies.

They may not always agree with Donless, especially when he rabbits on about "when I had Bobby Orr", but they respect his right to speak his mind (or his mouth). Freedom of speech is what Canadians, Americans, Brits, Aussies, even the French, fought and died for. But nowadays free speech is not for the unorthodox or anti-orthodox. Shame!

VIDEO: The Hockey Guy comments on Don Cherry's firing

SportsNet fired Don Cherry today. On Remembrance Day. Because he was politically incorrect enough to call out people who ought to be wearing poppies to honour those who gave their lives for freedom, but aren't doing so. See "Don Cherry calls out people who won't wear a poppy", WWW 10/11/19.

What happened is simple to explain. All the lefties, SJWs, refugee-huggers and other "right-thinking people" blitzed the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, Hockey Night in Canada, SportsNet (which owns and produces HNIC), and the Canadian Broadcorping Castration (which airs it), and Rogers (the cable monsters who own SportsNet) to complain about Donless attacking immigrants, when he never entered that word or anything like it. What he said was "You people...", and of course that means he's a white nationalist, racist bigot, yada yada yada.

Predictably, everyone caved, including Don's "Coach's Corner" second banana, Ron MacLean, who made a fulsome, gag-inducing on-air apology. SportsNet said its arrangement with Mr Cherry was terminated effective immediately, then thanked him for his decades of service. Blech. The makers of Budweiser (the alleged beer), who sponsored the segment said they respected SportsNet's decision.

So it's farewell then, Donald S. Cherry, Canadian icon. Poor Len Canayen, who knows well Mr Cherry's dislike of the Montréal Canadiens, says he will miss you. So will hundreds of thousands of Canucks, including The Hockey Guy. Here's his take on the whole sad affair.

Rogers hockey ratings tank, Poor Len gloats

Poor Len, again. Forgive me for indulging in a bit of schadenfreude, but I can't help saying "I told you so" after reading "Rogers’ early-season TV ratings down sharply for NHL, Maple Leafs" in today's Groan & Wail.

A couple of years ago, Rogers outbid the Canadian Broadcasting Corpse for the Canadian broadcast rights for all NHL games, for 12 years. It then "leased" some of the games to CBC, RDS and other networks, but retained control of which games would be shown on Hockey Night in Canada, which it now owns, and SportsNet, its ridiculously expensive pay channel.

Then, because Toronto is Canada's biggest TV market, Robbers decided to foist games featuring the Maple Laffs on the entire nation, relegating Canada's team -- the Montréal Canadiens -- to "regional markets", i.e. the French-language networks (TVA and RDS) and (sometimes) English broadcasts in Québec and Atlantic Canada. I have complained before about the blackouts of Habs games from the Québec-Ontario border westward, and predicted Robbers would rue its, Conn-Symthian, francophobic bias.

And so it has come to pass. (Lifetime pct .990.) The Glob reports that NHL TV ratings are down across the board on average for Rogers for the first seven weeks this season. According to Numeris, Canada's only broadcast ratings service, combined ratings for the Leafs on all the Rogers-connected networks that carry them -- CBC, Sportsnet and City -- are down 30 per cent from October 7th through November 21st.

The Eastern games on Saturday’s Hockey Night in Canada, which usually feature the Leafs (on CBC) and some other team, not the Habs, on City, are down 19% from the same period last year. From October 7th through November 21st, an average of 1,771,500 viewers saw the prime-time Hockey Night Eastern game, a drop of 412,500 from last year’s 2,184,000.

Dontcha love it? I do. I hope Robbers lose their blue-and-white shirts.