Tag Archives: Sportsnet Central Montreal

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Sportsnet Central Montreal reborn as Montreal Sports Weekly?

Montreal Sports Weekly on ICI.

I had two things waiting on my PVR this morning: A notification that future episodes of Sportsnet Central Montreal have been deleted from the City Montreal schedule, and a recording of Montreal Sports Weekly, a show I happened to notice on the ICI Television schedule as I was looking for information about its new arrangement with OMNI.

You can imagine my surprise when I hit play.

Montreal Sports Weekly is a half-hour local sports panel discussion show hosted by Elias Makos with local journalists sitting in high chairs in the City Montreal studio.

Sounds kind of familiar.

Makos hasn’t said anything publicly about this show, and his panelists — SN Central Montreal regulars Jeremy Filosa and Sean Farrell — haven’t talked about it either, which seems odd, so I’m not entirely sure what the deal is (the credits say only “COPYRIGHT 2017”). It could mean an announcement is coming, or it could mean that this is just a pilot or something and no one wants to get anyone’s hopes up.

Even the description of the show on the electronic program guide — “takes audiences beyond the game highlights for an in-depth look at the city’s professional and amateur teams, along with athlete profiles and feature stories” — is identical to the one first announced for Montreal Connected in 2013, with the exception that it’s described as an “English-language program” for clarity.

ICI’s business model involves working with independent producers who buy airtime and create shows that they can sell their own advertising for.

The first airing at 9am Saturday featured the same public service announcements and ICI house ads that generally fill the airtime. If this is really a project with a future, the show is going to need sponsors if it’s going to survive. So if you were upset that Sportsnet Central Montreal was cancelled, now is the time to get people to start advertising and supporting this.

This isn’t the first time someone has tried an English local Montreal sports talk show on ICI. Adam Reid had a show called Reid Between the Lines, an episode of which can be seen here. He’s since moved on to The Lineup, a sports game show on WatchMojo, which features some local media celebrities.

I’ll update this as I get more information about this show, assuming it doesn’t disappear as mysteriously and suddenly as it appeared.

Montreal Sports Weekly airs Saturdays at 9am and 6pm, Mondays at 2:30pm, Tuesdays at 11am, Wednesdays at 4pm, and Thursdays at 3pm and 9pm on ICI.

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City cancels Sportsnet Central Montreal

Sportsnet Central Montreal, hosted by Elias Makos, centre.

Sportsnet Central Montreal, the weekly half-hour sports panel discussion show on City Montreal, has been cancelled by Rogers Media. Thursday’s show will be its last.

(UPDATE: It looks like there’s a project to try to revive the show on ICI.)

Host Elias Makos dropped the first hint of the cancellation during last week’s show, describing it as the “penultimate” one. Rogers confirmed to me today that it has decided to end the show. It sent me this statement:

Rogers Media is evolving its local strategy to better serve the Montreal community. In doing this we’re deepening our commitment to local news with the launch of daily newscast CityNews in Winter 2018.   As a result of this re-focused strategy, SN Central will have its last broadcast this Thursday, August 31 at 6:30 p.m. We’d like to thank Elias Makos and all of our contributors for their smart and entertaining commentary on Montreal’s sports scene.

City will continue to provide coverage of Montreal sports teams and events on Breakfast Television, featuring Joanne Vrakas, Derick Fage, Catherine Verdon Diamond, Elias Makos and Domenic Fazioli as well as through our new CityNews newscast, launching Winter 2018.

Makos remains with City, as the new media producer and occasional fill-in host or weather presenter on Breakfast Television.

The last show will be broadcast mere hours before the condition of licence requiring the station to broadcast the show expires. As of Sept. 1, City Montreal (CJNT-DT) has standard conditions of licence regarding local programming.

The cancellation of the show makes sense since the new evening newscasts would take over all three of its timeslots. But that won’t happen until next winter.

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