Tag Archives: Alouettes

| Radio, Sports

TSN 690 picks up rights to Alouettes games for 3-4 years

To the surprise of absolutely no one, TSN 690 announced Friday morning that it has acquired the rights to Alouettes games from now sister station CJAD, completing the trifecta of Montreal major sports rights.

The deal is for three years, starting this one, with an option for a fourth, Bell Media tells me. It includes the two preseason games, all regular season games and all postseason games, including the Grey Cup. TSN said it would also air special events like the CFL draft, training camp and Canadian Football Hall of Fame inductions.

Rick Moffat and Dave Mudge will be the broadcast team, as they were at CJAD.

The station also announced that it is moving The Als This Week to Mondays at 7pm, and that Alouettes general manager Jim Popp will be a guest every week on the show.

The Alouettes’ first game is June 14.

The regular-season schedules of the Alouettes and Impact this season includes three conflicts where both teams are playing simultaneously: July 19, Aug. 16 and Oct. 18, all Saturdays. In those cases, expect Impact games to move to CJAD.

We’ll see what happens when the Alouettes conflict with fall Canadiens games. TSN has said it plans to broadcast all games from both teams.

Financial terms of the deal were not discussed on air and are usually not disclosed.

As silly as it is for TSN 690 to wrestle rights away from a station it now shares not only an office but a program director with, this deal more importantly represents a renewal of the broadcasting rights, which expired after last season.  It ensures that Alouettes games will continue to be carried on English radio through the end of 2016, and likely 2017 as well.

| Montreal, Sports

Assshh!

Remember kids, when the Alouettes offence is on the field, fans should be quiet so the players can hear each other.

So Assshh!

And when the other team’s offence is on the field, be as loud as possible so they can’t hear each other.

That’s when you can be an Assshh-olé.

| Media, Montreal, Sports

Gazette starts up Alouettes website

After seeing the success of its Habs Inside/Out website, The Gazette (my employer) has gone the next logical step and setup a similar one for the Alouettes, Montreal’s Canadian Football League team.

It’s called Als Inside/Out, and the name and logo make it clear that these are sister sites, even though the older one will probably get all the attention. It officially soft-launched on Saturday (to coincide with the team’s home preseason game in the revamped Molson Stadium). A brief welcome from Alouettes reporter Herb Zurkowsky greets the fans, who are invited to take a peek (and subscribe via Facebook, Twitter or RSS), but the Gazette will put off really advertising its new baby until it’s gone through some more testing, and don’t be surprised if stuff stops working while its creators play with it.

There are some noteworthy differences between the two websites. First is on the back end: Habs Inside/Out is based on Drupal, while Als Inside/Out is running on WordPress (the same engine that’s behind this blog).

The second is on the editorial side and reflects the difference in scale between the two teams: The Canadiens have a beat reporter (Pat Hickey), columnists (Red Fisher, Dave Stubbs, Jack Todd), and bloggers (Mike Boone, Kevin Mio, Hickey and Stubbs). The Alouettes so far have just Zurkowsky, whose coverage of the Alouettes is second to none (even getting him recognized by the Canadian Football Hall of Fame), though he’ll no doubt be getting help from his colleagues.

Then again, a look at Zurkowsky’s blog The Snap (one of The Gazette’s most popular) and his seemingly endless string of feature stories between games during the season makes it clear he could provide plenty of content to keep the site running. (The Als Inside/Out site effectively replaces The Snap.) The fact that the Als play only 13 18 games a season (plus two preseason games and up to three playoff games) compared to the Canadiens’ 82 regular season games (and a handful of preseason games and up to 28 playoff games) will also mean a bit less traffic for the younger sister, though Zurkowsky’s ability to pull good stories out of nowhere in that dead space between games should not be discounted.

Emry, Richardson are invited bloggers

In addition to Zurkowsky and other Gazette staff, Alouettes players Shea Emry and Jamel Richardson are also expected to pitch in and blog before and after games. (The Impact’s Nevio Pizzolitto has been doing something similar for the soccer blog – expect a similar level of not-so-professional writing.)

They’re also planning a “cheerleader of the week” feature (I’m assuming those will include photos), and like Habs Inside/Out there will be photo galleries and breaking news.