Network no longer in Coach's Corner; bombastic commentator Don Cherry will be iced after playoffs
The love-hate relationship between the CBC and Don Cherry is so strained that the two sides are preparing to sever their 23-year relationship at the end of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
CBC brass is apparently fed up with trying to keep Canada's best-known bombast in line and on a politically correct leash. But if he goes, Mr. Cherry's departure will polarize the country, which is invariably delighted or infuriated by this 70-year-old iconoclast's recurring bouts of foot-in-mouth disease.
Mr. Cherry, reached at his home yesterday, said he fervently hopes he remains at the Coach's Corner pulpit with his 20-year partner, Ron MacLean. But he's not saying which way the wind will blow. "If they want me, they haven't approached me on that, one way or the other.
Hockey Night in Canada commentator Don Cherry poses outside the CBC studios in Toronto. (J.P. Moczulski/The Globe and Mail)
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"And if the CBC doesn't want me, I've had a good ride. I have no regrets and I wouldn't change anything.
"I would like to stay with the CBC for the simple fact that I get a big kick out of it. I could make more money at other places. In fact, down in the States I've been offered more money, but I love doing Coach's Corner. I haven't asked for a raise in three years because I just like doing the show."
Asked yesterday whether Mr. Cherry will be on the CBC payroll next year, CBC spokeswoman Ruth Ellen Soles said the corporation had not reached a decision. "Right now, we're focusing on the playoffs. And any contract negotiations, not just Don's, will be looked at after that."
While there is still a whiff of a chance that the broadcaster will sign Mr. Cherry back to Coach's Corner — a huge audience draw and bottom-line booster — sources close to both parties predicted Mr. Cherry will be a free agent at the end of this season, which could run into early June.
Sources said that TSN, Rogers Sportsnet and Leafs TV have made overtures to Mr. Cherry.
Mr. Cherry was coy about outside suitors.
In the past year, Mr. Cherry has been embroiled in several sensitive situations."There is a small but strong contingent of very senior people at the CBC who want desperately to get rid of him," said a long-time friend of Mr. Cherry, who asked not to be named.
"Harold [Redekopp, executive vice-president of CBC-TV] and Bob [Rabinovitch, CBC president] have the biggest issues with Don," he said. "And the ironic thing is those two guys are leaving the company.Over the years, Mr. Cherry maintained that his first-intermission show is a ratings winner. Ms. Soles agrees that Hockey Night in Canada is one of the network's golden properties, attracting an average 1.286 million viewers this season.She said the network does not break out the Ron and Don show to determine that segment's audience appeal. "There's no doubt over the years that Coach's Corner has enhanced the value of the total Hockey Night in Canada package, but we can't pull it apart as a particular value."
Yesterday, Barry Kiefl, owner of Canadian Media Research Inc., scoffed. "It's very common that networks look at their audience not only on a segment-by-segment basis but on a minute-by-minute basis. It's a natural thing to want to examine the audience component on a program like Coach's Corner." In February, Edmonton North MP Deborah Grey told the House of Commons that taxpayer money was being wasted on a CBC survey in which 2,000 people were phoned to gauge views on Mr. Cherry's verbosity. She told Parliament she was asked whether Mr. Cherry was racist.
CBC acknowledges that it performed a public survey about its Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts. She said the survey was to discover audience opinion of the show's hosts, graphics, special features and theme music. And the survey, she added, did not ask whether Mr. Cherry is racist.Ms. Soles would not disclose the survey results: "As a matter of policy, we don't make the results of our research public."
Mr. Cherry said he was hurt by news of the poll, which he read about in the news media. "It was sort of disheartening," he said yesterday. "I have to tell you, here you are doing your best, and you find out they're asking if people think I'm racist. That kind of bothered me."Mr. Cherry said he hopes he and Mr. MacLean don't part ways. "Although I sometimes don't understand him, and I don't like his left-wing thinking and he's a referee . . . I still have fun with him doing Coach's Corner, and I can't imagine being on television without him.
"Oh God, I've never said that before. He's going to think I'm going nuts."
