Canadian Football Network

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The Canadian Football Network (CFN) was the official

television syndication service of the Canadian Football League
from 1987 to 1990.

History

Background

CFN broadcasts mainly aired on stations via the

.

Hamilton and Toronto

In its

Toronto
market.

CFN in the United States

In addition to being shown on the above-mentioned Burlington, Vermont station, from

tape-delay basis on ESPN
.

Grey Cup coverage

CFN's Grey Cup[1] coverage was completely separate from CBC's coverage (whereas from 1971-1986, CBC and CTV fully pooled their commentary teams for the game; CBC's commentators called the first half of the game while CTV's crew called the rest of the game or vice versa).

During its broadcast of the 1988 Grey Cup game, CFN reported that its telecasts that season were seen in 14 countries, including the U.S., Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain, West Germany, Norway, Sweden and Finland.

The 1988 Grey Cup was the last game for veteran

Edmonton Eskimos fullback Neil Lumsden was CFN's primary colour man, while Dave Hodge and Bob Irving
, a long-time voice of the Blue Bombers, provided play-by-play.

The end of CFN

CFN was critically acclaimed. The production quality of CFL telecasts had noticeably fallen behind the standards of the other North American major professional sports leagues by the mid- to late-1980s. CFN was widely credited with raising CFL production values to a calibre comparable to contemporary National Football League broadcasts.

However, CFN did not do well financially. CFN was supposed to operate like a normal television network, which meant that it was to earn revenue solely from advertising and other such sponsorship. Unfortunately for CFN, the aforementioned effort to improve production quality was a costly endeavour, and most of the rights fees the CFL earned from CBC and TSN were diverted to cover CFN expenses.[2] The league discontinued the network after the 1990 season. After CFN shut down, all playoff and Grey Cup games would be exclusively broadcast on CBC Television from 1991 to 2007 and TSN from 2008 to the present and into the foreseeable future.

Commentators

Play-by-play/pregame hosts

Colour commentators/Pregame analysts

The theme music package for CFN was provided by Donald Quan.

See also

References

  1. ^ Anderson, Bill (1990-11-24), "Grey Cup still has some shine: Large TV audience expected", Kitchener-Waterloo Record, p. E10, retrieved 2012-07-12[permanent dead link]
  2. ^ Hickey, Pat (November 11, 1987). "CFL May Be Beyond Rescuing". Montreal Gazette. Retrieved January 2, 2014 – via Chicago Tribune.

External links