Whose this Strombo Guy and Whatever Happened to Saturday Night?

'Rocky Horror' references aside whatever happened to Saturday Night? We are a few weeks into the new hockey season and it's almost more then I can bare. 

As all if you must know by now Rogers Communications here in Canada paid an exorbitant amount of money to be the exclusive rights holder to NHL Hockey in Canada. In the process they made a deal with CBC to use the Hockey Night in Canada name and retain much of their on-air talent including Don Cherry and Ron MacLean. 

At first glance you would think that's all well and good. You would think that Rogers would maintain the status quo and not mess with a good thing. They didn't. They hired George Stroumboulopoulos to anchor the show and relegated Ron MacLean to co-host of Coach's Corner with Don Cherry. Ron got relegated to a FIVE minute segment! 

Ron MacLean is a legend and you replace him with a MuchMusic VJ. Really? Rogers is completely ruining the coverage of hockey. Hockey Night in Canada had sort of a folksy charm. Each broadcast still began with Foster Hewitt saying "Hello, Canada, and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland", the graphics were simple, there was no fake ice surface in the studio, and it had Ron MacLean anchoring the broadcast as he had for over 20 years. 

Rogers is 'Americanizing' the coverage of the sport. George is sitting at his red chairs interviewing people. The panels are massive. The set is massive. It's overly flashy and they've gotten rid of the Hockey Night in Canada towels and replaced them with a Sports Net towel (note: since week 1 they have brought back the old CBC towels).

Remember in 2002 when the CBC couldn't come to a contract agreement with Rob MacLean and it was literally front page news, there was protests in the streets and the CBC eventually caved and gave him what he deserved. Where is that now that Rogers is giving him the shaft and replacing him with Strombo? People should once again take to the streets. write letters, create a twitter hashtag, and boycott Rogers products. None of this is of course going to happen so I might as well start the hashtag ...#imwithron

Not a very well formed argument but I don't care. I do not like Roger's doing hockey. That being said next month the new 'Rogers Hometown Hockey' broadcast which has Ron MacLean touring the country is coming to town. You had best believe I'll be there. #imwithron

That's it for me. As always I hope you find your time on this site to be time (and bandwidth) well wasted.