A pair of Canadian media giants look to be taking their Sports battle to radio. CTVglobemedia, owners of TSN, the Canadian equivalent of ESPN is in the planning stages of building a national sports radio programming service. According to a report in The Toronto Globe & Mail, also owned by CTVglobemedia, the existing “Team” branded Sports stations in Montreal, Ottawa, and Vancouver in addition to News 1050 CHUM Toronto would be used as the framework for a TSN Radio network similar to ESPN Radio.
Competitor Rogers, which operates a network of regional sports networks may also be looking to expand its brand to radio. Our NetGnomes have discovered a batch of domains which lineup with existing Rogers properties. The five cable networks that make up Rogers Sportsnet have domains with radio inserted: Sportsnet1Radio.com, SportsnetRadioEast.com, SportsnetRadioOntario.com, SportsnetRadioWest.com, and SportsnetRadioPacific.com. More importantly there appears to be rebranding in the works for Rogers two existing Sports stations. “The Fan 590” CJCL Toronto looks to become SportsnetRadio590, while “The Fan 960” CFAC Calgary would become SportsnetRadio960.
All of the aforementioned stations currently supplement their local programming with US based ESPN Radio or Fox Sports Radio.