RIP Ted Rogers

Rogers, 75, owned the Blue Jays and their home stadium, the Rogers Centre, along with an array of Canadian media properties, including Rogers Sportsnet and the Canadian news magazine Maclean's. He had been treated recently for a heart condition.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/al/bluejays/2008-12-02-rogers-obit_N.htm

 

Ted was a pioneer in the cable industry in Canada and built an amazing empire starting with one FM Station.

HC & I send Rogers about $200.00 a month for cable, internet & cell phones.

He managed to buy Skydome for $25,000,000 or for about ten cents on the dollar.

However, by all accounts he was hell to work for

http://business.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081202.wrogersobit1202/BNStory/Business/home

Mr. Rogers was the classic micromanager who contacted executives at all hours to discuss minute details. One manager, later fired by Mr. Rogers, said he used to break away from lunch meetings by telling his fellow diners: “I've got to get back to the office. I have 25 e-mails from Ted to ignore.”

RIP, Ted.

 

Here's the Toronto Star story.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/546983

I listened to Top 40 on CFTR in the 1980s, not knowing then that the "TR" stood for the station's owner. It's now called News 680.

I also didn't know until much later that CFRB, probably the legendary radio station in Toronto, even more so than CHUM, was founded by Ted's father. The station slipped out of the family's hands after Ted's father died, and apparently he considered it his greatest failure that he was never able to reacquire it.

RIP Ted.

 

Double J

CFRB was my parent's station: Betty Kennedy, Gordon Sinclair, Pierre Berton & Charles Templeton. No one under the age of 25 listened to it.

CHUM's Top 40 set the standard for pop music radio in the country.

I'd say both are equally legendary.

 

My old man was a CFRB guy, he knew Wally Crouter a little bit.

I listened to CFTR some too, but CHUM and CHUM-FM dominated pop and rock music radio through my youth and into my teens.

 

Fixed.

Just kidding. My opinion is that it's the station simply because CHUM, as it once was, gave up the ghost 20 years ago. It still spins the current hits on FM, but its trend-setting days are long, long gone. CFRB, meanwhile, keeps on keeping on.

Besides, its reputation was established 25 years before CHUM even went on the air. It carried Foster Hewitt's Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts in the 1930s and 1940s (along with CBL) and was responsible for bringing the Leafs to provincial and nationial prominence. If the Leafs are still "Canada's Team," it's due to Hewitt and CFRB.

 

Ironically (or coincidentally) CFRB was the station that Ted Rogers father founded.

OK, so when did Hewitt's CJCL take over the Leafs radio broadcasts?

 

JR was a teenager when cub reporter Foster Hewitt started doing the Toronto Arenas games on radio!

 

Hewitt's station was CKFH and it took over the Leafs in the early 1950s, right around the time CBC took its broadcasts to TV.

 

So what's this mean for the Blue Jays? I know they are already reconsidering their budget in light of the economy, do they get put on the market themselves?

 

Lower budget, layoffs for the Jays.....

http://www.torontosun.com/sports/columnists/ken_fidlin/2008/12/03/7614566-sun.html

 

Lot of people in Buffalo are interested in this story, as you might expect. In fact, there were a few on our site -- thankfully, only a few -- who weren't exactly sad to hear the news of Mr. Rogers' passing.

The National Post weighs in on the future of his NFL ambitions:

NFL dream may fizzle
Rogers Leaves Void