Freddie P's Blog

November 27, 2007 @ 09:24

On Saturday morning I received an e-mail from my old colleague Neil Morrison aka Brother Bill bringing my attention to a posting on a popular radio website.

It talked about my stint with Bill Watters and mentioned another venture of mine way back in 1988 called the Sports Zone.

I remember it fondly because it was an extremely trying yet rewarding time in my career mainly because the show was so ahead of its time.

I got a call from a producer at the CBC named Doug Syrota who had the idea for a different kind of sports show and he wanted me to audition.

Two average guys would sit in big easy chairs, shoot the shit about sports and do off the wall interviews and features much like you see today.

But this was 1988 and after I got the gig with BJ Del Conte and we went to air, it wasn't received very well by the established Toronto media and I wrote about one incident in a posting last year.

Half didn't get it, and the other half were jealous, but to this day I'm proud of that show because it was cutting edge and ruffled the feathers of so many stale assholes in sports jackets reading scores.

In typical Canadian fashion it didn't last long but take nothing away from the concept and the gamble because it was a lot of goddamn fun.

Thanks to my sweet mother, who's collected virtually every piece of press during my career, here's an article from Starweek Magazine in November of 1988, the night before the show went to air.