No.
For instance Paul Steigerwald and Bob Errey are employees of Root Sports, while the radio tandem of Mike Lange and Phil Bourque are employees of the Penguins. For most (all?) promotional material provided by the team you hear Lange and Bourque, not Steigerwald and Errey.
I was wondering do all teams employ their own broadcasters for television and radio? If so, when did this trend start!
No need to yell, man.
But yeah I would say that TV commentators are employed by the network, not the team. Different sport, but I'm pretty sure it's the same with hockey: "Marv Albert and MSG part ways". That was the headline when Marv Albert left his commentating job with the Knicks.
In Montreal, the Canadiens do not employed any of their broadcast team.
But then, some could argue that they don't need to, 'cause all the journalists in the city are already sold to the cause.
I was wondering do all teams employ their own broadcasters for television and radio? If so, when did this trend start?
No.
For instance Paul Steigerwald and Bob Errey are employees of Root Sports, while the radio tandem of Mike Lange and Phil Bourque are employees of the Penguins. For most (all?) promotional material provided by the team you hear Lange and Bourque, not Steigerwald and Errey.
So more likely the radio broadcasters would be employed by the teams. Kind of makes sense as if there is a regional or national television rights package, would be employed by the TV station.
I'm pretty sure that the Senators broadcast crew are employed by the team and not by the respective networks. I remember hearing that many years ago, and I was surprised at first, but it seemed to be a trend. Dean Brown does Sportsnet games as well as a few Hockey Night in Canada games, which probably wouldn't be possible if he was employed by Sportsnet. He does radio when the Sens are on TSN (and the radio station is owned by BellMedia).
Our radio broadcast however is Radio Hofstra, so I'm guessing it's mostly run by their Communications/Broadcasting department/students. Yes, Charles Wang is cheap.
This is one of those grey areas....There is journalistic ethics in place.
The TV announcers and commentator are generally with the team so they keep the same announcing crew with the team. The station that holds the rights tends to run the intermission shows.
In the last 15 years sports team have gone to local sports networks on cable and are rarely on over the air network/local TV.
Before cable one of the local affiliates aired the games. Then when cable came up it was more of a split of games where about half on TV and the other half on cable. Now almost all is on cable.
The trend now is the team have an ownership stake in the local sports network that airs the games.