What happened to Joe Bowen?

[go_leafs_go02]

I quite like the change to Romanuk. Didn't have an issue with Bowen overall, but have liked the call from him so far.

 

[blue82]

I'm gonna miss calls like this

this game was a radio broadcast by bowen as all playoff games are, there will always be clips of his epic playoff calls over youtube should we ever make the playoffs again

 

[htpwn]

I don't have much of an issue with Romanuk. At least not yet.

The first game of the preseason that he called was pretty rough, but by last night, I thought he was decent. It seems natural to have an adjustment period both for us and certainly for him as well, doing this full-time for the first time in years. Once he kind of gets settled in, I think he'll be close to what we see in Gord Miller. A good, not great, announcer. As Daisy said, maybe the days of the great voices like Bob Cole are over and we shouldn't expect it.

Also, I like him better than Hughson already, so that's a positive.

As for Bowen, it would have been nice if Sportsnet separated their regional/national games. Not every Leafs game that Sportsnet owns the rights to is going to be national, so I see no reason why Romanuk has to do every game. I'm going to miss Bowen on TV. I know a minority didn't like him but I think most were happy with the job he's done for as long as he has. It's going to suck not to have our own play-by-play, with all the bias and excitement that entails.

 

[Rob11]

Heres the reason Bowen is radio only and we're getting the short end of the stick

-Bowen is a homer announcer for the Leafs
-Most Leafs games are on Sportsnet or CBC (controlled by Sportsnet)
-Sportsnet is showing almost all of these games on a national basis
-Homer announcer (or at least blatant ones like Bowen) can't do national games because of their inherent bias
-Subsequently Bowen is automatically cut out of most of our games. The remaining games on TSN are regional, but TSN has kept their old national crew (also non-biased) for those games

This isn't quite correct.

Sportsnet is showing regional leaf games still. That contract did not really change too much based on the National rights from my understanding. Although they are showing 40 national games, 16 regional Sportsnet games will be shown and tsn has the last 26 regional. It appears as though with the cut of leafs TV they blended those into national games this season.

Romanuk is doing regional leaf games the same as bowen previously did. However he will only be doing 16 games. He does not do any national games. The 40 nationally shown leaf games are done by Hughson and team. Like you said it doesn't make sense for Bowen to call all the national.

BUT also based on this Bowen and Rogers may have decided in his best interest to have him call 82 regular season games on the radio vs only 16 regional on TV. Last year when Sportsnet, Leafs TV, CBC and TSN had a different distribution of games. The leafs had 40 regional games that bowen did. 17 leafs TV and 23 Sportsnet.

This link outlines everyone's positions...

http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/healy-hrudey-headline-sportsnet-broadcast-team/