Posted on 04/03/2003 8:18:35 AM PST by IvanT
This is how Don Cherry probably wants it to end. With a big fight and a great big goodbye.
The kind of public firing that would make him even larger than he is right now -- if that is, in fact, possible.
He just won't say that for attribution. He has said far too much already.
The uncomfortable relationship between Cherry and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is more combustible now than ever before. The major difference being that Cherry has never hid from what he is or what he says -- no matter how offensive it might be -- while the CBC plays the duplicitous role of grabbing ratings and claiming outrage.
Cherry is, in fact, a home-grown monster. The CBC created him, fed him, developed him, encouraged him, and participated with a certain trepidation as he became the most watched man on Canadian television.
And now he has become Don Cherry, broadcasting martyr. The last of the loud voices and loud collars. More powerful than the network. Some nights, you have to watch Coach's Corner for the very same reasons you couldn't take your eyes off Peter Finch in the classic movie Network.
He was mad as hell and he was not going to take it. But Cherry is not mad -- just out of control, pushing, forever pushing. He is, and always has been, in the Don Cherry business, which has been good business. And it isn't his fault. Once upon a time, the CBC or Hockey Night in Canada could have done something about it, but it's not unlike disciplining kids -- you have to do it early or you can't do it at all.
And on a network desperate for ratings -- people are watching hockey and almost nothing else on CBC -- Cherry represents everything CBC is not supposed to be and it isn't strong enough or creative enough to stand up to him. He speaks his mind and they cringe in their board rooms and then he speaks his mind again.
Had almost any other broadcaster in this or any other country gone on a radio show and ripped his network, his bosses, his country, and anyone else he could think of -- the way Cherry did on The Jim Rome Show the other day -- he would be spending today trying to explain his demise and unemployment.
There are rules for those who broadcast, just not for Cherry. And when you pay no attention to the standards of your profession, when you cross the line and no one has the stones to do or say anything, you establish your own rules and they allow you to do so.
The Cherry Rules: I say what I want to say, when I want to say it and no one is going to silence me ... I won't quit, they'll have to fire me to shut me up.
And so far, CBC has resisted doing anything of the kind.
You can say all that when you're Don Effing Cherry and you have an adoring public that will scrap harder for your independence than they would for anything of real importance.
It used to be just Cherry battling the CBC and his few critics, but now it's even more complicated. It has become a two-headed monster.
Ron MacLean is right beside him, bolder than ever. The CBC brass had the perfect opportunity to put the clamps on Cherry when contract negotiations broke off with MacLean last fall. They could have said bye bye, but in the Cherry vernacular, they turtled when it came to MacLean.
This was their chance to put in some semblance of control to the Coach's Corner segments on Hockey Night In Canada. The kind of simple controls that exist for almost every other broadcaster in this country. They lost that negotiation, just as they've lost the kind of responsibility they define themselves by in almost every other venue.
Make no mistake, the CBC executives, more than ever before, are legitimately disturbed by Cherry's antics. They just don't know what to do about it. They want to fire him, but no matter how they react now, keeping him, firing him, pre-taping Coach's Corner, Cherry wins.
He doesn't want to retire from HNIC. He wants to go out on a shield in a blaze of glory. On his terms. Always on his terms.
By divergent, do you mean trying to find someone in Canada who actually likes and watches the CBC, other than hockey of course? Good luck. The CBC is one of the longest running jokes in Canadian history, aside from the CFL that is. (Although I personally quite like the CFL)
Cherry, I'm told by the rector of our church in North Andover, Mass., used to be a member of our congregation. His son's kidneys suddenly failed, and Cherry donated a kidney to the boy.
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