|
|
 |
|
NEWS 95.7 SPORTS GUY, SCOTT MACINTOSH IS RARE BREED |
|
|
|
Written by Alex J. Walling
|
|
Monday, 28 August 2006 |
MEDIA COLUMN
 (Insert William Tell Overture here)
“Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, the Lone Ranger, rides again. Hi Yo Silver, away!”
Scott MacIntosh is ‘The Lone Ranger’. All he’s missing are those silver bullets; they’ve been replaced by business cards.
He is also an endangered species. In this large radio market of 14 radio signals that we have access to, MacIntosh is the only full time, local sports guy on News 95.7. Yep, he is the only one, as radio sportscasters have gone the way of the rotary dial telephone and jukeboxes that play 45’s.
There are two part time sports guys who ‘do sports in the morning’ such as Harv Stewart (Q104) and John Hancock on CBC Info Morning. But Harv is more of a co-host with BJ and Lisa Blackburn and Hancock does but one cast for this area as the rest of the time he is feeding the rest of the country.
But for MacIntosh it’s ‘all sports, all the time’ and nearly morning noon and night.
It wasn’t that long ago that radio sports people ruled the media in this city.
Halifax radio gave us the likes of Danny Gallivan, Harris Sullivan, John Gallagher, Paul Lethbridge, Leo McIsaac, Pat Connolly, John MacGillivray, Kevin Reed, Gail Rice, Andrew Boyle, Bruce Stephen, Peter Spurway, Joe Bowen, Gerry Fogerty, Paul Menier, Marty Kingston, Jim Tattie and many more. These days there is only Scotty.
When I hit Halifax in the early 70’s there were at least six sportscasters. TV had Steve Armitage and Harris Sullivan and radio had Connolly, Fogerty, Sullivan who did both radio and TV and me. And we had part timers to cover the major events.
In those days this market had four commercial stations (CHNS, CJCH, and CFDR) and only one FM (CHFX).
So where’s the logic? Back then we had 4 stations and tons of sportscasters, now we have 14 and have but one guy, McIntosh. What gives?
Radio people will give you tons of reasons but I call them pathetic excuses. They’ve given up sports to the TSN’s of the world.
The problem is TSN, the Score and Sportsnet don’t talk about the Moose, QEH Lions, Dartmouth Dry in baseball, Dal, SMU and other local sports.
But MacIntosh does and he’s the only one doing it well. The Mooseheads by themselves is almost a full time beat almost like the Vees and the AHL. Radio, other than 95.7, does very little for local sports other than pay lip service to it. Pity.
MacIntosh, 25 and from Hantsport, puts in tons of time. I thought the days of the split shifts died decades ago but the kid still does them, the only one on staff that does.
He’s up at 3:00 am, in the station a few minutes later and does a morning run until 9am. Then it’s off for some sleep and back to the office around 3pm where he gets ready to do the “afternoon run” which is from 3:30 -7pm.
“I do the morning run live; tape the noon time and try and catch a few hours of sleep before I’m back at the station around 3pm,” he tells me.
He’s also very consistent. I love the fact that a sports fan can get information at a set time which is :15 and :45. It’s also nice to see breaking stories, and they happen in sports, get covered.
Doug Reynolds who works with MacIntosh in the 95.7 newsroom in the early morning calls him ‘a great guy with a great voice who loves his job and wants to get better at it. He is an asset to the sports media in this area.’
Debra Rent, a News editor who works with him in the afternoon says ‘he comes in, does his work, hardly says boo, and does his job very well. He is quiet, efficient, a strong person and nice guy.”
MacIntosh went to AMI and started his broadcast career in Amherst at CKDH and moved to MBS (CHNS/CHFX) a few years ago.
In all MacIntosh is heard around 24 times a day in Halifax when you add the headline or two at the top and bottom of the hour. And that’s not all. He does the same thing for Saint John and Moncton and they are different casts because in Saint John he talks about the Seadogs and the Wildcats are the big show in Moncton.
He’s a busy guy but so was… the Lone Ranger.
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
