There are many circumstances of sports activities media figures exiting an organization they’ve lengthy labored at, however how that performed out with Canadian hockey commentator Jeff Marek turns out a bit of bizarre. Marek were at Rogers-owned Canadian cable community Sportsnet for 13 years and had survived a lot of previous layoffs and restructurings. However he’s now exited in an abnormal means.
All through his decade-plus at Sportsnet, Marek was once recognized for his presence discussing hockey on Twitter (now X). And he has 244,000 fans there, or 0.85 Kleimans. However, earlier than Friday, the closing time he posted anything else there was once on June 28, the primary day of the NHL Draft, which he was once protecting for the community (which holds nationwide hockey rights in Canada) are living from Las Vegas. (And his closing posts had been retweets of @Sportsnet clips of him interviewing avid gamers on-air.) That was once additionally the closing day he gave the impression on Sportsnet’s TV or radio airwaves, and the 32 Ideas podcast he co-hosted with Elliotte Friedman hadn’t uploaded a brand new episode since then both.
Marek’s sudden and unexplained Twitter absence sparked some hypothesis for some time on what was once up. Some readability then emerged Thursday with a document from Jonah Siegel of Toronto Sports activities Media, who cited a couple of assets and wrote “for unconfirmed draft causes , @JeffMarek can be not acting tasks at Sportsnet hockey” and “all we will ascertain is he was once at draft & then he wasn’t hasn’t been heard from since & instructed possibly gained’t be again both.”
Sportsnet then showed Marek’s go out to Colton Pankiw of The Day-to-day Hive, however simplest with a spokesperson pronouncing “Jeff Marek is not with Sportsnet.” And, on Friday, Marek broke his Twitter silence with a put up thanking other people for his or her beef up and pronouncing he was once “transferring on”:
After 13 nice years at Sportsnet, I’m transferring on. It’s been an implausible adventure and I’m grateful to have labored along such a lot of nice other people and performed a task in bringing sports activities and hockey information to fanatics throughout Canada and the sector. Extra to return quickly.
– Jeff— Jeff Marek (@JeffMarek) July 26, 2024
Following that, Marek were given many additional notable expressions of thank you and beef up. One vital one got here from Elliotte Friedman, who mentioned Marek’s position as co-host of his 32 Ideas podcast:
After we began the podcast, Sportsnet requested if I sought after to do it myself or have a co-host. I preferred the theory of enjoying off any individual; @moorescottmoore advised Jeff Marek.
It was once sensible. Jeff has his crazy ideas, however they made for amusing debates and nice moments.
Existence… %.twitter.com/Pzv9SJgn0U
— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) July 26, 2024
The portion of that tweet bring to an end through the embed reads “Existence throws curveballs at you. I will be able to leave out being his teammate, and thank him for being an incredible co-pilot at the begin to our 32 Ideas podcasting voyage — which is able to proceed.” And whilst that’s unquestionably no longer explicit, the “curveballs” line provides to the strangeness round this departure.
As discussed off the highest, there are many individuals who finish up leaving shops they’ve been at a very long time. Now and again, that’s an evident leap for a distinct alternative; different occasions, it’s a freelance non-renewal or an incapacity to comply with new contract phrases. And that may’t be dominated out right here, however the extraordinary timing has many questioning if there’s extra happening.
On that entrance, Steve Warne wrote a work in this for The Hockey Information‘ Ottawa Senators web page he edits Saturday titled “Looking to Piece In combination the Curious Case of Broadcaster Jeff Marek and His Fresh Break up With Sportsnet.” Warne, a veteran broadcaster himself (in particular recognized for previous paintings at TSN 1200 Ottawa and CTV Ottawa), wrote there that the timing of Marek’s dismissal is one thing he’d “by no means observed”:
I’ve observed greater than my percentage of Canadian broadcast activity carnage. What I’ve by no means observed is an worker being despatched around the continent to lend a hand host crucial are living TV occasion, watched through hundreds of thousands nationally, simplest to be reduce from the herd in a mid-assignment layoff.
…At this 12 months’s NHL Draft in Las Vegas, Marek labored day one at the draft flooring, interviewing all of the first-rounders moments once they had been decided on, together with Ottawa Senators first-rounder Carter Yakemchuk.
By way of that evening, with the activity simplest part completed, Marek was once on a red-eye flight house. Weeks later, we realized Marek and Sportsnet had parted techniques.
…The primary idea, for the explanations I discussed above, is a cost-cutting transfer. However that might be a peculiar tactic. Layoffs are deliberate for weeks prematurely and nearly by no means occur to only one man, particularly in the course of a large, vital manufacturing. And when layoffs do occur, the corporate most often reviews it as such. Everybody doesn’t pass right into a month-long radio silence about it.
Warne is slightly right kind that the timing there may be remarkably bizarre. Sending any individual to a are living occasion, particularly one thing as giant as a draft, is an important expense, and are living occasion manufacturing comes with explicit obligations for everybody running on it. Mid-event departures and adjustments do occasionally occur, however they’re most often about sickness or different assignments, they usually’re most often obviously defined. In a similar way, departures over contract disagreements or converting instructions in protection most often include no less than some stage of public clarification on what took place, making the radio silence right here odder nonetheless. However this one has Marek and Friedman declining remark, together with to Gilbert Ngabo of The Toronto Celebrity, and a Sportsnet spokesperson simplest including that they “can’t percentage main points on particular person worker issues.”
Why does this subject? Smartly, who a community chooses to have on its protection is surely of hobby to the general public, and if a transformation is made for editorial and/or cost-cutting causes, that’s one thing the general public unquestionably will weigh in on. If a transformation is made for violation of corporate insurance policies, that continuously will get mentioned too, together with if the ones insurance policies are suitable or no longer. And the way any individual leaves a task continuously affects their long run employment, and the dialogue that springs up if and when they’re employed subsequent.
In a case like this one, it’s slightly tough to speak about the parting of how and what could be subsequent for each Marek and Sportsnet with none data on what took place right here. And it’s exceptionally abnormal to look any individual taken off-air in the course of an occasion, then everybody concerned stay quiet for a month till temporary “not with” and “transferring on” statements.
We’ll see if additional info emerges in this. We do no less than have Marek’s tweet pronouncing “Extra to return quickly.” What we do know for now’s that Sportsnet’s hockey protection goes to head on with out one in every of its maximum distinguished and longest-tenured faces. However we don’t know why.
[Jeff Marek on X/Twitter, The Hockey News; image from Sportsnet on YouTube]
