CBC to air 5 hours of Daily PAN AM coverage

• While offering more than 650 hours of coverage online, the CBC is planning to televise only five hours of programming on most days during the Pan American Games, a total that will generally be spread over three different time slots.

The public broadcaster announced the basic framework of its coverage plans Wednesday, inside its downtown Toronto headquarters. Since it lost the NHL rights two years ago, the CBC has made deep staffing cuts and shifted its mandate from professional sports and renewed its focus on the amateur scene.

There will be a two-hour bloc of television coverage beginning at 3 p.m. local time every weekday during the Pan Am Games, and there will be another two-hour stretch beginning at 8 p.m. The final bloc will run from 11:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.

Some of the content will be on a tape delay, and some events will be condensed.

“I think they are doing what their national mandate is,” said David Peterson, chair of the Pan Am Games organizing committee. “I have no complaints, honest to God.”

The CBC has sub-licensed soccer coverage to Rogers Communications.

It was a Rogers deal that shifted the landscape for the CBC, as well as for TSN, two years ago. The communications giant hatched a 12-year deal worth $5.2 billion to snatch rights to the NHL in Canada — sub-licensing games to the CBC, but only after gaining editorial control over Hockey Night in Canada, as well as studio space at the CBC headquarters.

Mark Lee and Steve Armitage, longtime voices in the CBC’s sports department, were let go last year. Scott Russell, one of the few remaining on-air personalities, will host two of the Pan Am Games programs in July, anchoring the primetime and late-night shows.

“We have less people than we did a year ago, but with the changes that we made, we retained our thought leaders, the people at the core of our Olympic production,” said Trevor Pilling, head of programming at CBC Sports. “The plan all along was to be able to employ this flexible workforce.”

Brenda Irving, another veteran broadcaster, will also be a part of the coverage. The CBC is also planning to hire freelancers as analysts, as it would do for an Olympics — former athletes with experience near a microphone, for example.

Coverage of some competition will be time-shifted, Pilling said, though sometimes only by a matter of minutes. Games could be carried in long-form, or as highlights: “Depending on all the other decisions you have to make during the day as to what other competitions were being held, or how well Canada performed at different events.”

There will be more than 650 hours available online, though not every event will receive the same level of coverage.

“You have to be reasonable, there’s 51 sports,” said Pan Am Games chief executive Saad Rafi. “I think that’s the case in all multi-sport events. Olympic coverage doesn’t cover all the sports, and they have far fewer sports.”