It’s becoming a bit of a soap opera and one of the great debates of our time, but for perhaps the first time since Mr. Fessenden first talked into a radio, you have to feel a tad sorry for the CBC.
The National broadcaster is finding itself in the eye of a storm as the composer of the Hockey Night in Canada theme and her agent play a serious game of hardball with the Mother Corp.
Dolores Claman, who put together the now familiar ditty over forty years ago has rebuffed a reported CBC Bid of one million dollars to purchase the song outright and negotiations have now as they say broken off with little sign of any positive developments on the horizon…
( from the blog a town called podunk, click on the link below to see the entire article atowncalledpodunk.blogspot.com/2 … 8976195174 )-
Any ideas about prices and what they wanted for the song?
You know I’ve gone through dozens of stories on this thing and have yet to find out what the composer and her agent are actually asking for.
They clearly want more than the 500 dollars per game that they receive at the moment for the thirty second tune, and apparently there is an unresolved 2.5 million dollar lawsuit that is still outstanding complicating the mess. Something to do with a claim on ringtones and on line downloads of the theme.
My guess is that this is a move to put some pressure on the CBC to settle that lawsuit and top up the per game appearance fee, but who knows for sure…
I see that today, Gord Kirke a Toronto based entertainment and sports lawyer (and the unfortunate soul that has been tasked to try and find somebody to run the Maple Leafs) has been asked to mediate the dispute, so perhaps an end may be in sight to this goofy little melodrama…
cbc.ca/sports/hockey/story/2 … theme.html