It has come to my attention that TSN will not be able to air all of the CFL's regular season games due to prior commitments to live television, such as the America's Cup.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_CFL_season
Also, TSN has contracts to air Darts, Bowling, Soccer, Golf, and Tennis.
With all of TSN's prior commitments, there are rumours that some CFL games will be dumped to ESPN or A-Channel. There are also rumours of TSN selling some of its rights to another broadcaster, CBC/Global. There seems to be no discussion on moving any game (including playoffs) to CTV, due to an NFL contact.
It appears TSN may drop the ball on the upcoming 2008 CFL season. Even CFL.ca has left the broadcaster column on their 2008 schedule blank.
These things get finalized at the last minute sometimes. Even in the NFL, remember last year the fiasco, for want of a better word, about the NFL Network carrying a game, I forget what the circumstance was but I think it only got finalized as to who was carrying this game about a couple days before the actual game.
The NFL Network had the rights to a number of Thursday night games, and one of them happened to be the 10-0 Cowboys against the 10-0 Packers. Americans were up in arms as only a small percentage of viewers had the NFL Network.
Nothing was done - the game was shown on the NFL Network.
I'd rather miss than listen to Lee and Walby for another season. I think we are jumping the gun a bit here, because TSN now has the Alternate feed channel, which most cable providers are now including in their packages, so if they have other committments, they can use the alternate feed to show games.
lol, they just added that today, after my post. the broadcast column had been blank since they posted the schedule. i guess someone important reads these boards, haha.