So this week it was announced that TEAM1040 has thrown the Vancouver Giants a bone and will broadcast their games on what was formerly CFUN (now 1410 The Buzz).

Which, on the surface, is better than what the Giants had planned (a deal with CISL). But when you pry a little deeper, it flat out stinks.

First of all, don’t the Giants attract enough fans to warrant an actual spot on Vancouver’s only sports radio station? Sure, it’s junior hockey, but it’s also big business in this town, and TEAM1040 is a SPORTS radio station. That, to my way of thinking, should mean they cover sports beyond Canucks hockey, and frankly the Giants rank highly as a piece of the Vancouver sports pie.

"But they cover Canadians games", I hear you say.

The hell they do.

They cover SOME Canadians games. They cover Canadians games - at home, if they’re on a weekend.

Yes, that’s the new contract for the Vancouver Canadians. Radio coverage as long as it’s a Saturday or Sunday, and you’re with a five minute drive from TEAM1040 HQ. The Giants get consigned to a station nobody listens to, and the C’s get 80% of their games broadcast through their own website.

That, frankly, is bullshit.

I listen to TEAM1040 a fair bit - not because it’s good, but because it’s the only sports station in town. We all remember how the previous competitor in the sports market here, MOJO, went the easy listening route because ‘there aren’t enough sports to cover in Vancouver’.

Well, the way TEAM1040 neglects, or pays lip service but only lip service, to most sports in this town demonstrates that explanation was all sorts of wrong.

Of course, it’s tough to juggle all those sports when you’re committed to giving Dave ‘the plagiarist‘ Pratt and Don ‘forceps head’ Taylor 75% of your air time, and the rest over to repeats of all the ‘engaging and witty and informed’ things they’ve said over the previous week.

But couldn’t Giants games be broadcast on delay, after the Canucks games are done, or on nights that the Nucks are resting? Couldn’t C’s games be squeezed in, even if not live, in the spot that currently goes to airing syndicated late night shows devoted to pro wrestling and NAScar?

There’s room for Whitecaps games - but there’s seriously no room for the C’s and Giants?

TEAM1040 would no doubt point to their ratings and defend their actions by saying what they’re doing is working. But it isn’t - there’s just no other option for the sports listener. They could be running wall-to-wall coverage of lacrosse and they’d outrate the moribund collection of easy listening stations, all-traffic stations and ‘news’ stations that only talk about news for 5 minutes every hour that makes up the Vancouver radio landscape.

The fact of the matter is, if TEAM1040 actually had a little competition that wasn’t run like a girl scout cookie drive, they’d collapse in a plagiarizing, NHL-obsessed, panicky heap.

But hey, I guess they could always throw some more cash to Dave Pratt so he can renew his Sports Illustrated subscription and scan it for interesting things to put in his next column.