At last, our long national nightmare is over.
OK, that might be a little dramatic but after offering up the same product to viewers for what feels like an eternity, the CFL on TSN is finally making some much-needed changes to their broadcast.
3DownNation first reported that an update would be coming ahead of the opening of the regular season. Outside of some personnel changes, like the departure of long-time panellist Matt Dunigan and the addition of former NFLer Luke Willson, Bell Media also confirmed that alterations would be coming to the rest of the broadcast, most notably Friday Night Football.
The end of the work week affair was once TSN’s marquee game of the week at a time when games still appeared on CBC. Those games played a big part in ensuring that TSN would secure exclusive rights to the CFL in 2008.
TSN appears to be trying to bring the allure back to Friday Night Football and make it the league’s big game of the week. That’s something that I believe was long overdue, no matter which night of the week they chose.
The first big change actually debuted on Thursday night during the game between the Riders and the Redblacks, and that was a new scorebug. For the uninitiated, the scorebug is the graphic that shows the score of the game, time remaining, etc.
The bug itself is clean and to the point. All of the information you need is now in a nice symmetrical box at the bottom of the screen. It gives off the same vibe as the scorebug FOX debuted at the Super Bowl but is less boring. A couple of minor corrections have already been made following its debut, as initially the play clock in red on a black background was difficult to read and the flag icon did not match the colour of the flags on the field.
On Friday evening, we finally got to see the much-anticipated new-look Friday Night Football and overall, I’d say it’s a positive change.
I actually enjoyed the players paying homage to the original theme song by singing along to it, though I do hope it’s a one-off and not something we see every week. The new theme song itself is fairly generic and forgettable but the graphics package looks nice and modern.
Wake up, new Friday Night Football song just dropped
pic.twitter.com/p3cGOlCX7s
— 3DownNation (@3DownNation) June 6, 2025
If you’re a curling fan at all, the whole thing reminded me a lot of changes that were made to Curling Canada events on TSN this year, but with a few tweaks for football.
As for the talent on the screen, I hope that Dustin Nielson and Paul LaPolice working this debut game is hinting at who could be the top crew going forward, even if it’s not this season.
The addition of Willson on the sideline worked out fairly well. A few of the segments involving the former Seattle Seahawk could have been tighter, but I’m sure he’ll get his timing down as he gets more comfortable in the role. Willson brought some good energy to the broadcast and is also a name that non-CFL fans might recognize. Despite never playing the league, Willson did come across as excited to be there and if he’s talking CFL, that’s a good thing.
One of the minor changes that I appreciate thus far is the shrinking of the panel from a host and three panellists to a host and two panellists. There just isn’t enough time for more voices to get coherent thought-out points across. In this case, less is definitely more.
One thing I could do without is something that TSN has seemingly picked up from American football coverage. ESPN and NBC are particularly bad for weird graphics packs to tell stories about the teams. TSN has now dipped their hand in that with a package explaining how the Argos and Als traded roles from 2023 to 2024 with head coaches Ryan Dinwiddie and Jason Maas speaking at political rallies.
The whole thing felt awkward and the obvious use of artificial intelligence is problematic for a number of reasons, including taking work away from talented individuals.
Full-scale change was never going to happen overnight but TSN has taken a big first step toward modernizing what was a fairly stale broadcast. There’s still some work to be done, but it’s safe to say that things are now trending in the right direction.
The post Opinion: CFL on TSN’s new look a step in right direction appeared first on 3DownNation.