Flin Flon native Rod Nystrom will help media giant Rogers Communications transition into Canada’s new home of the NHL.
Nystrom recently joined Rogers’ NHL team as a creative producer, less than three months before the media giant begins its reign as the nation’s undisputed hockey leader.
Nystrom, who lives in Toronto, previously spent nearly 25 years with TSN.
Growing up in Flin Flon in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, Nystrom, now 60, dreamed of a career in sports media.
But upon graduating from Hapnot Collegiate in 1971, he was not quite ready to pursue his goal.
Instead, in 1972, he began what would be a short stint at the University of Manitoba. For reasons he still does not understand, he enrolled in the Bachelor of Science program.
In a patent case of foreshadowing, Nystrom’s passion for hockey eventually derailed his university career.
“The start of the university year coincided with the Canada-Russia [Summit] Series,” he told The Reminder in 2012, “and by the time the ice had cleared and [Paul] Henderson had scored, I had no clue about what was going on in my
studies.”
When he returned to post-secondary education in the fall of 1974, Nystrom stayed true to himself. He enrolled in the radio, television and stage program at Calgary’s Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.
After graduating in 1976, he and a fellow grad accepted job offers from CFCP radio on Vancouver Island. It was a great opportunity, but one that was incompatible with Nystrom’s early-20s lifestyle.
He lasted six months at the station before he and his superiors came to a mutual understanding – the working relationship wasn’t working.
A little older and a little wiser, Nystrom applied at a number of smaller and medium-sized radio stations before receiving a job offer from his hometown CFAR.
Over the next three years, he tried his hand at everything from hockey colour commentator on Bomber broadcasts to being music director on the morning show.
By 1980, Nystrom was ready to climb up the broadcasting totem pole, so he relocated to Toronto to produce the late-night shift at CHUM AM.
From there, he worked at a couple of other radio stations before landing a position as managing editor of a digital media enterprise.
As Nystrom’s career progressed, a new phenomenon was sweeping Canada. The Sports Network, TSN, was rapidly building an audience as one of Canada’s first specialty cable channels.
In 1989, five years after its debut, TSN branched out. In a lucky break, Nystrom was hired to write and produce hourly updates for TSN Radio.
It was a hectic job. On many occasions, the radio updates were nearly missed because the anchors were too busy with their television updates.
A year of this was enough for TSN, which opted to hire producer-announcers for the radio updates. Nystrom, who admits he “never had the big, booming pipes for major-market radio,” took a junior role on the TV side of TSN.
He started as a production assistant in on-air promotions, working his way up to producer-director, a position he still held until recent years.
This hockey season marks the start of Rogers’ blockbuster 12-year, $5.2-billion broadcast and multimedia deal with the NHL.
