Sports Page, a staple of big-league highlights and amateur-level features for so many years on TV, should still have a place on the tube, according to Carson, one of the show's masterminds.

The Page ended a 28-year run in 2005, as its then-broadcaster, CH-Global TV, opted to focus more on news programming.

Where are they now? The stars of the Page's heyday are everywhere. Doing play-by-play for the Vancouver Canucks, all over the TEAM 1040, on TV with Sportsnet, TSN and Shaw.
Where is the show now? It's still on the to-do-again list of Carson. He remains in the business, working in sales and marketing for TEAM 1040.

"This is a huge sports town and I don't think it's being properly presented on TV in Vancouver," says Carson, the former Page sports director who was with the show from 1980-99. "You get a couple of clips on the news every day, but you can't get your teeth into anything.

"The show would work because it was built on personalities. It wasn't built on highlights or scores. We did a lot of offbeat stuff that you wouldn't see on a network show. I think there's room in the market for personality TV and for guys to be offbeat, zany, non-corporate."

It's easier said than done, Carson admits. Fired by Global six years before the show's end in what was portrayed as a cost-cutting move, Carson went around town trying to revive the Page immediately after its demise. He came up empty, although he insists, "there was interest."

He says the fact that the media has been taken over by conglomerates who make many of their decisions out of their Toronto offices hurts his bid.

"I don't see the corporate guys getting on board," laments Carson.

Carson sounds like he hasn't given up. There are other things in play for him, though. To compete with Sportsnet's highlight show, any new Page incarnation would have to go at 10 p.m., rather than its traditional 11 p.m. slot, and stations are hesitant to cut into their prime-time hours.

As well, there's a thought that a new Page would need some of its old guard, like Don Taylor or Barry Macdonald. And, suffice it to say, their current employers aren't about to trade them away for draft picks.

All that has the likes of John Shorthouse, the Page product who's now the play-by-play voice of the Canucks, thinking the Page has "run its course."

"It was huge for a while," says Shorthouse. "We knew in the city we were a hit. We knew that people were turning to us if they were hardcore sports fans and they were confident in our product.

"It's a different world now. The Internet didn't really exist. I can get everything I need on the Internet.

"It was a great thing when it lasted. You could have put it up against any national show in the U.S. and Canada. But its time ran out because of the day and age."