Jason MacDonald Quotations

From our standpoint, 'Hockey Night in Canada' is unique and can't be replaced. Certainly, we felt some impact from (the lockout). But I think the hockey fans here are ready to celebrate the game coming back. There is a great appetite for it.

From our perspective, the focus right now needs to be on bargaining. Anything that's not related to that is just a diversion away from the real problem, which is the need to get an agreement in place.

We've expressed concerns about some aspects of the content. But Sirius Canada has in place significant safeguards to make sure that the people who are going to hear Howard Stern are the people that want to hear Howard Stern.

We have to balance entertainment and news. Considering the heavy sports schedule in February and March, this was the best solution.

It is a bit frustrating that it takes a professional athlete from another sport to bring the attention (to mixed-martial arts).

Some of the things proposed were not workable or acceptable to the corporation and similarly some of the proposals were not acceptable to the union. So it's interesting that Mr. Amber chose to highlight one rejection.

We want to get back to business as usual and put the programming on the air that people expect from us. But we've managed to mount a schedule that still provides Canadians with the kind of relevant programming that's of interest to them.

We've promoted the film heavily and our audiences are expecting it to be on. We will broadcast it.

We have expressed some reservations about the programming. But this is a business decision on the part of Sirius Canada.

There's no question it'll take some hustling, but these are professionals and they know what they're doing.

There's an option to allow the moderator to give a leader a chance to reply to direct criticisms, or a direct attack or question.

It's about promoting it properly. It's about making the right schedule around it -- all of those kinds of things that go into building a schedule. If you're going to do it, you want to do it right.

The numbers suggest that it was a compromise. That is, in fact, what the agreement is -- a compromise on both parts. From our point of view, we're glad that it was ratified, and that means we can now move ahead with bringing employees back to work and bring our regular schedule back up and running.

Everybody wants Hockey Night in Canada back. One way or another we will have hockey Saturday night. What it looks like will depend on how quickly we can get people back and all of that.

And from the sound of things, things have gone relatively well. By the end of the week, hopefully we'll have everything back up and running as normal.