Chicago Tribune: Blackhawks owner found Collins’ videos ‘offensive’

As has been speculated, it appears as if the Chicago Blackhawks weren’t aware of Susannah Collins’ previous work doing racy sports videos prior to being hired as a sports reporter by Comcast SportsNet Chicago.

In a front page story in the Chicago Tribune, Robert Channick obtained a copy of a letter Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz sent to CSNC vice-president and general manager Phil Bedella.

Channick reports:

Launched in 2004, CSN Chicago is a partnership between Comcast and the Cubs, Sox, Blackhawks and Bulls. Comcast owns about 30 percent of the sports network, and the teams control the rest. Management at CSN Chicago is solely responsible for the hiring of reporters, according to the network.

But on Wednesday, Wirtz sent a letter to Phil Bedella, vice president and general manager of CSN Chicago, which the Tribune obtained, addressing his concerns about the Sports Nutz videos.

“In my opinion and those of others, (the videos) are incredibly offensive to a number of audiences, going well beyond professional athletes,” Wirtz said. “Had we known of this earlier, we would have raised the issue immediately.”

The letter went on to ask CSN to “remove her from our broadcast immediately.”

The racy nature of Collins’ Sports Nutz videos were magnified in the wake of her now infamous “tremendous sex” slip-up on Tuesday night. However, as I pointed out yesterday, Collins didn’t try to conceal that she did those videos. Quite the contrary, she proudly points them out on her biography. In fact, they led to her getting sports reporting work in New York, and eventually a job back in her hometown in Chicago.

Channick writes:

A Downers Grove native and University of Illinois graduate, Collins previously worked as a reporter for Showtime Sports, the NFL Network and as a weekend sports anchor at WCBS-TV in New York, according to CSN’s press release announcing her hiring. There was no mention of Sports Nutz at the time, and it is unclear if any CSN executives had viewed the videos before employing her.

“We are very pleased to bring someone of Susannah’s experience and local sports enthusiasm to our network on a full-time basis,” Charlie Schumacher, the then-news director for CSN Chicago, said in the September press release.

Schumacher has since left the network and didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.

If there was a problem or concern with the videos, it should have been addressed when Collins was hired. The whole thing leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. It just seems unfair that Collins had to be embarrassed like this.

It also is a perfect example of how one slip can derail an entire career in today’s media environment.