Is the CBC's Hockey Anthem Challenge Completely Legit?

Okay, you all know that my buddy Voin submitted a song to Mothercorp's Hockey Anthem contest. You can find that here. Now, Voin didn't really expect to win, altho he hoped he would. He also has at least one friend who also entered, and in fact spent some money on her recording.

With something like 20,000 entries, nobody really expects to win, but you do expect a fair shot at it.

But now there are questions being raised about the impartiality of the judging. The finalists have already been announced. One of them is named Gerry Mosby. You can hear his entry here.

Here's the thing: another friend of Voin's did some Googling and discovered that Gerry Mosby is a friend and co-worker of Bob Rock and Lou Pomanti, two key figures in the Hockey Anthem Challenge hierarchy. Voin's friend Nick found a bunch of links linking these individuals. Here they are and I think you should check them out for yourself:

http://www.wcmusic.info/files/abc/z/zappacosta04.php - This one shows Gerry Mosby as the producer and Lou Pomanti as one of the guitarists on a Zappacosta album.

http://www.canadianbands.com/Zappacosta.html - This page on Zappacosta says: Produced by Bob Rock, most notable for his work with The Payola$, it contained guest appearances by a whole slew of friends, including former Surrender members Gerry Mosby and Gerald O'Brien, Rock and The Headpins' Brian MacLeod.

http://www.playbackonline.ca/articles/magazine/19990419/25243.html -This one shows Gerry Mosby and Lou Pomanti as senior staff who work at Jungle Music Productions.

Of course, there could be more than one Gerry Mosby.

But if not, then this whole contest smells a bit off to me. And it reinforces for me the wisdom of having blind judging in contests of this nature. It's way too much of a coincidence that one of the five finalists happens to be a friend of the two top dogs.

The Mothercorp blog has this to say about it:

Now with regard to the potential conflicts of interest, in the event judges had personal or professional contacts with contestants, they were disclosed and appropriately noted through the selection process. Again, the final selection of semifinalists were made through unanimous agreement of the senior jury.

Seems a little thin to me...disclosed and appropriately noted...The blog and Facebook pages have received questions and comments about potential conflicts of interest. The actual comments don't appear on the blog. Why not? I haven't checked the Facebook page.

Finally, I have to say, I was not impressed by the way Mothercorp handled the issue of the original Hockey Night in Canaduh theme. I think it was mishandled. And the bad vibes just seem to be rolling on. I give them a 10 minute misconduct for unsportsmanlike conduct.