That loud whooshing noise we all heard last month was CHUM Television missing an easy, underhand pitch in the ongoing baseball game of its public image.

The Toronto radio and TV giant has – for some time now – seemed to be slowly losing the youthful, cavalier attitude that has been its trademark, and in particular the mark of its flagship Citytv station, since the 1970s. True, CHUM is still a creative and vigorous broadcaster, blessed with an eye for style, multicultural sensibility and a cheeky sense of humor. True also, they rarely bleep out cuss words, air a great deal of soft-core porn and have kept the reliably foul-mouthed Ed the Sock on the payroll for the better part of 10 years. They also throw really good parties.

But even before colorful, zany ol’ Moses Znaimer walked out the door (or was pushed, depending whom you believe), aging hipsters such as me have begun to grumble that CHUM is losing its nerve, that its occasional displays of derring-do seem stale (cough, Jimmy Kimmel), and that the nation’s would-be fourth network is now more concerned with playing it safe on Bay Street than testing its limits on Queen Street West.

This is understandable, to a point. The older we get, the better we used to be. Companies need stability to expand and expansion has been very much on the mind of the CHUM brass these days, what with their moves into digital, Alberta and B.C.

If only they hadn’t chickened out over Conan O’Brien and Quebec.

The controversy surrounding Triumph the Comic Insult Dog and his indelicate remarks about la belle province – which aired up here on CHUM’s NewNet outlets – proved many things. Among them:

a) Canada wanted all the fun and profit of a circus coming to town, but couldn’t handle getting goosed by the clowns,

b) that we are not nearly as immune to moralistic fits as, post-Janet Jackson, we had come to think,

c) that, compared to Triumph, Don Cherry looks as pro-French as Charles de Gaulle, and,

d) CHUM, which cut the entire segment out of the rerun on its Star! specialty, only has a taste for the daring or provocative so long as no one complains too loudly.

But instead of standing by the O’Brien tour to Toronto that it had so excessively hyped, instead of perhaps reminding us that jokes are best taken in the spirit they are intended, CHUM gave in to the silly hysteria of the moment, and missed a fine opportunity to win back a little piece of its youth.

Strike one.