| Media

Postmedia reaches deal to acquire Saltwire Network assets

The announcement this morning that Postmedia (my employer) had reached a deal to acquire “certain” Saltwire Network assets didn’t surprise me. Not because I’m privy to confidential negotiations by senior executives at my company, but because the deal makes sense considering Postmedia’s recent dealings.

The announcement is light on details — it doesn’t specify which assets, a purchase price, whether debt will be assumed, etc. But it presumably includes Saltwire’s news outlets in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador, which would expand Postmedia to nine provinces (it would be 10 but it just sold its assets in Manitoba).

The deal is not guaranteed. Closing conditions include “satisfactory outcomes with unions and other stakeholders” and court approval. But there aren’t a lot of people buying newspaper chains these days. Unless some rich person wants to own some money-losing local papers (there were “several” non-binding letters of intent, but we don’t know how serious they were), the only alternative to Postmedia might be a shutdown.

The acquisition follows other expansion moves by Postmedia, including the acquisition of Brunswick News in 2022 and an attempted but failed merger with Torstar in 2023. Postmedia also already has had some dealings with Saltwire, including for content sharing.

When Saltwire filed for creditor protection in March, the writing was on the wall. Because of its insolvent state, the sale could progress quickly. Postmedia wants key conditions satisfied by Aug. 5 so the deal can close by Aug. 26.

| Radio

Bell’s radio station sales show declining value of FM outside major cities

It would be an exaggeration to say that radio is dead. There’s definitely a case to be made that AM radio is on the way out, and interest in that century-old technology is pretty low, at least for mainstream commercial enterprises.

But FM is still popular, and the bands are still pretty packed in Canada’s largest markets. In smaller markets, there are fewer stations, but still a lot of value.

At least there used to be.

Two weeks ago, the CRTC published applications for the sale of 35 of the 45 radio stations Bell Media announced in February it was offloading, and for the first time we have their sale prices listed.

It’s $12.9 million. For 35 radio stations. Or about $369,000 each.

Continue reading →

| TV

Rogers kneecaps Corus, stealing Canadian rights to HGTV and Food Network

If you’re a fan of lifestyle channels like HGTV and Food Network in Canada, things are going to change dramatically as of January 2025, when Rogers acquires the Canadian rights to those brands, along with the Cooking Channel, Investigation Discovery and more.

Rogers announced this morning as part of its fall preview announcements that it has signed a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal to become the Canadian home to Warner’s factual and lifestyle brands as of January, and NBC’s Bravo as of September.

These deals include both the Canadian rights to those brands as well as to U.S. programming of those networks.

A complete list of brands isn’t included in the announcement, but Corus confirms these brands are affected:

  • HGTV
  • Food Network
  • Cooking Channel
  • Magnolia Network
  • OWN

Children’s brands like Adult Swim and Cartoon Network are not affected by this announcement.

Warner also owns the following Discovery brands with Canadian versions managed by Bell Media:

  • Discovery Channel
  • Animal Planet
  • Investigation Discovery
  • Science Channel (Discovery Science)
  • Motor Trend (Discovery Velocity)

So what does this mean for those channels? Well, it’s unclear, actually. When I asked about this, a Bell Media spokesperson at first said “it’s business as usual,” but followed up Monday evening with this statement:

Bell Media is Canada’s foremost media company, with industry-leading assets across every content genre. Our long-standing partnership, content, and brand arrangements for the Discovery Canada channels includes protections against the launch of competing services. We fully intend to assert our rights with a view to protecting our business.

Cartt.ca noticed that in its upfront announcement last week, Bell Media avoided using Discovery brands and referred to some series as being only on “Bell Media Specialty Channel”.

Bravo used to also be a Canadian channel until Bell rebranded it CTV Drama in 2019. Rogers says it will launch a new Canadian Bravo channel, though I’m waiting to hear if their plan is to create a new TV channel or rebrand an existing one like OLN.

For HGTV, Food and Cooking, it gets a bit more complicated. Not only does Corus have channels by those names, but it has a lot of the U.S. programming on those Canadian channels. On top of that, the Canadian channels of HGTV, Food Network, Cooking Channel and Magnolia are about 16-19% owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.

Corus quietly issued a vaguely-worded statement on Friday saying some “programming and trademark output arrangements” wouldn’t be renewed. But it says Corus intends to “continue operating the country’s largest and most widely distributed lifestyle channels based on the strength of top-rated Canadian programs and alternate foreign content supply.”

This will likely mean the channels we know as HGTV, Food Network and Cooking Channel will rebrand as of January, and while some Canadian content will remain the same, the U.S. shows associated with them will move to Rogers-owned channels.

Rogers doesn’t have enough specialty channel licences to rebrand into all these, so assuming they go ahead with linear channels, it would require new licences. Thankfully, the CRTC allows new channels to launch without prior approval. They just have to apply for a licence once they hit 200,000 subscribers (which probably won’t take long).

Broadcast Dialogue reports Rogers saying “distribution details are still being finalized with an eye to a mix of linear and streaming options.”

Corus blames the change on “inequitable structural relationships in the Canadian media and telecom industries, particularly affecting independent broadcasters like Corus.”

In other words, since Rogers bought Shaw (whose family still owns Corus), Rogers has deeper pockets and more power to acquire these kinds of rights. Meanwhile Corus, which no longer has the deep pockets of a cable giant, has to get by as an independent now.

This kind of change could be potentially life-threatening for Corus. If it loses its audience to the same brands it and its predecessors have spent decades building, the loss of subscription and ad revenue could not only devastate Corus’s lifestyle brands, but the Global network as well. (Corus is still waiting for the CRTC to authorize Global to access the Independent Local News Fund, since Rogers took away its cross-subsidy funding from Shaw to redirect it to Citytv stations.)

The markets would seem to agree. Corus’s stock fell 29% on Monday, to an all-time low of 34 cents per share. As recently as 2022 it was worth 10 times that.

Back when Corus did this

There is some precedent for this kind of change, and ironically it was Corus doing the stealing that time. In 2015, after DHX Media (now WildBrain) acquired Family Channel, Disney Jr. and Disney XD out of the Bell Media/Astral deal, Corus announced it had signed a deal with Disney for Canadian rights to its children’s channel brands. DHX rebranded the channels to Family Jr. and Télémagino, while Corus launched new channels under the Disney Channel, Disney Jr. and Disney XD brands. DHX had to find non-Disney children’s content to fill their schedule.

Now Corus will get a taste of that medicine, only on a larger and more expensive scale.

UPDATE (June 17): Corus’s CEO has left the company in the wake of this news (and its dramatic impact on Corus’s stock price), effective immediately. Troy Reeb and John Gossling will act as co-CEOs.

| Radio

CRTC approves new country music station in Joliette on 107.9 FM

Arsenal Media is still growing. On Monday, the CRTC approved its application for a new French-language country music station in Joliette, which will act as a sister station to its O103.5 there.

The new station will be branded Hit Country, using a format Arsenal has used in stations in Lac-Mégantic, Beauce, Saguenay and Plessisville.

The transmitter will be at 107.9 MHz, and 25kW. According to one document in its application, Arsenal is looking at using the callsign CJOL-FM for the station.

Theoretical listening area of Arsenal Media’s new FM station in Joliette. Areas in purple would expect interference from WVPS in Vermont.

The frequency chosen, effectively the only one remaining suitable for the station, might be frustrating for some listeners of Vermont Public’s radio station WVPS, broadcasting from the top of Mount Mansfield and getting a decent signal into the Montreal area.

For listeners in and around Joliette, the new country station will effectively replace Vermont Public on that frequency. For those further south, including in Montreal, it might depend on which direction you or your antenna is facing, and you could find yourself listening to both.

Because WVPS is an American station, it does not have any protection north of the border. A Canadian station can stomp all over its signal, provided it does not interfere with reception in the U.S.

Also on Monday, the CRTC approved an application by Radio Nord-Joli, owner of French-language community station CFNJ-FM in nearby St-Gabriel-de-Brandon. They proposed to replace the St-Gabriel station with one in Joliette, on the same 99.1 FM frequency, while keeping a retransmitter in St-Zénon. This follows the denial of an application to extend the St-Gabriel transmitter’s coverage area to include Joliette, which the commission found to be a back door to setting up a Joliette station.

| TV

Rogers sells off Monday Night Hockey to Amazon

Rogers announced Thursday it has sold off the exclusive rights to Monday Night Hockey to Amazon, meaning for the next two seasons, national Monday night games during the regular season will be exclusive to Amazon Prime subscribers.

Rogers talks about how “thrilled” it is with the announcement, but this deal doesn’t help Sportsnet with audiences, it’s about whatever money Amazon is paying Rogers for these rights.

Rogers famously spent $5.2 billion for the national rights to NHL games for 12 years (2014-2026), and has since learned it overpaid for those rights. It gets some money back from sublicensing French rights to TVA Sports, and now it’s getting more back from Amazon with this deal.

With Mondays exclusive to Amazon, Rogers retains exclusive national windows on Wednesday nights and Saturday nights, as well as all NHL playoff games. Regional rights are unaffected.

There aren’t many details on what Amazon NHL games will look like, except that they won’t be Sportsnet productions and will have new broadcast teams.

This is the first time a streaming service has acquired exclusive broadcast rights to NHL games in Canada, and in that sense Rogers is right in calling it a “milestone” rights deal. Amazon hopes to use Monday night games involving Canadian teams to push hockey fans to become Amazon Prime Video subscribers.

The deal could be a bit of a boost for TVA Sports, whose rights aren’t covered in the agreement. If the network airs Canadian NHL games on Monday nights, it could see some tuning from anglophone NHL fans who don’t want to subscribe to Amazon.

For reference, last season Sportsnet had a total of 27 national Monday night hockey games. Here were the number for each Canadian team during the 2023-24 season:

  • Toronto Maple Leafs: 7 games
  • Montreal Canadiens: 5 games
  • Winnipeg Jets: 5 games
  • Ottawa Senators: 4 games
  • Vancouver Canucks: 3 games
  • Calgary Flames: 2 games
  • Edmonton Oilers: 2 games

The Globe and Mail reports Amazon will get 26 games per season as part of the deal.

The rumour of Rogers selling rights to Amazon was first reported by YYZ Sports Media on April 1.

| Uncategorized

New steamy Netflix drama to follow will-they-or-won’t-they story of Cogeco launching a wireless service

“I long for you. I radiate for you. You ping me.”

Those are some of the loin-melting sentences spoken in a new Netflix drama that follows the building textual tension between Cogeco and a wireless service it says it is oh so tantalizingly close to deciding to launch.

“Much like the Rogers story was the Canadian version of Succession, we think this new series ‘It’s Gonna Be Epico’ will be the next Bridgerton,” said Netflix head of Canadian programming Sue Kerr.

The new docudrama series, in which everyone is dressed up in 18th-century formal attire and speaks with a British accent for some reason, promises endless scenes in which Cogeco and a wireless service end up alone together and inch closer together, their hearts racing as they are swept away in their desires for each other, only to be interrupted at the moment they were totally about the seal the deal.

The first season will feature an intriguing story about the leader Philippe negotiating with the Great Powers when suddenly he’s replaced by the young Frédéric. Was there a coup? A love triangle? A kidnapping? You’ll have to tune in to find out.

| Uncategorized

Totally legit 10,000-channel IPTV streaming services expand into original programming

A consortium of services offering every TV channel in the universe for only $5 a month announced today they are upping the offer even more by creating original series, greenlighting two new dramas and a comedy series.

“To stay competitive in this environment, we have to do more than offer every TV channel plus all Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ programs for only $5 a month,” said Fu Ludyu, CEO of KoolTVBox. “Our subscribers are demanding even more value, and we believe these new projects will help us offer that.”

Ludyu said the new series will be exclusive to the network of small IPTV streaming services, and they will aggressively protect their copyrighted material. “While we are not responsible for the copyright status of programming from our independent offshore contractors, our team of lawyers will go after Netflix and YouTube hard if we see our content on their services,” he said.

| Uncategorized

Pierre Karl Péladeau to be next CBC president

Saying he has always been committed to public broadcasting, Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau said Monday he is thrilled to have been appointed the new president of CBC/Radio-Canada for a five-year term.

He succeeds Catherine Tait, whose term is ending.

Péladeau said he has a big vision for the public broadcaster, including more cooperation with private broadcasters, a new more narrow focus on high-quality niche programs, and integration with Videotron’s Helix distribution system.

The Alouettes owner more specifically announced he intends to make Tou.tv a channel within Club Illico, cancel underperforming projects like Véro.tv, and create a new province-wide news and information show on ICI Première hosted by Richard Martineau.

Asked about English services, Péladeau said he didn’t have any big plans there but whatever Bell doesn’t like sounds good to him.

| Uncategorized

CFQR 600 AM to broadcast live audio feed of April 8 eclipse

In its quest to offer the best radio experience, CFQR 600 AM has proposed special programming of the April 8 total solar eclipse, with a live raw audio feed so its audience can listen to it from their homes or across the country.

“This event happens only once in a lifetime, so we can’t miss it,” said whoever is in charge there these days. “We’ll have a special directional microphone pointed directly at the sun and will broadcast super HD audio of the sound as the moon crosses over the sun and blocks out its solar sounds.”

The broadcast will start around 2pm, and continue until the end of the partial eclipse around 5pm. The broadcast will run without a host, analysis or any spoken words, just the raw sounds of the eclipse.

“We’ll also be sending a copy of the recording to scientists so they can study the sounds and learn more about the sun and moon,” the station’s management said.

| Uncategorized

Ken Connors arrested after revealing secret cryptocurrency Koin Coinnors

Fans were shocked and outraged by this incident.

Only a day after his retirement from CJAD 800, Ken Connors was arrested by authorities, charged with illegally revealing a secret cryptocurrency that has exploded in value making people insanely rich.

“The government doesn’t want you to know how to make all this money,” Connors said as he was being led away in handcuffs by police on Monday morning.

According to a CBC News article that looks fairly legit, Connors chose to retire from broadcasting because of massive wealth he accumulated investing his savings in Koin Coinnors, a trivia-based cryptocurrency that is guaranteed to be the next Bitcoin. Rather than mining currency by crunching complicated mathematical equations, Koins are distributed when Coinnors successfully answer trivia questions.

“It makes crypto fun and eco-friendly,” Connors explains in the story at cbcnewsnews.co. Understanding how it works or if it’s sustainable or secure isn’t important, nor is it important to check if the story is real. What is important to understand is this is the perfect time to take all the money out of your bank account and convert it to this cryptocurrency.

| Media, Opinion

The Supreme Court, “person with a vagina” and knee-jerk outrage culture

Did the Supreme Court of Canada ban the use of the word “woman” because it’s gotten too woke?

Reading the coverage of a recent decision, you might be justified in thinking that’s the case. It’s not, of course. A simple reading of the decision would confirm that by any reasonable analysis. But even when presented with the facts, the people who cranked the outrage machine insist they’re right.

Which is a bit concerning because they’re all people who work or have worked as journalists for mainstream media.

The decision in question is called R. v. Kruk, and dated March 8 (coincidentally, International Women’s Day). But the outrage circus started March 13 when the National Post published its daily opinion newsletter from Tristin Hopper, titled “Supreme Court decision opts for ‘person with a vagina’ over ‘woman'”. It starts as follows:

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in a recent sexual assault case that it was “problematic” for a lower court judge to refer to the alleged victim as a “woman,” implying that the more appropriate term should have been “person with a vagina.”

In a decision published Friday, Justice Sheilah Martin wrote that a trial judge’s use of the word “a woman” may “have been unfortunate and engendered confusion.”

Martin does not specify why the word “woman” is confusing, but the next passage in her decision refers to the complainant as a “person with a vagina.” Notably, not one person in the entire case is identified as transgender, and the complainant is referred to throughout as a “she.”

Right-wing and clickbait social media accounts and websites and even news media pounced on Hopper’s interpretation of the decision, as did Journal de Montréal columnist Richard Martineau, who wrote in a column published the next day that “Il n’y a plus de femmes au Canada!” (There’s no more women in Canada!)

Martineau repeats the two key points of Hopper’s analysis, that the Supreme Court ruled a lower court’s use of the word “woman” was problematic, and that the Supreme Court says judgments should instead say “person with a vagina.”

Martineau’s column, in turn, prompted Martine Biron, Quebec’s minister responsible for the status of women, to present an emergency motion in the National Assembly condemning the Supreme Court’s words. Co-signed by Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, Liberal MNA André Morin and independent (formerly Liberal) MNA Marie-Claude Nichols, it passed unanimously.

There’s just one problem. That stuff about the Supreme Court finding a problem with the word “woman”, and saying courts should use “person with a vagina” instead? It’s not true.

Continue reading →

| Radio

Lite 106.7 drops Ted Bird

People who tuned in to 106.7 in Hudson/St-Lazare this morning to listen to the Terry and Ted show were disappointed and possibly confused that the show wasn’t on today.

Ted Bird confirmed to me today he is no longer employed by the station, and said it was the decision of owner Evanov Communications. The weekday morning show is listed on the station’s website without a host, and the Saturday morning Terry and Ted show has also been removed from the schedule. DiMonte also confirmed on social media that show is not returning.

The news of Bird’s departure is a bit surprising as it was only in January that Evanov began carrying Bird’s show on its Ottawa station at 98.5.

Bird joined CHSV-FM, then Jewel 106.7 when it launched in 2015 as the first English-language radio station serving the western off-island region. That ended five years of bouncing around local radio stations after Bird left CHOM-FM in a dispute with management. He worked at K103 in Kahnawake, TSN 690 and KIC 89.9 before landing at the Hudson station.

The Terry and Ted podcast Standing By is a separate venture and will go on. Bird says they’re recording Season 7 in April.

As for a new job, there are always options out there, but “I think I’m done with radio,” he says.

| TV

Bell’s MTV2 becomes latest casualty of specialty channel decline

If you’re a subscriber of Bell Media’s MTV2 channel, you may have already received a notice that the channel is being shut down at the end of March.

The shutdown is not too surprising. It was on my list of endangered channels along with ESPN Classic and Yoopa, which have seen dramatic declines in subscribers and advertising in recent years.

According to the latest CRTC data for the 2021-22 broadcast year, MTV2 had about 750,000 subscribers (including zero satellite TV subscribers), about $215,000 in total advertising revenue, and had cut expenses by 84% in four years to try to shrink itself back into profitability.

Billed as “the ultimate destination for Canada’s 12-24s”, the channel currently runs marathons of reality shows like The Real World, Teen Mom, Catfish, Geordie Shore and Canadian filler shows Cash Cab and Comedy Now!

The channel began service in 2001 during the digital specialty channel explosion, originally as Craig Media-owned MTV Canada, then rebranded to Razer and finally to MTV2. MTV still exists as a separate Bell Media channel under a separate licence, though Bell hasn’t done much more to promote that channel than it did MTV2, and it was also bleeding money according to CRTC data.

UPDATE (May 6): The CRTC has revoked the channel’s licence at Bell’s request.

| Media, Radio, TV

Natasha Hall, Mose Persico, Lise McAuley among Bell Media cuts in Montreal

Updated March 24 with more details.

Two weeks after BCE announced it was abolishing 4,800 jobs, we’re starting to learn how those losses are trickling down to the local level.

In Montreal, CTV News was hit hard. The station’s website confirms weather presenter Lise McAuley, assignment editor Derek Conlon and production assistant and movie reviewer Mosé Persico no longer work for the company. That’s decades of experience with CFCF gone.

Director Yves Marion and producer Helen Michailidis have also left the organization.

This doesn’t mean they were all let go. In fact, a source within CTV Montreal tells me most of them took voluntary retirement packages instead. (Persico confirms this was the case for him.)

CTV News also lost Montreal-based national reporter Vanessa Lee. There’s no official list nationally, but correspondent Judy Trinh notes some names gone at CTV National News. It includes Kevin Gallagher, who was formerly a local reporter with CTV Montreal.

On the radio side, CJAD cut afternoon co-host Natasha Hall and Trivia Show co-host Dan Laxer is also gone. The loss of Hall isn’t entirely unexpected — a schedule shuffle in 2021 to incorporate more unoriginal programming on the schedule meant merging her show with Aaron Rand’s and making them co-hosts. This made one of them an easier cut in the next round of layoffs.

Rand, no stranger to having to carry on after his co-hosts get fired, paid tribute to Hall in a Facebook post, calling her “a smart, talented, and a consummate radio professional who didn’t deserve this outcome.”

With Laxer’s departure, Ken Connors is listed as the sole host of the Sunday morning Trivia Show.

I haven’t seen any cuts at CHOM, Virgin Radio or TSN Radio in Montreal. Despite the sword of Damocles seeming to dangle above TSN 690’s head, the station itself seems to have survived the latest round of cuts.

As announced with the news of the layoffs, CTV has cancelled noon newscasts at local stations outside Toronto, as well as news on holidays. CTV Montreal’s weekend newscasts survived the cut, along with Ottawa and Toronto, but other CTV stations have seen those newscasts cut as well.

UPDATE: Persico has already announced a new gig to keep him busy: Host of the afternoon drive show on ethnic station Mike FM 105.1 starting April 1. The announcement confirms his Mose at the Movies segments will move to Mike FM’s platforms.

| TV

Jon Stewart is coming back to The Daily Show, but it’s not coming back to CTV

For those of you who miss the good ol’ days of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, there’s good news and bad news.

The good news is the old host is coming back. Stewart will host the show Mondays during this presidential election cycle, starting Feb. 12, and be an executive producer.

The bad news is the show isn’t coming back to CTV or CTV Comedy. Paramount confirms the show’s Canadian rights will remain with the Paramount+ streaming service, where it had moved since the end of the writers strike.

The show will be available on Paramount+ the day after it airs on Comedy Central.

Many Canadians (including myself) were confused when they heard the show had resumed production in October but CTV continued airing The Big Bang Theory reruns at 12:05am weekdays. Bell Media would only say it no longer had the rights to the show.

Then Paramount+, a service few Canadians have heard of much less subscribe to, announced it was adding The Daily Show last month. But within weeks, the show disappeared from there too. Paramount told me it’s because they weren’t producing new episodes at the time. (Why they couldn’t have archived episodes available is unclear.)

Today’s news confirms that even with Stewart’s return, the show won’t be widely available in Canada. Paramount+, which also includes Yellowstone, Yellowstone spinoffs, a bunch of series you’ve never heard of and that Sylvester Stallone project you may have seen ads for, costs $10/month directly, or through Apple TV+ or Amazon Prime Video.

Bell Media has complained recently to the CRTC and others that big U.S. streaming services are unfairly competing for Canadian rights to shows, making it harder for Bell to make money. It used the example of Star Trek, which is also owned by Paramount. Though CTV and Space/CTV Sci-Fi has been Star Trek’s home since the days of The Next Generation, expect future Trek series to be exclusive to Paramount+ in Canada. (The service already has all the Star Trek series, but for now at least those rights are mostly non-exclusive.)