Quebec has two New Year's traditions: one is watching Radio-Canada's Bye-Bye variety show. The other is spending an entire fucking week MONTH talking about it in the press.
- What were the ratings like?
- Did someone post it illegally online?
- Was it racist?
- Was it not funny?
- How many people complained?
- What do black people think about it?
- What does Radio-Canada have to say about it?
- How much did Radio-Canada know was going to be aired ahead of time?
- Should Radio-Canada even be doing Bye-Byes? (with response from Therrien)
- Has Radio-Canada turned into trash TV?
- Why haven't they said anything yet?
- Does Jean-François Mercier regret being on it?
- OMG HE GOT A DEATH THREAT FROM SOME WACKO?!?!
- What did Nathalie Simard think of all the jokes at her expense?
- What are Véro and Louis going to say when they respond to the controversy?
- Will Véro lose her job as spokesperson for the Royal Canadian Mint?
- Why haven't Véro and Louis talked yet?
- What did René Angélil think of it?
- What did the federal heritage minister think of it?
- What are they going to do next year?
- Will Bye Bye 2009 have to make jokes about Bye Bye 2008?
- OMG THEY DIDN'T APOLOGIZE about making fun of anglos!
- Isn't it great that Quebecers protested this racism?
- Doesn't the CBC make fun of Quebecers just as badly?
- Will Radio-Canada apologize to the Black Coalition?
- Will Radio-Canada's apology satisfy the Black Coalition?
- Will this finally put an end to the issue in the media?
- What more does Radio-Canada need to do?
- Did the mea culpas satisfy Nathalie Simard?
- Isn't this all Nathalie Simard's fault?
- What did writer François Avard think of all this?
- How does Taxi 0-22 get away with these racist jokes?
It's gotten so bad the anglo media is starting to take notice, with belated articles in the National Post and Globe and Mail. Naturally, the Journal has an article talking about how there's articles in the anglo media about this now.
Now that this is officially a thing, the media is putting together stories about the stories:
- Are we exaggerating the issue?
- Has this been in the news too long?
- Has the Journal gone crazy with Bye Bye stories?
- Has the media in general over-covered this?
- Is that because the Journal is owned by Quebecor, which owns TVA, RadCan's competitor?
- What other random points of analysis can we put together about this?
This doesn't even include all the stuff that was written about it before it aired.
And this is just the beginning folks. Some actual news better break to push this off the front page or Jean Charest is going to have to create a commission on this.
UPDATE (Jan. 9): Véro and Louis's mea-culpa-but-not-really has ensured at least a few more days of this.
And this statement from Rad-Can just ended up in my inbox:
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/January2009/07/c5814.html
And that alone will probably keep the story going at least a couple of days. RadCan isn't apologizing for the show, but gives a "sorry if you're too stupid to understand our comedy" statement, while at the same time saying it's learned from its listeners and it was too lenient and it will be better next time.
Yeah, something for everybody in that statement. And it gives the story at least another day or two in the news cycle.
Unveliebebable: a National “post” article that links to Monty Python!!!!
You mean “news spincycle”, I presume???
[...] You must remember it. There were dozens of articles written in January about it. [...]
[...] a year and a half after a rather disastrous end-of-year Bye-Bye special that got a bit of media coverage and resulted in complaints to the CRTC, Radio-Canada has decided that, what they hey, they'll bring [...]
[...] I know, I know, you're mad. You're both on Quebecor's enemies list and you're probably never going to come off. They used that giant media empire thing against you after the 2008 Bye-Bye and you felt like crap for months trying to deal with the fallout. [...]
[...] tradition in Quebec media to review each year's end-of-year special from Radio-Canada, the Bye-Bye. It went a bit crazy two years ago when Véronique Cloutier and Louis Morissette decided to take their first crack at it. So much so [...]