Not as huge as some of the other media layoff announcements we've seen recently, but Torstar has announced it is laying off 60 people at a printing plant near Toronto. There are also reports of unspecified numbers of layoffs at 24 Hours in Vancouver and the Winnipeg Free Press (UPDATE: More on the Freep from the Ceeb).
Two months and nine episodes into the series, the team behind CBC's one-hour drama Being Erica seem a bit more comfortable in their gimmick format. But unfortunately, that comfort hasn't boosted its ratings, which slowly eroded into Sophie territory through a change from Monday to Wednesday nights.
Faced with tens of thousands abandoning the show every week, and ratings dropping to just over 400,000, the show sexed it up this week, promising HOT GIRL-ON-GIRL action. As a red-blooded male, that got me interested, as it did plenty of other TV-watching-watchers.
Nudity and sexuality are my two favourite words
That was a good start. Unfortunately the warning neglected to mention Spice Girls music, which I think requires the most viewer discretion.
Those of you in Canada can watch last night's episode (and all the other episodes) on CBC's website in pretty-good-definition. If you're wondering how far the sex scene goes, here's the juiciest bits:
That's about as far as it gets before an (admittedly hilarious) interruption. But that's still pretty hot. Of course, Erin Karpluk could spend an entire episode reading the phone book and I'd be entranced, so perhaps I'm not the best judge. And Anna Silk (whom you might remember from that Nicoderm commercial) kind of looks like Mary-Louise Parker, another of my many TV crushes.
The reviews range from "lesberrific" to ... well, I'll let you know. In any case, it did see a ratings boost of about 100,000 viewers. Bill Brioux says that might have as much to do with less competition than increased interest.
I'm not a TV critic any more than I'm an art critic, so I can't tell you if the show is good or not, topless scenes notwithstanding. I can't even tell you whether or not I like it, because I just don't know. I think I'm stuck between liking it and not liking it. I'm still annoyed a bit by the constant references to Toronto, as if living in Toronto to Being Erica is like living in New York to Sex and the City.
But the show is growing on me. It's becoming a bit less cliché, a bit less predictable. And most importantly, I'm still watching it.
One disappointment I have with the show is its apparent abandonment of new media marketing. The thing that first got me attached to it was the pre-launch campaign which included a blog and YouTube videos, which were actually pretty entertaining. But the blog and YouTube channel stopped being updated after the show launched, and I don't see any original new media outreach. Since the show is plunging in the ratings and desperately trying to gain an audience, this would seem to be the last time to abandon marketing efforts.
A couple of weeks ago, Being Erica premiered on ABC's SoapNet cable channel. That led to reviews in U.S. media, most of which were positive (and all of which I got off the most excellent TV, Eh? blog).
So if it's so good and we can relate to it so well, why aren't we? Is Being Erica's cancellation something we'll end up regretting?
I'm not an art critic. Or an art lover. Or really an art anything. So when I look through the guide to the Nuit Blanche, I glaze over all the art galleries, dance performances, films, plays, DJs or anything else of the sort. Instead, I concern myself with fun things in the Old Port or anything that's funny.
But something about this "Art Souterrain" project caused me to want to go there. It was free, it was in a heated environment, and you could walk through it all without waiting in lines, checking your coats or feeling guilty about leaving early. You could spend about 10 seconds at one installation and then move on to the next one. And that's pretty much what I did.
This video, complete with fake old-style-cinema lines, shows a bunch of headlines from francophone Montreal newspapers, without any sound or other commentary. But the message it's trying to convey comes out pretty clearly.
Rue Frontenac had the news EN PRIMEUR this morning, a result of an ENQUÊTE EXCLUSIF: The Journal de Montréal is subcontracting its subscription marketing to a company that's not registered and is perhaps not being entirely honest with people. (THE HORROR!) This investigation involved the usual Journal technique of going undercover and exposing all of the inner dealings, then talking to experts about how this might be illegal if anyone cared to prosecute. It caught Lagacé's attention, at least.
Two days after its union unanimously rejected a contract offer that would have meant massive layoffs and outsourcing of layout and administrative jobs to Montreal, Quebecor locked out employees of Jonquière weekly Le Réveil this morning, putting them in the same boat as their colleagues at the Journal de Montréal (though with considerably less news coverage). Counting employees of the paper's printing plant who were laid off when the plant was closed recently, the union says Quebecor wants to reduce the number of unionized employees from 80 to only five.
The union, naturally, is outraged and sees this as part of a trend of lockouts and union-busting that also involved the Journal de Québec and Journal de Montréal.
I haven't seen anything from Quebecor yet explaining their reasons (though they'll probably sound familiar). The latest issue of the paper is from Sunday, and contains plenty of ads for Quebecor, including one with its financial statements:
Notice something missing?
Funny enough, that ad lists Quebecor Media's assets, including four Montreal-based newspapers, but neglects to mention Le Réveil, the very paper this ad appears in.
The big news this week is the release by the CRTC of submissions from major Canadian private television broadcasters whose licenses are up for renewal in August. This includes CTV/A, Global/E!, TVA, Sun TV, Citytv and OMNI. (TQS is the notable exception since it had its own dealings with the CRTC after it went bankrupt).
The CRTC has suggested having one-year license renewals (instead of standard seven-year ones) and dealing with the TV financial crisis in the meantime. The networks have gone along with that and are recommending status quo until August 2010.
The private networks (especially CTV Globemedia and Canwest) are re-repeating all of the please-give-us-money talking points they've been sending toward the CRTC for years now, including bringing up their pet project of forcing cable and satellite companies to give them money for putting their free over-the-air channels on their systems, mainly because they can't find a way to make a profit off advertising and say the system is broken.
Among their other money-grabbing and money-saving ideas:
Canwest proposes a "5 and 10" rule that would require 5 hours a week of local programming for stations serving markets of under a million viewers, and 10 hours a week for stations serving markets of over a million. Since most Canwest stations already have local programming requirements far in excess of 10 hours a week, this would save it a lot of money. (It counts only four stations as being in large markets - even Global Quebec is considered small because it only counts English-speaking viewers, which means it would drop from 18 hours a week of local programming to only five)
Even Quebec's TVA, which does plenty of local (or at least regional) programming, wants to cut back. It's asking to reduce the amount of local programming at its Quebec City station from 21 hours a week to 12 UPDATE: They now say they only want to cut it to 18 hours a week.
Canwest even proposes going further than its continued demand for money from cable companies, and throw out some new ideas that nobody has suggested before, including:
UPDATE: More coverage from the Globe and Mail, which also looks at how much the networks are spending on Canadian versus foreign content.
As part of its submission to the CRTC on license renewal, Canwest said it wants to convert only primary transmitters of its 15 major stations to digital by 2011, and as part of that it wants to convert regional networks Global Ontario and Global Quebec into local stations in Toronto and Montreal, respectively. CKMI-TV is actually based out of Quebec City (and also serves the Eastern Townships through a transmitter in Sherbrooke), but all its programming, including its newscasts, originate in Montreal.
The change wouldn't affect programming but would allow CKMI to attract local advertisers, even though Canwest says they would not be taking advantage of this much.
In its submission to the CRTC, CTVglobemedia put forward a long list of television transmitters it said it would not apply for licenses to renew past August. Included in that list is a retransmitter for CJOH Ottawa in Lancaster, Ont., on Channel 8. Montrealers and off-islanders with good TV antennas will note that this transmitter serves southwestern Quebec since it is just across the border. Shutting the transmitter down means those near the Ontario/Quebec border will have to tune into CJOH's Ottawa transmitter or CFCF-12 in Montreal.
The CRTC has granted approval for a regional Quebec cable channel called Je me souviens, which will be devoted essentially to obituaries and related public notices. The CRTC did not agree to a request to carry local advertising in addition to the obits, however.
The channel (which is a private venture unconnected to the major broadcasting companies) is interesting because it's an original idea and because it's a regional network (most cable networks are national in order to reach as broad an audience as possible).
But if Astral Media couldn't keep its TATV shopping channel on the air, does a regional channel of nothing but obituaries stand a chance?
UPDATE: I see CJAD reads this blog.
The CRTC has denied a request from Laval radio station CFAV 1570 AM, which wanted to be excused from the $8,000 a year it has to pay to promote Canadian artists. Its excuse is that it's not making a profit. The CRTC says rules are rules.
Rogers has asked for some very radical amendments to its license for the Outdoor Life Network (OLN). Among them, it wants to be able to use sitcoms, comedy shows and animated shows, reduce its restriction on televising live sports, and reduce requirements for Canadian content. The proposal was so radical it caught the eye of the Globe and Mail.
Speaking of radical amendments, TVA has filed requests to add more programming categories for three of its specialty channels: Mystère (mystery), Argent (financial news) and Idées de ma maison (home/living). While some might make sense in a world where various forms of programming blend together (say, a game show about science), it's hard to see some of these categories as being requested solely so that TVA can stretch the envelope and provide programming that has only a tenuous connection to the mandate of the channel.
Among the categories they'd like to add:
I'm all for flexibility, but can you imagine a program that has music videos about mysteries? Or a sitcom about financial news?
Pelmorex, the strangely-named owner of the Weather Network/MétéoMédia, is asking for the CRTC to require that all cable and satellite companies operating in Canada have the networks as part of their basic digital services (it's already required on analog cable). In exchange, the networks will act as "a national public alerting aggregator", distributing emergency information.
To sweeten the deal, Pelmorex gives idle threats about how their existence will be in "jeopardy" if they can't force that $0.23 per subscriber out of us, even though most Canadians already (happily) get the Weather Network by default.
Still, having the Weather Network distribute emergency information makes sense, if only because many such emergencies are weather-related and TWN already deals with emergency weather alerts.
The only problem is: Shouldn't it be the broadcast networks (like, say, CBC/Radio-Canada) who distribute emergency information, so it's over the air where everyone can receive it?
While Canal Évasion wants to start an HD version of the channel, the owners of three HD-only networks - Oasis HD, Treasure HD and Equador HD - want to distribute those channels in standard definition. This isn't the first request of this kind I've seen, and is probably a reflection of the fact that while most Canadians have cable or satellite service, the number with HD service and sets is not as high as they had expected by now, and offering a downgraded SD signal will allow them to reach a larger audience.
The CRTC has approved a request to add five networks, all of third-language programming originating from east and southeast Asia, to the list of eligible channels for satellite providers.
Turns out I took over 100 photos during my few hours at the Nuit Blanche, so I'm splitting up the posts. Part 1 was my time around midnight at the Old Port.
It's so adorable when kids look up to real journalists. The Concordian this week has an interview with Gazette universities columnist Peggy Curran.
Speaking of which, these Concordia kids want me to talk to them about something later this month. Any suggestions what topic of infinite wisdom I can impart on young journalist-wannabes (other than "you've picked the wrong profession")?
Habs Inside/Out, my newspaper's most successful online venture so far, is seeing 100% traffic increases over last year, according to a recent post from Mike Boone. Those kinds of numbers put all of their other blogs (and mine) to shame, but they are well-deserved because of the efforts put into it by Boone, Dave Stubbs, Kevin Mio and Pat Hickey, who all contribute to bringing breaking news to the site in addition to their day jobs for the newspaper.
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