Monthly Archives: March 2009

Slash and burn at A Channel

March 3, 2009 – 3:36 pm| Posted in TV

A channel

It turns out CTV isn't quite done with the cutbacks at its secondary broadcast network. After announcing it wouldn't renew licenses for two southern Ontario stations, the axe has come down on 118 jobs at other stations across the network, including 34 in Ottawa/Pembroke, 18 in Victoria, 24 in Barrie, Ont., and more (42 by my math) in London, representing about 28% of the workforce.

As a result, various local programming is being cancelled. Barrie and London are cutting their morning programs, and like Global Quebec will be re-running their nightly newscasts in the morning.

In Victoria, the morning show will be replaced by "cameras ... in the C-FAX 1070 radio station starting tomorrow to broadcast its morning show from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m."

In Ottawa, it's the reverse. The evening and weekend newscasts will be cancelled.

They can do this and still keep their broadcasting licenses because of a loophole in the CRTC's local programming rules. It says stations have to air a certain minimum amount of locally-produced programming every week, but it doesn't say that it has to produce that much, so stations can get away with producing an hour and a half of news and replaying it at 6am, and that counts as three hours of programming.

A Channel has never really made money. And since its acquisition by CTV it's basically been a dumping ground for second-rate U.S. shows that won't fit on the main network's schedule. (The irony is that CTV never wanted the network. They were more interested in acquiring CHUM's specialty channels and would offload A Channel onto Rogers. But the CRTC intervened and said they had to give away Citytv instead. Had this not happened, we might be looking at massive layoffs at Citytv right now.)

The union has issued a news release blaming CTV for turning its back on small communities, while also drinking its Kool-Aid that the whole problem is because cable companies are making money and not handing it over to CTV (as opposed to, say, CTV spending millions to acquire U.S. programming that could be spent on original programming).

UPDATE (March 12): the Ottawa Citizen looks inside the cuts at A Channel in Ottawa.

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Journal Daily Digest: Guichets fermés

March 3, 2009 – 2:21 am| Posted in Media

Journal picket

The protest of the day was against René Angélil, whose biography, published by a Quebecor-owned company, has just been launched.

In more interesting (and topical) news, at least a few people were seriously turned off by a Journal headline about the funeral of those kids in Piedmont. Perhaps annoyed by the fact that the public (i.e. news media) was excluded from the small crowded building where the funeral was taking place, the newspaper used the headline: "Cérémonie à guichets fermés". At least one blogger and one letter-writer found that to be a tacky and inappropriate comparison between a private family funeral and a rock concert.

Meanwhile

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The Source by Bell

March 2, 2009 – 5:41 pm| Posted in Business

The Source outlet in Eaton Centre downtown

Bell Canada, which apparently has lots of money to spare, has decided to buy up The Source, the overpriced electronics retailer which used to be Radio Shack and whose parent company went bankrupt in November.

Coverage from, well, everyone: Globe, Star, CBC, Forbes, WSJ, Reuters, Digital Home

Bell says it plans to use the outlets to hawk Bell merchandise like Bell Mobility cellphones (once the exclusivity contract with Rogers ends this year) and Bell TV satellite service.

The deal seems to make perfect sense, as both companies offer crappy product, have horrible customer service, charge way too much and yet survive because people who don't know any better recognize the brand.

Any bets on whether Bell will fix the many fundamental problems with The Source's business model?

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On aura tout lu

March 2, 2009 – 4:50 pm| Posted in Media, Video

Another gem from the digger-upper of retro Québécois commercials. This one for my newspaper. (Don't call that number, it's about 20 years out of date.)

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Patrick Charles joins CJFM morning show

March 2, 2009 – 4:16 pm| Posted in Radio
Patrick Charles (Q92 photo)

Patrick Charles (Q92 photo)

Patrick Charles, who since 2001 has been working with the morning show on Q92, has jumped ship and (after some contractually-mandated downtime) will join CJFM 95.9 as the third morning host with Cat Spencer and Lisa Player. He starts on Wednesday. (via MediaInMontreal)

His old bio page at Q92 is still up in case you want to learn more about the guy. You can also hear his song parody work on MySpace.

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2/3 support Journal de Montréal workers (by default)

March 2, 2009 – 3:57 pm| Posted in Media

Branchez-Vous has the EXCLUSIF today: a poll it commissioned shows that about two thirds (literally 66.7%) of Quebecers support the 253 workers who were locked out by the Journal de Montréal in January.

But the full results of the survey show that about the same percentage (65.5%) support the employees and their union in labour conflicts in general. So it's probably fair to say that the level of support is more of a default position than any serious analysis of the conflict. This is backed up by results showing that while the vast majority (82.7%) of Quebecers are aware of the lockout, three quarters of them (70% in Montreal) say they know little or nothing about the reasons behind it.

Who wins in this is a good question. The union will no doubt consider this a big win, because it looks good on its face and because initially it seemed the public might turn its backs on the union because of the generous working conditions (32-hour weeks, high salaries, etc.). Despite Quebecor's efforts, this seems not to be the case.

But public support is irrelevant if people are still buying newspapers and advertisers are still putting ads. We don't know how this is affecting the Journal financially, but that will be the big decider in all this.

The online poll of 1125 adult Quebecers taken Feb. 10-16 (margin of error 3% 19 times out of 20) also breaks down its answers by region (Montreal, Quebec and other), though the only one that shows a significant difference is that people who live in and near Quebec City support locked-out Journal workers more than they would workers in general. This is probably a result of the long Journal de Québec conflict, which also began with a lockout.

Meanwhile

  • During Québec solidaire's general meeting Sunday in Quebec City, the far-left political party refused access to a Journal de Québec reporter and photographer, saying that their work would end up in the Journal de Montréal. The Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec has apparently denounced this move.
  • In case you base all your decisions on what former Pittsburgh Penguins general manager Michel Therrien thinks, he's supporting the workers. He also says the Journal offered him a weekly column (to replace Jacques Demers and Martin Brodeur?), which he refused.
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Beaconsfield applies NIMBY to parking

March 2, 2009 – 3:58 am| Posted in Opinion, Public transit, West Island

Here's a really short-sighted idea: Beaconsfield town council has approved a measure that would reserve 30 parking spaces near the Beaurepaire commuter train station only to permit-holding Beaconsfield residents.

While 30 spots at a station in Montreal's equivalent to the middle of nowhere won't make much of a difference in the long run, the worry is that this will become a trend. Other municipalities might enact similar measures, making it more difficult to park near train stations. Imagine if Pierrefonds restricted parking near the Roxboro and Sunnybrooke stations to only its residents, or if Montreal did the same for the Du Ruisseau station on the Deux-Montagnes line.

Such NIMBYism (while not foreign to Beaconsfield) is counter-productive to traffic problems and only serves to build walls between neighbouring towns.

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Nuit Blanche pop quiz

March 1, 2009 – 6:11 am| Posted in Pop quiz, Public transit

I had fun at the Nuit Blanche. I'll put together a longer post with lots of pictures over the next day or two, but since it's 6am and I want to get some sleep, I'll just post this quickie.

Nuit Blanche pop quiz

When was this photo taken?

(I've scrubbed the EXIF data in case any of you want to be cute)

For bonus points, where was this taken?

UPDATE: Alex gets it right below, and I'll just quote him: "Assumung 24:00:00 is midnight, then 28:00:00 would be 04:00:00 and 28:58:20 would be at 04:58:20, which means that if the metro left at 04:58:20 and there are 00:02:40 left before departure, the current time is 04:55:40 (AM)"

Some background: These are clocks installed at every terminus to tell the train driver when to depart. The top number is the time of departure, bottom left is the number of the train, and bottom right is time remaining to departure (it counts down to zero and then counts up until they reset it for the next train).

For scheduling purposes, the STM's daily clock doesn't reset at midnight. As far as bus and metro drivers are concerned, there are departures at 25, 26, 27 and 28 o'clock instead of 1, 2, 3 and 4am, as these departures (of day and night buses) are considered part of the previous day. You can even have two schedules running simultaneously if a night bus and early morning bus are on the road at the same time.

What's so unusual about this sight, of course, is that trains don't normally run at 4am. The last terminus departure is at 1:30am on Saturday nights on the yellow line. The last train leaves service 25 minutes later when it arrives at the Côte-Vertu station, making it 1:55 am or 25:55. Seeing the clock go up to 28:58 pushes it to new heights. (For those curious, the clock reset itself minutes later to 5am.)

Christelle got the second part of the question right (without getting the first). The picture was taken at Snowdon on the Saint-Michel-bound platform.

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