Championships in Montreal are more rare than we’d like them to be, yet this year we’ve had two – the Impact and the Alouettes. (And with the Habs being shut out at home to the Leafs, a trifecta seems unlikely.)
Wednesday sees the players and fans meet to celebrate for the victory parade down Ste. Catherine St., from Crescent to Jeanne-Mance starting at 11:40am.
Surprisingly, despite it being a local event (and one coming with little advance notice), there’s going to be actual live coverage of it by local television.
Here’s what’s been announced:
- Global (CKMI) will have live coverage from 11:30am to 1:30pm (Mike LeCouteur with The Gazette’s Herb Zurkowsky and the Q’s Ken Connors). It will also be streaming the parade live at globalmontreal.com
- CTV (CFCF) will have live coverage from noon to 1:30pm, preempting its entire noon newscast. Sports reporters will be in the crowd, Mutsumi Takahashi and Randy Tieman at the end of the route. Lori Graham and Todd van der Heyden will be in the parade itself. It will livestream the entire parade at montreal.ctv.ca
- CBC (CBMT) has no announced live coverage
- Radio-Canada will not have live TV coverage on the main network, but will be livestreaming the parade at radio-canada.ca/sports
- TVA and V have nothing announced as far as live coverage
- RDI will have a live special from 11:30am to 1:30pm. Simon Durivage hosts with Marc André Masson, Jean St-Onge, Jacinthe Taillon, Antoine Deshaies and former Als player Bruno Heppell
- LCN has not announced anything, but expect it to give good coverage to the parade
- RDS will have live parade coverage from 11:30am to 2pm (it’s the only network to actually change its electronic and online schedule to reflect the coverage) with David Arsenault, Marc Labrecque, Pierre Vercheval and Denis Casavant.
- TSN has not announced anything, but considering their current plan for noon is World Championship Darts…
So that’s four channels carrying live TV specials (CFCF, CKMI, RDI and RDS), and three sources for live online streaming, at least.
Maybe what’s surprising is that, in this local TV death spiral, I find this surprising.
(Of course, you won’t be watching the parade on TV because you’ll be on Ste. Catherine St. celebrating, right?)
UPDATE: CTV Montreal and RDS have archived footage of the parade and party afterward. The Gazette and Rue Frontenac have put together artisty videos.
Very glad to see that CFCF-TV 12 and CKMI-TV 46 are presenting this. Two local over the air stations doing what local TV should be doing. Too bad none of the french local stations aren’t doing anything. Thus forcing francophones to run to the old cable solution in order to access RDI and RDS. Too bad CBFT-DT 19 (2.1) isn’t presenting their streaming video of the parade on a sub-channel of their DT signal.
As much as I wish everybody finally woke up, I find the whole thing a little too convenient coming right after the CRTC announces wide-open public solicitation (including the dedicated website for comments) on the fee-for-carriage issue. December is might be the only time of year local stations actually have some local content (parades, telethons, etc.) so my gut is telling me this is more for sway than actual care.
It wouldn’t surprise me. The local anglo stations haven’t covered local parades much these days. Mind you, this is a sports championship parade, not the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, but it does raise an eyebrow that two stations are going all out to cover this.
Anyone want to bet that Global replays this 5 times and calls it 7.5 hours of local programming.
Tried Global first but they appear to be covering it from the studio, they might as well be sitting in a studio in Toronto. CTV actually has all their reporters in the crowd and in the parade.
I was watching Global today and they had a couple of people out on the parade route too.
out of curiousity, is football mostly an anglo thing in montreal? what about the province in general?
I don’t think it’s exclusively anglo (there were a lot of people cheering francophone Alouettes from Université Laval), but anglo Montrealers might be a bit more connected to the team.
I had a chance to experience a Concordia Stingers game against the Rouge-et-or at Université Laval’s stadium. HUGE crowd and atmosphere (much more than I’ve ever seen for the Stingers locally). It feels like all of Quebec City adopted the university team. Makes for a convincing argument to expand to a professional franchise, and speaks to francophone appeal for the game. The two colleagues at work who are interested in the sport (including a high-school volunteer coach) are Francophone.
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