Media News Digest: Fantastiques sans Eric, magazine awards reunited, Aly Lozoff in Vegas

News about news

  • The Suburban held its election “debates”, which consisted of candidates writing answers to the same question, including Beryl Wajsman, who is a candidate for mayor of Westmount and editor of the newspaper. The issue with the answers includes a note from the publisher explaining that “Mr. Wajsman did not know the questions and agreed to have his answers recorded before any of the other candidates arrived, and has had no hand in any Westmount stories since May.” Christine Smith, the interim mayor who’s running against Wajsman, declined to participate because of Wajsman’s conflict.
  • The Montreal Gazette and La Presse collaborated on an investigation into Montreal city contracts. The collaboration is interesting if only because it means the articles need to be translated between French and English.
  • For those looking for live TV coverage of Sunday’s municipal elections, the pickings will be a bit slim. RDI and LCN will have live coverage throughout the night, and most media will have online coverage, but the local stations will have mostly regular programming during the evening. Global Montreal will extend its 11pm newscast to an hour for an election night special, while CTV and CBC will incorporate election results into its regular broadcasts, according to their TV schedules. CBC News Network and CTV News Channel don’t appear to have any plans for special programming.
  • Le Devoir looks at the new charter created by the Association de presse francophone, representing French-language media in English Canada.

At the CRTC

  • Quebec City radio station CHXX-FM (Pop 100.9) has succeeded in getting its licence renewed by the CRTC despite coming short on its requirement for French-language music. Rather than issue a short-term renewal, it has de facto fined the station $920. And once again, the station has been shot down in its request to cut its conditions of licence requiring it to serve the Portneuf region. When it was first approved in 1995, the station was sold to the CRTC as being a local service to Portneuf. Its current owner RNC Media has repeatedly tried to eliminate the requirements to have a studio in Donnacona and 14 hours a week of programming for the region. The CRTC found there was insufficient evidence put forward that such a change was necessary to the station’s financial survival and that the change would be bad for people in the Portneuf region who have no other local station.
  • The commission has denied a request from Vancouver radio station CHLG-FM (LG 104.3) to amend its licence to eliminate the requirement that 15% of its music be special interest. The CRTC found there as no compelling economic reason to approve the change. CHLG-FM is owned by Newcap, purchased out of the Bell-Astral deal.

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3 thoughts on “Media News Digest: Fantastiques sans Eric, magazine awards reunited, Aly Lozoff in Vegas

  1. Richard G

    I believe your comments about The Suburban election coverage to be somewhat snarky . Given the dearth of English municipal election coverage (or to be honest coverage in general) any reporting is a good thing . I realize that this is a sad comment on the state of English media in Montreal .

    Reply
    1. dilbert

      Truth is municipal politics is a little too low end for much in the way of coverage, and way to diverse to cover properly live. It doesn’t total up or add up to anything at the end either, there is no “provincial winner” or overall leader selected. It really just isn’t all that.

      It’s also something very particular to small groups of potential listeners, viewers, or readers. Someone who lives in Laval likely doesn’t give a damn about who got elected mayor in St Gregoire or whatever. It’s not compelling enough TV (or radio for that matter) to kick your regular programming to the curb. There is little common interest to drive an audience to you.

      It’s something much better covered after the fact, with results, details, and so on.

      I also think that the combined mayor / Borough mayor / whatever in Montreal makes it equally diffused and hard to focus on. It’s not really that interesting to follow on the fly.

      Reply

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