Media News Digest: Canal+ comes to Canada, Courrier Laval sold, Alexa and Google sign news deals

News about news

  • The Ottawa CItizen’s tradition of putting together a biography of a fallen soldier based on a name tweeted out at random at 11:11am on Remembrance Day continues. Here’s the latest edition.
  • CBC’s ombudsman put out a decision related to a CBC Halifax radio discussion about the Pittsburgh Penguins’ decision to visit the White House to celebrate their Stanley Cup win. A listener complained that more effort should have been made to find balance in their coverage of this, and find more pro-Trump sources. The ombudsman agreed, saying “the coverage was flawed.”
  • Various news organizations are reaching deals with these new smart speakers or assistants or whatever you call them: Google Home and Amazon Echo. Amazon’s Alexa service will carry content from CBC, Global News, CTV, TSN, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, National Post and Montreal Gazette. Google Home has a deal with Postmedia.
  • Rebel Media’s Ezra Levant has pushed his defamation lawsuit against the man behind the @CanadianCynic Twitter account past a preliminary look at whether it’s an abusive suit against public comment. A judge found that Robert Day’s Twitter posts accusing Levant of fraud in a Fort MacMurray fundraiser were not public comment and not protected by the law.
  • Montreal city hall’s new administration is looking for an attaché(e) de presse. The previous media relations person for Montreal’s mayor, Catherine Maurice, previously worked for Projet Montréal before she jumped ship for Coderre’s team.

At the CRTC

  • New CRTC chairman Ian Scott gave a speech and did media interviews in which he makes it clear that he plans to do his job fairly and isn’t being guided by some overall vision. The non-vision vision is a break from his predecessor Jean-Pierre Blais, who was seen as being very pro-consumer and tough on the big media companies.

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6 thoughts on “Media News Digest: Canal+ comes to Canada, Courrier Laval sold, Alexa and Google sign news deals

  1. Mediaman

    Not a busy week I see, but as for the new CRTC Chair Ian Scott, not having any sort of vision, can be either a bad or a good thing, depending on what side of the fence you’re on.

    As for his predecessor, being hard on the companies, I didn’t see a problem with that, but I thought Jean Pierre Blais wasn’t tough on the Bell Astral merger… That was his big mistake, and most employees that have been fired or unhumanly laid off would agree just for the sake of saving a few bucks for the shareholder pockets.

    Reply
    1. Fagstein Post author

      I thought Jean Pierre Blais wasn’t tough on the Bell Astral merger

      He rejected it the first time, along with other members of the CRTC panel. You could argue he could have been tougher, but I don’t see how you can argue that he wasn’t tough at all.

      most employees that have been fired or unhumanly laid off would agree just for the sake of saving a few bucks for the shareholder pockets.

      Shareholders aren’t interested in keeping people employed if they have a negative impact on the company’s bottom line. If you don’t like that, become a controlling shareholder and vote in a board of directors that will set a different direction.

      Reply
      1. dilbert

        Of course he wasn’t tough on the merger – he just pushed it every so slightly to make it look like the CRTC was doing something. The reality is that the deal accepted by the CRTC wasn’t hugely different from the original, and has had exactly the same net effect: Bell got much larger and much more dominant , and the Canadian broadcast landscape lost a larger tier 2 media company (there are fewer of them all the time). The result was published by the CRTC last week (remember?) where they showed that a very few companies control just about all of the money and all of the access to media.

        Blais had the chance to stop that from happening, and didn’t.

        Reply
  2. Tim

    Was there ever a satisfying post-mortem done on Canal+’ first foray into the Canadian market? They were poised to set up their own Netflix in the market, then… nothing. Was it lack of market demand? Infrastructure? Is there a story there?

    Reply
  3. telso

    It is not the student union at McGill (SSMU) that requires this existence referendum, but the university administration. The Daily, combined with its French sister paper, Le Délit, are run by the Daily Publications Society, which is completely independent from SSMU (or PGSS, which represents grad students), with SSMU not having any control over DPS formally or informally (though the DPS contracts with Elections SSMU to run this referendum; also, I can’t recall if the DPS offices, which are in the student union building, are leased from the university directly or subleased from SSMU, though I think it’s the former). Since 2007, the university administration started unilaterally requiring all independent student groups, such as CKUT and QPIRG-McGill, to hold these referendums to continue collecting student fees when students pay tuition and to be allowed to lease McGill buildings.

    Reply

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