News about news

Gros sourire ce matin en lisant le donneur de leçon professionnel @YvesBoisvert payé par la famille Desmarais pour écrire dans un média déficitaire dont la seule mission est de tenter de maintenir leur influence politique par le biais des médias. Non Boisvert, je vais m'exprimer

— Pierre Karl Péladeau (@PKP_Qc) January 18, 2018

• Pierre Karl Péladeau, who was leader of Quebec’s opposition then went back to being CEO of the Quebecor Media empire like that was perfectly normal, went off on La Presse’s Yves Boisvert in a Twitter storm after this Boisvert column about Péladeau’s statements on social media. (1, 2, 3, 4) Péladeau trotted out his usual talking points about La Presse being a tool of the Desmarais empire to control Quebecers’ minds for political reasons.
• CNN says Fox News knew about the Donald Trump porn star story before the election and buried it.
• New York prosecutors raided Newsweek, but the magazine says it’s not a content-related issue and its content and sources were safe.
• Donald Trump’s Fake News Awards winners were announced in a post on the Republican Party website. Basically it lists every media error about him, despite the fact that they were all corrected.
• The woman behind the Shitty Media Men list spoke to the New York Times.
• The government in the Philippines has revoked the business registration of Rappler, a popular news media website that’s critical of the government. Officially, it’s about foreign ownership of the outlet, which is forbidden by law. But critics content it’s more about President Duterte wanting to silence dissent.
• Global News has signed a deal with Pattison to become the official news source for TV screens in Toronto’s transit system.

At the CRTC

• The commission has sided with Bell in a carriage fee dispute with TVA Sports. Under the commission’s final offer arbitration rules, if two parties come to the CRTC to resolve a dispute, the commission receives offers from both sides and chooses the more reasonable one in its entirety. TVA tried to argue that TVA Sports has caught up with RDS and should receive a similar fee. Bell argued the gap is still there though it has narrowed, and that TVA Sports’s ratings are very dependent on the NHL and highly volatile compared to RDS. The CRTC liked Bell’s reasoning better. The actual conditions of the contract, and the wholesale rate Bell will pay, are confidential. La Presse notes TVA lost to Bell in a similar case in 2015.
• CIHW-FM in Wendake, the reservation in Quebec City, has received CRTC approval for an increase in power, going from a low-power 50W station to 400W. It maintains the same frequency of 100.3.
• The Cowichan Valley Community Radio Society, which runs CICV-FM in Lake Cowichan, B.C., has decided to turn in the station’s licence, because “there are very few people prepared to spend enough time at the radio studio necessary to keep us on the air. After Dec. 31 (2017), this problem will become more acute. We need 2 adult chaperones with criminal checks present whenever student DJ’s are present. In addition, we need volunteers with technical experience and sales and marketing skills.” The CRTC revoked the licence on Thursday.
• The commission has called a hearing for March 27 (a formality, as it does not expect to require any oral presentations) to discuss three applications. One is a new radio station in Assiniboia, Sask., one is a corporate reorganization at Jim Pattison Group, and the other is the licence renewal of CKFG-FM (G98.7) Toronto. The notice lays out a long list of licence compliance issues, and says “the Commission has concerns regarding the licensee’s ability and commitment to operate the station in a compliant manner.” It suggests a mandatory court order to comply could be the next step, or even revocation of the licence.
• The commission has approved the sale of CJED-FM Niagara Falls and CFLZ-FM Fort Erie from Vista Radio to Byrnes Communications for $800,000. Because both the stations are deeply in deficit, the CRTC did not impose tangible benefits.
• Bell is trying yet again to get the courts to reverse the CRTC’s Super Bowl ad substitution decision. Super Bowl LII is Feb. 4.

At the CBC

• The search for a new CBC president continues, and now news that the selection committee wants to reopen the application process to accept candidates from Canadians abroad.

Canadian Screen Awards

The 2018 nominations are out for movies, television and digital media. Among the highlights of local interest:

• Montreal-based cop series 19-2 is nominated for best drama, best makeup, best picture editing (Annie Ilkow) and best photography in a drama (Ronald Plante) in its final season. It also scored two supporting actor nominations, for Benz Antoine and Dan Petronijevic.
• Montreal-based drama The Disappearance is nominated for best limited series and best writing, best direction (Peter Stebbings) and best actress (Camille Sullivan) in a drama or limited series
• Montreal-based documentary series Interrupt This Program is nominated for best documentary series, best direction in a documentary series (Karen Cho), and best photography for a factual program (Van Royko)
• Montreal-based docudrama Bad Blood is nominated for best writing for a drama and best actor (Kim Coates) and actress (Maxim Roy) for a drama or limited series
• Montreal-based drama This Life got a nomination for best guest appearance (Hamza Haq)
• CBC’s The Goods is nominated for best lifestyle show (it’s not up against CityLine, Marilyn Denis or The Social because those are all nominated in the best talk show category)
• The 2017 Canadian Screen Awards broadcast is nominated for best awards show (the Emmys avoid this apparent conflict of interest by making Emmys broadcasts ineligible for any Emmys)
• Best local newscast nominees are CTV Toronto, CBC Vancouver, Global BC and Global Calgary
• P.K. Subban: Shots Fired is nominated for best variety or entertainment special
• Quebec My Country Mon Pays is nominated for best visual research
• Mohawk Girls director Tracey Deer is nominated for best direction in a comedy
• Daniel Grou (aka Podz) is nominated for best direction in a drama or limited series for Cardinal

and finally, CBC Montreal’s Debra Arbec is one of four nominees for best local news anchor. She’s up against CTV Toronto’s Ken Shaw and Michelle Dubé, CBC Toronto’s Dwight Drummond and … Andrew Chang, her former co-anchor who left for CBC Vancouver and is now at The National.

The academy is also giving out special awards, to the late writer Denis McGrath and a humanitarian award to the Bell Let’s Talk campaign.

TV

• Spike TV became the Paramount Network on Thursday. It celebrated by destroying its old logo on a Facebook Live video.
• V has found its new primetime talk show host to replace Éric Salvail: Stéphane Rousseau will start in February. The name of the show hasn’t been announced, but Rousseau tells La Presse the show will be pre-taped, unlike Salvail who was live two out of four nights in the week.
• CBC has brought on a new Olympic broadcast partner: Telelatino (majority owned by Corus) will broadcast daily highlights and hockey broadcasts in Spanish and Italian during the 2018 Games, and in 2020 will add Portuguese as well.
• Confirmed Numeris figures, which now include seven-day PVR data, show Radio-Canada’s Bye Bye 2017 with 3.907 million viewers on New Year’s Eve. Not only is that just an average (as opposed to a total or peak), it doesn’t include the rebroadcast a day later, that got almost a million more. English Canada’s best on NYE was CBC’s Canada 150 special with Rick Mercer, that got 1.5 million.
• Cosmos, the National Geographic/Fox series starring Neil deGrasse Tyson, has been greenlit for a second season, expected for 2019, five years after the first. Like the first season, it will air on Fox, a channel not really known for its science programming.
• Bell has renewed its deal with Ericsson to provide the backend equipment that runs its television distribution service.
• Canadian TV executives discuss the future of television in this brief video from Numeris’s NLogic.

Radio

• Corus Radio, which has rebranded most its AM talk stations as Global News Radio, is launching a new national late-night call-in show called The Shift with Drex. Airing live on seven stations in four time zones simultaneously, it stars Justin “Drex” Wilcomes. You might remember him as the guy who asked B.C. premier Christy Clark about her being a MILF and getting fired over that.
• Rogers is acquiring CJCY-FM 102.1 in Medicine Hat, Alta from Clear Sky Radio. Rogers already has another station in that market. The transaction requires CRTC approval, and would leave Clear Sky with three radio stations in Alberta.
• Rogers is going to begin using dynamic ad insertion on its audio streams, giving people more targeted ads. It looks like this will be regardless of which application (website, TuneIn, RadioPlayer) the person is using to get the stream. AdsWizz will provide the technology.

Print

https://twitter.com/KathViner/status/952647642517049344

• The Guardian in the U.K. is now a tabloid, and has a new design.
• Some good news in the newspaper business: Metro is hiring in Vancouver and Edmonton.
• The Denver Post is putting its paywall back up, arguing as its budget forces it to move out of downtown that it can no longer work for free. Reporter John Ingold makes an argument for subscribing on Twitter.
• The owner of the Los Angeles Daily News, Orange County Register and other southern California newspapers is warning of “significant” layoffs in the coming months.

Online

• HuffPost, which built a lot of its reputation on the backs of free labour from bloggers, has decided to do away with them because they’re a distraction. But HuffPost Canada reassures that it will still accept contributions from bloggers.
• Writing websites The Awl and The Hairpin are shutting down. The Hairpin hosted a post that eventually led to an investigation into professors’ conduct at Concordia University’s creative writing department.
• You’ve heard of the pivot to video, how about the pivot to audio? Slate says podcasts represent 25% of its revenue now.
• The Bell Fund has announced $2.4 million in funding for digital series — eight English ones and six French ones. English series includes “Does it Fart?” in which it is examined which animals fart.
• Google says it will start factoring in page load times in ranking websites in mobile searches.
• YouTube is making changes to how it monetizes videos to prevent another Logan Paul-style incident. But YouTubers are worried that the changes will just make it harder to make money off videos, especially for people with smaller audiences.

News about people

• Kim Sullivan, weather presenter on Global Montreal’s Morning News, opens up on a personal blog about becoming a single mother (the mother part being the choice).
• Two new faces at Kiss 105.3 in Ottawa: Chris Love (from CKNO-FM Edmonton)* joins the morning show and Robbin Reay (from Virgin Radio in London, Ont.) joins the afternoon show, both as part of two-announcer teams.
• Comedian Léa Strélinski is the latest contributor to be added to La Presse, where she will write biweekly.
• La Presse columnist Paul Journet trended on Saturday night during the show En direct de l’univers devoted to his colleague Patrick Lagacé, after he performed Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby and showed off his moves. The appearance sparked a Tumblr with the best GIFs of the performance.
• Blue Ant Media has named Jamie Schouela as president of Canadian media, a promotion from his current position. Blue Ant owns Love Nature, BBC Earth, Cottage Life, Travel + Escape, A.Side, Makeful, Smithsonian Channel Canada and HIFI.
• Neetu Garcha is now a full-time reporter with Global BC.
• Katie Couric is returning to NBC to co-host the Olympics opening ceremony.

Obituaries

• Keith Jackson, college football broadcaster

Good reads

• Ellen Pompeo, star of Grey’s Anatomy, opens up to The Hollywood Reporter about money and how she went from being told she wasn’t worth that much because they still had Patrick Dempsey on the show, to negotiating a $20 million a year paycheque.
• H.G. Watson at J-Source talks to Ontario cities that will have more difficulty communicating with constituents after losing community newspapers.
• Ottawa Life has a profile of John Mielke, who went to his own online radio station after being let go from Bob FM. The article somehow manages to avoid any mention of MilkmanUnLimited.com.
• Canadaland has a short piece about how an iconic series of short videos from the First World War were actually staged. It’s a small amount of video from an otherwise real documentary, but some re-uses may not have been too careful to label it as a recreation.

Jobs

• Part-time traffic reporter, Canadian Traffic Network, Montreal
• Senior National Online Journalist – Health and Smart Living, Global News (deadline: Jan. 22)
• Editorial coordinator (French) for the Canadiens (deadline: Jan. 26)
• Summer reporting intern, Vancouver Sun/Province (deadline: Jan. 26)

*Correction: An earlier version of this item got the situation at Kiss 105.3 backwards: Sandra Plagakis is being joined by Chris Love on the morning show. She’s not the new person on the show.