Fagstein » CBMT

Yearning for local television

Fagstein — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 05:47:52 +0000

Last month, CBC television aired a half-hour special program called Secrets of Montreal.

The show, hosted by evening news anchor Debra Arbec, talked to some figures in the anglo Montreal cultural community about some of their cultural "secrets". The guests include some pretty big local names, like comedian Sugar Sammy, filmmakers Jacob and Kevin Tierney, chef Chuck Hughes and musician Melissa Auf der Maur. They talk about restaurants, bars, urban spaces and other things they love about this city.

This, all in high definition (actual HD, not the fake HD we see on the newscasts). I actually can't think of another program produced for a local audience by any of the three anglo broadcasters in this city that was done entirely in HD.

Secrets of Montreal host Debra Arbec

It's not the greatest half hour of television ever (that soundtrack gets annoyingly repetitive after a while, for one, and some people have noted the Travel Travel-esque vibe), but it's the kind of thing I'd love to see more of: local programming that isn't confined to a newscast.

Even though Montreal has three local English-language television stations (four if you include the multiethnic CJNT/Metro 14), none of them air original local programming that isn't either confined within the schedule blocks of their newscasts or done from their news sets. Not to take away from the quality of local news being produced by these stations, but there are some things we'd like to see that can't be converted into a two-minute news package or six-minute sit-down interview.

Seeing this show was a breath of fresh air, a sign that maybe the CBC was starting to rediscover the idea that its programming should reflect not only the national culture but the local one as well. And I was hopeful that this was a sign the local stations were getting more control over their programming schedules and/or budgets, being able to work on special projects like this.

But I was disappointed somewhat when I discovered through Google searches that this idea didn't come from CBC Montreal. "Cultural secrets" shows were produced across the country: Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver and apparently other places as well. All were done to coincide with "Culture Days" and the CBC's 75th anniversary. All followed roughly the same idea, and all aired Sept. 29th at 7:30pm, in the timeslot normally reserved for Jeopardy. (In fact, for Videotron illico users, the show was listed as an episode of Jeopardy, and remains labelled as such on my PVR. This may have resulted in many potential viewers missing the show.)

What bugged me about this national congruence was that it reminded me how much of what happens locally at the CBC is actually decided nationally, imposed on the regions in a cookie-cutter fashion.

It reminded me of Living [insert location here], the regional lifestyle show duplicated across the country that was cancelled during the big round of budget cuts in 2009. At least that was regular programming instead of a one-off show.

When I start giving more serious thought to proposals of radical changes at the CBC, this is one of the reasons why. The other stations are doing daily local newscasts (and, unlike CBC Montreal, they don't take the weekends off). If this network is going to be funded mainly through government financing, shouldn't it offer something different?

I'm aware of - and sympathetic to - the budget constraints faced by CBC and its Montreal television station. But English Montreal (and, for that matter, English Quebec) is a linguistic minority, and one would think the CBC would be a leader in giving this community a voice. Lately, it's seemed more like an also-ran, which is particularly outrageous considering how little is done outside of news at CTV and Global.

Secrets of Montreal, directed by Vincent Scotti and Filippo Campo, and starring Debra Arbec, can be viewed in its entirety on the CBC website.

CBC open house this weekend

Fagstein — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 19:30:07 +0000

As part of its 75th anniversary, and on the weekend of Culture Days/Journées de la culture, CBC and Radio-Canada stations across the country are opening their doors to the public and showing them around.

Among locations in Quebec are:

Bas-Saint-Laurent/Rimouski (Saturday 1pm-4pm)
Côte-Nord/Sept-Îles (Saturday 1pm-4pm)
Estrie/Sherbrooke (Saturday 12:30pm-3:30pm)
Gaspésie/Matane (Saturday 1pm-4pm)
Mauricie/Trois-Rivières (Saturday 1pm-4pm)
Quebec City (Saturday 9am-1pm)
Rouyn-Noranda
Saguenay/Chicoutimi (Saturday 1pm-4pm)
and, of course, Montreal.

Pretty well everywhere that creates programming.

Specific crowd-pleasers are planned in various large cities, though on the English side it's mostly in Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver.

At Maison Radio-Canada, where understandably most of the interesting stuff will be in French, there's still plenty of interest for anglos. Besides the tours and personalities, a Hockey Night in Canada display is promised, as well as opportunities for kids who are fans of CBC Television's children's programming.

The Montreal building on René-Lévesque Blvd. will offer guided tours, one a short one of about an hour and another a longer one of an hour and 45 minutes. The CBC Montreal and Radio Canada International portions are included only in the longer tour. (See a full list of attractions in this PDF flyer)

Doors are open from 10am to 4pm on Saturday and Sunday. On-air TV stars like Debra Arbec, Andrew Chang and Amanda Margison have said they'll be around for about lunch time on Saturday.

You might recall that CTV Montreal held open houses in 2009 and 2010. In both cases the studio considered the events a huge success, and though there is definitely a desire to repeat the process in the future, there aren't any specific plans yet for another one.

Even more details about Montreal’s digital TV transition

Fagstein — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 11:01:51 +0000

Mount Royal tower is about to go digital

I wrote a feature that appeared in Saturday's Gazette (Page E3, for those clipping) about the transition from analog television to digital, whose deadline is Aug. 31.

The main story focuses mainly on how local broadcasters are coping with the transition. It's a big endeavour, and with less than 10% of Canadian households still using antennas to get their television service, it's difficult to justify the cost (in the neighbourhood of $1 million per transmitter, but varying widely) of replacing the analog with digital.

That's to say nothing about the consumers, many of whom are on the lower end of the income scale, who must now spend money on new equipment.

The sidebar focuses on consumers, and tries to explain how people can prepare. If you haven't already heard 1,000 times, cable and satellite subscribers are unaffected. If you get your service by antenna, you either need a TV with a digital ATSC tuner (most new HDTVs have one) or a digital converter box.

My editor was very generous with the assigned length (in all it clocks in at a bit under 2,000 words), but even then there's a lot of information I had to leave out, including a few conversations I had with actual TV viewers. I'll try to include most of that information here.

The digital transition in Montreal

First, here's how the digital transition is going for the nine television stations broadcasting in Montreal (updated 9am Sept. 1):

Five (CFCF/CTV, CFTM/TVA, CIVM/Télé-Québec, CFJP/V and CJNT/Metro 14) have completed the transition, switching off their analog transmitters and replacing them with digital ones that are now transmitting. They should all be at full power from their permanent antennas.
Three (CBMT/CBC, CBFT/Radio-Canada,CKMI-1/Global) have shut down their analog transmitters and have digital ones operating on their permanent assigned channels, but are not yet operating from what will be their permanent antenna on top of the Mount Royal tower. (CBMT and CBFT are also running at reduced power.) Those who don't get these signals now may see that improve over the coming weeks.
One (CFTU/Canal Savoir) has been given a two-month extension to make the transition. It is still broadcasting in analog until the digital transmitter begins running.

Here's more detail, by station. A few explanations first:

Power: Digital transmitter power for most of these stations is considerably less than analog power. That doesn't necessarily mean the digital signal will be weaker. Because digital transmitters are far more efficient than analog ones (about 10 times in the case of UHF transmitters), the same range can be achieved with much less power. Most stations expect their coverage area will remain about the same. I use "authorized power" here to denote the average effective radiated power authorized by Industry Canada. The actual transmitters could be operating at less power than this.
Virtual channels: It's kind of complicated, but the ATSC digital standard allows stations on one channel to pretend they're on another. This is used so that stations that must change channels as part of the digital transition can show up on TVs under their former analog channels. So CBMT (CBC Montreal), for example, will actually be transmitting on Channel 21, but will appear on TV sets as Channel 6.1. The ".1" denotes the digital subchannel, because digital transmitters allow more than one channel to be transmitted. So far no Canadian broadcaster is taking advantage of this.
CRTC cost estimate: The CRTC commissioned a study by engineers to determine a rough idea of the cost of changing transmitters to digital. This cost depends on a number of factors, including the pre- and post-transition channels. It should be taken with a truckload of salt, because it doesn't take into account any particular characteristics of individual transmitters.
PSIP: The Program and System Information Protocol is a system that allows digital transmitters to send information to TV receivers. Among them, content ratings and program descriptions, like you'd find in a digital cable or satellite menu. Its use by broadcasters in Canada is mixed, because it's not seen as a necessity.

CBMT

Status: Transmitting in digital on permanent channel but temporary antenna.

Brand: CBC Montreal
Analog transmitter:

Channel: 6
Authorized power: 100,000W
Location: Mount Royal tower
Status: shut down 12am Sept. 1

Transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 20
Authorized power: 57,410W
Location: Mount Royal tower
Status: switched to post-transitional channel on or before Aug. 27

Post-transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 21
Authorized power: 436,340W
Location: Mount Royal tower (same as analog)
Status: will become active when new antenna is installed by November

Virtual digital channel: 6.1
Broadcasting program information via PSIP: Not properly. Shows are given names like "CBMT Montreal English HD, Event 470" without descriptions
Available in HD on: Videotron illico (606), Bell TV (896/1030), Bell Fibe (1206)
Digital transmitter location: Mount Royal tower
CRTC cost estimate: $3,191,581
Retransmitters: Dozens of analog stations throughout Quebec (CBC Montreal is the only CBC station in Quebec with original programming). Digital transition postponed until Aug. 31, 2012 in the following mandatory markets: Quebec City, Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières, Saguenay
Digital transition website: http://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/dtv/Montreal_CBC.shtml

CBMT has had its digital transmitter up since 2005, but it's waiting until Aug. 31 to shut down the analog one. While the transition in Montreal is expected to happen on schedule, CBC decided it didn't have the money to make the switch for retransmitters (including Quebec City and Sherbrooke). The CRTC said it would allow a one-year extension so the analog to keep the analog transmitters running so they wouldn't have to be shut down, but the CBC's Steven Guiton told me they will probably just ask for another extension when that one comes up.

I asked José Breton, the guy who protested outside CBC in Quebec City demanding they not shut down the transmitter there because he wanted to watch Hockey Night in Canada, about the extension. I thought he would be happy, but turns out he's not. "It's a false compromise," he said. Instead, the CRTC should have forced CBC/Radio-Canada to setup digital transmitters in mandatory markets before the deadline instead of saving money for "some white-collars' salaries". He also suggested the CRTC was being influenced by cable and satellite lobbyists.

CBMT's digital transmitter has already switched to its permanent channel (which means digital tuners must rescan for channels to find it).

CBC Montreal's newscast has been 16:9 since 2009, though the quality of the video during newscasts is poor even by standard definition standards.

As noted in the guide in The Gazette, because CBMT transmits in analog on Channel 6, which is just below the FM radio band, its audio channel can be heard at 87.75MHz. Most FM radios allow you to tune that low, even though the band ends at 88 MHz. The only perceivable difference between the audio channel of an analog TV transmission and an FM broadcast radio transmission is that the former has a lower volume. So people can do things like listen to Hockey Night in Canada on the radio. This will, unfortunately, end on Sept. 1 when the analog transmitter goes down.

CFCF

Status: Transmitting digital-only as of Aug. 31.

Brand: CTV Montreal
Analog transmitter:

Channel: 12
Authorized power: 325,000W
Location: Mount Royal tower
Status: shut down 12:05am Aug. 31 (this was pushed up a day, was originally to be Sept. 1)

Transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 51
Authorized power: 2,700W
Location: Bell-Nexacor tower on Remembrance Rd.
Status: reduced power significantly around Aug. 27, shut down just after midnight Aug. 31

Post-transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 12 (same as analog)
Authorized power: 10,600W
Location: Mount Royal tower (same as analog)
Status: active as of 12:50am Aug. 31

Virtual digital channel: 12.1
Broadcasting program information via PSIP: Unknown
Available in HD on: Videotron illico (607), Bell Fibe (1205)
Digital transmitter location: Mount Royal tower
CRTC cost estimate: $440,619
Retransmitters: None
Digital transition website: http://www.ctv.ca/digitalswitch/

CFCF setup a temporary digital transmitter in January specifically so it could get it on air before the Super Bowl to take advantage of simultaneous substitution in HD. In a letter dated Jan. 4, 2011, CTV VP Kevin Goldstein specifically cited the Super Bowl as reason to expedite the application:

CTV respectfully requests that the Commission consider this application in an expedited manner as we hope to have Commission approval on or before January 28th, 2011 in advance of the broadcast of the Super Bowl on February 6th, 2011. CTV holds the Canadian broadcast rights to one of the most high profile sporting and broadcasting events of the year and approval of this application will rectify some concerns we have with respect to the requirements of certain BDU's to carry out simultaneous substitution during this broadcast.

CRTC gave approval on Jan. 21. The digital transmitter went live on Jan. 28. It's on a small tower on Remembrance Rd. near Beaver Lake, about 400 metres from the main Mount Royal tower and with an antenna about 100 metres below where their analog one is.

CTV Montreal General Manager Don Bastien said everything is ready to go. The digital transmitter has been tested twice and all that's left is to wait until the cutoff date. The analog transmitter is set to shut down at 12:05am on Sept. 1 - just after the end of the late newscast - and the permanent digital transmitter (using the same antenna and same channel) should be up 45 minutes later, he said.

Technical changes - including replacing the antenna, which had been in use since 1961 - happened last summer. Television transmitters on the Mount Royal tower were shut down overnight throughout the summer months as the tower was altered to prepare for the digital transition.

Bastien said the coverage area of the digital transmitter should be about the same as the analog one was (exact comparisons are difficult because of how reception of analog and digital signals differs).

CKMI-1

Status: Transmitting digital-only using temporary antenna as of Aug. 17.

Brand: Global Montreal
Analog transmitter:

Channel: 46
Authorized power: 33,000W
Location: Mount Royal tower
Status: shut down Aug. 13

Transitional/post-transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 15 (was assigned 51, but got approval to use 15 instead)
Authorized power: 8,000W
Location: Mount Royal tower (running on temporary antenna at base of tower)
Status: active since Aug. 17

Virtual digital channel: 15.1 (Global is the only Montreal station to choose a virtual channel different from its analog one)
Broadcasting program information via PSIP: No (except ratings)
Available in HD on: Videotron illico (608, replaced Global Toronto HD on Aug. 23)
Power (average ERP): 8,000W
Digital transmitter location: Mount Royal tower
CRTC cost estimate: $280,544/$380,994
Retransmitters:

Quebec City (CKMI), Channel 20, digital as of Aug. 13
Sherbrooke (CKMI-2), Channel 11, digital as of Aug. 10

Digital transition website: http://www.shaw.ca/dtv/

Global Montreal used to be based in Quebec City (which is why Quebec City's station is CKMI and Montreal's is CKMI-1). Canwest bought the station and setup transmitters in Montreal and Sherbrooke to create the regionally-licensed Global Quebec network. It then asked the CRTC to be re-licensed as a Montreal station so it could be allowed to seek local advertising.

CKMI-1 was the first of the nine Montreal stations to shut down its analog transmitter. It went dark on Aug. 13, and the digital transmitter started transmitting on Aug. 17. Global has been announcing that it's now on Channel 15, and its virtual digital channel is 15.1. Its satellites in Quebec City and Sherbrooke had already made the transition earlier in the month. Both remain on the same channel.

Videotron has been carrying Global HD from Toronto, which has been kind of a strange situation where Montreal viewers have been seeing Toronto local newscasts unless they switch to the standard-definition version of the channel. Videotron replaced Global Toronto HD with Global Montreal HD on Aug. 23. (Global was so happy it sent out a press release on the subject.)

Global Montreal's newscast is technically in high definition. The opening graphics are HD, as is the weather report (which is done out of Toronto). Master control is in Edmonton (I made a mistake in the original article, saying it was Vancouver - it switched to Edmonton in May 2009), which has HD facilities. Even the studio cameras are HD (the newscasts are anchored in Montreal, in a green room), but the data connection between Montreal and Edmonton isn't fast enough to deliver an HD signal.

Thankfully, Global is owned by Shaw, which has experience in telecommunications. A fat pipe is being setup, edit suites in Montreal will be upgraded and HD field cameras will be issued. "We are optimistic that our newscast will be produced in HD by the end of the year," said Shaw Media's Dervla Kelly. Once that happens, CFCF will be the only station in Montreal that produces a newscast that's not in HD.

"We've increased our over-the-air coverage area in all three markets," Kelly said of Global's Quebec stations. "More viewers will have access to our digital signal than had access to our analog signals."

CJNT

Status: Transmitting digital-only as of Aug. 27.

Brand: Metro 14
Analog transmitter:

Channel: 62
Authorized power: 11,000W
Location: roof of building next to Mount Royal tower
Status: shut down morning of Aug. 27

Transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 69
Status: never used

Post-transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 49
Authorized power: 4,000W
Location: roof of CTV building next to Mount Royal tower (same as analog)
Status: began operation on evening of Aug. 27

Virtual digital channel: 62.1
Broadcasting program information via PSIP: No
Available in HD on: Videotron illico (expecting 614 on Aug. 30)
Power (average ERP):
Digital transmitter location: Roof of CTV transmitter building next to Mount Royal tower
CRTC cost estimate: $273,881
Retransmitters: None
Digital transition website: http://www.metro14.ca/

You know CJNT, right? The multicultural station? It was scooped up by Canwest after failing to make money for many years, and it continued to not make money. Canwest threatened to shut it down along with the rest of its secondary E! network, but a company called Channel Zero bought it and sister station CHCH Hamilton for a grand total of $12. Since then, the station has produced no original programming, and has been embarrassingly repeating local shows from 2009 to fulfill its CRTC requirements. It has promised new programming for this fall, though, and some of it has already begun.

Metro 14 (the number is reference to its Videotron digital cable channel) went pretty well as scheduled for its digital transition. According to its schedule, the analog transmitter was to be shut off at 7am on Aug. 27 and the digital one was to be operational by 6pm. The delay was necessary to retune the antenna from Channel 62 to Channel 49. CHCH Broadcast Operations Manager Wayne Rabishaw, who is handling the CJNT transition along with four transmitters of CHCH, said the coverage area would actually greatly improve with the change, almost doubling, because the antenna they're using (which the station originally got used) was actually better for Channel 49 than Channel 62.

CHCH itself made the switch on Aug. 15, and Rabishaw said they had already gotten hundreds of phone calls from viewers. London and Muskoka were scheduled for this week, and Ottawa is set for Aug. 31. Their four remaining retransmitters (Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, North Bay and Timmins) will stay analog for now.

Rabishaw couldn't put a price on the CJNT transition, but said switching all five transmitters will cost Channel Zero "several million dollars".

CJNT is transmitting in HD, but so far I haven't spotted any actual HD programming on it. (Lots of programming in SD with black bars around it, though.) Rabishaw said programming will be in HD.

Metro 14's note says Videotron will add the station's HD feed on Channel 614 on Aug. 30. Cogeco will also begin carrying the station in standard and high-definition, but the satellite companies (Bell and Shaw) are only taking it in standard definition for now.

Once Videotron adds the HD feed, viewers can expect simultaneous substitution to begin in HD for American programming carried on CJNT. This includes 20/20, Nightline and Jimmy Kimmel Live.

CBFT

Status: Transmitting digital-only, on temporary antenna.

Brand: Radio-Canada Montréal
Analog transmitter:

Channel: 2
Authorized power: 100,000W
Location: Mount Royal tower
Status: shut down at 12am Sept. 1 (the last thing that aired was a beer ad)

Transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 19
Authorized power: 54,970W
Location: Mount Royal tower (temporary antenna at base of tower)
Status: active

Post-transitional digital channel:

Channel: 19 (same as transitional)
Authorized power: 447,820W
Location: Mount Royal tower
Status: will be active once new antenna is installed

Virtual digital channel: 2.1
Broadcasting program information via PSIP: No
Available in HD on: Videotron illico (602), Bell TV (1802/860), Bell Fibe (1112), Shaw Direct (244/380)
Digital transmitter location: Mount Royal tower
CRTC cost estimate: $4,266,294 (highest in Montreal)
Retransmitters: 28, none in mandatory markets or above Channel 16
Digital transition website: http://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/tvn/montreal_radio-canada.shtml

Like CBC, Radio-Canada has had a digital transmitter in Montreal since 2005. Since the transitional and post-transitional channels are the same, it is effectively operating in post-transitional mode, though I'm guessing from my signal meter that it's not operating at the post-transitional power level yet. At nearly 450,000W, it will be the most powerful digital television transmitter in Quebec.

Just about all of Radio-Canada's local and national programming has been in HD for some time.

Radio-Canada, like the CBC, will keep analog transmitters running in mandatory markets where it doesn't originate programming. This mostly affects the Prairies, southern Ontario and Atlantic Canada. All mandatory markets in Quebec will transition.

Radio-Canada also has two full-power transmitters that are on channels in the 52-69 range: Sainte-Famille and Lac-Etchemin, both retransmitters of CBVT (Quebec City) and both on Channel 55. The Lac Etchemin transmitter will become low-power, staying on the same channel, while the Sainte-Famille transmitter will be shut down.

CFTM

Status: Transmitting digital-only as of Sept. 1.

Brand: TVA Montréal
Analog transmitter:

Channel: 10
Authorized power: 325,000W
Location: Mount Royal tower
Status: shut down 12:01am Sept. 1

Transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 59
Authorized power: 6,140W
Location: TVA building (1600 de Maisonneuve Blvd. E.)
Status: never used

Post-transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 10 (same as analog)
Authorized power: 11,000W
Location: Mount Royal tower (same as analog)
Status: active as of 12:35am Sept. 1

Virtual digital channel: 10.1
Broadcasting program information via PSIP: Unknown
Available in HD on: Videotron illico (604), Bell TV (1804/861), Bell Fibe (1115), Shaw Direct (245/381)
Digital transmitter location: Mount Royal tower
CRTC cost estimate: $440,619
Retransmitters: None (but this is the flagship station of the TVA network)
Digital transition website: http://tva.canoe.ca/emissions/transitiontelenumerique/

TVA has, strangely, not been broadcasting in digital yet (or if it has, it's such low power that nobody has seen it). The plan is to make the switch directly on the night of Aug. 31 to Sept. 1. TVA has to coordinate its switch with CTV, since both use the same antenna.

TVA's local and national newscasts and other programming have been in HD for quite a while. Because it doesn't simulcast American programming, it doesn't need to setup a digital transmitter to take advantage of simultaneous substitution.

Across Quebec, TVA owns six stations, five of which will switch to digital (Montreal, Quebec, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Trois-Rivières) and one will not (Rimouski). The transmitter in Saguenay (CJPM) will run at first on a temporary digital transmitter, and then a full transmitter by Oct. 31, TVA's Serge Sasseville said. You can get channel information in this PDF file.

There are also four TVA affiliates not owned by Groupe TVA. Two stations in western Quebec are owned by RNC Media and are in mandatory markets (Gatineau and Rouyn-Noranda).

Two others in eastern Quebec are owned by Télé Inter-Rives:

CIMT in Rivière du Loup (a mandatory market), which has eight retransmitters, including one that fills a hole in coverage in the city of Rivière du Loup, and one in Edmunston, NB.
CHAU in Carleton-sur-Mer (which is not), which has 11 retransmitters around the Gaspé peninsula and northern New Brunswick.

Even though the CRTC's requirements would only force Télé Inter-Rives to switch its transmitters in Rivière du Loup to digital and move its retransmitter in Les Escoumins off of Channel 57, it has applied to switch all of its transmitters to digital. The transition for CHAU and its retransmitters has been delayed until mid-November due to delays in getting equipment. But since these are all transmitters that could stay analog if they wanted to, there's no deadline for making the change. CIMT and its retransmitters are still set for a Sept. 1 transition.

CFJP

Status: Transmitting digital-only as of Aug. 31.

Brand: V
Analog transmitter:

Channel: 35
Authorized power: 697,000W
Location: Mount Royal tower
Status: shut down 11:31pm Aug. 30

Transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 42
Authorized power: 13,900W
Location: Sherbrooke St. E. (corner of Amherst St.)
Status: shut down Aug. 30

Post-transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 35 (same as analog)
Authorized power: 13,750W (note this is actually slightly less than transitional transmitter)
Location: Sherbrooke St. E. (same as transitional)
Status: active as of 11:35pm Aug. 30

Virtual digital channel: 35.1
Broadcasting program information via PSIP: Unknown
Available in HD on: Videotron illico (605), Bell TV (1803/862), Bell Fibe (1114), Shaw Direct (248/388)
Digital transmitter location: Sherbrooke and Berri Sts. (analog transmitter is on Mount Royal tower, but digital one will stay downtown for "strategic reasons", the network says)
CRTC cost estimate: $280,713/$463,894
Retransmitters: None

V was kind of hard to get a hold of for this article. Emails and phone calls went unanswered until I finally heard from spokesperson Tim Ringuette, who blamed the network's fall launch for keeping him busy. Ringuette said the station has moved its digital transmitter off the Mount Royal tower site. "Décision stratégique," he wrote in a brief email. This most likely translates to "money" and V's reluctance to spend a lot of it renting expensive space on the Mount Royal tower (not to mention all the engineering work that goes into setting up a transmitter next to a bunch of other high-powered transmitters).

Ringuette said the coverage area should be almost identical to the analog signal now. I'm very skeptical that a transmitter on a downtown building (more than 200 metres lower in elevation) at a tiny fraction of the power can have the same coverage, particularly because I don't receive the digital transmitter at all right now.

CIVM

Status: Transmitting digital-only as of Sept. 1

Brand: Télé-Québec
Analog transmitter:

Channel: 17
Authorized power: 889,500W
Location: Mount Royal tower
Status: shut down for good at 1:30am Sept. 1

Transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 27
Authorized power: 8,956W
Location: Olympic Stadium
Status: shut down just after midnight Sept. 1

Post-transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 26
Authorized power: 160,600W
Location: Olympic Stadium (same as transitional)
Status: active as of 2:45am Sept. 1

Virtual digital channel: 17.1
Broadcasting program information via PSIP: Yes (detailed)
Available in HD on: Videotron illico (603), Bell TV (1839/799), Bell Fibe (1138)
Digital transmitter location: Olympic Stadium (analog transmitter is on Mount Royal tower, transitional digital one has been broadcasting from Olympic Stadium and will stay there post-transition)
CRTC cost estimate: $522,438/$676,519
Retransmitters: 11 (All Télé-Québec stations are effectively retransmitters of CIVM, and Télé-Québec plans to switch all of them to digital, regardless of market size)
Digital transition website: http://transitionnumerique.telequebec.tv/

Télé-Québec is the only one of the four French Quebec networks that has committed to transitioning all its transmitters to digital, regardless of market size. "La transition au numérique est notre priorité," said spokesperson Catherine Leboeuf. "Il s’agit du plus important changement technologique à court terme."

Digital transmitters are running in Montreal and Quebec City, the rest are scheduled to transition by Sept. 1.

Two exceptions are CIVB Rimouski and CIVB-1 Grand Fonds (which serves Rivière du Loup but is not considered a mandatory market station). They will be switching Sept. 7 and Sept. 15, respectively, and will maintain analog signal until their transition. Their website has a breakdown by transmitter.

The Montreal transmitter was setup on Olympic Stadium instead of Mount Royal and will remain there. The signal is very strong on the eastern side of the city, but those on the western side of the mountain are reporting trouble receiving it.

CFTU

Status: Transmitting in analog only. Transition deadline delayed until Oct. 31.

Brand: Canal Savoir
Analog transmitter:

Channel: 29
Authorized power: 10,000W
Location: Université de Montréal tower
Status: active, to be shut down by Oct. 31

Transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 54
Status: never used

Post-transitional digital transmitter:

Channel: 29 (same as analog)
Authorized power: 387W
Location: Université de Montréal tower
Status: to be activated by Oct. 31

Virtual digital channel: 29.1
Broadcasting program information via PSIP: Unknown
Not available in HD on cable/satellite
Digital transmitter location: Université de Montréal
CRTC cost estimate: $210,606
Retransmitters: None
Digital transition website: http://www.canal.qc.ca/passage_au_numerique.php

Canal Savoir had the most interesting transition story, so much so that I made it the lead of my article. General Manager Sylvie Godbout explained to me that, you see, they wanted to make the transition deadline, but haven't been able to access their transmitter because (1) the university is removing asbestos in the tower, and (2) a quartet of young peregrine falcons was just born there and couldn't be disturbed by construction work. (They're not technically endangered, but they're considered at risk, depending on the region and subspecies.)

The asbestos work makes sense. The university decided to do it in August when there weren't that many students around. The birds are just funny. In researching the article, I discovered that there's even a blog dedicated to them. They're named Tawodi, Rick, Éole and Altius, they're all boys and were hatched in early May. You can see videos of their development if you go back a few pages on the blog.

So the CRTC has "graciously" given them an extension until Oct. 31. Godbout said the plan is to get it done before the end of September. Until then, the analog signal will keep running.

A station run mostly by volunteers with an annual budget of $1.2 million, Canal Savoir would seem the least likely to want to spend a lot of money on a new transmitter. Godbout didn't pretend as though the money wouldn't have been better spent on programming, but she said they've known about this coming for three years and have been setting money aside for it. She wouldn't say how much it's going to cost (mostly because she doesn't know exactly), but it wasn't anywhere near the $1 million a transmitter figure that has been cited by the major broadcasters.

Canal Savoir is saving money, Godbout said, thanks in large part to assistance from Télé-Québec (Godbout used the term "graciously" more than once). Their analog transmitter - running for 25 years - was a used one from the provincial public broadcaster, and their technical help has also come from them. Though the station will have to buy a new digital transmitter, it will get help installing it.

Among the work that needs to be done is to reinforce the base of the antenna. Not easily done without disturbing the nest of some peregrine falcons that sits on the same tower.

Godbout also looked on the bright side: the old transmitter is the size of a fridge, and the new one will be smaller and generate much less heat, while serving the same population.

Though, Godbout said, she's going to have to buy herself a digital converter box. Not because she doesn't have cable service, but just so she can check on her station's transmitter from home.

Stores: What DTV transition?

I stopped by a few electronics stores to see how they were promoting the converter boxes people would need to get their TV signals after the transition. I was puzzled to see not one of them was actually promoting this, just a week before the end of analog TV.

The Source, which is owned by Bell (and plugged by name in its DTV transition ads, which is kind of pushing an ethical boundary there), had plenty of information and displays about Bell TV service, but I found only a single DTV converter box, and a few tearsheets about the transition.

At Future Shop downtown, lots of shiny HDTVs, but no big signs explaining the DTV transition. I found the converters on a shelf next to cable and satellite boxes. There were about 20 of the cheap Access HD box, which is about the size of a portable CD player and costs $50, but has a reputation online of getting very hot and forgetting its digital channel programming every time it's turned off. There were also some Coby boxes for sale for $60.

The flyers that came out this weekend for Future Shop and Best Buy also aren't really plugging the DTV transition. Both have the Access HD box, but Future Shop has it on page 28 and Best Buy has it on the back page.

A media spokesperson for Future Shop nationally said sales of converter boxes are "exceeding expectations". I'm guessing those expectations were fairly low.

When I went to Future Shop, I saw some people eyeing the converter boxes, spending quite a while trying to figure them out. I also overheard conversations between customers and staff looking at HDTVs that made it clear they had heard about the transition.

At Centre Hi-Fi, I stopped by, couldn't find the converters, and when I asked a staff member where they were he said they were all sold out. A few days later they had more Access HD boxes in the store.

("Access HD" is kind of a misnomer, implying that ... well, it's HD. It converts HD signals into analog, which is definitely not HD.)

My experience suggests you shouldn't have too much of a problem finding converter boxes unless there's a sudden rush for them (which could happen Sept. 1). Just stay away from The Source.

Digital subchannels: no thanks

One thing that kind of bugged me in the wake of the CBC transition delay was why Canadian stations weren't using digital subchannels. The American networks are taking advantage of this technology, with a main channel carrying HD programming and multiple standard-definition channels with things like 24-hour weather, repeated newscasts or alternative network programming. But Canadian broadcasters aren't using it.

I, and others, thought this would be a fine solution to CBC's problem. In most of the markets affected, the CBC is setting up a digital transmitter for its other network. Quebec City has a Radio-Canada digital transmitter, Fredericton has a CBC digital transmitter, etc. Couldn't they add a standard-definition subchannel with the other network on it? Quebec City's Radio-Canada station would be in HD on 12.1, and CBC could be in SD on 12.2.

Martin Marcotte, CBC's director of transmission (yeah, they have one of those), explained thusly:

CBC has looked at multiplexing of signals on a single transmitter.

First, that approach is not consistent with our general policy of building DTV transmitters only where we have originating stations.

Second, CBC-SRC wishes to transmit at the highest quality possible.

Third, it is correct that the subchannel would need to be SD so there would be a quality difference between the main channel and the subchannel.

Fourth, we are investigating mobile TV applications. Because a digital channel has a fixed bandwidth, any additions whether subchannels or mobile TV take away capacity from the main channel. That means a drop in quality. If you have a or more subchannels and mobile TV, the main channel essentially becomes SD or worse.

It sounds like a lot of different reasons, but it basically boils down to CBC not wanting to degrade the quality of its HD signal to fit in a secondary SD signal. While they would technically have to do that, I don't think compressing an HD signal from 19 to 15 megabits per second results in such a dramatic decrease in quality that it can't be done.

As far as the CRTC is concerned, there's no rule against using digital subchannels (or "multiplexing", as it calls the technology). But the subchannels would have to be licensed. So if, say, CTV wants to put its new CTV Two network as a subchannel to CFCF, it would probably have to get the okay from the CRTC before doing that.

Some people have suggested having specialty channels as digital subchannels (RDI on Radio-Canada's subchannel, Bold on CBC's, CTV News Channel on CFCF's, etc.). That probably wouldn't work out too well because of complaints from cable and satellite companies. They took RDI to task for having a livestream of the channel on its website, arguing that specialty channels shouldn't be distributed freely if they expect cable and satellite companies to pay for them. A similar issue would arise if the channels would be broadcast freely. Or, alternatively, the cable and satellite companies could then decide or even be forced to treat the specialty channels as over-the-air broadcasters and carry them free of charge to subscribers. The broadcasters probably wouldn't want that.

Is this even necessary?

In 2009, when the United States was set to do its digital transition, I argued that it seemed unnecessary. I understood the need to vacate part of the TV broadcast spectrum to sell off for better uses, but it seemed entirely possible to do this by simply reassigning channels 52 and above lower vacant channels in all but the biggest markets. How many markets do we have with more than 50 television channels, even if you include neighbouring markets?

It's not like digital television takes less space. Each channel still gets the same 6 MHz allocation. The only difference is that more information can be packed into that space now, allowing for HD or subchannels.

I asked the CRTC about this. They sent me to the Heritage department. Chaouki Dakdouki, the director of distribution and access policy (and possibly the most punctual person in the world - he said he'd call me at 10:30am, and my phone rang at exactly 10:30am), mentioned that digital signals will reduce interference between signals that are on adjacent channels. This would allow channels on adjacent channels in the same market instead of being spaced two apart. If this is true, then it makes sense. But even then, there aren't that many markets with more than a handful of stations - and few markets even have anything transmitting in the channels they want to get rid of.

It's too late to change anything now, but I still think some stations are being forced to switch unnecessarily. Thankfully the CRTC came to its senses and isn't forcing small towns to switch yet. The CBC has made it pretty clear most of those small transmitters will never be replaced with digital ones.

No coupon program

Those who were following the U.S. DTV transition might remember there was a coupon program that gave households discounts on converter boxes. It caused some ruckus because the government ran out of coupons (or, more accurately, ran out of money in the coupon program). This contributed to the decision to delay the transition a few months.

In Canada, there is no coupon program. No assistance for poor Canadians (or small broadcasters) to help them make the switch. It "wasn't deemed necessary," Dakdouki said, because of how few Canadians this would affect.

It's a curious position. The proportion of Canadians using antenna TV is lower than the U.S., but not by that much. And the U.S. drastically underestimated how many people would need converters for the digital transition. Judging from what I heard from Future Shop, I think the same might be happening here.

Dakdouki also pointed to the fact that, of the 7% or 8% of Canadian television viewers who don't have cable or satellite TV, about 35% of them watch programming online or through other means, which knocks this number down even further. I don't know how this compares to the United States, but it's interesting to note how fast other forms of television distribution are growing.

Antennas: Rabbit ears aren't dead

This transition is being called the death of "rabbit ears", but that's not exactly true. There's no difference between a digital and analog antenna, because the antenna is just a piece of wire cut to match a certain frequency. There's no reason analog antennas, including rabbit ears, can't be used for digital.

Antennas marketed as DTV-ready are different in two major ways: They have higher gain (which gives you a stronger signal whether in analog or digital), and they're better tuned to UHF frequencies (channels 14+) than VHF ones (2-13). This takes into account the fact that many VHF analog stations are switching to UHF channels for their digital transmitters. Most rabbit-ear antennas have long telescoping rods for VHF and a small loop for UHF. It's tempting to play with the length or position of the VHF antennas when watching a UHF station.

In Montreal, two stations are moving from VHF to UHF: CBMT (CBC) and CBFT (Radio-Canada). Two stations are staying on the (high) VHF band: CFCF (CTV) and CFTM (TVA). And the rest are staying on UHF.

The difference between Channel 2 (55 MHz) and Channel 10 (193 MHz) - the lowest post-transition channel in the city - is very significant, so there's definitely a shift upward in terms of frequency range (which means a shift downward for antenna length). But rabbit ears that pick up a wide range of frequencies should be able to pick up most strong stations.

Since most stations won't be at full power until after the Sept. 1 transition, I would recommend waiting until after that (maybe even give it a week or two in case things need to be fine-tuned) until deciding that your existing antenna is insufficient for the task.

Thoughts from viewers

I asked for input from antenna TV watchers while researching the article. I got plenty of responses, though most were people who either already had digital TVs or tuners or were planning to get them by the deadline. I had a vision of the perfect source for the story, a poor family with a dozen kids and an old TV, too poor to buy a converter but who sat by the old box and watched the broadcast networks for hours a day.

The closest I got to the perfect source was a man who wrote in to the paper in early August. The handwritten letter was left on my desk one night with a note from my editor saying that sometimes it just falls in your lap. I called him up, but while he was fine sharing his story, he didn't want his name publicized. He didn't want people to know he was on social assistance. Understandable, but frustrating. He said he'd probably buy a converter, and half-joked that he'd go around collecting refundable cans and bottles to raise the money.

For the record, here are some stories I've heard from the rest of you. Hardly a random sample, but interesting anecdotally:

Micah Galizia: "I watch OTA with an antenna and am very happy the DTV conversion is finally here. ... My TV is about five years old."
Regis Glorieux: "Cut the cord when I moved from Montreal to St-Eustache over 15 years ago. Been on antenna ever since. ... Our TVs are old school analog tube, I bought a couple ATSC digital tuners a couple of years ago when the US stations were switching over to digital."
Richard Archambault: "2 TVs (one is digital ready, small bedroom TV isn't) - both with DVD players; 2 young children at home who watch TeleQuebec on TV ... My wife and I usually watch the news, DVDs (including TV series), docs and movies on TeleQuebec and occasionally whatever other stuff may be on, but otherwise turn it off if there's nothing. I used to not be able to afford cable (rather pay for Internet access), but I recently got a promotion and thus I could afford it now if I really wanted to, but.. I find that when I visit my mother's house, sometimes I'll spend 20 minutes flipping through channels and not really finding anything worthwhile. Ideally, if I could pick only the channels I wanted (NatGeo, Discovery, maybe a sports channel for the occasional Habs game midweek when CBC doesn't play them usually, Spanish-language channels for my wife), and if I wasn't limited by the amount of Canadian channels I am required to have (I invariably have too many non-Canadian channels when I test-run my channel selections on Bell or Videotron's websites, for "pick your own" packages), then, and only then, would it be worth paying cable. So yeah, I figure I'll get a new antenna eventually, sometime in September likely."
Sarah Szefer: "Yes, I'm still using rabbit ears to access digital TV on my HDTV. Although I do get tons of interference from the Montreal Port (which means no US stations come in at all), I still can get flawless signals from Rad-Can, CBC, V, and Télé-Québec."
Rose-Line Beaupre (Regina): "I own 2 television sets. I have bought a converter box for one TV only. It was about $90. It's a very old TV and in a year or when the TV dies, I will buy a digital TV and put the converter to the other TV. The other TV is mostly used to watch movies when I'm working in my sewing room. I don't watch a lot of TV and this is the first reason I don't have cable. It's not worth the money. I'm a Francophone native living in the Prairies. I essentially bought the converter box to be able to watch Radio-Canada - Regina and watch the national news from Montréal. The news are also available on the net but I don't want to be limited to the computer in order to stay connected."
Jack Nathanson: "I am still on analog. I get the impression that the digital broadcasts won't actually begin until after September 1, so I won't get a digital box until after the analog signals have stopped." (I called Nathanson, and gave him some information about the transition. He lives on the fourth floor of a building in the Snowdon area, which should have pretty good reception. He says he used to watch a lot of TV, but does less so now. Still, he'll probably get a converter box.)

Thanks for everyone who shared their experiences. Feel free to add your own below, or ask any questions you might have.

No conspiracies

In talking to people and reading comments about the digital transition, a lot of the ones familiar enough with media ownership believe broadcasters are manipulating the switch in some way as to force people to aligned cable and satellite services. (CTV is owned by Bell, Global is owned by Shaw, and TVA is owned by Quebecor, which also owns Videotron.) Strained logic has even been contradictory - some claiming that an early switch is pushing people to pay for TV because they no longer get analog signals, others claiming a late switch is pushing people to pay because they think they can't get HD over the air.

The evidence indicates that, if anything, the opposite is true: broadcasters affiliated with cable companies are more likely to provide a better signal after the transition. Of the broadcasters on the Mount Royal tower that are not CBC/Radio-Canada (which runs the tower), it's the two that aren't affiliated with cable companies (CIVM/Télé-Québec and CFJP/V) that have decided to move off the tower, sacrificing coverage in order to save on rent. TVA, CTV and Global are staying on the tower, and are either replicating their coverage area or improving it slightly. (CJNT/Metro14 is not on the tower itself, but at its base, but its coverage has improved significantly.)

That's not to say there isn't some silliness going on. CTV's transition information points people to buy Bell TV or converter boxes at The Source, which is also owned by Bell. Shaw is plugging their free satellite program (but not very much - they're doing this as part of a promise to the CRTC, but the fewer satellites they give away, the less it costs them), but otherwise not pushing people to get Shaw service. (Global's story about the DTV transition even points to competitors' programs.) And TVA's transition page makes no mention of the word "Videotron".

But what really matters - and where the costs really lie - is the transmitters. The CRTC is forcing the switch, broadcasters have waited until the last month if not the last minute so their analog viewers have service as long as possible, and the digital transmitters for the most part try to replicate coverage area. In short, I don't see much of a conspiracy here.

Michel Godbout leaving CBC for TVA Sports

Fagstein — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 18:05:21 +0000

Michel Godbout has found a new career opportunity over the horizon

Quebecor's soon-to-be-launched TVA Sports specialty channel isn't just looking to RDS hockey analysts like Dave Morissette and Yvon Pedneault (or La Presse's Réjean Tremblay) for on-air talent. Their hiring spree has also poached CBC Montreal's sports anchor.

Michel Godbout confirmed Monday that he will be leaving the CBC to join the TVA Sports channel set to debut this fall. ~~His last day is July 30~~. (He was cut off early: see below)

Godbout (who is, as you can imagine, fully bilingual) worked for 15 years at Radio-Canada and then CBC Montreal - most famously as the evening news anchor between 2005 (when Dennis Trudeau retired) and 2009 (when Andrew Chang and Jennifer Hall took over a revamped newscast). He starts an anchoring job at TVA Sports on Aug. 22.

TVA Sports, which was approved by the CRTC in February 2010, has already signed deals to carry some Ottawa Senators games and most Montreal Impact soccer games, though it failed to get the government to break the deal the Canadiens have with RDS. Quebecor is also trying to get an NHL team to Quebec City, giving another big reason for fans to subscribe to this channel.

No word yet on who will replace Godbout permanently. CBC Montreal News Director Mary-Jo Barr is on vacation until August.

You can follow Godbout on Twitter at @GodboutSports (fortunately he won't have to change that name - but expect it to be a bit more francophone in the future).

UPDATE (July 21): Thursday was Godbout's last day. He says during an interview this morning on CBC Daybreak that he gave his two weeks' notice on Friday (July 15), but was told that Thursday would be his last day, being let go because he was leaving for a competitor.

Godbout had a brief goodbye on air with Debra Arbec (Andrew Chang was off):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfYro2kLsVc

Debra Arbec, Catherine Sherriffs debut without a hitch

Fagstein — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 09:15:37 +0000

Debra Arbec (left) on CBC at 5, and Catherine Sherriffs on CTV at 11:30

Monday was a pretty big day for local TV watchers, with new faces debuting on CBC and CTV newscasts.

Debra Arbec, who left CFCF in May for an evening anchor position at CBMT, saying she wanted a shot at a supper-hour newscast, finally got her first night on air after her contractual obligation to CTV ended on July 1. She co-anchors with Andrew Chang from 5pm to 6:30pm, replacing Jennifer Hall, who has moved back to southern Ontario.

CTV, meanwhile, gave Arbec's old job of 11:30pm weekday anchor to Catherine Sherriffs, who wasn't even part of the permanent reporting staff at the time. Sherriffs's first shift as a television anchor was Monday night.

Both Arbec and Sherriffs were flawless on their first nights, and got lots of praise from their bosses.

Smooth transition for Arbec

"It could not have gone smoother," said CBC Montreal News Director Mary-Jo Barr, who has been working with Arbec for three weeks. "I was so excited to see the team on air," she said. "It felt like Christmas morning."

Arbec agreed that things went very smoothly, even when the first news report she introduced failed to play and she had to give her first we're-having-technical-difficulties speech.

Asked what the biggest transition issue was, Arbec pointed to technology. CBC uses Avid video editing software, and Arbec had to learn to edit, something she didn't do at CTV. And in HD, to boot. She and Chang edit the international news roundup themselves.

Arbec also said the change in the schedule took some getting used to. "My body clock has been used to late nights for so long," she said. Now she has a day job and can spend evenings at home with her husband, Brian Wilde.

Chang, incidentally, also will have a more daytime schedule. It was decided to pull him off the late-night newscast (which runs 10 minutes from 10:55 to 11:05pm) so he could concentrate exclusively on the supper-hour show. Instead of coming in at 3pm and having only two hours to familiarize himself with the show, he can come in and shape it from the beginning. "The show was always a bit of a surprise to him," Barr said. The move was done by rearranging existing staff, avoiding the need to increase the show's budget by hiring another person.

Reporter Amanda Margison has been given the late-night host job, which includes some lineup editing and monitoring breaking news during the 5pm newscast.

Arbec heaped praise on her coworkers, including co-host Chang, who she said has been "such a godsend for technology for me." She's had a chance to meet the new team (she likened it to moving to a new school) and how to pronounce their names (try saying "Anna Asimakopoulos" without hesitating) and said they were all "really supportive and understanding" about her move there.

Aside from anchoring and preparing the newscast, Arbec will also be introducing a weekly segment called Montrealer of the Week, profiling people who make a difference in the community but aren't otherwise recognized. Similar in style to the My Montreal series she did at CTV, but focusing on individuals instead of ethnic groups. They will air Fridays, with the first one this coming Friday.

You can watch the 6-6:30pm portion of Arbec's first newscast here. It includes and end-of-show welcome from Chang, in which Arbec notes how fast the hour and a half went. CBC also has Arbec's bio on its website.

UPDATE (Sept. 26): The Gazette's Brendan Kelly profiles Arbec as an advance to a half-hour special Secrets of Montreal, which she hosts.

Sherriffs's nerves fade quickly

A few hours later at CFCF, it was Sherriffs's turn behind the desk. A smaller desk, as she was thrown the curveball of having her first day also be the first day of a new temporary set while they build a brand new studio.

"She went into that position a little cold," said CTV Montreal News Director Jed Kahane. "It's not a hermetically sealed studio. There's a lot of distraction. I thought it was great that she was able to do it under those circumstances."

For Sherriffs herself, it was a bit intimidating doing her first shift as a television news anchor. Other than some time with Todd van der Heyden on Crescent St. during the Formula One broadcasts, she hasn't had any experience behind the desk. She got some voice coaching (standard for new anchors, Kahane said), but nothing beat the pressure of being live on air by yourself.

"I was more nervous when I came in at the beginning of the shift," Sherriffs said. By showtime, she realized there was no going back now, and with every segment the nerves became more manageable.

The nervousness showed a bit on air, particularly in more light-hearted segments when she didn't seem entirely natural. By Tuesday night, it seemed much less apparent and she looked a lot more comfortable in her new role. (Well, as comfortable as you can be with bright lights shining on you, a camera in your face and thousands of people watching you live.)

Like Arbec, Sherriffs credited her crew for helping her get through it. "The crew was amazing," she said, offering her lots of support.

And in case you were curious, Arbec did watch Sherriffs's first show, even though it was on what is now a competitor's channel. She said Sherriffs did a fine job and she wishes her well.

You can read Sherriffs's CTV bio here.

A new studio at CFCF

CTV and RDS are really excited about upgraded studios that are being constructed on the ground floor of their building at Papineau St. and René-Lévesque Blvd. But before CTV can move in to the new set in September, it has to vacate its old one. Sunday's 11:30pm newscast with Paul Karwatsky was the last in the old studio (he's very proud of that). Starting Monday at noon, the newscasts were being done on a temporary set constructed in the CTV Montreal newsroom.

The temporary set has its issues. For one thing, there's only one chair behind the anchor desk. Kahane says the plan is to only have one anchor at a time (summer vacations mean the newscasts that normally have two anchors won't again until September). But it still causes some interesting situations, particularly when they have to switch between news and sports anchor. Currently, one of the two stands when they chat with each other during transitions, which is a bit awkward.

The other thing is that the newsroom is a pretty active place. There was a bit of noise in the audio from the anchor desk on the first night, and people working in the newsroom during a broadcast have to be careful what they yell or what they do when they're in the camera's view.

The set added a bit of awkwardness to the introductions, because the establishing shot of the studio can't be done anymore. Since that's where the booming voiceover introducing the anchors comes in, that's gone too. Now, the newscast goes straight from the opening theme to a closeup shot of the anchor. It's a bit of a jarring transition for someone used to the way the newscast works.

Kahane said most of the work in setting up the temporary studio came in fixing the lighting. There was a camera in the newsroom before that reporters could use to report breaking news and the late anchor would use to say what's coming up at 11:30, but to do an entire newscast from there, the background needed to be a bit better than the drab and - by television standards - dark cubicles of a newsroom.

Still, the production has a kind of out-of-the-basement feel to it. It looks fine technically, but it doesn't feel as comfortable.

Kahane said the summer was a good time to do this (it's kind of a lull in the news industry, and TV ratings are generally down as people head out and do things with their lives). And the move into a new expansive studio (with windows!) will be worth it.

The new studio will be "HD-ready", meaning the infrastructure will be suitable for HD broadcast, but there are no concrete plans yet to convert the newscast to high definition. CTV has prioritized its specialty channels, which are currently being transitioned. And Montreal hasn't been made a high priority because of the lack of competitive pressure.

Kahane also said the temporary set will be used as the in-the-newsroom live reporter feed once the new studio is in place, and its look will fit in with the look of the new studio.

You can watch the report CTV did here for some visuals of the building of the new set and the temporary one.

And what of their old set? Part of it is being used in the temporary studio, but the big desk and other elements have been donated to Concordia University's journalism department, where it's being used in their studio to teach students to become TV anchors themselves.

Debra Arbec leaves CTV to co-host CBC newscast

Fagstein — Wed, 11 May 2011 18:21:26 +0000

Debra Arbec waves goodbye to fans on her last trip on the CTV St. Patrick's Day float

News went out to CTV Montreal staffers early Wednesday morning that evening news anchor Debra Arbec has been poached by CBC Montreal to co-anchor its 5pm newscast, replacing the departing Jennifer Hall as Andrew Chang's co-anchor.

Hall is leaving for personal reasons, returning with her family to southern Ontario.

"It's been an amazing ride at CTV," Arbec told me on the phone today, describing the job at CBC as "a great opportunity." She says her contract there begins July 1 (though she suspects she'll get that first day off).

Though this is hardly the first change of stations for a local TV newscaster (CTV recently picked Kai Nagata from CBC to fill its Quebec City bureau, weatherman Frank Cavallaro was hired by CBC after his contract at CTV expired, and Global's evening news anchor Jamie Orchard worked for CTV before she got the bigger job at the smaller station many years ago). But it's a bit odd to see someone of Arbec's profile quitting the highest-rated station in the city to go to the No. 2.

For Arbec, who said she's "not really a numbers person," the issue was more her placement on the schedule than her placement on the dial. "It's obvious that a supper-hour show wasn't in the cards at CTV. Mutsumi (Takahashi) is very much loved in Montreal and will be for a very long time," she said, with no apparent hard feelings for the city's most veteran English-language TV news anchor.

Arbec has been hosting CFCF's 11:30pm newscast since 2003. Though it's 35 minutes long, only about 15 of that is news, which is a very small amount of daily airtime. CBMT's supper-hour newscast, meanwhile, is 90 minutes from 5pm to 6:30pm (even if it is a bit repetitive).

Still, ratings are an issue, and Arbec said she knows "a challenge will be to continue to grow CBC's numbers," which have just about doubled since the expanded newscast started but are still not even in the same ballpark as CFCF.

"I didn't make the decision lightly," Arbec said. She's been working there for 13 years, and "I love the people there."

That would obviously include Brian Wilde, who she met at CTV and has been married to for five years. She said it would be different not working together at the same station (they worked the late newscast together last week, which she said was fun), but she doesn't expect any major changes in their personal lives, except for the fact that she can now spend her late evenings at home.

Before joining CFCF in December 1997, Arbec worked a few years at The Weather Network (Frank Cavallaro and Tarah Schwartz also have TWN on their resumés) and before that she was at CJAD, according to the CTV biography that will probably disappear eventually. In addition to hosting the 11:30pm newscast, she did "My Montreal" segments on the city's cultural communities. She also had an election notebook on the 6pm newscast during the most recent campaign.

Jed Kahane, the news director at CTV Montreal, said it was too early to say what the station plans to do now, or whether there will be a job posting to replace her. Paul Karwatsky will be doing the 11:30pm newscast for the rest of the week, and Kahane said other regulars who substitute for Arbec will probably also fill in while they take their time figuring out a permanent replacement.

Though he spoke in a monotonous voice - not angry, but not terribly excited either - Kahane said the split was amicable, that Arbec did a "fantastic job" at the station and that they wished her well.

Don't expect to see much talk of her on air, though. Situations like this usually call for a big media splash from the poaching station, but not a peep from the victim. Arbec has already been pulled off the air - her last show was Tuesday night.

Neither side would comment on what negotiations, if any, were made to keep Arbec at CTV.

CBC Montreal news director Mary-Jo Barr called it a "seamless" process, and said her station was "very fortunate" that Arbec's desire for an opportunity at 6pm coincided with Hall's departure.

"Jennifer's departure left us with big shoes to fill," Barr said. "Everything came together at the right time."

From CBC's side, the move makes sense. The biggest challenge for Hall was that she had little connection to the city when she was hired. Arbec was born here, raised here, educated here and worked here, and her experience at CTV not only gives her the ideal skill set to take this job, but CBC can hope for a modest following who might switch with her. (It's unclear that Cavallaro brought any significant numbers to CBMT, so I wouldn't expect too much impact in the ratings department just from this.)

Barr said she was "looking foremost for a really strong anchor," but that Arbec's knowledge of the city and the trust she has built with viewers are definite assets. She said the two have known each other for a long time.

Chang, who's going to be co-anchoring with Arbec, said he was "excited and sad" about the news. Sad because Hall's departure means he's "not just losing a co-anchor (but) losing a friend" - but excited because he's looking forward to Arbec, who he described as "rock solid."

No big changes are planned for CBC Montreal to coincide with the new anchor, though Barr said she is considering having both anchors focus just on the supper-hour newscast and bringing in a third anchor to do the 10-minute late night newscast at 10:55pm currently hosted by Chang. Having to stay late means Chang's shift starts in the afternoon, leaving him little time to shape the 5pm newscast.

It's too early to say what kind of marketing push will be made to let the population know of Arbec's hiring, Barr said, though "we hope we can make a bit of a splash."

At the very least, they're going to need new fridge magnets:

With Jennifer Hall departing, these things are collectors' items ... or just surplus.

UPDATE: Arbec has changed her Twitter handle from DebraArbecCTV to DebraArbecCBC for obvious reasons. She posted a couple of tweets letting her followers know about her move.

Meanwhile, fans on Twitter are expressing their shock and wishing her well, including fellow TV journalists Stéphane Giroux and Kai Nagata of CTV, Global's Mike Le Couteur and CBC's Michel Godbout and Andrew Chang.

UPDATE (May 12): A story from CBC Montreal and a brief in The Gazette.

In Twitter photos, Stéphane Giroux captures Arbec making off with the supermarket checkout counter divider with her face on it, while Arpon Basu captures her almost-~~baron~~ barren desk at CTV.

Arbec was interviewed by Mike Finnerty on CBC Daybreak Thursday morning. She told Finnerty that while she had no complaints about her treatment at CTV, "I just felt that I was not able to grow any longer," she said, pointing to the fact that there wasn't any hope of her getting a supper-hour show at CTV and that her contract there had expired.

UPDATE (June 22): CBC has posted a promo video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho0FOzpNSpc

Ratings: CFCF dominates, but CBMT’s happy

Fagstein — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 19:54:42 +0000

Fall 2010 ratings for Montreal anglophone evening newscasts

It's the kind of statistic that can only be visualized in pie chart form: CFCF (CTV Montreal) continues to dominate the ratings of the three local evening newscasts, according to figures Bill Brownstein put out in Saturday's story about the station's anniversary (which, incidentally, is today - happy anniversary). It has more than six times as many viewers as its nearest competitor, and more than four out of every five people watching an anglophone newscast at 6pm is tuned to channel 12.

It's nothing new. CFCF has been dominating the ratings like this for years, ever since massive budget cuts at the CBC caused people to tune away from NewsWatch.

But the public broadcaster is slowly fighting its way back up. Almost a year and a half since introducing a 90-minute evening newscast (that relied primarily on repeating the same stories), CBMT is seeing a ratings spike in the 5-6pm hour.

"Our audience has almost doubled at 5 and 5:30 since last fall," news director Mary-Jo Barr explains in an email. "Our share at 5pm is 9% (up from 5% in fall 2009) and our 5:30 share is 10% (up from 6% in Fall 2009). This is the largest audience the CBC has held in the 5-6 timeslot in recent memory. We couldn't be more pleased."

This is a sign that Montrealers are realizing there's a newscast at 5pm on CBC, and if for whatever reason that timeslot is more convenient for them, they can get their news from CBC instead of CTV. It's nowhere near the kind of ratings CFCF gets for its 6pm newscast, but it should still serve as a lesson to CBMT, Global's CKMI and other stations who trail badly in the ratings department: Unless you have a truckload of money to waste, don't try to take beat the leader with a bad copy of what it does.

Barr also credits some content changes for the increased ratings. "We've been working hard to make the show as relevant as possible to English Montrealers," she says. "We've more clearly defined each half hour. We've increased our investigative reporting by dedicating our Shawn Apel to the beat and by embedding Nancy Wood in Radio-Canada's investigative unit. We've also added a weekly segment, Jennifer Hall's "Montrealer of the Week", which features the achievements of everyday Montrealers. We also continue to place special emphasis on breaking news, live reporting, and local news and weather. Seems like the winning formula is starting to pay off."

(With respect to Apel, who is a solid reporter, an investigative team of one isn't going to make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. But I appreciate the effort.)

So where do we go from here? I think CBC should just scrap the last half-hour of its newscast and run a straight hour from 5 to 6, where they have no competition (unfortunately, because too many big decisions are still made in Toronto, that's not likely to happen here unless it happens everywhere else too). Find places or beats that CFCF either isn't interested in covering or isn't doing a good job with, and make those their own.

And what about Global?

Mike Le Couteur hosting what is apparently the Global Maritimes newscast

I hesitate to use the word "laughingstock", mostly out of respect to the small crew of journalists who are trying their best there. But I tuned in to last night's News Final (it's the only local anglo newscast between 11:05 and 11:30) to see that it had a "Global Maritimes" bug in the corner. That lasted about 10 minutes until I mentioned it on Twitter and someone fixed it.

Yes, "it's just a bug", but it's a symptom of the larger problem of what happens when you try to run a newscast on the cheap by producing and directing it in another city. I've watched the show many times waiting for the weatherman to accidentally give the Toronto forecast (CKMI's weather is done by the weather presenter at Global's Toronto station), and to his credit I haven't seen Anthony Farnell slip up yet.

There's some hope on the horizon. With Shaw's acquisition of Global from Canwest, they've promised (as part of a government-mandated compensation package) to invest significantly in the stations, among them a new local morning show set to debut in 2012 (four years after This Morning Live went off the air). It's unclear at this point how much of that would actually be produced and directed in Montreal, but it fills a gaping hole in local news, where the only thing between midnight and noon is a local news ticker at the bottom of the screen during CTV's Canada AM.

I think CKMI should consider moving its evening newscast, perhaps to 7pm, and either move those stupid celebrity gossip shows elsewhere or kill them entirely. But they won't, of course. Global, unfortunately, gave up on local news in this market long ago.

The Alouettes parade and the two solitudes

Fagstein — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 07:35:58 +0000

A TV camera setup for live coverage of the Grey Cup parade and party in 2009.

Last year, when the Alouettes won the Grey Cup with a spectacular last-second field goal against the Saskatchewan Roughriders (though TSN's placement of it as the #1 wacky CFL moment of all-time was a bit over-the-top), I went down to Ste. Catherine St. and the new Place des Festivals and joined in the party, taking a few photos of the assembled media. It was fun being in such a large crowd celebrating a pro sports championship.

This year, the Grey Cup wasn't as exciting. (I barely noticed it was over, looking up from my copy editing station.) And with the same parade-and-party planned, and the weather not looking too hot, I reluctantly stayed home to watch the coverage on TV.

Thankfully, there wasn't a lack of live parade coverage on television, but where it was covered and where it wasn't made it clear to me how geographically biased Canada's English and French-language networks are.

On the English side, both CFCF (CTV) and CKMI (Global) aired live parade specials, as they had last year. Some kudos are due to Global here, which has awfully few resources and doesn't even produce its own newscast. I've criticized the station for barely meeting CRTC minimums on local programming (and even then by airing repeats of their newscasts at 6am and 6:30am), for outsourcing their production and using a fake, misleading green-screen set, and even having a weatherman who's based in Toronto (but pretends he's in Montreal). So to be able to put together a two-hour live special, with Mike Le Couteur in studio, Richard Dagenais at the Place des Festivals and Domenic Fazioli along the parade route, must have been quite the feat for this tiny group. CFCF's special may have been technically better, but was half an hour shorter and replaced their noon newscast.

CBMT (CBC Montreal) didn't air a parade special. I can't remember the last time this once-great station aired a live local special event. A CBC camera was on site with local sports reporter Sonali Karnick, but it was only used to give some live hits for CBC News Network. Online, they had a webcast of the parade and party without any commentary or interviews.

I went over to the all-news and all-sports networks: CBC News Network, CTV News Channel, TSN and Rogers Sportsnet. I figured they all had good reason to cover this parade. It's not like anything else breaking was going on at noon on a Wednesday.

You know what I found? Nothing.

CBC and CTV's news channels were going through the motions, recapping the latest headlines. TSN was recapping the previous night's Maple Leafs game, followed by a broadcast of competitive darts.

Darts!

TSN, which two days earlier had been crowing about how it had 4.94 million viewers for the Grey Cup game (a further 1.1 million was watching on RDS), just short of the previous year's record, apparently thought that showing SportsCentre and darts was more interesting than a Grey Cup victory parade.

What annoys me most was how little effort would have been required to give this a national audience. Nothing important would have to have been pre-empted. And because CTV owns CFCF, CTVNC and TSN, they could have simply had the national news and sports channels take the CFCF feed for an hour and a half and shown the parade nationally as Montreal viewers were watching it. There are anglophone Montreal expats across the country, not to mention simple fans of the Canadian Football League (surely that 4.94 million wasn't all Roughriders fans, considering Saskatchewan's total population is just over 1 million).

CBC would have needed more effort, but even then it already had plenty of resources in place. RDI was covering the parade live, and Sonali Karnick was in place with a CBC camera and live feed. Would it have really been that much more difficult to just air the common parade feed and provide some colour commentary?

Montréal = français, Toronto = English

On the French side, it was the opposite problem: The cable channels had parade specials, but the local channels didn't air them. LCN, RDI and RDS all had specials lasting more than two hours. Radio-Canada and TVA stuck with regular programming, which at noon means newscasts. Brief stories about the parade, but no live special. V and Télé-Québec, well, they don't have news departments so I didn't exactly expect much from them.

Part of me wants to see the Toronto Argonauts win the next Grey Cup so I can contrast the coverage plans. Does anyone seriously believe that CTVNC, CBCNN, TSN, CP24, Sportsnet and the rest wouldn't give this wall-to-wall coverage if it was in Toronto? And, conversely, that LCN, RDI and RDS would all ignore it completely if it was anywhere other than Montreal (or maybe Quebec City)?

LCN, RDS and CTV are privately-owned networks, so they can do whatever they want. If they want to be homers for the cities their broadcast studios are located in, if they have little interest in covering any event that's not happening within 50 kilometres of their offices, if they want to be de facto regional news networks, that's up to them.

But CBC is publicly-financed, and their geographical bias really annoys me, particularly with RDI, which can often be mistaken for an all-Montreal-news channel. I realize that a large part of its market lives within the greater Montreal area, but as a national French-language news channel it has a mandate to cover the entire country, not just wherever they can get to on a tank of gas from the Maison Radio-Canada.

CBC should have been there. And if the Roughriders had won, RDI should have been in Regina.

You might think this is a silly discussion to have over something as trivial as a Grey Cup victory parade, but it's a symptom of a larger problem. We see the same decisions being made during municipal and provincial elections, or provincial budgets, or just about any other prescheduled major local news events. During the last municipal election in 2009, the local anglo stations couldn't be bothered to cut into their American programming, so updates were limited to their websites, the 11pm newscasts and the occasional news break during commercials. The last provincial election was better, but there was more national interest in that vote. That press conference of Alouettes president Larry Smith announcing his resignation? Live on RDI and LCN, but all but ignored by CTV News Channel and CBC News Network.

As local stations get gutted of their resources and national networks continue to figure out ways of centralizing the basic functions of broadcasting, the ability to do special event programming is severely reduced. And as those same network bigwigs continue to put competitive interests above their duties to serve national populations, these geographical biases from our national news and sports networks will only get worse.

You can re-watch the parade specials (or parts thereof) online from CFCF, CKMI, RDS (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10) and RDI

Kai Nagata takes over CTV’s Quebec bureau

Fagstein — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 09:00:01 +0000

Kai Nagata reporting live from outside in the cold last January

More than three months after posting an opening for a Quebec City reporter to replace the retiring John Grant, CFCF reached out and stole an up-and-comer from its direct competitor, hiring CBC Montreal reporter Kai Nagata for the job.

The station didn't get much demand for the job internally, with much of its staff consisting of veterans who aren't eager to move to a city that's more than a two-hour drive away and doesn't have much of an English scene.

"I think our current staff of reporters are pretty happy with what they're doing now, and simply chose to stay put," CTV Montreal news director Jed Kahane told me. "Most of them have deep roots in Montreal, with families and other personal commitments here, so I wasn't expecting any internal applicants."

So instead, he reached out to Nagata and offered him the job, which Nagata formally accepted last Friday.

"I've been watching Kai since he started at CBC and was always very impressed with his work," Kahane said in a totally not-press-release-y way. "He's a serious journalist with a lot of insight and commitment. He's also a great storyteller who is at ease in front of the camera. I think what matters most in this profession is curiosity, a critical eye and a strong desire to inform the public responsibly. Kai has all of that; the rest he'll learn.

"I saw him cover the opening day of Marc Bellemare's testimony the other day for CBC's The National, and he did a great job. I'm really excited he's joining our team, and like his predecessor John Grant who is retiring at the end of the month, I'm confident Kai will earn the respect of our viewers."

Nagata, 23, has only been working at the CBC since the spring of 2008. He moved to Montreal from Vancouver a year earlier to take Concordia's graduate journalism diploma program. I've known him since then - we play the occasional soccer or board game. (So feel free to compensate for any bias this post may have in his favour.)

"A chance to step up my game"

Asked about his move, Nagata said he was both excited about this new adventure and sad that "I'm leaving behind the only journalistic family I've ever known. These are people I respect professionally but I also shared a lot of laughs and frustrations and cold cafeteria meals with. It's not an easy thing to walk away from."

Still, Nagata said he has felt "a sense of restlessness" that this new opportunity can help alleviate. "They're giving me the chance to cover the biggest stories in the province for the biggest anglophone audience in the province and to immerse myself in francophone culture in a beautiful city and find out what I'm made of."

"CBC went out of their way from the very beginning to challenge me and to present me with opportunities to cover these interesting stories and to go places and talk to people and to file nationally for radio and TV, but when it came down to it I just felt like the job that CTV is offering me is a chance to step up my game as a journalist."

Nagata said he's particularly glad that he'll have something few television reporters have the luxury of these days: a beat. "Politics is about people," he said. "There's a lot of beats that I admire, but politics has always attracted me."

What about CBC?

The CBC was gracious about Nagata's career advancement, while putting a positive spin on it.

"Kai is very talented and we'll miss him around here, but we're happy for him and wish him all the best," said News Director Mary-Jo Barr. "I'm proud to know our journalists at CBC Montreal are second to none, and are sought after by other organizations."

Barr can hardly fault Nagata's move. She herself used to work at CTV, and plenty of people have jumped from one station to the other.

Nagata gave his two weeks' notice and plans to keep working until next Friday. He's currently passing on specialized videojournalist training he received ("videojournalist" being CBC-ese for "working without a cameraman to save us money") to one of the station's other up-and-coming young journalists (and a former classmate of mine), Catherine Cullen.

Mind you, this hasn't stopped him from already becoming friends with CTV staff through Twitter.

Nagata will join the CTV family starting Sept. 27, and spend a few days training with Grant. He takes over the beat on Oct. 1.

Butterfingers

Fagstein — Thu, 27 May 2010 05:02:10 +0000

It was really hot today, but that's nothing compared to the forecast for next week, apparently:

CBC's Kenny Bodanis realizes he's made a typo in his weather forecast

One thing about putting your newscasts online is that the errors of live TV remain accessible long after they've aired. This is Kenny Bodanis (sitting, err, standing in for Frank Cavallaro), who accidentally added an extra digit to next Tuesday's high during Tuesday's weather segment on CBMT (fun starts about the 15-minute mark). He assures us it won't actually be 234 degrees next Tuesday, though it might feel like it.

Then again, I have it on pretty good authority that the weather people just pull numbers out of nowhere for forecasts six and seven days ahead, so he could very well be right!

(via Alex Leduc on Facebook)

PJ Stock too cool for Montreal

Fagstein — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:39:30 +0000

PJ Stock

P.J. Stock, a former journeyman NHL player turned hockey analyst, has come to the realization over the past few months that he was stretching himself a little too thin. His main gig at Hockey Night in Canada involved a lot of travelling between Toronto and Montreal on weekends.

Though he contributed regularly for CBMT's evening newscast, he cut that weeks ago (CBC says it's looking for a replacement). Last week, he said goodbye to an afternoon radio show on the Team 990. He'll be replaced there by Randy Tieman of CFCF.

Stock says he wants to spend more time with his family. And admiring himself in the mirror.

What if we stopped subsidizing local TV?

Fagstein — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:11:05 +0000

One of the arguments used against conventional television broadcasters in Canada - CTVglobemedia and my corporate overlord Canwest especially - in this whole fee-for-carriage debate is that they're both giant megacorporations and own a slew of cash-cow specialty television channels.

The broadcasters counter that they can't take profits from one part of the business and subsidize another.

As much as the knee-jerk consumer reaction might be that this is exactly what they should do, they're right. It makes no business sense for a profit-generating enterprise to not be generating profit. If conventional television doesn't make money, then subsidy or no subsidy, it will eventually be shut down.

CTV and Canwest purchased their specialty arsenals knowing the conventional model was going down the toilet. If it came down to it, neither would have any trouble shutting down their entire conventional network and moving completely to specialty channels. But conventional TV is still making money (only just) and they're betting on a fee-for-carriage solution to get them more.

But as much as the broadcasters are arguing against subsidizing their own operations, they have no trouble demanding exactly that from cable and satellite broadcast distribution companies. Not only do they benefit directly from the new Local Programming Improvement Fund in small markets, but their expensive Canadian dramas and comedies get large subsidies from the Canadian Media Fund, formerly the Canadian Television Fund. Both of these funds get their income from cable and satellite companies.

And cross-subsidization is what the conventional broadcasters do for local programming. In fact, even though they constantly whine that the "model is broken", the basic premise of using profits from reselling U.S. programming to fund Canadian and local programming remains. This isn't done because CTV and Global have hearts of gold and see the value in homegrown television, it's because the CRTC forces them to air this kind of programming as conditions of license.

The result is that the broadcasters see a negative value in original programming. They juggle the schedule to just barely pass CRTC-imposed minimums. They match U.S. networks for as many popular shows as possible to take advantage of lucrative simultaneous substitution rules that put their ads over the U.S. feeds. Original Canadian programming is left to fill the less desirable holes. CTV's Flashpoint, considered a huge success in Canadian drama, is thrown into the TV dead zone of 10pm Fridays. Most other programming consists of cheap Canadian franchises of U.S. or other foreign formats (usually reality shows). ET Canada, Project Runway Canada, Cash Cab, So You Think You Can Dance Canada, Canadian Idol, Canada's Worst Driver/Handyman, the list goes on. They're cheap and low-risk and don't require any original thought.

Local minimum

For local programming, it's the same deal: cheap and formulaic. Most stations outside of the huge markets produce the absolute minimum of local programming, even at the recently reduced levels of 7 or 14 hours a week depending on market size. And in most markets, there is zero local programming outside of local newscasts.

In Montreal, Global's CKMI produces only 7.5 hours of local programming a week, all of it with an anchor in a small green room and computer-generated set. It adds 7 hours of repeats of local news to fill the rest of its mandate. CBC's CBMT isn't much better, with 500 minutes (8h 20min) of news each week (a 90-minute newscast that repeats the same stories over and over again, and a 10-minute late-night newscast that includes 75 seconds of advertising). CTV's CFCF has just over 16 hours a week of local programming, all of it newscasts.

It gets worse. Those local newscasts aren't all local. As I studied previously, much of the local newscasts for all three networks consist of prepackaged reports from national reporters in Ottawa, Toronto and elsewhere. Only about half an hour of an hour-long newscast is local news. That, combined with the fact that newscasts repeat the same story during the day, means each station might produce only a handful of stories each day (figues based on the same newscasts studied this summer):

At CFCF, an average of 7-8 reporters producing about 15 minutes of local news packages a day
At CBMT, 4-5 reporters producing about 10 minutes of local news packages a day
At CKMI, 3-4 reporters producing about 8 minutes of local news packages a day

Perhaps these numbers are unfair. They don't include sit-down interviews during CFCF's news at noon. They don't include sports news and weather. They don't include special features on the weekend that CFCF used to replace Entertainment Spotlight and SportsNight 360. And they don't include CKMI's half-hour Focus Montreal show.

But let's set those aside for a moment (we'll get back to them). When we focus on the actual news part of those local newscasts, which we're told is the most important part of local TV (since it's the only thing they really have left), I'm tempted to ask: What would we lose if these stations simply disappeared from the airwaves?

What's at stake?

I watched the evening and late-night newscasts from all three networks on Friday night (flipping between them, so I might have missed a story or two), and I struggled to find any original journalism that would not have been done had it not been for that particular TV journalist. There were stories on swine flu and the Agence métropolitaine de transport, which are being heavily covered by all local media. There was the crime and justice reporting that everyone else has too. One story was clearly re-reported from the morning newspaper (without credit, of course).

It's not that the journalists are lazy, or that they're not doing their jobs. They all work very hard. Newspapers have no more claim to a government press release than the TV station does. More journalists means more voices, more eyes, hopefully more angles. And there is plenty you get from video that you can never get from audio or print.

But if the TV stations disappeared tomorrow, these stories would still get reported. We'd still find out how to get our swine flu vaccinations. We'd still find out what the weather is, or how the Habs did in their last game, or who's been arrested in what cold case. Exclusives on TV are few and far between (CFCF's special reports during sweeps notwithstanding). It's a direct result of the lack of editorial staff. There's just so much you can do with fewer than 10 reporters in a newsroom.

Those sit-down interviews, at least, are a bit more interesting. They're not as hard-hitting as a two-minute package done by a reporter on deadline, but sometimes you can learn something from them that the newspapers and radio might have missed.

But is that glimmer of information worth being forced to pay for? Is protecting this a national crisis that the CRTC has to step in to stop?

Local TV to care about

It's not that I want local TV to disappear. It's that I want the networks to care about them. And it's clear that they don't. No matter what happens, so long as local news is a negative-profit proposition, the networks will reduce their influence on the balance sheet as much as possible. This, I argue, is a broken model, and one the "Local TV Matters" proposal does nothing to fix.

Perhaps I'm being naive and idealistic, but I think something would come in and fill the gap if CFCF and CKMI were to shut down tomorrow. (I leave out CBC since it's not a private broadcaster and hence shouldn't be concerned with making money in the first place.) Print publications (which, as David Olive points out, don't get government subsidies) are increasingly using video to report stories that they think have a strong video angle. Most of those videos are God-awful, but they will start improving. Small independent video production houses could step up production and move into more serious journalism. And local cable access channels like VOX (which, by the way, are also subsidized by the cable companies) could become a destination for people looking for local news on television.

If the entrepreneurial spirit, instead of CRTC mandates, drove local news, we might see a lot of changes for the better. They might stop chasing the same stories that are being reported by everyone else and look to contribute something original to the conversation. They might value long-form original journalism over two-minute packages repeating what they read in the newspaper. They might have more interviews and less stock footage B-roll. And they might look seriously at having their product available on multiple platforms (neither of the three anglo stations have all their newscasts available for streaming online, none provide the choice between watching the entire newscast or individual stories, none have newscasts available for podcast download, and none are available on Videotron's video-on-demand service). They might see outside the constrictive box of what a newscast is supposed to look like. And they might try to produce inexpensive but watchable local programming.

Sure, it would suck balls at first. A lot of good TV reporters would be out of work (or forced to take low-paying jobs with no benefits or union protection), and the community would have a void of voices before someone stepped in to fill it (unless an existing station decided it really wanted to produce a local newscast for profit). A lot of the professionalism would be gone, replaced by young ambitious people with no clue what they're doing.

Maybe the result would look like VOX, a channel nobody watches. Maybe the result would be similar to the online local video productions that nobody watches either. Or maybe it might be interesting enough, different enough, to catch people's attention and make someone modestly rich.

In Hamilton, the new owners of CHCH are betting on the power of local news, expanding local newscasts far beyond what the CRTC requires. I certainly wouldn't put any good money on their chances of success (even if they are ultimately successful they're going to lose a lot of money at first), but even that slim chance of a workable business model is reason for hope, because if they do by some miracle turn a profit we could see that model quickly replicated across the country (and maybe around the world).

On the francophone side, Quebecor has its LCN all-news cable network, which is supported through subscriber fees and advertising, but is discretionary on digital cable and satellite. Though I'm sure TVA would protest otherwise, it's heavily focused on Montreal, the centre of the francophone media universe. And it obviously shares resources with the conventional TVA television network and news team. But it's a private enterprise, and one Quebecor thinks can make a profit.

Even under the best of scenarios, a deregulated local television landscape would probably have at most one local news operation, a reduction from the current three. But at least it would turn a profit, whether from advertising, subscriber fees or both, without any taxes, handouts or subsidies.

And we would care about it. And advertisers would care about it. And its journalists and producers would care about it. And its owners (and their shareholders) would care about it.

Because it would matter.

The New CBC Montreal

Fagstein — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:39:43 +0000

On Monday, the great renewal of CBC television took shape, with all sorts of minor pointless changes new, attention-catching refreshening of look and feel.

Nationally, CBC Newsworld was renamed CBC News Network, gained some on-screen furniture (a clock, weather, CNN-like animated lower-thirds, and an obnoxious non-transparent bug in the corner) and got a new schedule which has more one-hour shows and less 24-hour newsroom.

The National was similarly changed to reflect the network's new look (block serifs and pointless coloured square dots). Most importantly, Peter Mansbridge does the newscast standing up, which is kind of awkward.

Peter Mansbridge, kickin' it old-school - and standing

Other reviews of changes on the national level:

Changes in radio were minor: a new World Report at 5am for early risers, and additional local radio newscasts at 6:30pm (short) and 7pm (long).

Online, very little has changed, other than the new block-serifed logo and the Inside Politics blog with Kady O'Malley, freshly poached from Macleans.

But what interested me was the local television news. CBC Montreal hasn't had a late-evening newscast in a long time, and I was curious how they would do this one ever since I heard about it last month.

It starts with the 6pm newscast, which still has the 90-minute format but gets a new graphical look:

Considering some of the awful elements of the former graphics (especially business graphics and weather), most of these are significant improvements, even if they all strictly follow a national template.

(If you're wondering about the weather guy there, it was Ian Black filling in for Frank Cavallaro - they made a point on Tuesday to say they missed him when he returned.)

Jennifer Hall with The Pfeff in split-screen

Reporter Catherine Cullen gives a needlessly live report

The silliness of the 90-minute newscast, repeating the same stories over and over again in a slightly different way, and having reporters do live chats with anchors that could easily be replaced by them just pressing play on the package, continues under this new look. The set is also the same.

Full-page ad in The Gazette, Page A5 on Monday (click for larger image)

A full-page ad, which appeared in The Gazette on Monday, describes the 90-minute newscast as having "three convenient tune-in times", which translates as "you can watch it any time you want, as long as it's between 5 and 6:30".

But I digress.

CBC News: Montreal Late Night (10:55)

I set my VCR (yeah, I still have one of those) to record the 11pm-ish newscast on Monday night.

It starts at 10:55pm, taking a five-minute bite out of The National and a five-minute bite out of The Hour. I'm not quite sure of the reasoning behind this (it's the same nationwide). A criticism of it is that people will miss the first half if they watch primetime TV instead of The National. That's exactly what happened to me on Tuesday night.

Here's how broke down the first night (times are within a second or two):

At 10:55, Peter Mansbridge ends the National, right after a fake-live chat with Jian Ghomeshi (I could tell it was fake because Ghomeshi was outside in broad daylight) by saying "keep watching your local news (sic), because it starts right now" - a generic statement because it applies to all local newses in all markets. Andrew Chang jumps in with "thanks Peter" as if Mansbridge was addressing him personally.
Chang jumps straight into a brief about a sewer collapse, not so much because it's an important story, but because it's new and fresh.
At +0:25, a story on the mayoral race and a radio debate, introduced live by Steve Rukavina in the newsroom.
At +2:00, Chang gives a 20-second hint at the weather overnight (it's cold), adding "we are just minutes away from the full weather forecast" - even in the rushed 10-minute newscast, there's plenty of time to waste promoting what's coming up
At +2:25, a throw to George Stroumboulopoulos, who gives a 15-second preview of The Hour and concludes with "and now back to the news". Again, the response is "alright, thank you very much George", struggling to fake a conversation even though Strombo is clearly not listening to him.
At +2:40, "news in 100 seconds" goes rapid-fire through the headlines (though thankfully without a clock or other gimmick)
At +4:30, a brief on the H1N1 vaccine
At +5:10, a package (the only one of this newscast) from Joanne Vrakas on a new MRI machine at the Children's.
At +6:35, a recap (from Chang) of the Canadiens/Islanders game that night
At +7:25, Chang says "we're back in 60 seconds", and then an exterior shot, wasting 15 seconds
At +8:40, true to Chang's word, the commercials come back after 6o seconds, and the weather guy (Ian Black filling in for Frank Cavallaro) gives as full a forecast as you can present in under a minute.
At +9:50, Chang concludes the newscast, saying "we're warming up the red chair" before he's cut off by Strombo beginning his show.

Going by the numbers, it works out to six minutes of news (all of it local), a minute and a half of weather, less than a minute of sports, and a minute of advertising (a minute and a half if you include the Strombopromo). That's not bad, actually, though I could do with less "we're only minutes away from" stuff.

What really bugs me is the fake handoffs between national and local. The CBC should know better. They tried this with their ill-fated Canada Now, in which a national anchor would present the headlines at the start of the 6pm show, the local anchor would cut in with local news, jump back to the national anchor, and at 6:30 the national and local anchors would coordinate a fake throw to local news. It was awkward and forced, and I also believe somewhat dishonest.

Hopefully the CBC will learn from its mistakes ... again ... and drop the fakery. We don't care if the local anchor thanks Peter Mansbridge or not.

The other thing that struck me is that the vast majority of the newscast is just Andrew Chang talking. Only the weather, Rukavina and Vrakas's reports, and George's 15 seconds involved anyone else talking. It's a bit much. Not that I don't like Chang's voice, but it can get monotonous after a while.

And if the guy can talk for 10 minutes straight without a break, what does he need a coanchor for at 5?

Where is this online?

Finally, I'm a bit disappointed by the online offering. The CBC is starting to put local newscasts on its video portal (it's hard to find - you have to click down a few levels, including through "TV Shows" which is incredibly unintuitive), but there's still nothing from Montreal. The best you get from CBMT is a recording of the 6pm newscast in crappy Windows Media. They could at least offer the late-night newscast in the same format, preferably downloadable as a podcast, for those who want to tune into the news after the fact.

CBC 11pm local newscast launches Monday

Fagstein — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:11:05 +0000

Remember that 11pm local newscast that I told you about last month? CBC has announced that it's launching on Monday.

The new newscasts are being brought in across the country, and will start at 10:55pm, cutting a few minutes into The National.

As I explained last month, the 10-minute newscast would be a rapid-fire recap of the day's events, with some late-breaking news that's updated from the 6pm newscast.

And as I explained, there won't be much of a new budget for this extra programming, so employees will be stetched even further.

CBC Montreal news director Mary-Jo Barr tells Fagstein that Andrew Chang will be the night host, which will have a night reporter filing an updated story, Frank Cavallaro doing live weather, and updates on things like evening Canadiens games. The local newscast will also feature new graphics (an improvement that is sorely needed if you've seen some of those graphics over the past few years).

Among other changes on the docket:

CBC Newsworld gets renamed CBC News Network. This sounds very similar to CTV rebranding CTV Newsnet as CTV News Channel, and about as pointless. The new CBC NN (not to be confused with CNN) will have a new schedule with some new shows, for anyone who actually cares about the schedule of a 24-hour news network.
An online 10-minute version of The National by 6pm. A good idea, provided they can provide it in enough formats for it to be accessible (like, say, in a downloadable podcast form for those of us on the go). The newscast will also be "customizable", in that viewers will be able to select which stories will be part of it. Not quite sure how that will work, but the concept makes sense.
The National moves to 6pm on Saturday to avoid conflicting with NHL coverage. Because hockey is more important than news.
A "faster pace" and "new format" for The National which includes more stuff from Marketplace and the Fifth Estate. In other words, reusing staff from one show to provide cheap content for another.
More "transparency" in news reporting. It's unclear what they mean by this, though they give the example of explaining the CBC's policy on reporting on kidnappings. Of course, this would be welcome by people like me, but I'm skeptical that CBC News can get a culture of true transparency going without it getting torpedoed by marketing interests eventually.
Wendy Mesley will appear regularly on The National to generate "debate". Make your own Wendy Mesley/Peter Mansbridge joke here.
Kady O'Malley starts a political blog. You know Kady, she used to blog for Maclean's before CBC poached her.
World Report, which airs mornings at the top of the hour, will add a newscast at 5am for those poor souls who are up at that hour. This sounds a bit odd, considering Daybreak starts at 5:30. Are they going to fill that extra 20 minutes with national content, or just continue their overnight programming?

CBC Montreal to start 11pm newscast: sources

Fagstein — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:06:58 +0000

It's not a secret at the CBC, but it's being treated that way with the outside world: CBMT, CBC's Montreal television station, is planning to launch an 11pm newscast next month.

According to multiple sources within the CBC, the new 11pm newscast would be a short, 10-minute recap of the top stories, similar to what airs currently in Vancouver.

You can see an example of Vancouver at Eleven here. It's five minutes long, sandwiched between The National and The Hour. Vancouver's newscast will be expanding to 10 minutes, which should hopefully give the anchor an opportunity to breathe properly. Other markets are also planning similar newscasts.

CBC Montreal news director Mary-Jo Barr was coy when I asked her about the new newscast, neither confirming nor denying its existence. She would say only that "there's some excitement over here at CBC Montreal" and hinted at an upcoming announcement.

Ten minutes might not sound like much, but when you add local news in the evening newscasts together, you get to about that figure. Vancouver at Eleven contains no advertising, and only a brief weather segment. It's not clear whether that would still be the case in a 10-minute newscast.

CBMT hasn't aired an 11pm newscast since Newswatch was cancelled in 2000. Drastic cutbacks at the CBC led to the idea of "Canada Now", a one-hour evening newscast whose first half-hour was hosted by Ian Hanomansing in Vancouver and the rest by local anchors. That finally ended in 2007, when plummeting ratings forced the CBC to reconsider and bring back one-hour local newscasts. CBMT has been slowly building back the audience it forfeited to CFCF ever since.

Sources tell Fagstein the 11pm newscast should begin around Thanksgiving (in other words, mid-October).

CBC Montreal News at Five: Filling time with repeats

Fagstein — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 19:16:08 +0000

It was heralded as part of a renewal, a refocusing on local news and information that would bring people back to the CBC: Local newscasts in Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Montreal, Halifax, Calgary and Toronto would be expanded from an hour to 90 minutes. This comes just a few years after they were expanded from half an hour to an hour.

There's just one hitch: There's no additional staff to fill that extra time. In fact, the CBC is having to deal with much fewer staff than it had last year. So the idea, the CBC says, is to have three separate 30-minute newscasts back-to-back, each giving a different angle on the top stories of the day. People could watch the entire 90 minutes, or they could just watch a 30-minute segment and get the top headlines.

That's led to some criticism from the usual sources that the new newscast would be more repititious or even vacuous. The competition collectively yawned.

Yesterday, I watched the entire 90-minute newscast with my stopwatch laptop and crunched the numbers on how exactly they're filling their airtime in these extra 30 minutes.

Here's what I found. Note that these numbers are based on a single newscast, and so the average could be wildly different from what we see here.

Breakdown

As with my previous analysis, I broke the newscast down into major categories:

Advertising: Commercial breaks. There were nine of them through the broadcast, an average of 2:21.
Filler: Includes show openings and closings and “coming up” previews. There were an astonishing 10 of the latter (13 if you include the ones in the show openings). The newscast spent more than five minutes telling you what they were going to talk about later.
Local news: This includes six local briefs and the following news stories done by local reporters:
- Opus card troubles by Amanda Pfeffer (two packages and a brief)
- Drunk driving sentence by Amanda Margison (two packages and a brief)
- Peel pipe burst by Tim Duboyce (two packages and a brief)
- New surgery technique by Kristin Falcao (one package)
National news: Eight story packages provided by the national network, and a single national news brief.
Wire news: Five briefs about world news stories with video provided by wire services.
Weather: Frank Cavallaro got a lot of air time: eight weather segments, averaging 1:37. And this doesn't include the short 5-second bursts he presents during the "coming up" segments.
Sports: There was no separate sports segment, so I've included these two local sports stories under the sports banner (a third story, about the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, has been filed under national news):
- Impact thinking of leaving the USL by Kim Brunhuber (two packages)
- A brief on funeral services for former Alouette Sam Etcheverry
Business: Graphics with closing numbers were shown twice (once with anchor's voice-over, once without)
Arts: Consists entirely of The Scene, a national arts roundup by Jelena Adzic, which was presented once at the end of the 5pm newscast.

If we consolidate the categories into local news (including sports and weather) and non-local news (including the arts segment), it looks like this:

Local: 43%
Non-local: 27%
Advertising: 23%
Filler: 7%

That actually doesn't look too bad, but it's more complicated than that, as you'll see.

Before and after

Comparing before and after, we see most proportions are about the same, but local news has taken a substantial hit, mainly at the expense of more weather and more national news.

Here's the changes in chart form:

Category	Before	After
Advertising	25%	23%
Filler	8%	7%
Local news	31%	23%
National news	16%	20%
Wire news	2%	3%
Weather	11%	14%
Sports	5%	5%
Business	1%*	1%
Arts	1%*	4%

* Business numbers weren't included in the previous charts, but represented about 1% of the average newscast. Arts numbers also weren't included. The Scene is not presented daily, and was aired during only one of the three studied newscasts, where it was categorized as national news.

Repetition

The CBC big-wigs say you could watch the entire 90 minutes, but you don't have to, because the main headlines will be in each of the three newscasts, but each time a different angle will be presented.

Technically that's true. The three main local stories (the Opus card lineups, drunk driving sentence and Peel St. pipe burst) were presented once in each of the newscasts (a live reporter stand-up or packaged report in two of them, and a brief without the reporter in another), and the reporters did seem to file two slightly different packaged reports, with different interviews or a slightly different angle.

But the story was the same. I don't feel I learned anything new from the second time I watched it.

The repetition even got annoying at times. It led to at least one case where a story would be teased as "coming up" 13 minutes after it was reported (in the same half-hour block).

Stretching the staff

Of course, the real reason for all this kinda-repetition is the lack of additional staff. Five reporters presented local stories (four news, one sports). This is the same as the average from the 60-minute newscast. The number of (distinct) local briefs actually went down compared to the 60-minute newscast average.

Meanwhile, the use of national packages tells a different story. The number used was double the 60-minute average (8 vs. 4), and not a single one was repeated throughout the 90-minute broadcast. Not even the national and international briefs were repeated.

This forces us to ask: Why does local news need to be repeated in each of the three broadcasts, but non-local news doesn't? Is national news (like, say, the fact that the Liberal Party no longer supports the government) unimportant?

The new anchor

Andrew Chang, anchor

Andrew Chang is currently anchoring solo. He'll be joined by Jennifer Hall starting next Tuesday. You could definitely see the bright green glow under that stylish suit as he somewhat nervously stumbled on the occasional line. But he was comfortable enough that it didn't seem awkward. Plus, he's adorable. I'm comfortable enough in my masculinity to say that. My gut feeling is that he'll do a good job in the chair.

Michel Godbout, the former anchor and now a Really Important News Correspondent, seemed a bit odd in his new role. It wasn't that Godbout was bad. Rather, having him talk to Chang in a split-screen (one designed in such a way that Godbout looked much bigger than Chang), it was hard to see Chang as the anchor and Godbout as the reporter. Especially because Godbout still has many of his anchorisms - explaining stories to us in the "now, what that means is" way that he would do so often in the anchor chair.

I'm not sure if this feeling is because the two still need to get used to their new roles, or because we need to get used to them being in their new roles, or a mixture of the two.

Suggestions

Let it not be said my criticisms are not constructive. Here are some suggestions for the new newscast(s).

Split or get off the pot: This whole different-angle thing isn't working. Either design a newscast that people can watch for 90 minutes, or tape a 30-minute newscast and replay it twice.
Reschedule: If your mantra is that you want people to check in whenever they're free, why are you limiting them to a 90-minute segment of the day? CBMT is the only one of the three anglo stations without a late-night newscast. Why not take out one of those 30-minute blocks and move it to 11pm? Then it won't matter if you're repeating the same stories because you'll be reaching an entirely different block of viewers.
Get a local arts reporter: "The Scene" is a joke and an insult to your viewers. Its top story was about a new Cirque du Soleil show opening ... in Toronto. And that's the next stop in a worldwide tour for the show which began in Montreal. I realize you're under budget constraints. Steal someone from radio or something. Even if they're just in studio talking to the anchor without visuals, it would still be better than canned filler from Toronto. This is one of the reasons CFCF is the market leader in local newscasts - its competition isn't even trying with local entertainment reporting.
Ease up on the "coming up": Seriously. And don't tease stories you've already reported. But that brings us back ot the first point.
Stop telling us the obvious: It may sound cool to say "you're watching CBC News: Montreal at [time]", but it's completely useless information for us. We know we're watching the newscast. Just give us the news already. Besides, this is a sure way to get anchors to screw up by saying "CBC News: Montreal at Six" when it's actually 5:17. I see no purpose in having each newscast given a different name based on what time it airs.
Update your website: The "top stories" part of your newscast's website hasn't been updated since Friday. It also wouldn't hurt if you put video up in a more accessible format than streaming Windows Media.

Have any other suggestions? Add them below.

The set

The new set at CBMT

Finally, the set looks like something that's larger than a phone booth for once. Hopefully they get some good use out of it.

CBC News: Montreal at 5:00, CBC News: Montreal at 5:30, and CBC News: Montreal at 6:00 air weeknights at ... well, you get the idea.

UPDATE (Sept. 9): Chang explains during one of the newscasts (Windows Media Video) the subtle diferences behind each. If you can't see the video, here's how it breaks down:

CBC News Montreal at 5:00
- Top local stories
- Weather (next 48 hours)
- National/international news in brief
CBC News Montreal at 5:30
- Advancing (read: repeating with new angle) top local stories
- Weather (seven-day forecast)
- National/international news in depth
- Arts, opinion, environment segments
CBC News Montreal at 6:00
- Complete (read: repeated) top local stories
- Weather (short-term and long-term forecasts)
- "Developing" national/international news
- Arts

UPDATE (Sept. 16): Toronto's newscast is about the same as ours.

Welcome to the new TV

Fagstein — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:20:03 +0000

This week has a lot of changes for television both local and nationally. Two main reasons for this: it's September and the fall season is starting, plus CRTC broadcast licenses for conventional television stations end on Aug. 31.

This week's Bluffer's Guide (courtesy of yours truly) looks at the changes happening on the local television dial. The Globe and Mail's Grant Robertson also has a piece this morning, looking particularly at the upheaval at small money-losing stations owned by Canwest and CTVglobemedia.

Here's a timeline of what's going on this week in television:

Today, Aug. 31

5:30am: Channel Zero begins airing new programming on CJNT Montreal and CHCH Hamilton, only a few days after the CRTC approved the sale of the stations from Canwest. Channel Zero, which owns some cable channels but no conventional television stations, is supplementing CJNT's existing programming with foreign-language music videos and films. CHCH, meanwhile, will become all-news during the day (its afternoon schedule will have movies until the infrastructure is ready) with movies in primetime. The license officially changes hands at 12am on Sept. 1.
Showcase rebrands
MuchMusic's digital specialty channels MuchVibe, MuchLOUD, MuchMoreRetro, PunchMuch go commercial-free. MuchMusic and MuchMoreMusic - which still have enough viewers to sell commercials - continue to air ads, as will programs that are simulcasted on the digital specialty channels and Much or MMM.
CTV-owned "A" channel in Wingham, Ont., shuts down local programming and CKNX-TV becomes a retransmitter of CFPL-TV, the A station in London. The station is part of three that CTV had looked at selling or shutting down. Another, CKX-TV in Brandon, Man., has been sold to Bluepoint Investmestment Corp., and the third, CHWI-TV in Windsor, Ont., was saved from shutdown after the CRTC approved the Local Programming Improvement Fund. All three had received offers from Shaw to buy them, but then Shaw changed its mind.
The BBM ratings system switches to the "Personal People Meter", a device that had been tested in the Montreal market, to allow nationwide monitoring of what people watch and listen to on TV and radio. The PPM is a pager-like device worn by sample audiences, and replaces the less accurate diaries that relied on self-reporting.
6am: TQS officially becomes V as the broadcast day begins with Le show du matin
5pm: CBC Montreal launches its new 90-minute newscast along with other stations across the country. The newscast will be structured as three consecutive 30-minute newscasts, and is part of CBC's "integration" (read: convergence) strategy of having journalists do stories for TV and radio at the same time (so they don't have to hire any more journalists). The competition says they're not worried.
8am (6am in Red Deer): CHCA, an E! network station in Red Deer, Alta., goes off the air. (UPDATE: Its last newscast, from last Friday, has been uploaded to YouTube in eight parts)
8:30am (5:30am in Kelowna): CHBC, a former E! network station in Kelowna, B.C., is rebranded "Global Okanagan" as the E! network shuts down.

Tomorrow, Sept. 1

12am: The CRTC begins billing cable and satellite companies 1.5% of their revenues for a Local Programming Improvement Fund, to help small-market television stations. Bell and Shaw, Canada's satellite providers, have responded by adding a 1.5% fee to consumers' bills beginning today. Videotron, Quebec's main cable provider, hasn't decided to follow suit yet.
At the same time, the CRTC lifts the cap on the amount of advertising conventional television stations can air. It had previously been at 15 minutes per hour. The CRTC believes that the market will self-regulate the amount of advertising (after all, a station with too many ads is going to lose viewers).
1am (10pm in Victoria): CHEK-TV in Victoria goes off the air. See below.
6am: As conventional broadcast stations across the country (at least the ones that are part of large networks like Global, CTV, CityTV and TVA) get new one-year licenses, new local programming requirements come into effect. They require 7 hours of original programming for small markets and 14 hours for large markets (the latter includes Montreal on both the anglo and franco side). TVA's local programming numbers are defined on a case-by-case basis: 18 hours a week for Quebec City and 5 hours a week for Rimouski, Chicoutimi and Sherbrooke. TQS, because it got special consideration from the CRTC after going bankrupt, isn't affected by these changes.
Three stations formerly of the E! network but owned by the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group - CHAT-TV in Medicine Hat, Alta., CKPG-TV in Prince George, B.C., and CFJC-TV in Kamloops, B.C. - begin airing programming secured from Rogers. It includes the Price is Right, the Tyra Banks Show and Judge Judy in daytime, and Hell's Kitchen and Law & Order: SVU in primetime.
6pm: Global Quebec CKMI becomes Global Montreal with a rebranded evening newscast after a CRTC decision this summer allowed them to relicense and accept local advertising. Global Ontario is similarly changing to Global Toronto.

Wednesday, Sept. 2

1am (10pm in Victoria): CHEK-TV in Victoria goes off the air. See below.

Thursday, Sept. 3

9pm: Fox airs a repeat of Fringe with a live on-screen Twitter stream of commentary from the show's creators

Saturday, Sept. 5

1am (10pm in Victoria): Canwest's CHEK-TV goes off the air... NOT. Canwest has accepted an offer to sell CHEK to its employees.

Monday, Sept. 7

5pm: Dumont 360, a talk show hosted by former ADQ leader Mario Dumont, premieres on TQS V.

Tuesday, Sept. 8

5pm: CBC Montreal's News at Six ... err, Five ... gets new anchors in Andrew Chang and Jennifer Hall.

Wednesday, Sept. 9

9pm: Télé-Québec premieres Voir, a show by the people behind the newspaper of the same name.

Also of note this week are the 25th anniversaries of MuchMusic (video, CP story) and TSN.

Did I miss anything? Suggest additions below.

How local is your local TV newscast?

Fagstein — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 08:04:42 +0000

A quantitative study of Montreal's local newscasts

Next week is a pretty big one for local television. TQS becomes V, CJNT gets its new owner, Global Quebec becomes Global Montreal and CBMT expands its newscast to 90 minutes.

As Global's CKMI starts embracing the city (they've launched a campaign with anchor Jamie Orchard for us to tell them what we like about Montreal) and CBC touts how much it's expanding local news (though without any additional money or staff), CTV continues its campaign to "Save Local TV."

It's clear that all three anglo stations in Montreal are proud of their connection with the city.

But how deep does that connection go?

It doesn't go deep enough to allow for local branding. There's no "Pulse News" or "Newswatch" anymore. It's "CTV News Montreal" and "CBC News: Montreal" and "Global Quebec Evening News". Everything about the stations seems to indicate they're just duplicates of a national template with a note saying "insert local flavour here."

Nor do any of these stations provide local programming other than their newscasts. CTV cancelled its remaining non-news programs Entertainment Spotlight and SportsNight 360 last fall. Global Quebec cancelled This Morning Live in early 2008, and CBC cancelled Living Montreal earlier this year. All that's left are the newscasts (and Global's "Focus Montreal" - an interview show in which the anchor talks to a newsworthy interview subject from her anchor desk, indistinguishable from the regular newscast unless you're paying attention).

But at least the newscasts themselves are pure local programming, right?

It depends on your interpretation. I noticed a trend recently, particularly at Global, where local newscasts would take packaged TV reports from affiliated stations and national reporters and use them to fill the back end of their one-hour shows. Did this serve to give a taste of a national perspective and bring this country together, or was it a way to save on staff by replacing local news with canned filler from other stations?

To answer that, I decided to quantitatively study these newscasts the only way I knew how: I'd watch them.

Over the summer, I watched three one-hour newscasts (picked pseudo-randomly) from each of the networks, timing the length of each segment with my laptop and marking down what they were talking about. I wanted to figure out how much of the newscasts were devoted to local versus non-local news.

Here's what I found out:

This chart shows the breakdown of your average one-hour evening newscast, based off the nine newscasts I watched.

An explanation of the categories:

Advertising: This is fairly self-explanatory. It's the commercial breaks. It also includes "closed-captioning provided by" ads and network promos.
Filler: You could also call it overhead. It includes show openings and closings, banter between hosts, "coming up" previews and recaps of top stories. I also included segments on how to reach the station and, in CFCF's case, its Talkback viewer poll and accompanying street interviews.
Local news: This includes anything done by reporters at the station and briefs read by the anchor over video shot by local cameramen. Stories out of Quebec City or elsewhere in the province are also included here, as they are done by reporters or cameramen for the station.
National news: Any stories out of Ottawa, Toronto or elsewhere done for the national network, as well as local stories from other affiliated stations. Stories from network reporters based in international bureaus are also included here, as are any briefs read by the anchor over video supplied by the national network.
Wire news: Stories from CNN, NBC, ABC, BBC or other international networks. Also includes briefs read by the hosts that include video from Reuters or other wire services.
Weather and Sports are self-explanatory.

Now, playing with these numbers is a bit tricky. Do you include weather and sports as local news? (See CKMI below for why that's a problem.) What about when the anchor introduces a world news story or reads a brief? Isn't that local production even if it's not a local story?

In the categories above, I've made no distinction between introduction of stories by the anchor and the story itself.

If you want to count them separately, I'll give you this figure: 8:08. That's how much prepackaged material from national and international networks the local stations use in the average weeknight newscast. If you subtract that from the total, you get 38 out of 46 minutes being locally produced, or about 83%.

Per-station breakdown

For the purposes of this study, I chose the main hour-long newscasts by the three networks. In the cases of CFCF and CBMT, that's their 6pm newscasts. In the case of CKMI, it's their 11pm News Final. There are two reasons for this: First, it's tricky comparing a half-hour newscast to an hour-long one which tends to slow down in the second half. Second, the half-hour newscast for CKMI at 6pm follows a national newscast which already has national stories in it. Similarly, CFCF's 11:30 newscast also follows a national newscast. These three hour-long newscasts are not scheduled before or after national newscasts and therefore all have some national content in them.

Here's how it looks for each station:

CTV Montreal

Newscasts studied: May 21, May 28, June 4*

The local piece of the pie for CFCF is the largest of the three stations by a substantial margin. Adding in weather and sports, it's the only one which fills more than half the newscast with information of local interest done by local staff. This should come as no surprise as CFCF has had a one-hour newscast the longest and gets by far the strongest ratings for local news.

On the other hand, it has the most filler (if you disagree with including the Talkback segment here, that figure drops to about 8%, just below CBMT). It also offers a limited national and international perspective, essentially limiting those stories to 20-second briefs.

The only other thing worth noting is that CFCF uses a lot of live hits from reporters - having them stand in the newsroom or out on a street corner somewhere introducing a packaged report live for no particular reason. They'll do about two or three of these for each newscast.

*Note: I noticed after the fact that these all happen to be Thursdays. CFCF has a regular segment on Thursdays called Added Time which reviews weekly soccer news. This appeared in two of the three studied newscasts and may have thrown off the sports figure slightly.

CBC Montreal

Newscasts studied: May 27, June 2, June 15

CBC Montreal has a strong local content, but also relies on stories provided by CBC national correspondents around the country and around the world. It relies very little (if at all) on local stories from affiliated CBC stations, and uses very little content from outside the Corp.

CBMT also has the most weather as part of its newscast, probably because weatherman Frank Cavallaro was such a steal for them last year and he's the closest thing Michel Godbout had to a co-host.

On the other hand, the station also has a lot of filler, mostly due to the fact that it's constantly teasing upcoming stories. You'll hear "coming up" at least five times during the newscast (plus a recap of the top story in the latter half of the hour), taking up three and a half minutes of airtime, or enough to air a whole other story and then some. This doesn't include the newscast's intro, which also consists mainly of previewing stories in the newscast, so add another 30-45 seconds for that.

CBMT also (perhaps unsurprisingly) has the least amount of sports content. One of the three newscasts limited its sports news to a single packaged story about the Phoenix Coyotes and a promotion for Hockey Night in Canada.

It's unclear how this will all change when it moves to its new 90-minute newscast (or three 30-minute newscasts back to back). UPDATE: My analysis of the new 90-minute CBC Montreal newscast.

Global Quebec

Newscasts studied: May 20, June 9, July 6

The figures from Global Quebec have a number of asterisks. First, of course, is that it's owned by the parent company of my employer.

The smallest and cheapest of Montreal's three anglo stations is heavily reliant on the national network. Its newscast is arguably not even produced here. Instead, packages from local reporters and lineups from local producers are sent to Vancouver where they're integrated with green-screen video of the local anchor and turned into a newscast there to be beamed back to Montreal's transmitter.

Its reliance on news from the Global network and other Global stations is reflected in the high number of national news stories. Other Global stations (notably in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver) have much larger local news staff and offer much more local programming, and so provide many more stories of not-strictly-local interest (particularly health and human interest stories). About 13 minutes of prepackaged material from Global network reporters and other global stations is used in the average newscast, compared to only eight minutes of packages from local reporters.

The other major asterisk involves weather and sports, both of which are done by people outside Montreal. The station's budget is so tight it can't afford its own weather or sportscasters, so it borrows them from other stations. The weather segment is pre-taped with the weather anchor from Global Ontario (usually Anthony Farnell, who has some connection to this city at least), while the sports segment is done by someone from Global B.C. In both cases, the segments involve chats with the local anchor and the segment itself is specific to Montreal (local weather, local sports scores). Whether this qualifies as local news is up to your interpretation (and, eventually, the CRTC's).

On the other hand, CKMI is light on filler. Host banter is negligible, and the "coming up" segments are short and infrequent.

Analysis

The results should probably not be all that surprising, and seems consistent with the budget and staff levels of each station. And because each newscast is expected to stand alone (they're not matched with national newscasts just before or just after), you expect national and international news to be included.

But is it fair to credit these stations for the entire hour as local news?

I'll leave discussion of that to you.

Bell TV adds CBC Montreal in HD

Fagstein — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:25:55 +0000

Bell announced today that its Bell TV satellite service (formerly Bell ExpressVu) will be adding CBMT (CBC Montreal) HD to its channel lineup as of June 10.

It is also adding high-definition versions of some other channels that have setup HD feeds within the past six months:

CFCN-TV (CTV Calgary)
CICT-TV (Global Calgary)
CKXT-TV (SUN TV, Toronto)
TV5

And Bell is adding CBOFT (Radio-Canada Ottawa) to its lineup in both standard and high-definition versions.

Those hoping they might find some room for even a highly-compressed standard-definition version of Global Quebec's CKMI are unfortunately out of luck again.

Fagstein » CBMT

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