To be specific (because the press release is anything but), starting in May (the exact date is still to be confirmed):
CBMT will get a half-hour local newscast at 6pm Saturdays, replacing the national newscast at that same time. It leads into Hockey Night in Canada.
CBMT also gets a late newscast at 10:55pm Sundays, after The National.
CBME-FM (88.5) gets local hourly newscasts on weekend afternoons, extending local news hours from noon to 5pm on Saturdays and 4pm on Sundays
A couple of questions remain unanswered.
Anchor: For the TV newscasts, an anchor hasn't been chosen yet. The position is to be posted in the coming weeks. Top candidates would probably be Kristin Falcao, Sabrina Marandola, Catherine Cullen and Peter Akman, who have had experience filling in for vacationing anchors.
Jobs: It's not clear at this point how many people will be hired to fill these new newscasts. CBC Quebec managing director Pia Marquard told me there would be "a couple of people at least". Certainly an anchor will be needed on the TV side and a second news reader on the radio side. Plus one would imagine more reporters being needed on the weekend to file fresh stories for these newscasts. But Marquard seemed to suggest a lot of this would be done by shuffling around existing staff.
I asked Marquard about programming for Quebec communities outside of Montreal. No news there, even though one would think supporting anglophone minority communities in Quebec is part of the public broadcaster's mandate. Outside of the Quebec AM and Breakaway radio shows out of Quebec City and programs of CBC North out of northern Quebec, the only radio and TV programming produced in the province comes out of Maison Radio-Canada.
I also asked her about the possibility of more non-news local programming. Things along the lines of the Secrets of Montreal special that ran last fall. She pointed to the CBC Montreal Summer Series, which are one-off one-hour specials that air Saturday nights during the summer, when nobody's watching. Last year's crop wasn't particularly impressive. Of the six one-hour specials, two were English versions of Radio-Canada's Studio 12 music performance show (which won't return after this season, by the way, so they're going to have to find another way to produce cheap one-hour shows). It's not that I don't like Studio 12, but it's like those "CBC/Radio-Canada investigations" in which CBC Montreal repackages the work of Radio-Canada and takes credit for it.
Marquard did point out that CBC News Network will be airing the best of these summer series shows on Saturday afternoons this summer (when even fewer people will be watching, I imagine).
I don't want to be too negative here. CBC television in Montreal has made a lot of progress in the past few years. It wasn't long ago that all it had was a half-hour newscast on weekdays, producing 2.5 hours a week of programming. With these changes, it'll go up to nine hours of local news a week, which is still way behind CFCF.
It would be nice if more of an effort was made to produce more local and regional programming for Quebec's anglophone community from CBC, especially since there are no private English-language TV stations and few English-language radio stations outside of Montreal. And it would be nice if we had some programming that's not confined to two-minute news reports or six-minute studio interviews, that could reflect the unique culture that is anglophone Quebec.
But for now I guess we'll have to be satisfied that news that breaks on Saturday morning doesn't have to wait until Monday at 5pm to be reported on local public television.
UPDATE (Feb. 17): Jobs have been posted for weekend news anchor and weekend meteorologist. The former is strangely listed as "full-time" even though it's only two days a week.
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.
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.
Updated Feb. 23, 2012, with the latest information on transmitters (CKMI now on permanent antenna, CFTU transmitting in digital).
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.
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.
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):
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."
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
"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.
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.
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.
September 17, 2010 – 5:00 am|Posted in Montreal, TV
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
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:
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.
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?
