Bell Let's Talk national spokesperson Clara Hughes in an interview with TSN Radio in Toronto (Bell Canada photo)

Today is Bell's Let's Talk Day, a day in which Canada's biggest telecom company raises money to help treat mental illness, and helps bring the issue out into the spotlight at the same time.

Until midnight Pacific time, Bell is donating five cents for every long-distance call and text message sent using its network, as well as every (non-robot) retweet of its Twitter account, to this charitable cause.

I was reminded of this campaign when I watched CFCF's noon newscast today. It was hard to miss it. Half of the first 15-minute block was devoted to it, with a story by a local reporter profiling someone with mental illness, and an interview with the campaign's spokesperson, Olympian (and national sweetheart) Clara Hughes.

It didn't stop there. Later, a health news story about the potential causes of suicide (probably a coincidence because the study just came out), a sit-down interview with an expert on mental illness, and a chat with reporter Tarah Schwartz about a special report on depression airing on Thursday. That's not including the commercials devoted to the subject and all the other programming that's airing on CTV, including a special at 7pm.

A year ago, I asked similar questions about this campaign, and whether the perfectly laudable cause justified the apparent intrusion of Bell Canada into the editorial decisions of CTV's newsrooms. (One could argue that many have simply decided to join this cause without being ordered to, which is possible, but there's a reason we're not seeing as much coverage of this on CBC and Global, and do we really think it would get so much airtime on CTV if this was, say, a Telus campaign?)

There are also questions to be asked about Bell's motives in this. Every large company puts profit ahead of anything else, and it makes sense for a company whose reputation is as poor as Bell's to spend millions of dollars making it seem more human. And it sends the message that if you really want CTV News to pay attention to your cause, no matter how positive it is, you need to get Bell onside.

But rather than rehash all that, I'll share an email that was forwarded to me by someone from Bell Media, who I'm guessing saw my tweets critical of the campaign today or was directed to last year's blog post. It was sent from a viewer of CTV's Marilyn Denis show, which also devoted segments to mental health today, including one on postpartum depression.

He added only: "This is why we do it."

I've redacted the person's name since it's not important.

Subject: Thank you thank you thank you

Hello Marilyn

My name is ***, mother of 4 girls 8,6,4 and 5 months.

I started my last pregnancy with depression and it is becoming a giant battle!

I feel darker and darker and the show today made feel good and thank to CTV, let's talk day. It is good to know that I will talk and search for help.

What a show thank you again.

There are a lot of thing behind my depression, I have in Canada for 17years no status, with 4 children provide a good life. Being a great mother and wife. Keeping on packing weigh. Being there sometimes became a burden etc....but I do it because I love my family.

Well I just wanted to say thank to you and CTV for this day Let's talk.

I never wrote to a show but the one today saved my life.

By the grace of God!

There are worse reasons to abuse one's power.

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People who follow me on Twitter know that one of my pet peeves is when the broadcast networks don't air major live news events, preferring to relegate them to their all-news networks (if they have them) and/or websites.

Various arguments have been brought forth to justify this. Very few people don't have access to all-news channels anymore. There's less interest in live coverage of boring things. People who want it can get it online.

In the end, the biggest factor is money, with a little help from the CRTC. Simultaneous substitution rules encourage Canadian broadcast networks not only to run American programming, but to run it at the same time as the American stations do. They also, therefore, discourage Canadian networks from running Canadian programming during peak hours. As a bonus, relegating important programming to cable channels makes it more likely that people will subscribe to those channels, meaning increased subscription revenue.

In short, this is why we see regular-season NFL games Sunday afternoons on CTV, but all CFL games - even the Grey Cup - air on TSN instead. It's not a question of ratings, because the Grey Cup gets huge ratings in Canada. It's because the NFL games are on CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox, while the CFL games aren't.

It's win-win for the networks, while the only people who lose are Canadian viewers.

In the past few years, there has been a trend where live national and regional events don't get carried on the broadcast stations. Elections are a prime example. Often election nights (particularly provincial elections where a local station would likely have to go it alone or in a small group) get little if any live coverage. Other major events not involving attractive British royalty getting married are also less likely to be seen on local over-the-air television stations.

During CTV Montreal's noon newscast on Thursday, it was mentioned that there would be live coverage of Remembrance Day ceremonies at 11pm 11am Friday ... on CTV News Channel.

Sure enough, looking at the schedule, I don't see a Remembrance Day special on CTV's main network.

As it turns out, there was a noting of the occasion on the network, and it was done in the most half-assed way I can think of. It was a video that looked like it had been created in the 90s (it wasn't in HD, though some footage was in letterboxed 16:9) of the national anthem being played over stock footage of old veterans marching, followed by a trumped playing, and then two minutes of silence while old black and white war photos appeared on screen.

The video lasted a grand total of six minutes, from 10:56 to 11:02. Then it was back to regularly-scheduled programming already in progress.

What was so important that it couldn't be pre-empted more than two minutes for Remembrance Day?

The View.

Yeah, that Barbara Walters female-panel talk show. And it's not like it's a special episode or something. No, when CTV cut to it, it was in the middle of a conversation on interracial dating.

The cut was half-assed at the beginning, too. The video cut into the Marilyn Denis show (an original CTV production) in mid-sentence, while they were discussing some fashion makeover. This bothered me a bit more because there's no simultaneous substitution argument. Rather than simply cancel the show for a day, or make it four minutes shorter, or have four fewer minutes of advertising, they let it run as normal and just cut into it.

It's not like this is breaking news they didn't know was going to happen. Remembrance Day is not a surprise.

It's a stunning lack of respect for the viewers of both programs, but that seems pale in comparison to how it treats veterans.

Every year, we get news stories about malls refusing access to veterans to sell their poppies, followed a day or two later by a follow-up story saying the mall's management had changed its mind or that there was a misunderstanding. This year we had stories about people stealing poppy boxes. Each time the news is met with outrage.

Every year, news anchors and reporters wear the poppy religiously, knowing a failure to do so could result in the wrath of viewers.

And here we have CTV, which couldn't be bothered to carry more than six minutes of Remembrance Day coverage because of two entirely forgettable daytime talk shows. It's not like it would have cost them anything, since they were already producing special coverage for CTV News Channel.

Where's the outrage?

How the networks covered Remembrance Day

• CBC: A two-hour special on the main network and CBC News Network
• Radio-Canada: A two-hour special on the main network and RDI
• CTV: Six minutes on the main network, live coverage on CTV News Channel
• Global: A one-hour live special, plus a half-hour documentary on Canada's last WWI veteran
• TVA: No live special on main network (outside of regular news coverage). LCN checked in with ceremonies occasionally as it would car crashes or other stories
• V: An infomercial
• Télé-Québec: Nothing
• Sun News: Full live coverage
• CPAC: Full live coverage
• Assemblée nationale: Business as usual, minus a moment of silence at 11am

The radio stations weren't much better. While CBC and Radio-Canada had moments of silence (which is eerie and confusing on radio), commercial music stations treated the matter briefly. CKBE 92.5 marked the passing of 11am with a call to remembrance, and CJFM 95.9 had a moment of silence (which lasted no more than 30 seconds).

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BBC Two. ESPN2. CBC Radio 2. TSN2. And now Bell Media has added another broadcaster to the list of brands whose names literally scream out "second-rate stuff goes here": A Channel/ATV will become CTV Two, they announced on Monday.

Of course, A Channel is a second-rate channel, carrying mostly American programming that CTV has the rights to but can't fit into the main network's schedule. And I wasn't exactly crazy about the /A\ branding either, particularly because of how ungoogleable it was.

A poll apparently told Bell that CTV's brand is the most trusted media brand in Canada, and so it has decided to use that brand to maximum effect. It can't turn A Channel stations into CTV stations directly (most are too close to existing CTV stations), so it'll impose its brand and add a number to it because they can't think of anything better to name it.

Another change will be rebranding the newscasts as "CTV News" - so they'll be indistinguishable from CTV newscasts in all the other markets. Whether viewers of the local stations want this is, of course, irrelevant. The decision comes from the top, using the same logic that killed the Pulse News brand in Montreal.

CTV seems to be implying that it will put more effort into the network than it has in the past, giving it higher-profile shows instead of third-rate crap. It promises "one monster acquisition to anchor the schedule" - which I guess means that they're going to give the network a single hit show and otherwise keep the relationship between the two networks unchanged.

Using A as the sloppy-seconds network is the main reason it has never been profitable. And it will probably remain that way. But part of Bell's deal with the CRTC when it purchased CTV's assets was a commitment to keep the unprofitable A Channel stations running for another three years. So we'll see this experiment continue whether or not it's successful.

There may not be a lot of money for newscasts or original programming for the A stations, but apparently there's plenty of money to keep rebranding this network every few years. Hopefully whoever came up with the stupid name and cheap logo didn't get paid too much.

UPDATE (June 2): The announcement of CTV Two programming for this fall contains little of interest. Certainly no "monster acquisition" I can see.

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Ah, convergence. It's been the buzzword in the big media companies for the past decade or so, with all the acquisitions that have taken place. Bell, a phone company, started up a satellite TV service, a DSL Internet service, and got into the broadcasting game in one giant swoop by acquiring CTV the first time, along with a growing number of TV specialty channels.

Rogers, which had a head start on the convergence business being a broadcaster, cable provider and wireless company, added a baseball team, other cable and wireless providers, and broadcasting assets including the sloppy seconds of the CTV/CHUM acquisition.

Quebecor, once a commercial printer and newspaper owner, bought a TV network, a cable and Internet service provider, and an entire newspaper chain.

Canwest, once a small television broadcaster, built up a national television network, bought a high-profile newspaper chain and a media company with a truckload of specialty channels. Now it in turn (minus the newspapers) has been bought up by Shaw, a cable provider that acquired a satellite TV provider.

With Shaw's acquisition of Canwest and Bell's acquisition of CTV, a pattern is emerging where each of the corporate empires has a TV provider, a wireless service, an Internet service, a national broadcast network, TV specialty channels, and maybe some radio and print assets on the side.

*For the purpose of this chart, we'll assume that the Bell purchase of CTVglobemedia goes through as advertised.

**Many people point to the Shaw family's control of Corus Entertainment to suggest that Corus is unofficially a subsidiary of Shaw Communications. But if you think that way, you can add a bunch of specialty channels and radio stations to the Shaw column.

Filling the holes

Rather than worry too much about a telecommunications company wanting to spend billions on media assets when just about all media assets are falling in value, the business world is wondering: What's next? Where is the next big acquisition or merger that puts a fifth column on that table?

Telus is the big name on everyone's lips, because they have the audacity to just be a telecom company at the moment and therefore have a "content gap". But Telus says they won't get in this game.

Besides, there are other options. Just connect the dots as you like:

Telecom

• Telus (wireless, home phone, TV, Internet)
• EastLink (cable, Internet)

Publishing

• Postmedia Network (former Canwest newspapers and online assets)
• Gesca (newspapers, including La Presse, plus Cyberpresse and related websites) - currently owned by Power Corporation
• Torstar (newspapers, books)
• Transcontinental (newspapers, magazines, printers)
• Metroland Media Group (newspapers, printers)
• Black Press (newspapers)
• Brunswick News (newspapers)
• Communications Voir (newspapers)

Broadcasting

• Jim Pattison Media Group (TV, radio, advertising) - currently a division of the giant Jim Pattison Group
• Newcap Broadcasting (TV, radio)
• Astral Media (radio, TV, specialty)
• Corus Entertainment (TV, radio, specialty) - would be kind of awkward if it was owned by anyone but Shaw
• RNC Media (TV, radio)
• Remstar (Remstar Productions, V)
• Channel Zero (CHCH, CJNT, specialty)

Telecom and broadcasting

• Cogeco (cable, radio)

There's also plenty of regional telecom companies, small newspaper publishers, book publishers and specialty TV channel owners that can be scooped up and disappear into the large conglomerates.

How this screws us over

"Today our three largest cable competitors are fully integrated and clearly we are not prepared to buy our content from our competitors"

That quote comes from a conference call that Bell had shortly after announcing the deal to buy CTV. The basic premise behind this deal isn't that CTV is going to make Bell a lot of money by being a profitable business unit, but rather that CTV's content will be a bargaining chip to get people to use Bell's services.

Recently, Rogers launched a new TV channel called Sportsnet One. Even though it's only available on Rogers cable (it hasn't negotiated carriage on the other providers yet), Rogers decided to move Toronto Blue Jays games to Sportsnet One in order to get people to subscribe to the new channel. Since Rogers owns the baseball team, the television channel and the cable provider that carries it, it's the ultimate convergence play.

And it's royally screwing over Blue Jays fans.

Analysts don't think Bell will be using blackmail to get people to switch over to its services. But they could. Want to watch NHL games on your mobile phone? You can't unless you're with Bell. Want TVA shows on demand? You can't unless you have Videotron illico. Anything these companies can buy exclusive rights for, they will do it. The only things keeping them from forcing you to subscribe to a particular telecom in order to get some content are the CRTC (which doesn't regulate mobile or online content) and business models that see more profits in maximum exposure than short-sighted consumer blackmail.

It's not out of the realm of possibilities for one of these companies to pull some move that, like Sportsnet One, requires using a particular service to get something that used to be widely available. And if one company does that (and it's successful), the others would probably follow. We could be a couple of years away from a country where you need to buy redundant services in order to get the content you want.

Save our local TV from ... us?

Remember that "Save Local TV" campaign by the broadcasters who wanted us to convince the CRTC to force the cable and satellite companies to give money to TV broadcasters? And the corresponding "Stop the TV Tax" campaign from the cable and satellite companies to pressure the CRTC the other way? Well, since that campaign, Shaw took control of Global TV and BCE is about to take control of CTV. Quebecor, which owns both TVA and Videotron, didn't participate in either campaign.

Bill Brioux remembers those campaigns, and is particularly pissed that a TV network with a "broken business model" just sold for billions.

They're still arguing against each other at the moment, but how long can we expect that to last?

And there's other concerns too. John Bowman points out that there's little incentive to invest in quality broadcast equipment. And Iain Marlow suggests this may make it easier for the government to relax foreign ownership restrictions.

This kind of stuff will come up at the CRTC hearings into the takeover, though I'm doubtful that the commission will put up a major roadblock to it, despite opposition from opponents to media concentration.

It won't work ... or maybe it will

The biggest negative opinion about this deal is the simple argument that CTV won't be a profitable venture for Bell any more than it was a decade ago. That's what David Olive says, it's what Howard Bernstein says, and Torstar (which sells its stake in CTV) is playing this up as a win for them, as is the Globe and Mail, which is breaking off (mostly) from the empire.

To be fair, some like the Globe's Derek DeCloet believe this might make sense, pointing out that the price isn't as ridiculously high as it was 10 years ago. Other analysts agree.

One of those sides will be proven right in a few years. Let's hope, for the sake of consumer choice and healthy corporate competition, that bigger isn't better.

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Daniele Hamamdjian reporting for CTV in Ottawa

For those of you wondering about Daniele Hamamdjian, who recently left CFCF for a national reporting job at CTV, I spotted her today on CTV News Channel, reporting on the Olympic torch relay. Here she is closing her eyes and dreaming of a warm bagel from St. Viateur.

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This woman with a bullhorn, which used to adorn its splash page, is from a stock photographer based in Poland.

And that giant "on air" sign is from a 3D animator. It even comes with an off-air version, or one that says "vacancy". There's no French version, though, which forced CTV to kind of awkwardly photoshop their own.

Save local TV!

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Half-page ads from Global Montreal appearing in The Gazette

CKMI, Global Montreal (formerly Global Quebec) has been heavily advertising the fact that it's now finally on the Bell TV (formerly Bell ExpressVu) network, on channel 234.

Station manager Karen Macdonald says that after 12 years on the air, CKMI finally got added to the dial in late August. CFCF and CBMT have enjoyed places on the dial for years now, and this absence has always been a sticking point for the station. So, she says, "we are very happy."

The reason is obvious: Quebec has a large number of satellite TV subscribers, and this move will give the station a much broader reach, which would translate into higher advertising revenues.

Bell TV isn't paying them a dime to "sell" their signal. They're stealing it. And Global couldn't be happier.

I bring this up to point out the ridiculousness of the argument from the Local TV Matters people, led by CTV, that cable and satellite companies are "stealing" the signals of conventional broadcasters. In fact, the CRTC requires them to carry those signals, and many (especially satellite) would love nothing better than to get rid of conventional television stations from small markets whose spaces on the dial could be given to more lucrative specialty TV programming.

CTV et al argue what they want is "negotiation for value", which is different from a mandatory fee for carriage. Supposedly, this means that the cable and satellite people would get in a room with each broadcaster and hammer out a fee for their signals. For such negotiation to work, each side would need a bargaining chip. So CTV seems to have accepted that cable and satellite companies could choose not to pay for TV stations if they find the price demand too high.

I'm highly skeptical of this. If the Global ad at the top of this post shows anything, it's that being on cable and satellite brings in a lot of money. Are we seriously supposed to accept that they would just sit there and accept if cable and satellite companies decide they don't want to pay and cut the stations off from 90% of their viewers?

There is little incentive for a cable or satellite company to carry a local conventional television signal. Hook up a pair of rabbit ears and you can get it for free. And since cable and satellite companies don't charge for conventional television (and CTV wants to make sure that they couldn't if this system were put in place), there's every reason to believe that the negotiated price for carriage will be zero or close to it. If broadcasters balk, it's no skin off the cable companies' backs. They can simply delete the station from their lineups and add another specialty channel with non-stop Seinfeld reruns they can charge $2 a month for.

But, you argue, this negotiation system works in the U.S. And it does. Broadcasters there have the option of getting mandatory carriage for free or negotiating a price with cable companies. But U.S. conventional broadcasters have original programming you can't get anywhere else. Canadian conventional broadcasters buy U.S. programming and rebroadcast it. Unless blocking U.S. channels is part of this plan, Canadians could tune into stations from Burlington, and all we'd miss aside from local news are shows like So You Think You Can Dance Canada.

I have sympathy for conventional broadcasters. They're stuck in an unfair situation, competing against specialty channels that have no local programming requirements and provide the bare minimum of original programming, while being able to charge a fee and collect ad revenue. According to the CRTC, their profit margins sank from 5% ($113 million) in 2007 to 0% ($8 million) in 2008, a 93% decrease. They're right when they say that the model is broken.

But the arguments they've been making are ludicrous. This latest one suggests that cable companies take 70% of cable bills and "pocket" it as pure profit. That's ridiculous on its face.

According to the CRTC's latest communications monitoring report, which is a far more reliable source than industry press releases, telecommunications companies' profit margins are about 40%, but the margins from television broadcasting distribution are much lower than that. Cable made 28% profit in 2008, and direct-to-home satellite made 19%, both increases from the previous year. Those are very healthy profits, but not nearly as healthy as those from the telecommunications sector - telephone, Internet, wireless and other non-broadcasting activities that bring in a lot more money.

Like the broadcasters, the cable and satellite companies have banded together and launched a campaign filled with half-truths. They say that conventional broadcasters made $400 million in profit last year, which is about 50 times more than what the CRTC says the industry made. When asked where those figures come from, the Stop the TV Tax people point to a quarterly report from Canwest and an opinion piece about CTV, neither of which corroborate the figure. They also argue that their own margins are "very slim", which is total bullshit.

Of the two campaigns, CTV's is definitely more active, slicker, and probably better funded. (Imagine if they took all the money they're sinking into these campaigns and used it to improve programming - maybe Canadians would start watching again.) CTV's campaign is also much more ridiculous and juvenile. They literally have a guy in a cow costume touring the country. They've created two professionally-produced music videos and five hard-sell TV ads and they're airing all of them on their networks, particularly CTV's specialty channels (note the irony there). When Dave Carroll's music video launched, they took five minutes out of local newscasts to play it in its entirety, with no analysis, no opportunity to respond, and no commentary. An infomercial during a newscast.

CTV's latest "PSA" gives you an idea of just how delusional they've become. It compares the actions of broadcasters and broadcast distributors to a carrot and a stick. The broadcasters want to keep local TV and bring happiness to bunnies, while the cable and satellite companies are "threatening punishment" by saying they'll pass on charges to the consumer and strangle those bunnies.

But threatening punishment is exactly what CTV is doing. Their latest threat is to shut down 10 of 11 stations in Ontario, leaving only their profit-making station in Toronto. They've already shut down CKX-TV in Brandon, something they're reminding us about over and over again. Makes you wonder if CTV might have wanted to shut down that station in order to improve its bargaining position.

I agree the model is broken, and that cable and satellite companies are making too much money (because there is insufficient competition, not because they're stealing signals). We need to re-examine the entire system, and come up with a structure that's fair to all parties, rewarding local and original programming. But this debate is too serious to be done via advertising campaigns featuring guys in cow costumes.

The deadline for comments to the CRTC on this issue is Nov. 2. At least we can take some comfort in the fact that the campaigns should end after that.

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Dave Carroll, the guy who did the United Breaks Guitars video, produces a song about the evil cable companies paid for by CTV. It has aired in full (without explanation) at the end of local newscasts across the CTV network for two days in a row, as if reinforcing the idea that local stations have little say in local programming. You can download the video here.

At 11:30 a.m. Thursday, CTV held a 45-minute news conference in Toronto to make its case for "saving" local television by getting Canadians to support them and support their request (now with CBC and Global) before the CRTC. The complete video is on CTV's website. It started off by using CKX-TV Brandon as an example, making me wonder if proving a point in this campaign wasn't a big reason that CTV decided to pull the plug on the station so quickly. It also included the presentation of two new commercial spots (both of which are comically bad), and ended with the Dave Carroll video above.

Scanning through the TV channels, I found it covered live on only one. It wasn't CPAC, of course, it was CTV News Channel, which cut away from Dan Matheson's show for almost 25 minutes to air these talking heads live. Matheson cut it off just before noon only so he could finally throw to commercials. Before he did, there were three questions from the audience - all from television broadcasters with clear interests here (one was from CityTV, which isn't part of the coalition only because its owner Rogers is more interested in protecting cable revenue than television revenue - the videographer asked if this is a political campaign by broadcasters, and got them to admit that yes, it was).

When CTV News Channel returned, there was no discussion of the topic, no response from cable and satellite companies, and no attempt was made to provide the other side of the debate (even though it's being clearly stated). This despite the fact that the 25-minute presentation included facts that are clearly in dispute, included two commercials (which were not shot by a CTV cameraman pointing at a screen, but fed directly to air), and an admission from CTV itself that this was a political campaign.

It was only at 1 p.m., an hour and a half after the press conference began, that Dan Matheson brought in Phil Lind of Rogers and grilled him for five minutes on the cable company's response. A 25-minute news conference with embedded advertising presented without question versus a five-minute interview with a skeptical news anchor is apparently considered balanced to CTV.

Just after noon on CFCF's local newscast, a brief about the news conference was presented by anchor Todd van der Heyden. Again, CTV's statements were presented without question, no attempt was made to present the other side of the debate, and viewers were encouraged to visit CTV's Local TV Matters website as if it was some reliable source for more information instead of a propaganda campaign by the corporate office.

CTV started by airing one-sided ads on its networks, then holding "open houses" and leveraging local TV personalities to amass large crowds to pretend there's some huge support for their political cause. They aired one-sided reports from local journalists scaring people into supporting them. Now, it seems, they're presenting a news conference (at which nothing new was said) as if it's breaking news.

CTV is continuing to abuse the public trust, and using its power over journalists it employs to get them to ignore journalistic ethics and bias themselves in favour of their employer.

It doesn't matter whether you agree with CTV's campaign, or with fee for carriage, or that local TV is in trouble, or that cable and satellite companies are making too much money. CTV News has a duty to present a fair picture to its viewers, and it is intentionally failing to do so.

This is what you want us to save?

UPDATE: Bell and Rogers respond with a press release saying they give plenty of money to Canadian television.

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The battle for "fee for carriage" - forcing cable and satellite TV providers to hand over money to over-the-air broadcasters - is getting ugly.

A few weeks after CTV got Global and the CBC to join its "Save Local TV" campaign (now rebranded "Local TV Matters"), Bell (which owns the largest satellite TV provider) and Rogers (which owns Rogers Cable) have launched the counter-campaign Stop the TV Tax. Both websites feature "facts" pages with incredibly misleading arguments and statistics about the business model of television, and both are racing against the clock to get people to support their side in upcoming CRTC hearings on the fee for carriage issue.

Notably absent from either side is Quebecor, which owns the TVA television network (and Sun TV station in Toronto) but also the Videotron cable service. CityTV, the other notable absence on the broadcaster side, is owned by Rogers, which has clearly picked the other side in this debate.

The "TV tax" website has prompted CTVGlobeMedia to respond by calling it "misinformation", while in the same release saying that cable companies are charging Canadians for conventional television, which is demonstrably false.

While CTV et al's claims are suspect, the Rogers and Bell throw up some doozies of their own, including fantom quotes saying incorrectly that this is a "one time" fee. Except nobody said fee for carriage would be a one-time fee, and the website provides no source for this supposed quote. They also claim that conventional broadcasters had profits of $400 million last year, but the CRTC put that number at only $8 million (down from over $100 million) when it released statistical data in February. (UPDATE Oct. 6: I asked the Stop the TV Tax people about this, and they pointed to a Canwest quarterly report and an opinion piece about CTV, neither of which break down profit by conventional vs. specialty channels, and on Global's side the operating profit for its non-Alliance-Atlantis TV network - which still includes a half-dozen cable channels like MovieTime and TVtropolis - was about $40 million)

When it comes to choosing between greedy broadcasters and greedy cable and satellite companies, most informed Canadians would prefer to choose neither. These slick (and expensive) lobbying campaigns - just think of how much they're spending to lobby the CRTC directly if they're spending this much on us - only reinforces the fact that both sides have plenty of money to spare.

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The final moments of CKX-TV (the complete newscast starts here).

The news came suddenly: Bluepoint Investment Corporation said on Thursday that it would back out of a deal to buy CKX-TV in Brandon, Man., from CTV. CTV, which had threatened the station with closure if it couldn't find a buyer, didn't waste any time, announcing that Friday's newscast would be its last and the station would go off the air at 7 p.m. All 39 employees are now unemployed, and the community of Brandon is left without a local commercial television station (only the cable community channel, and a community station in nearby Neepawa). While the Brandon Sun still provides reporting for the community, television news for the entire province of Manitoba now originates from Winnipeg.

The news is devastating and humiliating for CKX, which had been a pawn in a bad-faith sarcastic deal negotiated by way of newspaper advertisement between CTV and Shaw. The latter said it would buy the station and two others from CTV for $1 to convince the CRTC that local television did indeed have a profitable future. Then, when Shaw took a look at the stations, it decided it wasn't such a good investment after all.

In July, the station's hopes were raised again when Bluepoint came on the scene, with what seemed like a more serious offer (though for the same nominal amount of $1). But Bluepoint has come to the same realization as Shaw: small-market TV stations aren't worth it.

Bluepoint's official excuse is that they couldn't get carriage guarantees from satellite companies, and since most people in the area get their TV that way, they desperately needed that. I'll leave it as an exercise for readers to determine how much of the decision was satellite coverage and how much was Bluepoint realizing the true economics of conventional TV.

So CKX is off the air, its website replaced with a thank you message and a link to CTV's "Local TV Matters" site (as if a message to everyone that more stations will fall unless local TV is saved). CTV had two stories on the closure, both of which mention the larger issue of conventional television and fee-for-carriage.

For those keeping score, here's how the CTV and Canwest stations threatened with closure this year stand:

• CHCH Hamilton and CJNT Montreal: Sold to Channel Zero for a grand total of $12.
• CHBC Kelowna (B.C.): Changed from an E! station to a Global station and renamed Global Okanagan
• CHEK Victoria: Sold to its employees
• CHCA Red Deer (Alta.): Shut down on Aug. 31.
• CHWI Windsor (Ont.): Kept running by CTV until at least Aug. 31, 2010
• CKX Brandon (Man.): Shut down on Oct. 2
• CKNX Wingham (Ont.): Shut down on Aug. 31, converted into a retransmitter for CFPL London

That's three stations sold, two kept running and three shut down.

You may not agree with fee for carriage, or that the conventional television model is even broken, but small-market stations are closing down, and nobody is moving in to even rescue them from the trash heap.

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The website's FAQ lists PR-generated counter-arguments to some common complaints, but seems to ignore the history of conventional television and why it's free in the first place.

Decades ago, before there was cable, conventional television was all there is. Most stations were locally-owned and had powerful transmitters to reach as many homes as possible. Revenue came from advertising, which was fine because everyone watched TV in primetime, and everyone watched the local news.

In the early days of cable, the specialty channels were low-budget affairs and highly specialized. Music videos on MuchMusic, live sports on TSN, non-stop weather updates on the Weather Network. Quality primetime programming came from the conventional networks like CTV, which was back then a cooperative of local stations. Local programming gave way to network (Canadian and U.S.) shows in primetime, but mornings and early evenings were still largely local affairs.

The proliferation of specialty channels is a large part of why conventional television isn't what it used to be. The audience is fragmented, and the conventional networks' piece of the pie has diminished, along with advertising.

Specialty networks don't have to provide local programming, though on the other hand they cannot accept local advertising and they cannot transmit over the air.

Now that more than 90% of Canadians have cable or satellite service, the advantage of over-the-air transmitters is outweighed by their cost. And because most advertising is national in scope, and targetted to specific demographics that specialty channels are better at reaching, that advantage too has disappeared.

What's left to give conventional television stations an advantage is the programming itself. But while many people still watch the news, it's not enough to pay for it. In very few markets does local news attract enough advertising revenue to pay for itself. So those newscasts (especially in smaller markets) have been drastically cut. Local news has been replaced by more pre-packaged news packages from the networks. Programming outside of the local newscasts has been all but eliminated.

So what can we do about this? Should we just shut down the conventional networks? Obviously the networks don't agree with that idea, because conventional television is still making them money.

How about a government bailout? Consumers would be opposed to that, and it creates all sorts of problems (should broadcasters be paid equally, or based on the ratings of their newscasts?). Besides, there already is one in the form of the Local Programming Improvement Fund, a 1.5% tax on cable and satellite companies' revenues that goes to help programming in small-market stations.

What CTV et al are proposing is that broadcasters and distributors negotiate a fair market value for carrying their stations. It's not entirely clear what the details are, such as whether consumers would be able to choose which conventional television stations they would pay for (they could pay for none of them and just hook up the rabbit ears to get them free), or whether they would be forced to pay for them like we're forced to pay for CBC Newsworld and CPAC whether we want to or not (such mandatory carriage would leave cable and satellite companies without a bargaining chip, making negotiation difficult).

It's the economics, stupid

The networks' prime argument in launching this campaign is this:

One of the campaign's concerns is that cable and satellite providers continue to charge viewers for our services, yet they pay nothing to local television stations. However, Canadian cable companies pay U.S. cable channels in excess of $300 million a year for their services, and these cable channels are not required to produce any Canadian content. The campaign members are standing up to change this system because they believe local stations deserve fairness so viewers can continue to enjoy local television programming now and in the years to come.

The argument about channels like Spike and CNN not producing Canadian content is valid. Of course, the CRTC takes this into consideration when approving a U.S. channel for distribution here. U.S. networks aren't allowed to compete with Canadian ones on (basic) cable, which is why we didn't have MTV to compete with MuchMusic or HBO to compete with the Movie Network until Canadian versions of those channels launched recently.

But the comparison to conventional television is based on a faulty assumption. People don't pay for conventional television stations as part of their cable bills. People get cable because they want CNN and Spike, not the local news. The bills for basic service cover the physical cable service as well as CRTC-mandated specialty channels like Newsworld and CPAC. Cable and satellite companies don't charge consumers to give them local television stations, because you can't charge people for something they already get for free.

The big irony of the argument is that the CRTC mandates that cable and satellite companies distribute local television stations as part of their basic service at the request of those television stations. In cable's infancy, local TV wanted to be on cable to reach larger markets and get more advertising revenue. They even got the CRTC to guarantee they'd get the lowest spots on the dial, which back then were considered prime electronic real estate.

But I understand times change. Things are different now, the model is broken.

At least, they say the model is broken. CTV and Global haven't released detailed financial reports showing how much money they're losing on conventional television (or if they're losing any at all). We have only their self-serving word to go on here.

The CRTC will be debating the future of local television in November.

Comments enabled

A side note about the "Local TV Matters" campaign: the website (which is WordPress-based) has open comments on its posts, and there's already a lot of them from incredulous consumers asking why they're being asked to pay more when their local programming is being cut to the bone. I'm a bit surprised the comments are still up there, and wonder what it will take for them to shut down dissenting consumer opinion.

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The CRTC on Monday decided to hike the fee (temporarily, at least) for its Local Programming Improvement Fund from 1% to 1.5% of cable and satellite provider revenues (revenues, not profits), which would give broadcasters an additional $32 million a year ($100 million total in the new fund) to devote to local programming.

You can see all its arguments in the official decision. It's less than the 2.5% that a parliamentary committee suggested in June.

It's a victory for broadcasters and a defeat for cable and satellite companies (and probably consumers). CBC is happy. Canwest is happy. CTV is happy. Bell is sad. Cogeco is sad (PDF). Rogers is sad. Videotron is sad. Bill Brioux is annoyed.

Especially when you consider how much the television industry is already subsidized through mandatory fees from cable and satellite companies (now 6.5% of their revenues) and funding from the government, all without us having a say in programming, you have to wonder whether it's all worth it.

Best of all, the broadcasters say they need more.

The CRTC also released its conditions of license for one-year renewals for the major networks:

• TVA
• Citytv
• CTV
• Global

Many of the decisions below come from these renewals.

Finally, the CRTC has kicked the fee-for-carriage can (which was in turn kicked to them by a parliamentary committee) and other issues down the road to a hearing in September, where it will discuss that and other issues affecting broadcast television. The indication, however, is that the CRTC supports a fee-for-carriage idea, provided the fees are negotiated with broadcasters and cable/satellilte companies.

Harmonized local programming minimums

And how much more local programming will we be getting for all this extra money? We won't! In fact, we're getting less! Thanks to new "harmonized" minimum requirements, most stations in the country will now have to produce less local programming.

For English-language stations, the minimums will be 14 hours a week for large markets (Toronto, Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary, Montreal, Vancouver), and seven hours a week for smaller markets (including Halifax, Hamilton and Victoria), with some exceptions. This will mean reductions for CKMI (18 hours a week) and CFCF (15.5 hours a week). Stations with really high requirements might see massive cuts and layoffs. CHCH Hamilton, for example, has dropped from 36.5 hours to only seven, though they're going to make a go at more local programming, at least in the short term.

For French-language stations (effectively just TVA since TQS has a special exception), it's on a case-by-case basis:

• CFCM (Quebec City): 18 hours a week, down from 21
• CFER (Rimouski): 5 hours a week, up from 3:10
• CJPM (Chicoutimi): 5 hours a week, up from 3:10
• CHLT (Sherbrooke): 5 hours a week, up from 3:10

Independent stations owned by Radio-Nord (TVA Gatineau) and Télé Inter-Rives (SRC/TVA/TQS in Rivière du Loup, TVA in Carleton) maintain their current requirements.

Note that for French markets, only Montreal is larger than a million and is ineligible for LPIF funding.

In the same decision, the CRTC also rejected requests from broadcasters to eliminate requirements for priority programming (expensive dramas) and independent production (as opposed to in-house).

Global Quebec is now Global Montreal

After again rejecting union complaints that Global's produced-out-of-Vancouver plan violates local programming requirements for Global Quebec (not saying it wasn't in violation, only that there is "insufficient evidence" and it will "continue to monitor the situation"), the CRTC has approved a request to change CKMI from a Quebec City-based regional station to a local Montreal-based station.

CKMI-TV was once based in our provincial capital, but since it was purchased by Canwest and turned into a Global station it has effectively been headquartered in Montreal, with retransmitters in Quebec City and Sherbrooke (technically, the transmitter was in Quebec with a retransmitter, CKMI-TV-1, in Montreal). Global Quebec was licensed as a regional station, which meant it couldn't take any local Montreal advertising. The license change makes it a local station which opens up that door (as small as it is) and allows the station to compete directly with CFCF and CBMT for local advertising.

A similar move was made for CIII, which is de facto Global's Toronto station but was technically licensed to Paris, Ontario, which is west of Hamilton.

CJNT keeps ethnic minimum

A request from Canwest to relieve money-losing ethnic station CJNT Montreal of its ethnic programming requirement was denied. Canwest wanted 5 hours a week, but will be stuck at the original 13.5. Since the station is being sold, it won't sadden Canwest too much to lose this battle.

Mandatory digital transition (or not?)

The CRTC recognized that some broadcasters are lagging behind in transitioning to digital. U.S. broadcasters were forced to make the switch last month (in a deadline that was delayed from February), but Canadians have until August 2011. The CRTC's decision doesn't suggest that this deadline will change for smaller markets (though it suggests perhaps a "hybrid model" may emerge), but it does say it "expects" that major markets will make the transition. It released a list of markets larger than 300,000 it "expects" will do so without complaint, and says it will discuss the issue further in September. The list includes Montréal, Quebec, Trois-Rivières, Sherbrooke, Rivière-du-Loup, Saguenay, Ottawa-Gatineau, territorial and provincial capitals and large cities across Canada. Essentially any market with more than one station.

The issue (which also includes whether there should be U.S.-style subsidies for converter boxes) will be dealt with again in September.

CTV-Shaw rejects get renewed

Even though Shaw's offer to buy them has fallen through, the CRTC has renewed licenses for CKX-TV in Brandon, Man., CHWI-TV in Wheatley/Windsor, Ont., and CKNX-TV in Wingham, Ont., for another year, despite CTV's request that they be terminated. They're still expected to shut down in August, although CTV says it is "reviewing" CHWI in light of the new funding. UPDATE: CTV says it will continue operating CHWI until Aug. 31, 2010. CKNX will be converted into a retransmitter, and CKX is still being shut down.

Other CTV stations which had the bare minimum of local programming have been relicensed as strictly retransmitters only:

• CKCO-TV-3 Oil Springs (Sarnia), Ont.
• CFRN-TV-3 Whitecourt, Alta.
• CFRN-TV-4 Ashmont, Alta.
• CFRN-TV-6 Red Deer, Alta.

No copy-copy

Separate requests from Canwest and Rogers to allow them to duplicate content on E!/Global and City/OMNI respectively were denied by the CRTC. The stations (CHAN-TV Vancouver/CHEK-TV Victoria, CIII-TV Toronto/CHCH-TV Hamilton, and City/OMNI pairings in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver) are currently limited to 10% overlap since they are stations with the same owner in the same markets. Requests to be relieved of that restriction were denied.

City stays special

In addition to allowing more overlap between City and OMNI, Rogers asked to be allowed to redirect "priority programming" money (money for expensive Canadian dramas) into local programming, and remove an unusual requirement at City to air Canadian feature films. Both were denied. The Globe has a story.

CHOI News Talk?

RNC Media has applied to the CRTC for a license amendment for CHOI-FM in Quebec City, which would change it from an alternative rock format to 50% spoken word. CHOI has a rather rocky past with the CRTC.

Radio was doing OK last year

The CRTC has released financial statistics of Canadian radio stations (taken as a whole). Looking at all of Canada and Quebec in particular, the numbers are fairly stable on both sides of the balance sheet. Of particular note is AM radio in Quebec, which shows significant losses year after year while the rest of the country just about breaks even.

Asians Asians Asians!

Asian Television Network has gotten approval for a slew of new specialty channels:

• Hindi Movie Channel
• Hindi Movie Channel Two
• ATN Cricket Channel One
• ATN Cricket Channel Two
• ATN South Asian News - Hindi/English
• ATN South Asian News - English
• ATN South Asian News - Hindi
• ATN Music Network One (Hindi Music)
• ATN Music Netowrk Two (Hindi Music)
• ATN Asian Sports Network (English coverage of cricket, ball hockey, badminton)

Another two networks - ATN Multicultural Channel and Commonwealth Broadcasting Network - were denied, as their nature was judged to be too broad for a specialty service.

ATN announced on Tuesday that nine channels, including some of the ones above, will premiere on Rogers Cable in the fall. The channels are being renamed to more interesting names.

CHEAR!

Ultimate Indie Productions has received authorization to start a specialty channel devoted to emerging Canadian Artists called CHEAR! (and CHEAR! HD)

Ashes to ashes, SCREAM to DUSK

Corus is rebranding its SCREAM! horror channel to DUSK, and expanding its niche to include "paranormal" and "supernatural" stuff that might not be so scary. I guess this means more X-Files? The change takes effect on Sept. 9 (09/09/09, as if that's scary or paranormal or something).

In other news

• TVA got a slap on the wrist (hell, not even that) for failing to meet expectations regarding airing of Canadian films and closed-captioning. The CRTC "expects" they'll meet those requirements in the future, or else they're going to get a sternly-worded letter, I guess.
• The Globe and Mail is reporting that Al-Jazeera English may be close to approval as a specialty channel.
• CPAC has gotten approval for a license amendment that would allow it to broadcast non-CPAC-sounding stuff like music on Canada Day every year. Now it can let loose in an explosion of patriotism on July 1.
• Vision TV has given up and is now asking viewers to figure out its programming.
• Cogeco has asked to move its transmitter for CFGE-FM (Rhythme FM) in Sherbrooke and increase its transmitter power to improve reception.
• MusiquePlus has gotten authorization to hand over its 3.4% of revenues required for the production of Canadian music videos to MaxFACT instead of VideoFACT. The difference is mainly that MaxFACT is what MusiMax gives its money to and this would simplify things for them. The request got an intervention from ADISQ which was concerned that there would be less money for youth-oriented music videos as well as those from Quebec anglophones. MusiquePlus responded that it has no control over the procedures used by MaxFACT to allocate it money.
• The CRTC is mad at CHRC in St. Catharines for violating a number of conditions of its license. There is, of course, no actual penalty associated with such violations as long as you promise not to do it again.
• The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has dismissed a complaint against CJMF-FM in Quebec City regarding a promotion related to driving while on a cellphone. The CBSC concluded that the station was not, in fact, advocating that people drive while illegally talking on a cellphone without a hands-free device.

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Could you imagine such a thing being done for a Canadian celebrity? It certainly wasn't done for Romeo Leblanc, a former governor general. Or this kind of special-event programming on any kind of local level? Except for elections, local stations haven't cut into programming since the Dawson shootings in 2006.

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Yeah, turns out it was a giant bluff. After going over the books for the three stations, Shaw determined that they are, indeed, losing quite a bit of money and it's not worth the CRTC brownie points and good PR to sink more cash into the stations. CTV issued a brief statement Tuesday afternoon saying Shaw reneged. Media outlets have repeated the statement, but Shaw and CTV aren't commenting further yet, and the stations can't comment because they don't know what's going on.

This comes (coincidentally?) on the same day Canwest announced it will offload two stations onto Channel Zero.

So CKX-TV in Brandon, Man., CHWI-TV in Wheatley (Windsor), Ont., and CKNX-TV in Wingham, Ont., go back to being endangered and unless another buyer can be lined up they won't last past the summer.

The optimism they had when the deal was announced now flies right out the window.

UPDATE: Canadian Press is the only outlet that finally tracks Shaw down to get comment. They say they expected real television stations but saw hollowed-out shells where much of the work was done in London and Toronto. Meanwhile, CTV says it will keep CHWI running for another year after getting more money from the CRTC.

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It was underhanded, mean-spirited, even arguably discriminatory. CTV executives decided to air the raw tape of an interview between ATV host Steve Murphy and then-Liberal leader Stéphane Dion in which Dion has trouble understanding a grammatically confusing question. The network said it was because it had news value, but in reality it was because it wanted to make Dion look bad.

The move backfired, with public opinion turning against CTV. And now the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has agreed, with two separate rulings that the network violated the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' Code of Ethics. (Two panels were actually convened, one regional panel to deal with the CTV Atlantic airing, and a specialty channel panel to deal with the Mike Duffy CTV NewsNet rebroadcast later that evening.)

Coverage from CP and Canwest. Still waiting for a news outlet that actually bothers to link to the decisions. Also no peep from CTV so far.

The decisions basically rule that Murphy's question was poorly worded, that the network should not have aired the outtakes after promising not to do so, that airing them was unfair to Dion, and that his restarts were not newsworthy enough to justify their airing.

I find myself mostly agreeing with the analysis of the council, though their analysis of Murphy's grammar is thorough to the point of absurdity.

The specialty channel panel wasn't unanimous, with two members providing a dissenting opinion that favoured CTV. CTV's arguments shouldn't be dismissed here - they argue that restarts like these are rare, even in live-to-tape interviews like this one, and that it should be up to CTV, not the council, to decide what is newsworthy, especially when it comes to the most important interview a newscaster can give - a candidate for prime minister during an election campaign.

One argument that CTV didn't make which I'll add is that the question Dion was asked is textbook to the point of being cliché: What would you have done as prime minister? And politicians with even a moderate amount of public exposure should know how to bullshit their way to the next question if they don't understand it (or don't have the answer). Had Dion just picked an interpretation of his choosing instead of asking for clarification multiple times, this would never have happened.

But that doesn't change the fact that CTV said it wouldn't air the outtakes, and acted in a way that made it clear to Dion they wouldn't be aired. Dion took advantage of an opportunity, and then got a knife stabbed in his back for his trouble.

UPDATE (June 2): ProjetJ looks at the differences between the CBSC and the Quebec Press Council. The latter has been losing members who also belong to the former (arguing they shouldn't have to belong to two organizations that do the same thing). It also suggests the press council is more secretive, making its decisions anonymously.

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It's not exactly a velvet rope, but it contains the crowd.

But when CTVglobemedia told its local stations that they were opening their doors on Saturday, I joined a few young aspiring journalists for a tour of the station, my first time setting foot in the building.

Cindy Sherwin rounds up another group for a tour

Our assigned guide was veteran reporter Cindy Sherwin, who brought us upstairs to the newsroom to take a peek at how the cool reporters do their jobs.

Next time, I'll get a better shot of the newsroom.

Joined by Executive Producer Barry Wilson, Sherwin re-emphasized how the team wants to bring out "your stories", even those you might not think are good enough to get on the news (it costs nothing to throw away a press release, after all). Being a Saturday at exactly noon, the newsroom was pretty empty.

An editor shows a future journalist how stories are put together

CFCF's editing booths are where reporters and editors put voice and video together to create a packaged report. Avid, an industry standard, is the editing software of choice.

The "Feed and play" room

Next door to the editing booths is the "Feed and play" room, where video from tapes is entered into the massive computer system. It works in concert with the control room, where the newscast is actually directed.

You don't see these bars too often on air anymore

The coloured bars are used to set levels. Below on the right, a scope that looks like a staircase shows the levels of the various colours. When real video is shown, the scope looks like a wavy blur.

What's going on down there?

One of the video feeds shows the weather camera in the studio, where Lori Graham is showing another group how the green screen works.

Hugh Haugland (left) and Cindy Sherwin

It's not a coincidence. Hugh Haugland is Bill's son.

The control room is where the newscast is created.

Screens all over the place. Studio cameras, remote feeds, packages and anything else that might end up on screen is fed into this room where for an hour at a time chaos is brought into order. On the left is a station that deals with name supers, those little lower-third graphics that identify interview subjects.

CFCF's studio, from left: sports, news, interviews and weather

But, of course, the real tourist attraction is the studio, where the anchors sit and where the weather green screen is.

RDS Antichambre set

One interesting piece of trivia is that the new RDS show l'Antichambre has its set in the CFCF studio. Since that show airs after hockey games at about 10 or 10:30pm, there's little risk of concurrent broadcasts (though I couldn't help imagining them shushing each other if it did happen - there's a sitcom plot in there somewhere).

Camera 2 (which for some reason is under a blue light) has no cameraman, nor do the others

The three studio cameras are computer-controlled, which makes for smoother movement and more fine-tuned control, but lacks a bit of humanity.

Everyone in front of the green screen! (Inset lower right: What they look like with the weather map)

Weather has been done in front of green screens just about since they were invented. Lots of people got a hoot out of standing in front of a giant weather map.

Photoshop Lori!

An exercise for the reader: Insert your own image in the background.

I asked Graham how long her day is, since she's on all three newscasts during the day. Turns out she tapes her segment on the 11:30 late night broadcast after the news at six. But if the weather changes, they either need to drag her back in studio or have someone else do the weather.

Camera 3 is used for weather, and includes a monitor for the weather map.

Teleprompters aren't just text anymore, they can be used for pictures too. Along with the side monitors off camera, Graham can see what she's doing by looking directly into the lens. The only quirk is that it's not a mirror image, so weather presenters need to be trained that when they move to the left, they're actually moving to the right.

One of the younger viewers at the green screen (inset top right: what she looks like on camera)

This young viewer took a microphone and gave a thoughtful analysis of the financial pressures facing broadcast television stations, arguing that broadcast distribution units should pay small, nominal fees to broadcasters to support local television, but that this won't solve the systemic inequities between conventional television stations and specialty channels who have dual revenue streams without the burden of localizing programming.

Either that or she sang the alphabet song. I can't remember which.

The interview desk, being used by Team 990

To the left of the weather green screen is the interview area, where one-on-one sitdowns (usually for the noon newscast) take place. During the open house, there was a guy from The Team 990 doing what appeared to be a live broadcast about soccer. CKGM is owned by CTV, so it makes sense they'd share resources, but wouldn't a sound studio make a lot more sense for this kind of thing?

Also note the security guard, there to protect the host from screaming fans who want their moment of fame by getting on an AM sports radio station on a Saturday afternoon.

Todd van der Heyden and Mutsumi Takahashi at the anchor desk

Behind the anchor desk is a lot less elegant than the front. Fluorescent lights in the desk shine on the anchors, who have only their drinks, laptops and cough buttons to play with.

Bright lights dominate the view from behind the desk.

The cameraman was there to do a story on the open house itself.

Todd van der Heyden likes to lean back and play it cool.

He's relatively serious on air, but Todd van der Heyden is a lot more laid back (literally) when the cameras aren't rolling. One of these days he's going to lean too far.

Todd van der Heyden is thinking.

Even though they weren't going to be on air (the weekend crew was handling the newscast), Takahashi, van der Heyden and Graham were in full costume and makeup. I'll leave it as another exercise for the reader to suggest what he's thinking about here.

Dominique Jarry-Shore and family with the news anchors

Since everyone wants a photo with the anchors, they had a professional photographer in the studio and lined people up to take pictures with Todd and Mits. Say cheese! Click! Click! Next!

Imagine having to smile for photo after photo for hours at a time.

The CTV mascot shows Todd the love

The mascot (named "Jellybean" for some strange reason) came on set and fooled around with people. I asked it to give van der Heyden a big bear hug, and both happily obliged.

If local television dies, this is what we'll be losing, folks.

Star reporter Rob Lurie with a fan

Brian Fantana Rob Lurie stopped by to show the love with some admirers. I'm not sure who looks more adorable in this picture, but it's definitely a close race.

Jack Layton and reporter Annie DeMelt

Annie DeMelt was the reporter actually doing the story on the open house. NDP leader Jack Layton walked in while we were there, and DeMelt pounced on him for an interview. Unsurprisingly, he said the government should ensure that local television has a future, though he didn't take a position specifically on fee for carriage.

I couldn't help noticing DeMelt was in heels.

I admit I have an anti-heel bias, even though I've never worn them myself. I always find it a bit silly, especially when you're never seen on camera below the chest.

Jazz hands!

This guy, who actually works in marketing and admitted he didn't know much about the equipment (other than its million-dollar cost), managed to muddle through a tour while the expert was out back. UPDATE: I'm told he's George Goulakos, the national sales president at CTV.

Depending on location and other factors, the truck will send its video out via microwave link or via satellite.

The control panel on the remote truck

And you think your remote control is confusing.

Maya Johnson (centre) at the refreshment stand

Outside, free soft drinks were being handed out. I picked up a can of coke. Does that ruin my journalistic objectivity here?

As the tour ended, and visitors put their "save local TV" postcards into a box to be mailed to Ottawa, I was asked if I'd been sold on fee for carriage. Except nobody mentioned that during the open house. I remain to be convinced.

Pictures from CTV open houses in Edmonton and Vancouver are on Flickr.

News coverage of the events seems to be mostly limited to CTV itself, with the exception of this story from the Ottawa Citizen (which includes a gallery), and a Canwest News Service piece that uses the word "protesters", which I think is a bit of a stretch. I didn't see anyone holding signs.

There are also more opinions about fee for carriage - some for, some against, some mockingly against.

Oh, and did I get on TV in DeMelt's report?

ME!

Why yes, yes I did. My parents are so proud.

UPDATE: For anyone interested, CTV has raw video of the interview with Justin Trudeau.

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One-sided ad from CTV Atlantic

If you haven't caught CTV's "Save Local Television" ads recently, you haven't been watching television. CTV has blanketed its stations, the A television network as well as specialty channels like the Comedy Network and Space with these advertisements that predict a doomsday scenario for local television and demonize the cable and satellite companies for "taking our programming" and "giving nothing in return" (as if this arrangement benefits solely the cable companies at the expense of local broadcasters, and as if the cable companies are selling DVDs of Corner Gas).

The cable and satellite companies have responded with a giant STFU, and issued a press release saying they're complaining to the CRTC that CTV is breaching the public trust with this one-sided campaign that is a "blatant violation of journalistic principles." (More coverage from CTV-owned Globe and Mail, Canwest/Global-owned Financial Post, CBC-owned CBC.ca and non-profit cooperative Canadian Press)

You see, not only is CTV running these ads all over the place, it's enlisting the help of its journalists to spread its message. Ridiculously one-sided news reports from CTV Atlantic, CTV Winnipeg, CTV Toronto and A Barrie simply throw journalism out the window. In all but the one case, no attempt whatsoever is made to get comment from cable and satellite companies. The exception, in the CTV Atlantic report, includes a 10-second clip in a two-and-a-half-minute report whose bias is evident when the reporter talks about broadcasters wanting "equal treatment".

CP24 (which is owned by CTV) has a fluff interview with CTV Executive Vice-President of Corporate Affairs Paul Sparkes in which he crosses the line from misleading to outright lie, saying cable and satellite companies are "taking our programs, repackaging them, selling them to the consumer, making a profit, and paying us nothing." Local television feeds are not "repackaged", but passed through directly to consumers. Sparkes also dismisses an actual question about fee for carriage lobbed at him from his reporter.

This report from Graham Richardson is a bit more balanced, in that he actually talked to a Rogers VP without systematically picking apart everything he says. It is the exception, unfortunately.

CTV Montreal enlisted the help of the premier, although Jean Charest doesn't specifically state that he supports a mandatory fee for carriage. (He also talks of how important local television is to his home town of Sherbrooke, even though it has no local anglo television station.)

Right of response

In response to the complaint, CTV issued a press release blasting Rogers as "underhanded" (at the same time arguing that discussions shouldn't happen via press release).

Its only comment about the attacks on its journalistic integrity came from this paragraph:

Indeed, consistent with CTV's efforts to provide balanced coverage of the issues surrounding the crisis in local television, CTV once again invites representatives from Rogers, Bell, TELUS, Cogeco, Eastlink and the CCSA to participate in tomorrow's nationwide events.

I can only assume this means CTV reporters will only talk to cable and satellite companies about this issue if they send a representative to CTV's political rallies on a Saturday to be heckled by a public that has only been told one side of an issue. That doesn't sound particularly "balanced" to me.

Despite this, Shaw once again called CTV's bluff, and Ken Stein, the senior vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs at Shaw Cable, agreed to an interview with CTV NewsNet's Jacqueline Milczarek. Milczarek argued with him (politely) for more than six minutes, a huge contrast from the softball questions given to CTV executives.

Stein also appeared opposite CTV's David Goldstein to debate the issue on an Alberta program, which went on for a respectable 14 minutes. Sadly, the debaters weren't as respectable, accusing the other of misleading people. In short, Shaw says it produces local programming through cable access channels, while CTV argues (correctly) that those channels are financed entirely out of a CRTC-mandated fund. CTV argues that Shaw et al are stealing their programming and pirating it to viewers, and incredulously accuses Shaw of using "scare tactics" in this campaign (you know, the one in which CTV is using a heart monitor metaphor to say local TV will "disappear forever" if fee for carriage isn't enacted).

The network also finally got some smart analysts on. Eamon Hoey looked at the larger picture, taking a dim view of fee for carriage, and got hounded by Milczarek. Carleton University's Christopher Waddell also pointed out how CTV isn't telling all sides of this story, and also got treated with skepticism.

Don't get me wrong, these interviews with Milczarek are what journalists are supposed to be doing: getting people to answer tough questions. But compared to the fluff interviews about open houses with CTV executives, it seems clear that CTV is using its journalists to advocate for a cause, being soft on their bosses and tough on their competition.

Breach of trust

CTV is grossly abusing its public trust by forcing its journalists to participate in what is essentially a political campaign. Television viewers have the right to be fully informed about all sides to this issue and CTV is systematically denying them that right.

Of course, the fact that local CTV stations are owned by a giant conglomerate that puts profit above everything else and is pretending to care about local television to manipulate the public is the problem in the first place, isn't it?

What's even sadder is that it takes another group of giant corporate conglomerates protecting their own bottom lines to bring this problem to light. If a solution was proposed that benefitted both private broadcasters and cable and satellite companies at the expense of television viewers, who would be there to look out for us?

I'm going to CTV Montreal's open house today. I'm pessimistic about their chances of convincing me to accept their corporate manifesto, but it's a good chance to explore the station.

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Todd Van der Heyden wants to show you inside CTV Montreal

CTV has gone on the offensive in its campaign to "save local television" by forcing cable companies through legislation to give them money. Ads have already started appearing on TV, and a website and online petition has been setup to get people to tell their MPs to approve a "fee for carriage" scheme that would give CTV, Global, Rogers and other conventional television broadcasters hundreds of millions of dollars, with very vague ideas of where that money would actually go.

I'm still kind of on the fence about fee for carriage or related schemes. On one hand, I agree that it's unfair for cable broadcasters to be able to charge subscription fees and get advertising revenues while spending little money on original programming (and no expensive local programming whatsoever). I also think cable and satellite distributors like Videotron and Bell have profit margins that are way too high and more of that money should be going either to the broadcasters or back in the pockets of consumers.

On the other hand, as a consumer, I object to the idea that I could be forced to pay for a signal I get over the air for free. It's like adding a surcharge on an air conditioning bill for the oxygen. My cable company doesn't "take" or "sell" CFCF programming, it simply retransmits the station's signal to my television set (should broadcasters also demand fees from antenna manufacturers?) And my solution to the disparity between cable channels and conventional broadcasters would have more to do with eliminating cable subscription fees altogether, except for channels like HBO that provide a large amount of original programming.

What is "local television"?

Besides, what exactly are we saving when we talk about saving local television anyway? There is no local television production besides the newcasts anymore, at least not in Montreal. Where once you could count on your local station to carry the Christmas or St. Patrick's Day parades live, now they produce five-minute packages for the evening news. Current affairs, entertainment, consumer affairs and other programming has been merged into mid-day and weekend newscasts on shoestring budgets. Even local sports teams can't get their games televised on local TV. They have to hope they can get a spot on the schedule of TSN, RDS or Rogers SportsNet.

So when we're talking about "local television", what we're really talking about is "local newscasts." That's not necessarily so bad. Local newscasts are the most important part of local television, and it's what people care about the most.

But what exactly do we get on local newscasts? We get:

• two-minute package reports about issues that were reported in the morning newspapers
• briefs about road accidents they could scramble a cameraman to get B-roll for
• softball interviews with newsmakers, activists and politicians
• whatever sounds good on a press release and can provide good visuals
• reports on criminal court proceedings (reporter stands in front of courthouse cut with B-roll of lawyers and family members walking down hallways)
• 20-second anchor voice-overs with B-roll from community events they didn't want to send a reporter to
• recaps of sports games with footage taken from other networks
• entertainment listings
• a weather presenter (usually female) showing us the latest fashions and waving her hands over forecast maps
• silly banter between anchors to fill time
• packaged reports taken from the national network, other regional stations or international sources like CNN.

This isn't to bash CFCF, which produces the best of Montreal's three anglo newscasts (and has the ratings to show for it). But they want us to pay for this in addition to seeing all the advertising?

Your friendly neighbourhood corporate conglomerate

Former CFCF12 logo

This slick marketing campaign really rubs me the wrong way. It's a giant corporate behemoth owned by an even more giant corporate behemoth, and it hasn't exactly shown a commitment to local television in the past. What was once a member-owned collective of television stations across Canada has since been bought up by a corporate profit-seeking enterprise that has imposed its power on local stations. CFCF Television in Montreal was forced to dump its iconic logo and rename its signature newscast solely to please the whims of head office that wanted all the stations in the network to look identical.

Now, suddenly, it's in CTV's interest to get people to feel nostalgic about their local television station. So it created this campaign and setup this website, which has cookie-cutter versions for each CTV and A-Channel station (it even has a French version which is actually mostly English). They've produced 30-second ads where community leaders read from nearly identical scripts that give vague references to how important local TV is in promoting local events. They're running ads on local television stations and even arranging one-sided fluff interviews with their news employees.

CFCF opens its doors

They're also organizing open houses next weekend at all their stations. CFCF, which has offices at Papineau and René-Lévesque, will be open as of 9am on May 23. People who want to visit are asked to call or email to "reserve your tour."

Whether or not you agree with or even care about this issue, this is a rare opportunity to see what it's like inside a local television station and meet some of the people you see on air. I'd recommend against passing this chance up.

How to get me on board

Despite my reservations about their funding idea, despite how much they've destroyed local television so far through budget cuts and local brand suppression, despite how obviously self-serving it all is, despite the fact that they still made money last year (though not the hundreds of millions of dollars that they're used to) and despite the fact that they want us to pay for the fact that they made unwise investments and couldn't see that their business model was doomed, I'm willing to hear CTV's case and even open to the idea of supporting their cause, on one condition:

I want to see their numbers. All of them.

While the CRTC releases so-called "aggregate" financial information about conventional broadcasters so we know how much money they make as a whole and how much they spend in total on certain types of programming. From that we learn that they're spending more on licensing U.S. programming than creating Canadian programming (including news). The argument is that the advertising profits from simulcasting U.S. programming subsidize the Canadian programming and newscasts. But we have only their word that this is true.

The CRTC has moved to increase such transparency in reporting of financial information, but that has met resistance from broadcasters who argue it may expose trade secrets.

If CTV wants my support, they have to get over that paranoia and let the public see those numbers. How much are senior executives getting paid? How much does their Canadian programming cost? How much are they spending on public relations and marketing? How much of the cost of importing U.S. programming is shared with the cable channels that also broadcast it?

These are questions I'd like answers to before I start pressuring my MP.

UPDATE (June 1): CTV says "100,000 expressions of support", with 30,000 visiting open houses.

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Morning news anchor Herb Luft will return to regular reporting

The news hit insiders this morning, and the press release was issued just after the end of business: CFCF (aka CTV Montreal) is cancelling its 6am morning newscast, effective immediately, and replacing it with another half hour of its national morning program Canada AM. (Previously, CFCF would cut into Canada AM after the first half hour.) They've already updated their weekly schedule to reflect the change.

The decision, which is being made to cut costs, will mean the cutting of four positions (one of which is already vacant). Herb Luft, who has been anchoring the morning newscast since it started in March 2000, will return to general assignment reporting.

CFCF's license requires a minimum of 15.5 hours a week of local programming. Since the cancellation of Entertainment Spotlight and SportsNight 360 in January, this has been entirely made up of local newscasts (and the late sportscast at 11:45). The cancellation of the half-hour weekday newscast drops CFCF's local programming hours from 18.5 to about 16 hours a week with a one-hour weekday noon newscast, one-hour daily evening newscast and 35-minute daily late newscast.

It also means that there is now no morning local news from any of Montreal's anglophone television stations. Global Quebec cancelled This Morning Live last year and replaced it with a repeat of the previous night's News Final. CBC Montreal airs a national morning news program.

First News, as it was officially called, was also the last local morning newscast in the CTV network. All the other stations ran all three hours of Canada AM from 6 to 9am.

UPDATE: The Gazette has a brief about it (that's open to comments), which pretty much repeats everything already in this post. Evening anchor Todd van der Heyden mentioned the cancellation in the middle of the evening newscast (the website has a brief about it as well), pointing out that even with this reduction CFCF has more local news than its competitors.

UPDATE (March 11): How's this for irony? CTV has laid off 24 people from Canada AM.

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It turns out CTV isn't quite done with the cutbacks at its secondary broadcast network. After announcing it wouldn't renew licenses for two southern Ontario stations, the axe has come down on 118 jobs at other stations across the network, including 34 in Ottawa/Pembroke, 18 in Victoria, 24 in Barrie, Ont., and more (42 by my math) in London, representing about 28% of the workforce.

As a result, various local programming is being cancelled. Barrie and London are cutting their morning programs, and like Global Quebec will be re-running their nightly newscasts in the morning.

In Victoria, the morning show will be replaced by "cameras ... in the C-FAX 1070 radio station starting tomorrow to broadcast its morning show from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m."

In Ottawa, it's the reverse. The evening and weekend newscasts will be cancelled.

They can do this and still keep their broadcasting licenses because of a loophole in the CRTC's local programming rules. It says stations have to air a certain minimum amount of locally-produced programming every week, but it doesn't say that it has to produce that much, so stations can get away with producing an hour and a half of news and replaying it at 6am, and that counts as three hours of programming.

A Channel has never really made money. And since its acquisition by CTV it's basically been a dumping ground for second-rate U.S. shows that won't fit on the main network's schedule. (The irony is that CTV never wanted the network. They were more interested in acquiring CHUM's specialty channels and would offload A Channel onto Rogers. But the CRTC intervened and said they had to give away Citytv instead. Had this not happened, we might be looking at massive layoffs at Citytv right now.)

The union has issued a news release blaming CTV for turning its back on small communities, while also drinking its Kool-Aid that the whole problem is because cable companies are making money and not handing it over to CTV (as opposed to, say, CTV spending millions to acquire U.S. programming that could be spent on original programming).

UPDATE (March 12): the Ottawa Citizen looks inside the cuts at A Channel in Ottawa.

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