| TV

TSN loses Saturday night CFL games in new 6-year deal

If you hear Bell Media talk about it, it’s a “landmark” deal that “solidifies” its “position as Canada’s Home of the CFL.”

The reality is that while it’s a big deal for the CFL, it’s a big change for CFL fans, who will now have to subscribe to a new service to get their games, after many years of TSN having 100% exclusive rights to CFL games within Canada.

The six-year deal, which starts in 2027, is as follows:

  • TSN keeps about 3/4 of regular-season games (60 games total), including Thursday and Friday night games. It also keeps seven of nine playoff games (in an expanded playoff format that also begins that year), including the Grey Cup.
  • DAZN gets an exclusive window for Saturday 7pm ET games (21 games total), and one preseason game. It also gets two playoff games in the first two rounds. DAZN also becomes the exclusive broadcaster for all CFL games outside Canada and the United States.
  • YouTube gets some preseason games not carried by TSN or DAZN, as well as some non-game content including “enhanced” CFL Combine coverage.
  • RDS remains the exclusive French-language broadcaster with all Alouettes games and all playoff games. (It presumably can show non-Alouettes games on Saturday nights as well, though it’s not clear if there are any limitations on this.)

The CFL doesn’t mention U.S. rights in this announcement. Those rights are held by CBS Sports, but are apparently in their final year, so we’ll probably get another announcement about that later. It also doesn’t include radio broadcast rights, which are unaffected.

DAZN costs $35 a month for its basic plan, $25 a month if you subscribe for a year or $250 a year if you pay upfront. That’s a high price to pay if you just want to watch the once a month on average your team will play on a Saturday night.

The deal makes sense for DAZN, which also has NFL games, but I remember the hype when that deal was first announced in 2017, how DAZN was going to be the “home of football” in Canada. The reality is that while it remains the only place you can stream every game, Bell Media still has rights to Thursday, Sunday and Monday night NFL games and at least half a dozen Sunday afternoon games.

I also remember when DAZN got the English Premier League exclusively, and how much of a pain that was not just for viewers but for bars and pubs wanting to show them as well.

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| Opinion, Public transit, West Island

It’s time we start actually consulting during public consultations

A week ago, the STM launched a new bus network for the north end and West Island to better connect routes with the REM and make other changes to boost efficiency. The off-island Presqu’île sector of Exo also made similar changes to better connect travellers with the Anse-à-l’Orme REM station.

The STM’s major overhaul of West Island routes, probably the biggest since 1997 when it created routes like the 207, 217, 218 and 268, or at least 2005 when it launched the 470 express bus to Côte-Vertu, was an opportunity to make a lot of commuters’ lives easier, reducing the number of connections, simplifying routes and getting people from Point A to Point B as fast as possible.

But a week later, West Island and off-island commuters are piling on the complaints, saying the changes have made things worse:

  • Off-island students who took Exo buses to CEGEP Gérald-Godin in Ste-Geneviève and Vanier College or Côte-Vertu, which also serves Vanier College, faced having to make two transfers after the Exo buses were redirected to the REM. Their protests led to a temporary extension of those buses, but only until the end of this week.
  • Off-island residents travelling to anywhere on the western leg of the Orange Line complained that replacing the 40 express bus with buses that go to the REM made their commutes significantly longer. Petitions were started and local MNAs involved. But besides the accommodation mentioned above, no changes were made.
  • Even those who want to go downtown found that the REM did not save any time compared to taking the commuter train.
  • Northern Beaconsfield NIMBYs protested about buses using their streets during rush hour.
  • Many West Island residents complaining in general that a route that used to be a single bus now requires a connection.

Normally, there’s a great way to avoid these problems, one governments love to require: public consultations. You present something to the public, get their thoughts on it, and consider those comments when making a decision.

The STM did this with its bus network overhauls. From 2018 to 2024 it held consultations in various sectors of the city, inviting the public to present their feedback and thoughts about a new bus network. You can even watch the videos of the events (many of which were online because of the pandemic), like this one for Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue/Baie-d’Urfé.

Having attended some of these consultations, I can’t say they were horrible. They did hear from plenty of people, and asked good questions, like which destinations people wanted to access or what links were missed with the previous network. People expressed legitimate concerns that I hope were taken into account.

The problem is that there was no further consultation after the changes were designed. No proposed routes were presented to the public. There was no opportunity for people to comment on new routes, route cancellations or changes. Everything was presented as a fait accompli a few weeks before they took effect, and no further changes were going to be considered.

Without disparaging what I’m sure was a lot of hard work by the employees involved in setting up these initial consultations, I feel like it was more for show than anything else. I don’t think the changes that were made are significantly different from what would have been done without these consultations. And I think the comments made about the changes after they were announced are far more helpful than asking people whether they think it’s important that they can get to school by bus.

Overall, I think the network overhauls by the STM and Exo did more good than bad. According to the STM’s data, more people will save time than will lose time on the new network, though most people won’t see any time savings with the REM. Some corrections can be made in the future by adjusting the new routes to deal with the unforeseen issues that come up.

But the next time a government wants to make changes like this that affect people’s daily lives, it might be a better idea to tell people what you’re going to change before asking them for their thoughts about those changes.

| Radio

Alouettes sign French radio deal with 99.5 FM

The Alouettes are changing radio stations after a decade and a half with Cogeco’s 98.5 FM.

It’s not a huge shocker, but what’s surprising is that they’re not going to Montreal’s French-language all-sports station, BPM Sports 91.9, but have instead signed a deal with CJPX-FM 99.5, owned by Leclerc Communication (which also owns WKND 91.9 and BLVD 102.1 in Quebec City, both music stations).

It’s effective immediately, and 99.5 will broadcast all the Alouettes games starting with next Friday’s preseason opener. They haven’t announced who will be doing play-by-play or analysis. UPDATE (May 19): Jean St-Onge, who did play-by-play at 98.5, will continue to do so for 99.5. Former Alouettes offensive lineman and coach Luc Brodeur-Jourdain will do analysis, replacing former Redblacks defensive back Jean-Philippe Bolduc.

The deal doesn’t affect English radio rights, which are held by Bell’s TSN 690, or television rights, held by TSN and RDS.

The 99.5 station, which doesn’t have any branding besides its frequency, is a de facto rebroadcaster of Quebecor’s QUB Radio during the day (a loophole to get around CRTC ownership limits), and broadcasts mostly music during evenings and weekends. The fact that Quebecor is owned by Pierre Karl Péladeau, who also owns the Alouettes, has been noted by some people online. Did existing relationships grease a deal here, or will Quebecor produce Alouettes broadcasts or something? We’ll see.

One quirk of this deal means Montreal’s three main sports teams are on three different French language radio stations — or, well, they would be if BPM Sports hadn’t stopped broadcasting CF Montréal games. But at least it means Alouettes games won’t be online-only in French when they conflict with Habs games.

This isn’t the first time a sports team has gone with an odd choice for broadcasting rights. The Alouettes had previously been on NRJ/Énergie before going to CKAC Sports 730, and recently the Laval Rocket chose the online-only media outlet Sick Media for radio broadcast rights.

Anyway, now the station has to establish a sports department, or at least find a way to produce home and away Alouettes games. And there’s a week left to do it.

| Public transit

Your line-by-line guide to the STM’s new bus network

Get ready, West Island. Not only does the REM’s Anse-à-l’Orme branch officially open on Monday after a weekend open house (finally making real the long wish of transit nerds to put the old Doney Spur rail line to good use), but the STM is timing its restructuring of the West Island and centre-north bus network to also take effect on Monday.

The STM has a tool online to look at routes and simulate trips on the new network. That will give you part of the story. Here’s the rest:

By the numbers

  • 13 new routes
  • 17 routes with major changes
  • 19 cancelled routes (most of which are de facto replaced by new routes)

New routes: 20, 79, 120, 127, 155, 210, 214, 221, 222, 223, 227, 229, 230 plus 294 and 295 taxibuses

Major changes: 31, 68, 69, 70, 140, 160, 171, 177, 180, 201, 203, 204, 211, 216, 411, 468, 475

Eliminated: 19, 30, 46, 115, 126, 135, 146, 213, 217, 219, 401, 405, 407, 409, 419, 425, 465, 485, 968

Expanding to seven days a week: 13, 54, 56, 218, 411, 468

Overall, if you’re looking to save time getting to and from destinations on existing bus routes in the West Island, prepare to be disappointed. The simulations I ran all resulted in either the same projected travel time or even more. (The STM says about three quarters of trip will take about the same time, and of the rest three quarters will be shorter by five minutes or more and the other quarter longer by five minutes or more.)

Many of the routes I expected to get major overhauls to become straighter (205, 206, 208) change very little in the end.

There are some areas that will get bus service for the first time (though not as many as you might think), or service seven days a week where it was just during rush hours before, and others that will see more simplified routes that will save some time.

Some areas will see new bus route numbers, as several routes have been eliminated and others created that in large part reassemble parts of old routes.

For others in the West Island, the only noticeable change will be that the Fairview REM station will fully replace Fairview mall bus terminal.

Here’s what’s changing for each line:

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| Media

Sherbrooke Record to become a weekly in print

A letter, titled 'Strengthening the future of local news', on Sherbrooke Record letterhead.

Notice from the Sherbrooke Record published April 22 saying it would move to a once-a-week schedule.

Quebec’s other English-language daily newspaper will soon no longer be that. This week, the Sherbrooke Record sent a letter to subscribers saying it would only produce print editions on Fridays starting in May.

Currently, the Record publishes in print five days a week (Monday to Friday).

The letter from publisher Sharon McCully explicitly states that “this is not a reduction in news” and breaking news would still be produced online. Instead, it is a way to cut production costs that are increasingly hard to justify for many daily newspapers. Others like La Presse and La Tribune, Sherbrooke’s French-language daily, have already eliminated print editions entirely and gone fully online.

The decision can’t come as much of a surprise. The paper has a community weekly feel to it anyway, and recent non-Friday editions have been only 12 pages long. Being a daily print publication comes with some prestige, but we’re long past the point when that prestige is worth the cost. (And La Presse and others have shown that you can still have that prestige even if you don’t have the paper.)

Brome County News, which was distributed with the Tuesday edition of the Record, will still be produced and distributed on Tuesdays, the note reads, and will also be included in the Friday Record along with the Record’s weekend edition.

UPDATE: In an interview with CBC’s Quebec AM, publisher Sharon McCully points to various reasons for the change, including the fact that the Record could no longer share distribution resources with the Montreal Gazette and had to rely on Canada Post instead, increasing those costs.

| Radio

Torres Media to acquire CHSV-FM 106.7 in Hudson/St-Lazare

A bit over a decade after it went on the air as the first English-language radio station serving the Vaudreuil-Soulanges area, CHSV-FM (Lite 106.7) is being sold to Torres Media, the owner of Ottawa’s Rebel 101.7.

The purchase price wasn’t announced, but we’ll learn that when the CRTC publishes the application. The commission has to approve the change in ownership before it can take effect. Until then, the station remains property of Evanov Radio, which launched it as Jewel 106.7 in 2015.

Evanov and Torres are trending in opposite directions in terms of radio ownership.

In the 2000s and 2010s, Evanov was expanding aggressively, launching new stations that include CHSV but also CHRF 980 AM in Montreal (Radio Fierté at first), and stations in Halifax, Winnipeg and Meaford, Hawkesbury, Ottawa and Clarence-Rockland, Ont., and acquiring others including Montreal’s CFMB 1280 AM. At its height it owned about 20.

But in 2023, three years after founder Bill Evanov died, the group began shutting down or selling off its stations. CHRF was shut down, as was Pride FM in Toronto, while stations in Halifax and eastern Ontario were sold to other owners, including the Jewel (later rebranded as Lite) station in Ottawa to Torres Media.

CFMB is Evanov’s only remaining station in Quebec, and if someone wants to buy it, now might be a good time to give them a call.

Torres, meanwhile, is in expansion mode. After launching The Rebel (originally Dawg FM) in Ottawa in 2010, in 2015 it launched CIUX-FM in Uxbridge, Ontario, and acquired CKOD-FM (Max 103), a French music station in Valleyfield. In 2020 it launched a country station in Georgina, Ontario. And last year it acquired The Jewel/Lite in Ottawa.

I asked Torres Media President Ed Torres about their plans for CHSV.

“We will conduct some research first. We’ve done some preliminary work, but not yet enough to conclude as to what direction to take the station format-wise,” he told me. “When we do, we will be locally focused on Hudson and environs.”

Roxanne Guérin, general manager of CKOD, will manage both stations, he said.

CHSV launched with some fanfare back in 2015, hiring Ted Bird for its morning show. (He was dropped in 2024.) It also gave shows to Paul Zakaib (Tasso Patsikakis) and Frank Cavallaro that didn’t last long. Nowadays it doesn’t move the needle much, with its announcers being mostly imports from other Evanov stations. At least that means Torres will have a blank slate to work with.

| Radio

The Beat drops Nat Lauzon

Nat Lauzon in The Beat’s studio in … I don’t know, a while back whenever I took this photo.

It’s an unfortunate reality in the radio business that while your arrival is announced with great fanfare, your departure is often met with a silent scrubbing of any evidence of your existence.

Such was the fate of Nat Lauzon, who announced on Thursday that her time at the radio station had come to an end. “We’ve parted ways,” she wrote in a Facebook post. (She clarifies in a video that the decision to leave wasn’t hers.)

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| Uncategorized

Agriculture minister introduces new tax credit for rage farmers

Citing the need to support new forms of agriculture, the Quebec government will announce Wednesday the introduction of a new tax credit aimed to help rage farmers maintain and grow their businesses.

The tax credit, which will be worth up to 30% of eligible labour expenses, was welcomed by the National Online Rage Farmers Union of Canada (NORFUC), which had lobbied hard for it the past few months.

“Artificial intelligence has been a double-edged sword for us,” said NORFUC national president Avril Wrasse. “It’s made generating images and stories easier and faster, but the increased competition from unregulated overseas rage farmers has significantly eaten into our profit margins. Facebook and Instagram are being flooded with nonsensical posts stealing attention from high-quality Canadian rage bait.”

The tax credit goes into effect starting in the 2026-27 tax year, and illegal immigrants who commit crimes will get double credit if they’re transgender.

| Uncategorized

CRTC orders Bell, Rogers, Quebecor and Telus to settle disputes using Rock Paper Scissors

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Wednesday announced it would streamline more than a dozen proceedings involving disputes between Canada’s largest telecom companies by ordering them to settle their disputes with a series of Rock Paper Scissors games.

“Our existing processes, which include final offer arbitration, tariff sheets, forbearance, disaggregated wholesale access and a bunch of other terms only you policy nerds really understand, has become too cumbersome due to the large number of complaints and proceedings started by these big four companies,” the CRTC wrote in its decision implementing the order.

Bilateral disagreements over things like TV channel carriage, access to utility poles, third-party internet access and telephone interconnection will be settled by a best-of-three Rock Paper Scissors tournament between the two organizations’ regulatory affairs directors, the CRTC said. (The commission received 148 interventions commenting on the number of games that would have to be played, with Bell arguing for one and others arguing for more.)

Disagreements involving three parties would be solved using the three-player variant of Rock Paper Scissors.

“The Commission has determined this would free up its resources to focus on more OLMC consultations and other pressing matters,” it said.

Bell has reportedly already hired an RPS consultant to train its vice-president of regulatory affairs on best techniques.

| Uncategorized

National Research Council renames itself Carney National Research Council in hope of restoring federal funding

Canada’s National Research Council has voted to rename itself the Carney National Research Council, hoping it might help the organization restore some funding the federal government cut in its latest budget.

“We’ve studied this extensively — half our staff is just experts in grant writing and government funding — and some compelling research out of the United States shows the best way to protect federal funding is to name yourself after the head of government,” said CNRC chair John Dory Krasavik.

The CNRC is waiting to hear back from the federal government, but is already making future plans to ensure its relevance well into the future. “We’ve prepared a new wave of Pierre Poilievre National Research Grants that are waiting to be deployed if needed,” Krasavik said.