Monthly Archives: August 2007

| Montreal

Shit-disturber seeks new employment

Zeke’s Gallery is shutting down. Not the blog, the gallery itself. And now Chris “Zeke” Hand is looking for a new job (know anyone hiring?).

The final show is this Friday.

Here’s what he told me:

Back when I started, there was no other ‘underground/alternative’ gallery in town – English or French. Now there are easily half a dozen. My Hero, Red Bird, Monastiraki, Kop Shop, Usine 106U, DGC, L78 and probably some that I am not completely aware of. Back when I started it was a fight to just get in the listings, now spaces like Le Kop Shop and Usine 106U regularly get mainstream press coverage.

While I recognize that it ain’t all my fault – I’d like to think that at the minimum ,the folk running those places thought ‘Hey! If he can do it, I can too! and better as well.’ Which ain’t such a bad legacy if you think about it.

It also is not getting easier competing with 20 year olds in pushing art. The stuff they are doing and showing is quite compelling.

Toss in that I’d gotten tired of fighting to make rent – and to the general public there appeared to be a convenient fall guy, and I figured why not? My previous job had lasted about 10 years. The gallery will have gone 9 years, 3 months, and 18 days. So this wasn’t any out of character moment.

Though it’s not directly a result of recent legal problems, it certainly had an impact.

| Uncategorized

More security through obscurity in Quebec highway infrastructure

Must we continue this cat-and-mouse game? First the government wouldn’t tell us which overpasses were part of the 135 they considered unsafe-but-still-safe. Then they published the list. Now they’re refusing to publish inspection and repair reports for those bridges and overpasses.

The reasons are vague and legal-sounding, but about half seem to do with giving out trade secrets of private corporations.

I’m not interested in how Pavage Connerie Jean-Luc drills its core samples. I want to know what’s wrong with these structures and what was fixed about them. What about the law prevents the government from giving us this information?

| Montreal, Radio

CKUT license renewed until 2014

The folks at CKUT Radio-McGill can rest easy. The CRTC today renewed their license for seven years until 2014, with only a minor change to its Canadian content rules. The decision also includes “suggestions” (to have board positions be longer than a year) and “reminders” (that board positions must be mostly university community members and at least 80% Canadian citizens).

Oh yeah, and make sure not to be discriminatory and stuff, even though you weren’t actually discriminatory before.

| TV

TQS needs better arguments for the CRTC

TQS has a request for the CRTC: Allow it to demand money from cable and satellite companies in exchange for carrying their signal, just like cable channels do.

At first, the argument seems compelling. TQS has more original programming … (ok, “programming”), higher expenses and can’t offset those with more advertising time than the specialty channels.

But TQS also has a broadcasting license. They’ve chosen a business model that says they distribute their signal freely and make money by charging advertisers based on the number of viewers they get. The more viewers, the more advertising revenue. It’s in their interest to be on cable and satellite, and they’re already given advantages like a low spot on the dial and a guaranteed spot in basic packages.

TQS wants more money they can funnel into their crappy programming (what the heck are they spending it on now? Hair treatments for Jean-Luc Mongrain?). That’s not an excuse to demand the government change laws that are already advantageous to over-the-air broadcasters.

Meanwhile, in happier TQS/CRTC-related news, a recent decision (PDF) means that a TQS Montreal retransmitter in Rimouski has transferred ownership to TQS affiliate CFTF-TV in Rivière-du-Loup, and part of the deal will add some local programming and a small news department in Rimouski. (And the CRTC has warned that they’ll need to increase that local programming when they apply for license renewal.)

| Media, Web design

So. Many. Ads.

I just went to a page on the Kingston Whig-Standard’s website:

Ads run amok

My God.

Un case you can’t tell, the article starts at the very bottom of the page. And there’s so much advertising on it that they can’t even fit the entire headline on the first screen.

When are mainstream media web properties going to learn how to properly place their ads online? Would you read a newspaper whose front page was almost exclusively advertising? Why are we expecting different for websites?

| TV

TLC: What exactly am I learning?

I used to be a fan of The Learning Channel. Owned by Discovery (in the U.S. where the idea of one educational network owning the other apparently didn’t strike anyone as odd), it had some low-budget educational programming that differed from a Discovery Channel that then was more focused on nature programming.

But then something changed. As Discovery added Mythbusters and dozens of Mythbusters knockoffs, TLC shifted its focus to reality programming and home renovation shows. “Bringing Home Baby”, “Take Home Chef”, “Flip That House”, “My Skin Could Kill Me” are among the shows on today. It’s the Medical Diagnosis Channel/Vehicle Repair Channel meets Home and Garden Television.

As if to underscore the fact that learning isn’t important to them, the channel has announced that it is carrying the exact opposite of everything that learning stands for:

The Miss America Pageant.

Just what am I supposed to learn from that?

| Business, Media, Web design

More bad web programming

CanWest has launched a new classified website, househunting.ca, for real estate listings. It’s still in beta, which is good because it still has problems with the way it’s coded:

Househunting.ca error message

Guess this Canadian website’s code wasn’t written in-house.

There are larger problems. The search results (there aren’t enough listings to analyze whether their search is good or not) produce a MapQuest map that’s centred on some random location that’s not where you searched for. When you move the map so you can see where you actually searched, the page forces itself to reload and change the search results to wherever you have the map pointed to.

The search box also doesn’t provide fine-tuned price ranging (or, for that matter, any search beyond location, price and size). If your range isn’t in their pre-set list, you’re out of luck (or you have to search a few times).

CanWest isn’t alone in these badly-designed online classified sites. All the websites owned by big media companies have downright awful designs. When a simple site like Craigslist is so successful, you wonder why people are trying to make these overly-complicated sites work instead of stealing a good idea.

| Blogosphere, Montreal, Public transit

It shouldn’t cost $9 to get from one shore to the other

Midnight Poutine has a rant-post about something I’ve heard a couple of times recently: when taking a trip that spans two transit networks, it’s treated as two separate trips, and you’re charged full-price for each.

So imagine someone taking public transit from western Laval to Brossard. That person would have to take an STL bus ($3), the metro ($2.75), and an RTL bus ($3.25). Total cost: $9.

We have, thanks to the Agence métropolitaine de transport, a “zone” monthly pass, which allows unlimited travel in multiple transit networks at a price considerably below what you’d pay for the different network’s passes individually. Why can’t we do something about individual trips to save people some money?

Part of the STM’s plan as they introduce a smart card system next year will be to be able to control zoning better. This will probably mean that a trip between downtown and the West Island will cost more than a trip within the downtown area. Hopefully this might also mean it’ll cost less than $9 to cross three transit networks on a single trip.

| In the news, Montreal

Off the rails

I was at a protest today. It had two purposes mainly: to denounce a CN lawsuit against a protester who blocked their tracks, and as a run-up to this weekend’s massive protest in Montebello, where leaders of the three North American countries are meeting to discuss trade and security.

I’ve been to a lot of protests as a reporter (I worked at Concordia during the first half of this decade, after all), and at some point they all kind of blend in together. There’s Jaggi Singh, being vague about whether he supports rampant property destruction in protests. There’s the references to Palestinian occupation, whether or not Palestine has anything to do with the protest at hand. There’s the demonization of the local police, who are standing quietly to help clear traffic out of their way as they march. And there’s the fact that half the time the media covering the event outnumber the protesters.

The protest, organized as always by a loose coalition of left-wing activist groups (No One Is Illegal, People’s Global Action Network, etc.), started off at Central Station, which for about an hour today became the safest place in the world. A media scrum quickly built up around blowhard Jaggi Singh and someone else the media couldn’t care less about. After a press conference that lasted way too long, they marched to CN’s headquarters down the hall, demanding to be able to deliver a letter to CN CEO E. Hunter Harrisson.

Naturally, that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, they promised to send their director of public relations. Except they couldn’t find her, apparently. So then they promised to send a representative from that department, who would accept the letter but not answer questions. Then they pulled a little bait-and-switch and sent a member of the security department to pick up the letter. The protesters wouldn’t bite, and that ended that. A slow march to Dorchester Square, some more megaphone chanting and everyone dispersed.

Afterward, I spoke with one of the people behind the megaphones (I wanted to speak to someone other than Jaggi Singh). You’ll get some insight from her in Saturday’s paper.

The protesters’ cause isn’t crazy. They want CN to drop a lawsuit against a protester, and they want international negotiations to happen with public input. But when they start chanting “no justice no peace”, it’s hard to imagine too many passers-by thinking “yeah, I agree with that.”

It makes me wonder: Should we separate moderate-left causes which can gain popular support (like, say, the 2003 anti-war protests) from the radical-crazy-left anarchist/communist everything-is-about-Palestine-and-native-rights window-smashing “fuck la police” riots, so that the message of the former isn’t dragged down by the public’s repulsion to the latter?

UPDATE: Video of the protest has been posted to YouTube.

| Montreal, Public transit

STM’s strike rebates coming this month

STM refund

As expected, the STM is offering a $3.50 refund for people who have May 2007 bus passes and had to endure a four-day maintenance workers’ strike that shut down service for more than half the day.

The details are in this STM press release, which, following their “Fuck You Anglos” policy, is available only in French.

Basically:

  • The price ($3.50) will come off the September bus pass (making it $61.50 instead of $65). You can get a cash refund if you don’t plan to buy a September pass, but only at select metro stations (Angrignon, Lionel-Groulx, McGill, Berri-UQAM, Honoré-Beaugrand, Côte Vertu, Snowdon, Bonaventure, Mont-Royal, Jean-Talon, Montmorency and Longueuil–Université-de-Sherbrooke), at select times (6 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.) and on select dates (Aug. 20-24). Not that they’re making it hard or anything.
  • Reduced fare passes will be compensated $2.00, making a $35 pass $33.
  • You must still have the May 2007 bus pass, to prove you’re eligible. Hand it in when you buy your September pass at any metro station, and you’ll get a receipt for federal tax purposes.
  • Holders of TRAM-3 passes must use the Montmorency metro station or AMT points-of-sale (like the ones at Central Station and Windsor Station). It’s unclear if this also applies to TRAM-1 and TRAM-2 passes, but I imagine it would.
  • Holders of weekly passes can apparently go fuck themselves, since they already knew about the strike when they bought their passes. (The news says they’ve already been compensated, but I don’t remember that.)
  • The compensation is calculated based on the hours during the month that service was not provided (60% of the day for four days).
| Media

Don’t edit your competition out of your news

Le Devoir has an article about how the television networks aren’t talking about each other’s shows. The reason is obvious: Not wanting to give free publicity to the competition. But at the same time they’re all going after newspapers to report new TV shows as news.

Le Devoir says that the newspapers are covering the upcoming season fairly. The implication is that newspapers are more fair than TV stations.

But newspapers aren’t immune to this “don’t talk about the competition” idea. Articles about stories written in other papers make vague references to “a Montreal newspaper” or “the Montreal newspaper The Gazette“, either deliberately obscuring the source or acting as if we’ve never heard of one of the four major daily newspapers in this city.

This is a small part of the reason why people are turning to blogs for news. Bloggers don’t try to hide when information comes from somewhere else. In fact, most successful bloggers welcome competition and cooperate with them.

Yeah, it’s embarrassing when you’re scooped on a story, or when their feature creates a big impact, or when their TV show is more exciting than yours. But don’t insult our intelligence by thinking your deliberate manipulation of the news for pure self-interest isn’t being noticed by readers and viewers.

| In the news, West Island

The highway link to nowhere

Suburban mayors are going crazy over suggested solutions to the 440 West Island problem. Come, gather ’round the fireplace as I explain it to you.

440 link to the West Island

Many moons ago, the Quebec Transport Department figured out that expropriating land from homeowners to build highways was a very expensive and time-consuming process. To help solve it, they asked themselves: Wouldn’t it be a good idea to “buy” the land now for a highway development later?

Enter the 440. Expecting to eventually link this East-West Laval highway to Highway 40 in Kirkland, the government planned a route for it and reserved the land so nobody would build anything there. At the time, of course, the entire area was undeveloped forest and farmland. Now, with development all around the proposed route in both Laval and the West Island, it’s easy to see on a satellite picture where the highway is going to go: on the winding strip of green between those houses.

Hoping to alleviate the West Island’s rush-hour traffic problem, Pierrefonds wants to build an “urban boulevard” on the Montreal Island part of the link, between Gouin Blvd. and Highway 40. It would, Pierrefonds mayor Monique Worth says, alleviate traffic on the main north-south axes: St. Charles Blvd., St. John’s Blvd. and Sources Blvd.

North-South axes in the West Island

OK, I get St. Charles. But Sources? By what stretch of the imagination is some route that takes Sources now going to benefit by this new road 10 km west?

Anyway, Worth cut in to her own argument in a CTV News interview today when she admitted the obvious: That rush-hour travellers to downtown would “still hit traffic on the 40”. The other obviousness is that almost all of the northern West Island is east of this proposed boulevard, meaning they won’t use it to get downtown.

The idea isn’t necessarily bad. It will help alleviate traffic on St. Charles which heads between the northern West Island and western off-island areas. But it’s not going to help one bit with the Great West Island Trek Downtown, whose biggest traffic problem is the Decarie Circle (and Highway 20/Highway 13 merge).

As for Highway 440, the link would have some advantages, the biggest one being a fixed link between Ile Bizard and Laval. Currently, though there are three ferries, there is no fixed link from Highway 40 to the north shore between Highway 13 and Hawkesbury, Ontario. That makes some significant detours.

But the proposed link also runs right through Ile Bizard’s nature park. And cutting down all those trees to build a highway is not only unpretty, it kind of goes against the whole “environment” thing.

Let’s start with small steps, the first being a fixed link between Ile Bizard and Laval. When the roads along that route start overflowing with traffic, then we can talk about building a highway.

Until then, keep the right-of-way reserved for now. Maybe have a dirt path for people to bike through. It’s trees, and they’re good, mmm’kay.

| Blogosphere, Business, Montreal, On the Net, Technology

Everyone’s a marketing/media critic

There’s something going on out there called the 1% Army Tournament. It’s a head-to-head competition between over a hundred Canadian marketing and media blogs (there are over a hundred Canadian marketing and media blogs?)

Among the local blogs participating (or having been nominated without even knowing about it), some of whom will be added to my feed reader soon:

Wow, that’s a lot.