Monthly Archives: December 2007

| TV, Video

Cable-access idol

Vox, Videotron’s community channel, is conducting a contest to decide on its newest TV series. Three finalists have been invited to create pilots, and viewers vote on their favourite. The winner gets a 12-episode deal for 2008.

Razzia is a show about fantasy photo shoots. Its pilot episode follows actress Mélissa Desormeaux-Poulin as she fulfills a dream of being photographed as a beat up boxer. (The video of pre-production answers a few questions about how it works.)

My take: Score one for a very original idea for a series. (Either that, or having stolen an idea from an obscure enough source.) But while it shows a lot of the photo shoot itself, there’s very little interview with the subject, and why she wants to be photographed in this way. There might be some interesting stories behind these dreams, but we’re not getting them. It’s hard to see a long-term series being based only on someone being made up and photographed.

Also, the cinematography is downright annoying. Tilted camera angles and ultra-fast zooms do not make an uninteresting interview more interesting. Try more editing and less dizzying camera movement.

Triple W is a … well, it’s hard to explain. It’s a sitcom about guys who create online comedy sketches, interspersed with humorous man-in-the-street interviews. You know what, I’ll just let them explain it. The pilot episode is about junk food.

My take: Humour is one of the things I think can work in low-budget productions. It’s more about the ideas and writing than special effects or high production values. But I’m not crazy about this meta concept (surely a standard clip show would be easier to understand), nor the cheesy animated web graphics.

Ultime is a show about extreme sports. It also has something to do with disabled kids or something, though the kids don’t participate in the extreme sports. The pilot involves people repelling down a rope tied to a bridge. (Pre-production video)

My take: Extreme sports shows have been done before, and I don’t see much new here. The poor-disabled-kids angle seems tacked on and pointless.

(via Yannou)

| Montreal

The SPVM’s new look

Montreal police logo history

The SPVM has rebranded itself, simplifying its logo to the five-pointed star they’ve had for years tucked into a cartoonish skyline image of the city. The rebranding will also apply to cadets, crossing guards, green onions and other related uniforms, as well as to their vehicles (whose new designs look like they have five exclamation points over the rear wheels). (via mtlweblog)

I’ve always thought their logo could use a bit of a makeover, as busy as it was. But now it seems so simplistic. Maybe I’m just being nostalgic.

Either way, they got to work on that anti-aliasing problem on their website. That’s not the way to introduce a new logo.

UPDATE (Dec. 18): This letter in the Gazette is cute, suggesting the “human form” of the star logo represents someone standing, feet spread out and arms in the air.

| Blogosphere, Humour, Media, On the Net

Regret the Error roundup

Regret the Error presents a roundup of this year’s funny corrections and cases of plagiarism and fabrication.

No Montreal media appear on either list, though the Toronto Star gets two dishonorable mentions, for prematurely killing off Morley Safer and for bringing the Detroit murder rate up by a factor of 50. The Ottawa Citizen, meanwhile, put a photo of an innocent man on a section front, identifying him as a pedophile.

| Montreal, Radio

940 popularity contest surprisingly produces talent

Natasha wins!Though there’s no press release to link to, Natasha Aimée Hall, who some of you will recognize as a fellow Gazette freelancer, has won the 940 News Talk Show Idol contest.

Aside from her unbeatable Stratford-based charm, credit for the win goes to her Facebook fan base, who stuffed ballots more than a 12-year-old girl stuffs her bra. She beat out 23 other finalists for the win.

Now Hall will get her own show on 940 News, and dozens of Montrealers will be able to hear her voice on a weekly basis.

Congrats, Natasha.

| Media, Montreal

Everyone wants your ice storm stories

It seems every media outlet in town is looking for personal stories about the 1998 ice storm, 10 years later:

The usual exclusive rights contracts apply to anything you give them, including the right to re-sell your photos and stories for profit, strip your name from them or do anything else they damn well please without needing your permission first.

Frankly I think there should be a bidding war for good stories.

| Opinion, TV

Car-wreck TV

Car accident on live TV (via Le blogue Canoë)This video is a clip of what would otherwise be a very boring unnecessarily-live stand-up about an intersection that is apparently prone to car accidents, except a collision occurs while they’re live. Talk about great timing.But what interests me isn’t the crazy coincidence, it’s the way the station acted about it.

The reporter, to his credit, quickly stops his reporting and goes to check up on the drivers of the two vehicles, who emerge without major injuries.

The station and its two anchors, meanwhile, instead of switching to another story and coming back to this one later, decide to ad-lib for a full minute telling us everything we could very obviously see for ourselves, in the most patronizingly condescending way imaginable:

Fortunately Ben, it looks like they’re ok. We’ve got the one person in the back pickup truck there, got out, and the person is moving in the van there and getting out.

The door’s opening, yes.

The door’s opening, so they look like they’re ok.

Live TV.

Live TV, yeah.

I don’t know if that’s a condition of the intersection like Ben was talking about, or sometimes people get distracted by the live shot and all the activity going on there. Both the drivers have gotten out of their vehicles. Again, the driver in the left hand black pickup truck there got out immediately. He’s walked out of frame. The driver, there you see in the red T-shirt has gotten out and is flexing his leg, he looks like he’s OK too. Don’t think any other vehicles are involved although there was one up ahead they’re thinking that the black pickup truck just missed.

That shakes you up. People are shook up and they’ll be a little sore tomorrow I’m sure.

It was a car accident. Not a bombing.

UPDATE (Dec. 12): Cartoons say things better than long rant posts sometimes.

| In the news, Montreal, Public transit

Vaillancourt getting greedy

Vaillancourt needs MORE METRO!

Laval mayor Gilles Vaillancourt, apparently not satisfied that the Quebec government spent more than his city’s entire annual budget building a metro extension of questionable worth there, wants even more money to close the loop of the Orange Line.

That’s kind of ballsy.

His arguments are as follows:

  • Laval’s population is growing: Yes, but the area around the Laval metro stations is still pretty vacant. Extensions of the blue and yellow lines would be through much more highly-populated areas that are in more desperate need of high-density transit.
  • The metro costs less per person, saving money: I don’t know where he gets his figures, but I’m guessing it’s based on operational costs, not construction costs. Building a metro to nowhere won’t pay for itself.
  • The current extension is a huge success: Its ridership numbers were a bit higher than an arbitrary conservative estimate pulled out of someone’s ass. Meanwhile, the project was almost an order of magnitude over budget. I don’t call this a success.
  • Closing the orange line loop would simplify many transit trips: Almost all Laval bus routes terminate at either the Montmorency or Cartier metro stations, funneling passengers onto metro cars. Creating a western connection would only split that traffic. It wouldn’t add another 40,000 riders to the system.
  • It’s environmentally friendly, and we need to get more cars of the road: In that case, I’m sure you’ll have no problem taking all that cash that’s building a new bridge along the Highway 25 axis and putting it into metro development instead.

Vaillancourt says he wants a dedicated tax for the extension. I agree. But I think he should be the one implementing it. If Laval wants a redundant metro extension for no particularly good reason, they can pay for it themselves.

UPDATE (Dec. 13): The Gazette’s Jim Mennie sees this as a shot across the bow in a battle between Laval and Montreal. And an editorial plagiarizes agrees with my main points.

| In the news, Opinion

We can’t accomodate freedom

Leaders of the FTQ and CSN told the Bouchard-Taylor commission that workers in Quebec should be forbidden from wearing anything that indicates what religion they are.

So I guess that means no more crucifix necklaces.

The article (I’m guessing it’s more their position) is a bit confusing, later going on about how they just don’t want employers to have to change any rules about safety or uniform codes in order to accomodate religious minorities.

It’s odd to hear about a trade union arguing for restricting workers’ rights, but then again these hearings are creating a lot of crazy ideas.

So when does the witchhunt begin for determining what constitutes a religious symbol? Does a black top hat make you Jewish? Does wearing a loose-fitting dress make you Muslim? Does a spaghetti-strap top make you a Pastafarian?

| Business, Canadiens, Montreal, Opinion

Habs want money for bricks

Habs Centennial Plaza bricks

The Montreal Canadiens, preparing to celebrate their 100th birthday, are redeveloping an area outside the Bell Centre, calling it “Centennial Plaza,” adding some statues and selling bricks.

The bricks, a seemingly a propos metaphor for the team currently (overpriced dead weight that people step on, defined only by the stubbornly unending support by Montreal hockey fans), are being sold at between $175 and $800 apiece (depending on size and location) to raise money for … uhh … the Montreal Canadiens. (With “a portion of the proceeds” going to the Canadiens Alumni Association.)

Some might call it a transparent money grab, but the hard-core fans will eat it up. After all, it’s a chance to be a part of Canadiens history and have your name be forever etched on a brick that you own, on the walkway to the greatest hockey arena in the world.
Provided, of course, your definition of “you own” is “remains the sole property of the Club de hockey Canadien, Inc.” and your definition of “forever” doesn’t last longer than five years.

The terms and conditions of the sale provide you no right to ownership, gives complete veto power to the club over the text you use, makes absolutely no guarantee to keep the plaza beyond 2013, and for that matter doesn’t even guarantee you that they’ll build it where they say they will.

I also note that the website is entirely silent about any obligation to maintain your brick, even for those five years. So if someone sticks gum in it, or scratches it, or takes a jackhammer to it, it’s entirely unclear who will pay the bill to have it replaced.

But hey, who am I to stand between them and your money?

| Business, Radio

Corus wants us to shop here

Corus, the owners of radio stations including 940 News, Q92, CKOI, CKAC and 98.5, have launched a campaign this holiday season to encourage people to shop in Quebec. The goal is to stem the tide of strong local dollars being spent across the border and falling out of our economy.

Corus Entertainment is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario.

| Montreal, Pop quiz

Montreal Geography Trivia No. 5

After last week’s head-scratcher (now updated with the answer, for those who missed it), here’s one that should be a bit easier for you:

In the United States, the borders between Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico are defined along specific latitudonal and longitudonal lines (instead of, say, along rivers). As a result, the four meet at the Four Corners, where you and three of your friends can hold hands and stand in four states at once.

Montreal has similar locations, though there are no monuments there. Places where four boroughs or reconstituted municipalities meet at an exact spot.

Where?

UPDATE: This one only took about an hour:

  1. Ste. Anne de Bellevue/Baie d’Urfé/Kirkland/Beaconsfield, in the West Island near Anse à l’Orme/Highway 40
  2. Côte-des-Neiges/Mount-Royal/Saint-Laurent/Côte-Saint-Luc near the end  of Royalmount Ave. in the trainyard.
  3. Plateau-Mont-Royal/Ville-Marie/Rosemont-Petite-Patrie/Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, where Sherbrooke St. crosses the tracks just east of Frontenac.
| TV

CRTC specialty channel digest: Everyone wants a break from CanCon

Some CRTC hearings currently open for public comment:

Videotron wants France 24

France 24Videotron has made a request to add France 24, the European country’s answer to CNN, BBC World and Al Jazeera, to its digital cable network in both French and English.

Videotron wants to add the networks as Category 2 specialty digital channels, whose only real condition is that they don’t compete with protected-format Category 1 channels.

Considering we already have CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, EuroNews, BBC World and even Al-Jazeera (though with an unusual monitoring requirement) in this category, it’s unlikely the CRTC will reject the request.

Deadline for comments: Jan. 22, 2008

OUTtv is out of money

OUTtvLGBT specialty channel OUTtv, which as you can tell from its Wikipedia page has had an interesting history, wants to reduce both its Canadian content requirements (from 65% to 50%) and its requirement to spend money producing Canadian programming (from 49% to 25% of its revenues). The reason: Its “precarious financial circumstances” are forcing it to run more profitable (and cheaper) American programming.

OUTtv is a Category 1 specialty digital channel, which means that all digital operators must carry it (though not necessarily make it part of their basic package) and no other digital channel can compete directly with it with similar format. In return, the category demands a minimum of 50% Canadian content.

Not knowing the nature of OUTtv’s “precarious financial circumstances” (and for that matter, never having watched the network’s programming) I can’t really comment on whether or not this is a good idea.

Deadline for comments: Dec. 19, 2007

Avis de recherche won’t get off that easy

Avis de recherche TVThe CRTC is reconsidering an earlier decision to offer a license to Avis de recherche/All Points Bulletin TV, a pair of wanted-by-police channels that were licensed as Category 2 channels, but with must-carry status, which requires not only that digital* cable companies provide the channel on their basic digital service, but that they pay a fee per subscriber to the network.

The reconsideration was mandated by the Governor-General, who under advice from the Minister of Canadian Heritage ordered a re-examination of the unusually low requirement (see Appendix 5) for spending on Canadian programming.

Despite agreeing to a 95% Canadian content requirement (the channel is, after all, nothing but public bulletins from Canadian police departments), it is required to spend only 20% of its revenues on Canadian programming. That was considered too low by the government.

It’s hard to disagree. With a few pennies from every cable subscriber in the country, and a requirement to spend only 20% of that on programming, the channel’s owner stands to profit greatly.

In response to the decision to reconsider, the channel proposed upping the spending requirement to 43% of revenues, but with an odd rollover clause (and reverse rollover clause) that would allow them to shift up to 5% of that from one year to the next. So they could spend 38% of revenues on Canadian programming one year, and 48% the next, and still be in accordance with their license.

I fail to see how requiring this supposedly essential channel to spend a large percentage of its revenues on producing its programming is out of line.

Judge for yourself: Avis de recherche is available on Videotron Illico digital TV on channel 46.

Deadline for comments: Dec. 17, 2007

*UPDATE (Dec. 18): This post originally didn’t make clear that the channel is must-carry only on digital cable. It has been updated to clarify. See comment below. 

Shaw/StarChoice don’t want to simsub HD channels

The CRTC is conducting a hearing Jan. 15 over the apparent refusal of Shaw Cable and StarChoice satellite to follow simultaneous substitution rules for certain HD channels.

Simultaneous substitution requires Canadian cable and satellite providers to substitute American channels with local (Canadian) ones when the two are carrying identical programming (and the local network requests it, which they always do), so that Canadian consumers get all-Canadian commercials. We only notice the change during the Super Bowl, when those all-important multi-zillion-dollar American Super Bowl commercials are blocked out and replaced by a much-lower-budget Canadian equivalent.

The arrival of HD caused the scheme a hiccup for two reasons:

  1. Not all local broadcast networks have HD equivalents. Instead, most have just two HD channels, one for the East coast and one for the West. Since the East feeds come out of Toronto, cable providers in Montreal don’t have to substitute American channels for out-of-market Canadian ones.
  2. Substitution rules require that the signal being replaced is as good as or better than the signal it’s replacing. So they can’t replace a Fox HD version of House with a Global standard-definition version.
  3. The CRTC allows exemptions for small cable providers where the technical costs of substituting signals outweigh the benefits. (Neither Shaw nor StarChoice fit this definition of “small.”)

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters complained to the CRTC that Shaw and StarChoice were not performing their substitution duties for three stations:

  1. CTV HD Vancouver (Shaw and StarChoice)
  2. CTV HD Toronto (StarChoice)
  3. CITY-TV HD Toronto (StarChoice)

Shaw and StarChoice’s argument seems to be that HD presents unique technical challenges that makes it too difficult for them to substitute signals.

The word “bullshit” comes to mind, but I’ll wait until they present their argument at the hearing before I make any rash judgments.

If you’re interested in filing a written submission, the deadline is Dec. 13, 2007. The hearing is Jan. 15, 2008 in Gatineau.

| Montreal, Public transit

AMT fares going up too

$TM

Following the STM/STL transit fare increases announced last week, the Agence métropolitaine de transport has put out its list. Fare increases for monthly passes range between 1.0% and 3.8%:

Adult fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase Intermediate fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase Reduced fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase
TRAM 1 (Downtown Montreal) $77.00 $74.50 3.4% $61.50 $59.50 3.4% $46.00 $44.50 3.4%
TRAM 2 (Midwest/ mideast/ North Montreal) $90.00 $87.00 3.4% $72.00 $69.50 3.6% $54.00 $52.00 3.8%
TRAM 3 (Longueuil, Laval, Far West/East island) $105.00 $103.00 1.9% $84.00 $82.50 1.8% $63.00 $62.00 1.6%
TRAM 4 (Ile Perrot, La Prairie) $115.00 $113.00 1.8% $92.00 $90.50 1.7% $69.00 $68.00 1.5%
TRAM 5 (Vaudreuil/Dorion, Chateauguay, Kahnawake, north shore, Repentigny, Sainte-Julie, Saint-Constant, St. Bruno) $133.00 $131.00 1.5% $106.00 $105.00 1.0% $80.00 $78.50 1.9%
TRAM 6 (St. Hilaire, Mercier, Hudson/Rigaud, Blainville) $159.00 $156.00 1.9% $127.00 $125.00 1.6% $95.50 $93.50 2.1%
TRAM 7 (Mirabel, Oka, St. Sulpice, lower St. Jerome) $185.00 $182.00 1.6% $148.00 $146.00 1.4% $111.00 $109.00 1.8%
TRAM 8 (upper St. Jerome, Valleyfield, St. Hyacinthe, Sorel) $211.00 $207.00 1.9% $169.00 $166.00 1.8% $127.00 $124.00 2.4%

STM (Montreal):

Adult fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase Reduced fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase
Monthly CAM $66.25 $65 1.9% $36 $35 2.9%
Weekly CAM Hebdo $19.25 $19 1.3% $11 $10.75 2.3%
Six tickets $12 $11.75 2.1% $6.50 $6.25 4%
Cash fare $2.75 $2.75 No change $1.75 $1.75 No change
Tourist card (3 days) $17.00 $17.00 No change
Tourist card (1 day) $9.00 $9.00 No change

STL (Laval):

Adult fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase Intermediate fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase Reduced fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase
Monthly pass $74 $72.50 2.1% $59.00 $58.00 1.7% $44.50 $43 3.5%
Eight tickets $18 $21 -14% $12.50 $12.25 2.0%
Cash fare $2.50 $3.00 -17% (None?) $1.80 ?

Still no word from the RTL about Longueuil rates for 2008.

UPDATE (Dec. 18): Finally the RTL releases their 2008 rates. The increase is substantial, especially for reduced fare monthly passes.

Adult fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase Reduced fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase
Monthly pass $76 $73 4.1% $45 $42 7.1%
Six tickets $15.50 $15 3.3% $9.25 $8.90 3.9%
Cash fare $3.25 $3.25 No change $2 $2 No change
| Media, Opinion

Advertiser pressure on the media is subtle

The blogosphere is abuzz with the story of Jeff Gerstmann, who was fired from GameSpot after a negative review of an advertiser’s video game. The company that owns GameSpot insists that this was not the reason for his firing, but neither side will comment on the real reason, hiding behind laws that apparently prevent that.

Closer to home, La Presse chief editorialist André Pratte paid a visit to Francs-Tireurs this week (Part 1 of the interview deals with his views on sovereignty in case you’re interested). In it, he says there’s no “red phone” from the bosses to tell him what to write. However, the paper has an editorial viewpoint, and its opinions follow that.

Over the years, Big Media learned that it’s in their best interest to separate advertising from editorial content. Otherwise, readers wouldn’t trust them and would move on to competing papers.

But while many still follow that mantra officially, various methods have come up for advertisers to influence the editorial process that news media have accepted don’t cross the line:

  • Advertising features: Popular in newspapers, these are advertisements that have layouts that make them look like real newspaper articles. Headlines, bylines, photo captions. Only the tiny word “advertisement” (or in some cases confusing terms like “marketing feature” or “sponsored feature” or “advertising section”) at the top tells you that the content has been paid for. Some newspapers require that such sections use fonts that are clearly different from the editorial content, others don’t.
  • Press releases as news: Media outlets subscribe to press releases from Canada NewsWire and others as if they were wire services. In many cases, that’s how they find out about stories. When you read about that new medical breakthrough, or that survey, or damning statement from a lobby group, chances are the news outlet got that information through a press release. Because groups have to pay to have their releases distributed, it gives an air of authority to the statement. It also discriminates against poor, less organized groups to find your news in this fashion. Issues that people don’t want to (or can’t) pay hundreds of dollars to get in the hands of journalists don’t get reported.
  • Sponsored, but “hands off” coverage: This is what special sections are all about. Companies offer to place advertisements around articles about a specific subject. They make no demands concerning the content of those articles. This is why you see special sections on big-budget things like home renovation, travel, cars, business issues, fashion, but no special sections on world hunger. In smaller publications, this quid pro quo can cross the line even further. Many small businesses actually think they can demand articles be written about them in exchange for advertising.
  • Free gifts: Actual gifts are supposed to be strictly limited. But all sorts of exceptions exist: Free copies of books are much more likely to be evaluated, underpaid journalists are likely to accept a bribe of free food in exchange for attending a press conference or corporate event, and then much more likely to write about them.
  • Self-censorship: There don’t have to be official policies against pissing off big advertisers or owners, but journalists aren’t stupid. Many won’t take the chance if they can avoid it. They write good stories and gloss over bad ones. Meanwhile, behind the scenes they rant about how horrible the company is to fellow journalists, in a way they would never do in print or in public.
  • Finding an excuse: GameSpot said their firing decision was based on an internal review and not on a game company/advertiser’s complaints. That actually sounds entirely plausible. Nobody’s a model employee, and it’s usually fairly easy to find something about an undesirable that’s grounds for dismissal. Unless they’re part of a powerful union, you can fire them and have a ready-made excuse for their lawyer or the media. It also has the advantage of keeping other employees in line (see “self-censorship” above).
  • Buddy-buddy at the top levels: As Big Media get huge, and their advertisers too, big corporate bosses find themselves meeting socially often. Threats turn into favours, and bribes turn into unwritten mutual agreements.
  • Yes men: Middle-management quickly learn that in order to succeed they have to agree with everything their higher-ups tell them. Self-criticism is shunned. Original ideas are ignored or stolen. Advancement is more about ass-kissing than talent and experience. Not rocking the boat is paramount.
  • Cross-promotion: Media properties do stories about other properties belonging to the same owner. A Gazette article about a Global TV show, a TVA documentary about the Journal de Montréal. The coverage itself may not be biased, but the reason behind it is.

When Pratte says there’s no red phone by his desk, I believe him. Big Media publishers and owners are simply too busy making money to care about micromanaging the day-to-day news decisions of their media properties. They have other people hired to do that. It’s very rare that an order comes from the very top that seriously affects journalistic integrity. And when it does, there’s usually a backlash.

So pressures become much more subtle. Advertising is the biggest source of revenue for almost any media operation. They know that it’s hard to exist without it. And so they justify the blurring of the line between editorial and advertising as a necessary evil to stay alive.

Some even call it “innovative.”

| Media, Montreal, On the Net, Opinion, Web design

Media websites all Flash, no accessibility

Last week, a group called AccessibilitéWeb released a report that evaluated major websites for accessibility to the disabled. The Gazette described it as “scathing” for its exposure of the very poor performance of certain websites.

Canadian government websites, unsurprisingly, rated very high.

The other end of the scale will come as no surprise for those who read this blog regularly:

Media websites scored the worst, with an average rating of 5.48.

Later, the article explains one of the reasons for this:

To François Aubin, an expert at usability and ergonomics firm Cognitive Group, the numbers are not surprising. He goes as far to say that half of websites aren’t even accessible to able-bodied people.

Many times the text is too small for normal standards and the information is badly organized, he said.

“There’s a big paradox in Web accessibility,” he said. “Sometimes you make sites accessible, but not for the everyman.” As an example, the city of Montreal created a good accessible version of its portal, but the regular site remains confusing for the layperson.

“You can follow all the technical norms, but it’s more important for people to find info they’re looking for,” Aubin said.

Their table listing the top 200 websites accessible to Quebecers gives some more details on how the sites ranked. Only government websites received their top rating.

Here’s how the mainstream Canadian media sites did:

Radio-Canada

  • Ranked: 27th (C or “good”)
  • Accessibility problems: An over-reliance on JavaScript, missing or redundant/useless ALT text, unnecessary Flash, text in images, and a fixed, graphical-based layout.
  • My pet peeve: They have plenty of audio and video clips online, but make it almost impossible to link to them directly, assuming trying to view them doesn’t crash my browser.

Cyberpresse

  • Ranked: 109th (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Missing ALT text, links with the same text, tables used for layout, pop-up windows
  • My pet peeve: Archaic pixel-measured three-column layout. 275 links on the homepage is way too much. And is that MS Comic Sans as the photo caption font?

TQS

  • Ranked: 141st (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Over-reliance on Flash and JavaScript, broken links, missing ALT text, linkes with the same text, pop-up windows, tables used for layout
  • My pet peeve: The only thing worse than an 800-pixel fixed layout is a 1024-pixel fixed layout. Homepage is a mess, and almost completely unusable without its style sheet. Over 300 links on the homepage.

Canoe

  • Ranked: 146th (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Navigation by JavaScript, broken links, too much Flash
  • My pet peeve: Videos that play without you asking them to, >300 links, 1024-pixel fixed-width messy layout similar to TQS, text is way too small.

CTV.ca

  • Ranked: 155th (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Navigation by JavaScript, tables used or layout, very difficult to navigate without stylesheets, iframes, missing ALT text
  • My pet peeve: Links open in new window, lots of images, video requires Windows Media Player

Toronto Star

  • Ranked: 158th (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Missing ALT text, tables used for layout, lots of JavaScript
  • My pet peeve: Fixed-pixel layout, bottom half of homepage is a complete mess, can’t make heads or tails without stylesheet

Global TV

  • Ranked: 169th (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Missing ALT text, tables used for layout
  • My pet peeve: Video plays (with audio) without permission, a lot of things that should be links aren’t

If you’re thinking this list is incomplete, you’re not the only one. Le Devoir and The Gazette are notably absent. The list is based on the top 200 websites in Quebec according to ComScore, which I guess is an unbiased enough criteria. But you’d think exceptions could be made. Tetesaclaques.tv and Heavy.com are on there. Do we really care about those more than two major media sources in Montreal?

The other problem I have with the survey is its methodology: It seems to rely on a quantitative measure of the number of errors in the code rather than putting someone in front of a computer and seeing how well they cope finding information with each site. They just ran an online accessibility checker they created on each site and summarized the results.

I can live with that, even though it provides an inaccurate accounting of how accessible each site really is, but I’m not going to pay $500 for each site’s report. The only people who are going to do that are the owners of the largest sites, who can scan the report and make some recommendations to their code lackeys like “we should have ALT text for all images” that they should already know.

They’re still not learning

Automatically-playing audio, distracting animation, overcrowded homepages and bad JavaScript links are problems that have existed since the dawn of the WWW in one form or another. It’s shocking that these problems still exist.

But as Patrick Tanguay points out, the people who evaluate websites look at the wow factor rather than the ability to find information you’re looking for. Winners of the Infopresse Boomerang prizes show this very obviously: They’re all Flash-based, very inaccessible, and turn navigation into a frustrating game rather than an intuitive process.

One of their grand prize winners, Montréal en 12 lieux, is a perfect example. It has a lot of great content. Videos, pictures, stories. It’s really cool. But it’s also unnecessarily difficult to navigate. One level of navigation actually involves chasing after pictures that are spinning around at variable speeds. I had to stop watching the videos at one point because the strain on my poor computer’s CPU and memory became too much to bear.

At some point, people are going to have to learn that “cool” and “good-looking” aren’t synonyms for “good” when dealing with web design. Craigslist and Google should have proven that by now.

UPDATE (Dec. 12): A defence of the Boomerangs (basically about how they’ve honoured non-Flash sites in the past, which is a rather silly argument), and an idea for a competing competition, decided by users. And Patrick responds to responses of his criticisms of the awards.