Monthly Archives: August 2008

| Business, Opinion

Another gigantic waste of money from Bell

Bell billboard on St. Jacques St. West

Bell billboard on St. Jacques St. West

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve been exposed to ads in print, television, online, outside, in the metro and elsewhere from Bell Canada, which recently changed its logo, dumped its beavers and has launched a massive ad campaign to … introduce their new logo, I guess.

As if to underline the pointlessness of the redesign and the ad campaign, Bell first put up anonymous ads in the metro, with little slivers of the logo. I’m sure some marketing genius thought that would get people’s attention (they certainly bought enough space to get noticed). But really, nobody cared enough to look into it, gossip about it, or put the ad puzzle pieces together to figure out their source. (Well, almost nobody).

When the ad campaign launched, it introduced taglines in both French and English. The French version is “la vie est Bell,” which is a cute but obvious pun. In English, the taglines all end with a bolded, coloured “er”, as in “today just got better“, which makes no sense and has no connection with Bell.

Combined with ads for Telus’s Koodo service, expect to be bombarded with cellphone-related advertising, expecially in the metro.

Bell is also heavily promoting the Samsung Instinct, which it paradoxically promotes as both the “hottest phone of the year” and an “Apple killer” (sorry, “killer“), all with a straight face, in a desperate (and desperately transparent) attempt to show that not having the iPhone doesn’t make Bell executives cry at night.

But the worst part for Bell customers: Every one of the millions and millions of dollars spent on advertising, marketing experts and website designers is a dollar that is not spent improving customer service, lowering rates or expanding the network.

La vie est Bell, indeed.

| Media

Journal stops demanding moral rights of its own employees

The Journal de Montréal has stopped a practice of demanding that its employees sign draconian rights waivers when doing additional freelance work, which require the waiver of moral rights, among others.

Whether an author can waive moral rights in the first place is a legal debate that hasn’t happened yet, but this is a good sign. Hopefully other media will follow and be a bit more fair in their freelance contracts.

| Opinion, TV

Olympics’ assault on fair use

Take a look at this clip from CTV News announcing our medal haul for today. Notice anything odd about it? The athletes look a bit stationary, don’t they?

This isn’t because of technical problems, or because a video editor got lazy, or even NBC’s controversial time-shifting of “live” broadcasts. It’s because of draconian rules about rebroadcasting of video from Olympic events.

Broadcasters pay a truckload of money in order to get rights to live Olympic events. That’s not so unusual. All the major sports leagues work the same way. The difference is that after the event is complete, other networks can rebroadcast clips from them in their news reports. It’s a gentleman’s agreement, but more importantly it’s the law. Fair use rules for copyright (“fair dealing” in Canada) allow broadcasters to show short clips from events as part of news reports about them.

But for the Olympics, that’s not the case. Even CBC, which has the rights to the Olympics, has to strip Olympic video from its National podcast because the latter is distributed out of the country.

The networks, including the U.S. ones like ABC and CBS, have tucked their tails between their legs and accepted these draconian rules. Instead, they awkwardly fudge their reports with still photos, file footage of practices or earlier events, or post-event press conferences.

It’s ridiculous. And someone needs to make it stop.

| Media, Opinion

Infographics infographics infographics infographics

Sun Sentinel travel front by ex-Gazette design director Nuri Ducassi

Sun Sentinel travel front by ex-Gazette design director Nuri Ducassi

The South Florida Sun Sentinel, which has been getting noticed for a “bold” change to its page design (and the journalists it is cutting along the way), launched its redesign on Sunday. The Visual Editors blog has images, including the Travel section front above, designed by Nuri Ducassi, who recently left her job as design director for the Montreal Gazette for sunnier Florida pastures.

The redesign looks way cool, but seems to rely way too heavily on turning every bloody story into an infographic of some sort. Eventually, they’ll be putting more effort into the look of the story than the writing of it.

I don’t know if that’s a good thing.

| Opinion, TV

Trivia is learning too!

Remember back in January when the Discovery Channel wanted to add game shows to its allowable programming, and I (and others) suggested it was because they wanted to bring in this Cash Cab show that airs on the U.S. network?

Well, that’s exactly what’s happening. Digital Home reports Discovery Canada has added the show to its lineup.

It will be a Canadian version instead of the show instead of an import, so I can’t comment on the type of questions being asked, but if it’s regular trivia like the U.S. and U.K. shows, I don’t think it will fit in with Discovery’s mandate.

You can argue that learning about trivia is also learning, but that would make every trivia game show fair game for this channel. Jeopardy, 1 vs. 100, Beat the Geeks, Hollywood Squares and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire would all be OK.

Is that what we want the Discovery Channel to look like?

| Blogosphere, TV

Therrien joins blogosphere, teeveephiles rejoice

Le Soleil's Richard Therrien

Le Soleil's Richard Therrien

Allow me to add my voice to others in welcoming Le Soleil’s Richard Therrien to the blogosphere. He’ll be writing for Cyberpresse about television, tapping into his freakishly vast knowledge of everything that has ever aired, ever. (He explains his mission statement in his debut post)

Le Soleil, of course, is in Quebec City, so that changes… well, nothing. Unless he’s talking about the local news. Which he should, because local news is awesome for mistakes and stupidity, which he and I both seem to enjoy pointing out.