CTV announced yesterday that its “A channel” network, which is a collection of broadcast stations mainly in Ontario, would be renamed simply “A” and would feature a new look and new logo (right), as well as a new website: atv.ca.
The website address demonstrates the main problem with this new name: It’s just a stupid letter. Like CBC’s Bold and Documentary networks (sorry, “bold” and “documentary”) and Canwest’s “E!” entertainment network, their names are confusing, and their website addresses non-intuitive.
But the biggest problem is that “A” is ungoogleable. You simply can’t own a letter in Google. So if people want to find “A” online, they have to guess what its real name is. ATV? A Channel? A Network? Two of those won’t work either in Google.
So people will just keep calling it A Channel to avoid confusion. Which makes the name change kind of pointless.
Two articles from two countries’ most prestigious newspapers compare two television networks’ coverage of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies.
The Globe and Mail says NBC’s coverage “outshone the work of the CBC, mainly because co-hosts Bob Costas and Matt Lauer brought more information and enthusiasm to the show than did the stolid, rather dull presentation of the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge, who handled most of the commentary during the first 80 minutes.”
The New York Times: “how extraordinarily pleasant it was to be able to view that spectacle in Beijing without the annoyance of constant exclamation and endless recitations of trivia — just great swaths of wonderful silence from our narrators MacLean and Mansbridge between 8am and 9am or so, just letting the show at the stadium tell its own story with the least obtrusive economy of helpful footnotes, no urgency whatsoever to riddle the air with inane nattering and relentless fill.”
I just watched the Men’s 100m backstroke final race on NBC late night. It says “LIVE” in the corner, so I can only assume the images I’m seeing are, you know, live.
Problem is, the race happened five hours ago. I know, because I watched it live on CBC. And the results have been on the Beijing Olympics website since then.
This isn’t the first time I noticed this problem, either.
So is someone at NBC incompetent, running a tape delay without covering up the “LIVE” thing, or is someone being intentionally deceptive?
…the constant “Live” tag is accompanied by twice-per-hour time stamps that inform West Coast viewers that the event was only live on the East Coast (ex. “10:05 ET”).
“The audience makeup of the Olympics is very much like that of ‘American Idol’ and ‘Dancing with the Stars’ which have ‘live’ season finales presented in much the same way,” an NBC Sports spokesperson says. “You assume there’s a large amount of intelligence in the viewing audience, so when they see those twice-an-hour time stamps they’ll understand what is being presented.”
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
Let’s count how wrong this is:
Lying isn’t OK if you air a disclaimer twice an hour.
Lying isn’t OK if other broadcasters also lie.
I’m on the East Coast, and what I saw wasn’t live.
The difference in time zones between East and West Coast is three hours, not five.
This isn’t American Idol. The time difference isn’t as obvious, and last I checked the Beijing Olympics wasn’t created by a U.S. or British-based entertainment company.
None of these things are excuses for presenting a tape delay as live.
It’s either live or it isn’t. It wasn’t. I don’t care if it makes you look bad. It’s wrong to lie. And more importantly, it’s ridiculously transparent.
For those wondering when a politician would exploit the shooting and subsequent riot in Montreal North for transparently self-serving purposes, Affiliation Quebec’s Allen Nutik just sent out a press release:
As a champion of minority rights, AffiliationQuebec calls on Quebec’s cultural communities to select effective candidates to run under the AQ banner in order to elect relevant representation to send to the National Assembly.
The tense situation in Montreal North offers a unique opportunity for these communities to ‘break free’ from Quebec’s nationalist agenda, and to play a direct role in their own governance.
It’s amazing how many new causes are dummed up every hour to replace the apparently inadequate “kids mad ’cause cops shot other kid.”
On a slightly more serious note, an analysis of Toronto media coverage of its susprise breaking news. Toronto media were caught especially off-guard because the incident happened in the middle of the night on a weekend, when few (if any) people are on the job.
Montreal’s media got lucky, in that the riots started before midnight, before newspapers were put to bed and everyone went home for the night. In addition, the top story was about the police shooting that prompted the riot, so newspapers (like mine) could combine the two together and not have to rip apart their front pages.
La Presse has the best roundup of the action (including a column by Patrick Lagacé, who was on the scene and has some stories to tell about it), as well as the best photos from photographer David Boily. LCN was on the scene live with its helicopter coverage, and though suffering from the usual breaking-news confusion saying-stuff-off-the-top-of-your-ass time-filler, was enough to keep us journalists glued to the set. (LCN/TVA reporters, meanwhile, repeatedly ignored police demands to retreat to a safe area once shots had been fired, making the anchor’s half-transparent “are you ok?” clichés seem almost silly.)
The best anglo coverage came, of course, from Canadian Press, whose reporter Andy Blatchford (a former classmate of mine) had a story filled with quotes.
Unfortunately, most of the other media are playing catch-up today, and you’ll see more photos of day-after busted up businesses than the riots themselves.
As for blog and “new media” coverage, it was pretty well nonexistent. Some posts with “this is bad” comments, but no citizen journalists stepping up and doing a proper reporting job.
Perhaps we should take it farther: Archery is among the least popular sports at the Olympics. But what if, instead of bows and arrows, we turned it into Semen Archery, in which the closest splat is the winner?
Most gymnastics competitions could be made much more interesting by pairing men and women and having them contort into various positions together. Marks would be awarded for difficulty.
Judo, wrestling and taekwondo would be a huge hit if instead of those bulky housecoats everyone just wrestled naked.
Last weekend, some metro station platform ads were replaced by a television screen inviting people to “train” with some Koodo-branded games. Koodo, you’ll recall, is the Telus-owned “discount” cellphone service which competes with Rogers’s Fido and Bell’s Solo Mobile services. It unexplicably uses cheesy 80s workout clichés as the basis for its branding.
A user interacts with a Koodo ad at Berri-UQAM metro station
Lo and behold, it worked. People on a metro platform waiting for a train are a notoriously bored bunch (even if they’re in a hurry). Shiny things with buttons will quickly find people willing to press them.
Unfortunately, the games themselves weren’t that good. In fact, one wasn’t even a game, it was just a menu filled with information about Koodo’s cellphone plans. The only actual “game” is a Where’s Waldo-style search game that requires the user to “scroll” through the map because it doesn’t all fit on the screen.
The game had clearly not been usability tested, because I couldn’t figure out how the scrolling worked. Tapping near the corner caused it to slowly scroll in that direction by about an inch. Dragging a finger toward the corner caused the screen to quickly scroll in that direction and then quickly scroll back. Dragging a finger away from the corner caused about the same thing to happen. (UPDATE Aug. 27: I’m not the only one to notice this failure.)
Also:
Unexpected click gives a 404 error
I’m not quite sure how I did this, but I somehow created a new tab in Internet Explorer (which this apparently runs on) and sent it to a page which doesn’t exist.
Closeup of Koodo ad 404 error
So apparently these ads are running on Windows servers using a two-year-old version of the Apache web server. (On the plus side, the system resets itself after a minute or two of inactivity)
I have to give Koodo credit for this one. After all, I’m blogging about it, which was the point. But it doesn’t make me want to get a Koodo phone plan any more.
Some local fun-seekers are trying to drum up last-minute support for a silent dance party tonight (Friday) at 9:30 at Place Jacques-Cartier (actually, at the fountain just beside City Hall). The idea is you bring your own music and you dance to it listening on your headphones. And because you’re doing it as a group, you look like less of an idiot.
After more than 15 months, 317 editions and 12.5 million copies, MédiaMatinQuébec, the paper put out by striking and locked-out workers from the Journal de Québec, published its final issue this morning (PDF). Next week, the 252 workers return to the Journal de Québec and start re-learning how to do their jobs (which now will include increased use of multi-media for journalists), thanks to the deal that was approved last month.
In other words, it’s ok to like the Journal de Québec again (though it remains to be seen what it will take in from all that the employees have learned from putting out a paper over 15 months).
The MMQ’s final issue, at a staggering 80 pages, is filled with congratulatory ads from local businesses and unions, as well as retrospectives on the paper and the union’s long fight. In fact, other than the crossword and horoscope, that’s all that’s in those 80 pages. Stories about the 15 months of the paper’s existence, a collage of the best photos used in the paper, and mostly first-person retrospectives from dozens of employees who struggled through 15 months working in a cramped office, getting up early and standing in traffic handing out newspapers for pennies of strike pay. (Michel Hébert has a more poetic obit on his blog as well as a copy of his final column.) It’s also interspersed with comments from readers who say they’ll miss the free paper with no filler material, no wire services and 100% local news compiled by dedicated professionals.
You’ve never seen so many people happy to see their paper cease to exist. But then, that was its goal all along. The deal reached with the Journal wasn’t what either side wanted, but it was fair. And now everyone can return to work and start receiving a proper paycheque again.
More importantly, MédiaMatinQuébec may have changed the face of media union pressure tactics forever. Taking what happened during the CBC lockout to the next step, they put away their baseball bats and picket signs and protested by doing their jobs. And the public loved them for it.
MédiaMatinQuébec is dead. Long live MédiaMatinQuébec.
40 years ago, when composer Dolores Claman was given the task of coming up with a theme to a hockey broadcast, she envisioned the music you’d associate with Roman gladiators wearing skates (assuming you could imagine such a thing in the first place). The theme she came up with became synonymous with CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada for 40 years, and has become this country’s unofficial second national anthem.
The CBC, left with its pants around its ankles, dusted off Plan B: Run a contest to find its replacement.
A contest to replace the most epic song in Canadian history. No problem.
The CBC’s Anthem Challenge, which has been promoted endlessly in order to drive up interest, has been surprisingly successful at doing so. Thousands of submissions each take a legitimate shot at being the theme’s successor, mostly by trying to copy it with slightly different notes.
Considering all these people got paid exactly $0 for the submissions, they’re not bad.
But these were the most popular ones. Imagine the ones that sucked.
The big question I have here is: Is this the kind of thing that should be trusted to Joe Schmo next door? Claman was a professional, not some person they picked off the street. Why should we think that amateurs would do a better job this time, clinging to the faint hope that maybe they might be the one lucky one out of thousands to win the $100,000 grand prize and get all the fame and glory that comes from not having the right to play your own song because you’ve signed away the copyright?
It’s perhaps partly to prove this point that a member of Something Awful posted “Hockey Scores,” a collection of random annoying sounds designed to sound as bad as possible, and encouraged others to vote for it. Because Something Awful is so powerful, the song rocketed to the top, where it sits as the most popular, most viewed and most commented entry.
That has garnered the attention of mainstream media, its blogs and even the CBC itself, which points out that the number of votes is not the only factor it must use according to the rules in determining the semifinalists that will be presented to the nation in October (though it will likely be the determining factor in choosing finalists from those semifinalists, and then the winner from the finalists).
But little of that coverage is mentioning the larger issue: When rich media organizations “crowdsource” something that’s going to make them a lot of money, expecting people to work for free, they’re just begging to get a bunch of crap.
Something Awful just helped the process along a bit.
The contest continues to accept entries until Aug. 31. Semifinalists will be aired and voted on by the public in the beginning of October.
UPDATE (Aug. 9): The Globe has a piece on the contest, which of course includes not a single link to all the entries it talks about, nor the contest itself.
In October, you’ll recall Global TV announced a major overhaul of its local news outlets. As part of the plan, sets would be demolished, staff would be laid off and instead of a proper studio, local anchors would deliver the news in front of green screens to cameras controlled remotely out of Vancouver. Story packages would be shipped off electronically to a centralized news processing centre, and virtually all the production would be taken out of the hands of local workers. (The results, of course, left much to be desired)
News staff in each market will continue to generate local content. All content will be delivered to a Broadcast Centre and packaged into a program format for air. Local anchors will continue to deliver the news from their local stations.
Well, apparently that’s not quite the case anymore. Because being in front of a green screen means you can pretend to be almost anywhere, Global is exploiting this to make its news anchors pretend to be in places they’re not.
Hannah Thibedeau anchors Global Quebec's evening news from who knows where
The three of you still tuning into Global Quebec’s evening local newscast might notice some unfamiliar faces on your screen. Hannah Boudreau Thibedeau is anchoring the 6pm newscast for what I’ll assume is a vacationing Jamie Orchard. Except Thibedeau isn’t part of the Global Quebec team, she’s Global’s Parliament Hill correspondent based out of Ottawa.
But that’s not conclusive proof. She could have driven into town to fill in, the local staff stretched too much as it is with summer vacations and all.
Anthony Farnell doing Global Quebec's local forecast
More conclusive is weatherman Anthony Farnell, since on the same day he appears on both Global Quebec’s local newscast (above) and Global Ontario’s local newscast (below).
Anthony Farnell does Global Ontario's local forecast
Unless he has a special helicopter to shuttle him back and forth between Montreal and Toronto, he’s clearly doing both weathercasts from the same location, in front of the same green screen.
That in itself isn’t too much of an issue. I mean, any idiot can do the weather.
The problem is that he’s being dishonest about it. In both newscasts he uses the word “we,” as in “we are going to see heavy rain over the next couple of days.” For the Quebec newscast, he cut to clips of Montreal traffic. And yet nowhere is it mentioned that he’s doing this newscast from a green screen in Toronto.
Lying about your location goes well beyond the usual fakery we see on TV news. It’s dishonest an unacceptable from an organization that is supposed to be trustworthy about bringing the truth to its audience.
It’s hard being the No. 3 newscast for a community of only a few hundred thousands anglophones. The fact that nobody watches the newscast does justify cost-cutting (though that only continues the hopeless ratings death spiral). But you have to be honest about it. Level with your viewers, explain the reasons behind your decisions and even if they don’t like it, they’ll at least understand.
Saving money by lying to people is just one step above fraud.
In yesterday’s paper, the CBC had a glossy insert with a schedule for its main television broadcast of the Beijing Olympic Games. In small print at the bottom is this:
All times Eastern Standard Time. Schedule is subject to change.
Considering most of Eastern Canada is on Eastern Daylight Time currently, giving a schedule in EST seems kind of pointless, no?
Stephanie Myles’s frequently updated Open Court tennis blog is by far the most popular in terms of page views. It’s also by far the most updated (about as much as all the other ones combined).
UPDATE (Aug. 7): Andrew also points out a huge increase in traffic to the Habs Inside/Out blog, which is getting regular updates on the Mats Sundin situation from resident funnyman Mike Boone.
