Monthly Archives: June 2009

| In the news, Media, Technology, TV

The webtélé explosion

La Presse on Saturday had a special feaure on “la webtélé”, or online video series. It also includes a piece from Hugo Dumas on a Vrak.tv series, one from Chantal Guy about how women are taking charge online (hello there, Jessica)

The piece from Nathaëlle Morrissette talks about the business model for online video, which outside of Têtes à claques doesn’t really exist. Even though it’s cheaper than television, online video series in Quebec are supported either by arts grant, television broadcaster/telecom company/internet provider or by the creator’s back pocket (usually a combination of these).

I’ve always been impressed with the state of Quebec cultural productions, especially when compared with English Canada. I wonder how much of that success is due to the heavy subsidies from provincial and federal governments, and how much is due to the fact that Quebecers crave music, television and movies in their own language and from their own culture.

Still, I wonder how much a population of six million can really support. The failure of TQS I think was due partially to this oversaturation of media. If hundreds of producers start making their own web TV series, they’re contributing to the fragmentation of what little advertising and other revenue they can hope to collect. Not all of them can get cushy deals with Radio-Canada or Télé-Québec.

But you won’t know if you don’t try, right? If they’re willing to bankroll these operations as a labour of love, who am I to tell them no?

| Pop quiz, West Island

Montreal Geography Trivia No. 39

MGT #39

‘Roundabout where is this?

UPDATE: Jason gets it right below. It’s the intersection of Sources Blvd. and Riverdale Blvd. in Pierrefonds, just beyond the tracks, one of the few roundabouts on the island.

Riverdale Blvd.: Behold the suburban conformity!

Riverdale Blvd.: Behold the suburban conformity!

The roundabout, which I crossed a while back on my bike, leads to a new development in the Parc des Rapides du Cheval Blanc that is so new the streets don’t have names, the driveways are made of gravel and grass hasn’t grown yet on the yards. I took a brief tour of the neighbourhood, noticed a lot of young families, many of Indian and south Asian descent.

I also noticed a lot of insects, reminding me that this development is encroaching on what was once their habitat.

Domaine des Brises

The Rapides du Cheval Blanc is one of the 10 Eco-territories on the island of Montreal, which some might assume to mean its territory is sacred and can’t be touched. But in 2007, the borough of Pierrefonds-Roxboro approved a development of 251 housing units (PDF), about half of which are in the form of single-family detached houses that all look alike. The developers had actually wanted to build 650 housing units, but pressure from the city forced them to scale back from 15 to 10 hectares. The revised project also talked a lot about “integrating” into the territory by using the same trees or something. Still, the development cut 21% of the green space out of the eco-territory.

| Media

Irvings’ media monopoly in NB takes a sad step (UPDATED)

UPDATE (June 8): The Telegraph-Journal responds. See below.

The media concentration outrage of the week (Hitler comparisons and all) concerns Matt McCann, an intern at the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal who wrote an article about teachers’ reaction to the University of New Brunswick giving an honorary degree to premier Shawn Graham.

You’d think such a thing would be a conflict of interest, an academic institution presenting an honour to the man responsible for the government that funds them, but apparently UNB does this as a matter of routine.

The story made the front page. It included quotes from professors and students (none of which were anonymous) who were upset at the move. It quoted a university spokesperson who explained the policy and made counter-arguments, as well as a note saying that Graham’s office did not wish to comment. In all, a fairly standard newspaper political conflict story, and a pretty good one for an intern.

After the story was published, the newspaper fired him.

According to McCann, he was told his story was “seriously unbalanced and severely underplayed the university’s side of the story” and that “the newspaper has worked hard to establish a good relationship with UNB and that I had damaged that relationship”. The newspaper refused to give its side to the CBC, so we have only McCann’s word on this.

On Saturday, the Telegraph-Journal, which had refused to comment because it was a “personnel issue” (a policy many companies have to avoid lawsuits and such), decided that policy has a scandal-annoyance exception clause to it, and published an unsigned Page 3 story with an inflammatory headline that falsely accuses the CBC. (Thanks Josh) In it, the paper said McCann was fired because he misspelled a name, got a title wrong (his “university secretary” was actually a “university secretary” … wait, what?), and didn’t correctly list the premier’s degrees. It also repeats that that McCann didn’t “adequately portray” both sides of the story and “did not seem to fully grasp the seriousness” of his errors.

Bullshit.

Are we to believe that the Telegraph-Journal has such absolute integrity that minor factual errors lead to immediate dismissal? If it was, why haven’t the errors been corrected on the original story online? Is balance in stories so important that a 149-word rebuttal to a 368-word argument is so outrageously biased it constitutes an error in judgment? (And just what part of the university’s argument did McCann leave out of his story?) Shall we go through Telegraph-Journal stories with minor factual errors and where the word counts of both sides of an argument don’t exactly match and demand those journalists be fired too?

This isn’t just wrong, it’s cartoonishly-evil wrong. The kind of stuff you see on TV and scream “that wouldn’t actually happen in real life.” It’s so bad, in fact, that Premier Graham took pity on the kid and asked for his CV. Even Graham, who the newspaper considered the victim of McCann’s “reckless” reporting, thought the punishment was too severe.

This is an abhorrent act and needs to be condemned in the strongest terms. Other than the minor factual errors, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that story.

A little context is necessary here: The Telegraph-Journal is owned by the Irving family, a very powerful family that owns almost all news media in New Brunswick (the exceptions are a Transcon-owned community paper, L’Acadie Nouvelle and sister francophone media, bureaus of Global Halifax and CTV Halifax, CBC/RadCan stations, private radio music stations and small community publications). Of note is the fact that outside of CBC New Brunswick, there hasn’t been any original reporting of this story. Not only is this kind of monopoly unique in Canada, but unlike Canwest or CTVglobemedia, the Irvings also have non-media corporate interests, including big-money forestry and oil businesses. Their media holdings have been repeatedly accused of being soft on the Irving empire.

And now a young reporter has been dismissed because he made the premier look bad.

New Brunswick needs a media revolution. The Irvings’ control over the province needs to be pried off with a crowbar.

| Media, On the Net, Technology

Ownership mothership

CBC media ownership network map

CBC media ownership network map

The CBC has played with cool new technology from IBM to create a network map of media ownership in Canada as part of a special section dealing with the future of television.

While it does look cool, it’s not particularly useful for understanding media ownership. For one, large corporations are represented by tiny dots, and the network looks a lot more incestuous than it should because of things like CPAC (which is financed by all Canadian cable and satellite providers) and other joint ownership situations.

That data behind it, however, are publicly available and can be used to create other visualizations. Making the size of the dots proportional to gross yearly revenue might make it more interesting.

| Media

Cartoonist bites the (graphite) dust

The Vancouver Sun has an article about its editorial cartoonist, Roy Peterson, who has been drawing biting visual commentary for the paper for 47 years. It includes laudatory commentary from The Gazette’s Aislin.

Actually, make that former editorial cartoonist. The article doesn’t explicitly say this, but Peterson has been let go, his final cartoon killed. His freelance contract isn’t being renewed, judged to be too expensive.

Not having seen Peterson’s invoices, it’s hard to judge whether he was in fact asking for too much money, but either way it’s sad that another newspaper veteran has been forced out before his time.

| Media

RRJ explores MédiaMatinQuébec

MédiaMatinQuébec's final issue: August 8, 2008

MédiaMatinQuébec's final issue: August 8, 2008

The spring issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism has an article by Carolyn Morris about the labour conflict at the Journal de Québec, and the MédiaMatinQuébec free daily put out by stiking and locked-out workers 317 times over 15 months (No. 317 is shown above).

Of interest to those who have read everything I’ve written about the conflict is a bit of back story about how the paper began, including the lengths union leaders had to go through to make sure word of their project didn’t get to their employer.

Sadly, when the labour conflict ended, the website was shut down, taking all the paper’s archives with it. The Wayback Machine has managed to store some web pages, mostly from the fall of 2007, and eight PDF versions of the printed paper, including a 16-page special edition devoted entirely to the sudden death of Quebec City Mayor Andrée Boucher.

| Montreal, TV

Bell TV adds CBC Montreal in HD

Bell announced today that its Bell TV satellite service (formerly Bell ExpressVu) will be adding CBMT (CBC Montreal) HD to its channel lineup as of June 10.

It is also adding high-definition versions of some other channels that have setup HD feeds within the past six months:

  • CFCN-TV (CTV Calgary)
  • CICT-TV (Global Calgary)
  • CKXT-TV (SUN TV, Toronto)
  • TV5

And Bell is adding CBOFT (Radio-Canada Ottawa) to its lineup in both standard and high-definition versions.

Those hoping they might find some room for even a highly-compressed standard-definition version of Global Quebec’s CKMI are unfortunately out of luck again.

| Opinion, TV, Video

TQS’s Call-TV: Finally a show for compulsive gamblers

On Monday, TQS came out with its newest far-fetched idea: Call-TV, a daily 90-minute show in which people call in to win prizes. The reviews were unanimously unpleasant: Ridiculous. Tedious and repetitive. So bad it’s good. Frustrating. Worse than the Monsieur Showbiz reruns it replaced.

Oh, and it forgets how many Os are in Toronto.

In the current pathetic state of the mouton noir, it’s nice to see them go back to their roots as a low-budget network that’s willing to try anything and look pathetic doing it. I might even think of applauding it if it had been an original TQS idea instead of an Austrian creation (the show is even filmed in Vienna).

But there’s another thing that bugs me about it: you have to pay to take part. An entry fee of $1 per call or text to have a chance to win a prize (the show doesn’t take the first caller, but waits for a bunch of people to call in and then picks one at random).

Marketing contests and prize draws operating in Quebec and elsewhere are usually very careful about giving a “no purchase necessary” option in order to stay legal. Usually this involves sending a postcard or self-addressed stamped envelope, which nobody does because that costs money too. But for Call-TV, there is no option that forgoes payment. And since there is an element of pure chance involved, this should technically qualify as a lottery, no?

In the UK, the Call TV format was investigated to see if it qualified as gambling. The report didn’t make a conclusion, arguing that it was up to the courts to decide if this qualifies. (Even if it had reached that conclusion officially, the difference in laws means you couldn’t make the same conclusion in Quebec.)

Whether or not it successfully exploits a loophole in Quebec’s gambling law, or is even sanctioned by the government, it just rubs me the wrong way. It’s like a slot machine you can play at home. Is that really what you want in television?

At least, at $1 a call, compulsive gamblers can’t lose their life savings in 90 minutes.

UPDATE (June 9): La Presse’s Hugo Dumas did some calling to various government regulatory bodies (CRTC, Loto-Québec, Régie des alcools, courses et jeux, CBSC, Department of National Defence) and got responses ranging from “our lawyers are looking into it” to “technically it’s not our department”.

| Media

Conseil de quoi?

In case you didn’t notice, the Quebec Press Council is undergoing an existential crisis. Two of its leaders quit on Friday, amid disputes over whether the group that counts most reputable news media organizations (including The Gazette) as members should focus solely on dealing with complaints or act as an interest group for journalism in general.

They haven’t been quiet since leaving, printing an op-ed in Le Devoir and giving an interview to Projet J. Ex-president Raymond Corriveau and ex-VP Denis Plamondon tackle some of the council members’ demands head on, including demands that decisions be signed (they say anonymity protects journalists from reprisals from their bosses) and that those who issue complaints via the council be forced to waive their right to sue media outlets (such a thing would only discourage complaints, especially those that are valid).

UdeM journalism professor Jean-Claude Leclerc also has an analysis of the situation.

| In the news, Montreal, Opinion

Vision Montreal: [Insert leader here]

Better pull these ads quick

Better pull these ads quick. There's a minor update to them.

Well, it’s official. Benoît Labonté is stepping aside as leader of Vision Montreal so that former PQ minister Louise Harel can run in his place for mayor of Montreal.

I must say I’m surprised by this move. Not only does Labonté have a lot of ambition, but he’s made his campaign for mayor all about him. The Vision Montreal website still links to his blog, which has his face plastered all over it and is now useless as a campaign website (which makes his assertion that his cause “isn’t personal” absurd to the point of late-night comedy). They’ll replace it by one from Louise Harel (who will hopefully hire Labonté’s web designers instead of sticking with her current blog).

I could criticize Harel on many points. She was the person who gave us the whole megacity disaster (fortunately for her, residents of Hampstead and Beaconsfield don’t vote for Montreal’s mayor), and she wants us to just forget all that, saying “there’s no question of rekindling the debate.” She’s an evil sovereignist who spent most of her political career in Quebec City and can barely string three words together in English. And she shares Labonté’s habit of using lots of words that say nothing, not to mention his lack of humility.

But what gets me most is how matter-of-fact this all is. Five months before an election that Labonté has been preparing for more than a year, they have a meeting and just replace the leader.

The ease by which this happened reflects something I wrote about with Labonté in April: He and his party have no platform.

You can see it in Harel’s press release, just like in Vision Montreal’s “Manifesto”. There’s lots of talk of “true political and administrative leadership and attention to priorities,” but no discussion of what those priorities actually are. The only thing that ties Labonté, Harel and Vision Montreal together seems to be the only point of the platform so far: A dislike of Gérald Tremblay.

Actually, to be fair, there’s one other platform point hidden among the empty calories of text about “visionary leadership” and “bold vision”: a desire for a radical change to the borough system and more centralized power at City Hall. It’s something Labonté has supported and something Harel instituted with municipal mergers (though her bill created the mess in the first place).

But that still leaves a lot of blank that can be filled in by almost anything (provided it can be sold as bold and audacious) before November. They could fill it with Projet Montréal’s trams and greenery if they go through with a merger, as Harel hinted at. But I’d like to think that Richard Bergeron is smart enough not to tie his reputation to this sinking ship.

In the end, this probably says more about Vision Montreal and our city’s politics than it does any individual player. The parties can’t be pigeonholed like they can on the provincial and federal levels (Conservatives/ADQ xenophobic conservatives who want to dismantle the government piece by piece, NDP/Québec solidaire crazy leftists who want to pour even more tax money into inefficient black holes, BQ/PQ left-wing separatists who talk radical to get elected and then soften up when they get into power, Greens the environment nuts, and the Liberals the centre-left lesser of many evils who have the experience to run government and the experience to exploit their offices). We don’t really know what separates Union Montreal and Vision Montreal other than who’s leading them.

Like with Labonté, I’m willing to give Harel the benefit of the doubt, and look forward to reading her platform if eventually it comes out.

But right now it’s hard not to see the party of Pierre Bourque as a blank cheque to be cashed in by naive, ambitious politicians who want to parachute in and carpetbag their way into power based solely on their personal, vastly overestimated popularity combined with a lot of empty words from rejected Obama speechwriters.

UPDATE: Le Devoir agrees with me, asking why the left-wing Harel is uniting with the pro-business Labonté.

| Montreal, TV

CBC seeking co-host for Montreal at Six

Michel Godbout has been hosting CBC News Montreal at Six alone since 2006. (Fagstein photo illustration)

Michel Godbout has been hosting CBC News Montreal at Six alone since 2006. (Fagstein photo illustration)

Thomas tips me off to a job posting from the CBC for a co-anchor for its weeknight Montreal newscast (the only remaining local programming on CBMT).

The posting doesn’t make it clear, but I’m assuming the co-anchor will be added to the desk next to current anchor Michel Godbout, who has been hosting the newscast since he replaced longtime Newswatch anchor Dennis Trudeau.

I’m not quite sure about the strategy behind this. Dual anchors are at best redundant, and while a lot of News at Six involves Godbout speaking, he does it well enough. Especially considering the current firing craze at the network, it seems silly to hire someone new for purely aesthetic reasons.

And even then, what’s the point? Silly host banter? We already have that with Godbout and “weather specialist” Frank Cavallaro.

Besides, the studio space allotted to CBC News at Six is so tiny, it would be cramped with two people inside.

Applications are due by June 10. Any takers?

| Media, Opinion

The Toronto/B.C. Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail is being all proud of its new Toronto section, which includes a content-sharing deal with the Torontoist blog.

In a chat with readers, Toronto editor Kelly Grant took a few minutes from being so gosh-darn adorable to counter a complaint that I was about to make: Isn’t this supposed to be a national newspaper? Here’s what she said:

I think you underestimate The Globe’s ability to do more than one thing at a time. We  have always been and always will be a national paper — in print and online. We have more resources in more parts of  Canada and around the world than any other newspaper in the country. This new initiative won’t diminsh our superb national and international coverage.

Those of you who don’t read the paper in the GTA and Ontario may not realize that we usually dedicate roughly two pages of space in the A-section to Toronto news. We have different editions across the country. (In B.C., for example, we have  a large bureau and a section front full of news you won’t see in other parts of Canada.) Yet online we buried the work of our expanded B.C. and Toronto bureaus until recently. I see no reason to shortchange our loyal online readers in two of  Canada’s largest and most important cities, especially when I know it won’t hurt our coverage of other parts of Canada.

She’s got a point, and the B.C. website is also impressive. But considering how little attention other places get (like, say, the entire province of Quebec) compared to Toronto City Hall, I still find myself wondering if the Globe is too focused on the few streets outside its two homes instead of the rest of us.

Let’s hope Canada’s national newspaper slowly moves to cover every city like it does the country’s largest.

| Montreal, Opinion

CDN/NDG bike paths just lipstick on asphalt

De Maisonneuve Blvd. W. at Decarie Blvd.

De Maisonneuve Blvd. W. at Decarie Blvd.

You’d think that Côte des Neiges and Notre Dame de Grâce, being so young, urban, working-class and eco-friendly, would have lots of bike paths spread across its huge territory. And yet, when you look at a map, you see only one, along de Maisonneuve Blvd. next to the tracks.

So I’m sure plenty of people got excited when they heard last Friday that the borough is working to vastly improve its bike path network, adding a new east-west corridor on the north side, about where the 51 bus travels. It would start from the western end of the de Maisonneuve path, go up West Broadway, east along Fielding and Isabella, then along Lacombe and Édouard-Montpetit until it reaches the Outremont town limit, where it will link up with the new path along Côte-Sainte-Catherine Rd.

Well, almost.

Continue reading →

| Media

Telegraph’s scoops aren’t telling the whole story

The New York Times this weekend explored the London Daily Telegraph’s British-MPs-exploit-expense-accounts scoop (or, rather, scoops – they dished out the details bit by bit over several days, milking their investigation for all it was worth). It spreads the rumour that the Telegraph paid for the information (a faux pas, at least among the upper class of the British press).

The Telegraph, which doesn’t confirm nor deny the rumour (usually an indication that it’s true), throws in this quote (emphasis mine):

“One of the great rules of journalism is that you don’t discuss your sources, so long as you establish the information is reliable and in the public interest,” said Benedict Brogan, assistant editor of The Daily Telegraph, in an e-mailed statement.

Is that really a rule of journalism, much less a great one?

I don’t think so. Some sources require protection, the Deep Throat-like ones who come forward with important information but can’t be identified because they could lose their jobs or worse for leaking something to the media. But recently the granting of anonymity has become commonplace, given to random people on the street giving their opinion about things because they just don’t want their full names in the paper. (Not that knowing their names really changes anything, mind you.)

Not discussing where you got your scoops isn’t a great rule of journalism, it’s an unfortunate consequence of newspaper competition, and one of the places where journalism takes a back seat to self-marketing and self-congratulation.

I’m not necessarily saying that the Telegraph shouldn’t have paid for the information, provided it treated it with the highest amount of skepticism. Nor am I necessarily saying it shouldn’t disclose who or what sold them the information (though a discussion of their motivation would certainly be helpful). These are grey areas of journalism ethics.

I’m saying that when the Telegraph hides this information from the public, it shouldn’t be proud of it.

| Montreal, Pop quiz

Montreal Geography Trivia No. 38

A riddle this time:

I affect every other that crosses me, but not necessarily every one I touch. And I’m the only one in Montreal that does this. Or at least I was before the merger.

What am I? What do I do to others? And who is the other that’s (kinda) like me?

UPDATE: Three of you independently got the first two right: It’s St. Laurent Blvd., which splits the island between East and West. Any streets that cross it (actually, any streets that can be found on both sides, whether or not they actually cross) get East and West designations. Those that are only on one side (even if they intersect St. Laurent) don’t have them.

UPDATE (June 2): Michel K gets the last part right: Gouin Blvd. in Roxboro splits three streets – 3rd Ave., 4th Ave. and 5th Ave. – into North and South. (Two others, 1st Ave. and 2nd Ave., have North designations but no southern counterpart.)

Kate also notes Montreal West, which is split North-South by the tracks.