Viewers of CFCF’s 6pm newscast were left scratching their heads this evening as they were presented not with their familiar anchors but with CTV News Channel’s Marcia MacMillan, who presented national news but gave a special shout-out to viewers of CTV Montreal.
The local newscast began five minutes later. Turns out there was a fire alarm at CTV Montreal’s offices on Papineau Ave., forcing everyone outside at a most inconvenient time. It continued as normal after an awkward handoff.
The infrequent, unplanned disruptions will give way to frequent, planned ones over the next two weeks as CFCF airs Olympic coverage for the first time in almost two decades.
The noon and 11:30pm newscasts will be pre-empted throughout the Games, and the evening newscast will be reduced to half an hour, bouncing around to fit in between live Olympic events.
For the most part, the newscasts will be from 5:30pm to 6pm, except for Valentine’s Day and the last day of the Olympics (which features the closing ceremony in the afternoon and early evening, pushing the newscast to 7:30).
The full schedule is on their website and reproduced below:
| Date | Time |
|---|---|
| Friday, Feb. 12 | 6-7pm (as normal) |
| Saturday, Feb. 13 | 5:30-6pm |
| Sunday, Feb. 14 | 6pm-6:30pm |
| Monday, Feb. 15 | 5:30-6pm |
| Tuesday, Feb. 16 | 5:30-6pm |
| Wednesday, Feb. 17 | 5:30-6pm |
| Thursday, Feb. 18 | 5:30-6pm |
| Friday, Feb. 19 | 5:30-6pm |
| Saturday, Feb. 20 | 5:30-6pm |
| Sunday, Feb. 21 | 5:35-6:05pm |
| Monday, Feb. 22 | 5:30-6pm |
| Tuesday, Feb. 23 | 5:30-6pm |
| Wednesday, Feb. 24 | 5:30-6pm |
| Thursday, Feb. 25 | 5:30-6pm |
| Friday, Feb. 26 | 5:30-6pm |
| Saturday, Feb. 27 | 5:30-6pm |
| Sunday, Feb. 28 | 7:30-8pm |
As usual, stories will be available on demand at ctvmontreal.ca, and CTV News Channel will have news throughout the Games for you heartless bastards who hate Canada.
I thought it was one of CFCF’s usual technical gaffes at first. Seriously, I’ve seen old community UHF stations that do better studio jobs.
And if CFCF-TV had bothered to get their digital transmitter up by now, they could have run their regular CTV Olympics programming on 12.1, and placed their local newscasts at their regular time slots on 12.2. Just like WCAX-DT 3.1/ 3.2 does when things run over on the CBS schedule. But you know, saving local TV is all talk.
At least this will allow CKMI-TV 46 and CBMT-TV 6/DT 6.1 , a chance to attract some viewers to their local newscasts.