So in case you couldn’t figure out on your own, those posts from yesterday were April Fool’s jokes. I mean, really, come on.

(For those of you curious, the engagement one drew the most traffic, probably because of all the lockoutés who linked to it via Twitter. I giggle when I look at the Photoshopped image now, because they really do look like a cute couple.)

The posts were all written in advance (not as far in advance as I’d planned, mind you) because I was working the morning shift on Thursday morning. That meant the morning reporter and I had to sort through what was actual news and what was fake. Sadly, that turned out to be not nearly as difficult as it should have been, because (a) wire services check these things, (b) the police don’t fool around with this kind of stuff, (c) press releases based on gags were clearly marked with “April 1 Alert” so they wouldn’t ruffle feathers, and (d) nobody’s going to call in with bogus tips at 7am on a workday.

I spent the morning working, with the occasional break checking out what was going on in the world and which brilliant or lame pranks were getting traction. I won’t bore you with rating the most popular ones worldwide (there are websites for that), but I will highlight a few of local interest that caught my eye:

Halak signs six-year deal

Sometimes the best pranks are the most obvious and stupid. Allan Walsh, the agent for Canadiens goalie Jaroslav Halak who has gotten in trouble in the past for what he’s posted on Twitter, sent this tweet announcing that his goaltender had signed a six-year extension with the Canadiens. Halak was supposed to become a restricted free agent this summer, and it’s widely expected that the Canadiens will need to choose between keeping him and holding onto Carey Price for next year.

Walsh followed it up almost immediately with a “Happy April Fool’s Day” tweet, but it was enough to cause Habs-obsessed journalists and watchers to have a heart attack. CKAC in particular wasn’t amused.

I’m just sad he didn’t keep it going a bit longer.

Mauvais Oeil’s Cyberpresse parody

When I saw the main story about Jean Charest resigning, I sighed. It could have been more funny.

But then I went back and saw they didn’t just copy HTML from the Cyberpresse site, but rewrote the entire thing. None of the links work, but the snippets of text are pretty darn funny.

Of course, Mauvais Oeil does this kind of thing often, and the URL means nobody’s likely to actually get fooled by this particular prank (unless you’re showing someone your computer screen and hiding the address bar).

La Ronde’s stupid monster prank

Corporate gags are usually lame. They’re too afraid to prank anyone with something remotely serious, so they keep it to something so benign as to be boring. The fad of “viral videos” has changed that mentality somewhat, and now many companies are convinced by stupid marketers that if they intentionally shoot a crappy video of some special effect then everyone in the world will see it.

La Ronde sent out a press release in the morning saying a monster from the St. Lawrence had attacked two employees, and linking to the above video, an obvious fake “viral video” that’s copied off every other fake “viral video” created by people with no originality. They later sent out another press release promising an inquiry.

That sound you hear is nobody paying attention. Let’s hope an inquiry is called into how much money was wasted in this stupid marketing dud.

Canada.com’s upside down logo

Yeah, that was about the extent of the April Fool’s celebration at Canada.com, which is owned by my employer’s parent company. Serious news sites (and newspapers) are, unfortunately, far too careful about these things, because every now and then there’s actual news that happens on April 1.

Le Devoir’s armor cream

While some news outlets stayed away from it, gotta give credit to Le Devoir for having some fun. This piece talks about a cream being designed that, when applied to the skin, prevents it from being cut like some sort of chain mail. It’s serious and scientific, and only at the very end do the true suckers get let in on the fact that they’ve been had.

Compared to my works of art, none of these come close.

Mac-based program to auto-generate Red Fisher columns

A dark secret about how The Gazette operates will soon become known to the masses. In a piece to be published this Saturday, sports editor Stu Cowan will finally reveal publicly that columns signed by veteran hockey writer Red Fisher have been generated automatically by a sophisticated computer algorithm ever since the columnist died of natural causes six years ago.

The software, used after the odd Habs home game, generates a Red Fisher-style column using statistical data from the boxscore, as well as some human-entered information to spice it up. It has a database of hundreds of old Red Fisher columns and has learned his way of writing quite well. It uses expressions like:

• “Raise your hand if…”
• “There was a lot to like about…”
• “Know something?”
• “We’re talking about a team who went into the game…”
• “What else can you say about a team that…”
• “Particularly on a night when…”
• “The rest you know.”

Actually, that last one was cut from the database after a few weeks when it appeared at the end of virtually every column.

The program is fast, though not perfect. The text needs a lot of editing once it’s created, and even now it needs the approval of a senior editor before it gets published.

A similar program puts together the weekly Red Line notebook, taking NHL briefs and “Fisherizing” them.

Fisher’s other function, writing obits for expiring Canadiens greats, is handled mostly by taking elements from old columns and tacking on a paragraph or two about how and when the person died.

Even though it has been wildly successful, upper management at Canwest ordered an immediate halt to the program once they learned about it two days ago. The Gazette decided the best way to deal with the sudden disappearance of a star columnist is to just come clean about what was going on.

I won’t get too much into the ethics of the program. A separate investigation is under way on how this could have gone on for so long, and more details about that will be revealed on Saturday, and no doubt huge amounts of ink will be spilled about this afterward. But on a sheer technical basis, you have to admit it’s pretty impressive.

They’re talking about replacing journalists with robots. This is an example of the first wave of that battle.

Radio-Canada, which has for years had a secret agreement with Gesca (owner of La Presse, Le Soleil and Cyberpresse) as part of a complex, federalist conspiracy against Quebecor, has decided to terminate that agreement after negotiations on a renewal went sour, and is launching its own, competing daily newspaper.

An ad seeking experienced journalists to staff this newspaper appeared in La Presse recently (sources within La Presse say if they knew it was for the Radio-Canada newspaper, the ad would never have run), leading to a lot of speculation about who is behind it from people unfamiliar with the status of negotiations.

Some have even theorized that it’s the work of Quebecor, which already owns two of Montreal’s six daily newspapers.

Once the newspaper gets up and running, my sources within Radio-Canada say, columnists from that newspaper – and not La Presse – will be invited to be analysts on Radio-Canada TV and radio newscasts, and Radio-Canada will shift its huge advertising budget from La Presse to the new newspaper.

Needless to say, La Presse is pissed about this, though they can’t say anything publicly because of the nature of the secret agreement. Radio-Canada’s advertising money was a huge part of their budget, and the exposure their columnists get on Radio-Canada programs are the only reason anyone knows who they are. Mostly, they say, this split hurts the ultimate goal of both organizations: to crush Quebecor once and for all and end the Quebec sovereignist movement.

The secret agreement dates back to a not-so-secret agreement back in 2001, that reassured people the two newsrooms would remain separate. Radio-Canada said the agreement was terminated in 2003. But years later, after integration had made itself obvious, the work of brave journalists eventually uncovered the conspiracy through anonymous testimony, statistical analysis and by numbering paragraphs. Quebec’s press council has rejected such complaints (it too is controlled by the Gesca-Radio-Canada cabal), but the evidence has kept mounting to the point where most Quebecers just accept it as fact.

It’s unclear how La Presse will respond to this move. Some speculate that it may move to another broadcaster. Discussions are apparently already underway with V to have either a spot on Mario Dumont’s news show or to produce a new TV series focused on current affairs, something the network badly needs. For radio, it appears the target will be 98.5, the Corus-owned station which airs Paul Arcand’s morning show. Corus also needs an infusion of news, having just cut regional programming to replace it with Arcand’s show. Bringing Gesca and its regional papers in the loop might mean bringing back some of that regional programming.

The Gesca-Radio-Canada entente is apparently to end June 30. The new newspaper (which so far doesn’t have a name) is slated to begin production the next day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxqinvDs8Rs

Yoopa, Quebecor’s specialty channel aimed at young children ages 2-6, officially launched this morning. The channel, which will not carry any “traditional” advertising and has the very pretty Mariloup Wolfe as its spokesperson, will have a lot of educational programming, but one name has come up that might surprise people: News anchor Jean-Luc Mongrain.

“We were just as surprised,” said a TVA insider, who asked to remain anonymous because the announcement of Mongrain’s show hasn’t been authorized yet. Apparently, a higher-up at Quebecor half-jokingly asked Yoopa’s programming planners to show a clip of Mongrain to their focus group of young children, and was shocked to learn that they just ate it up.

“Kids loved Mongrain,” the insider said. “They love the way his eyes pop out when he talks, the way he says ‘DUO-TANG!’ They might not entirely understand what he’s talking about, but they giggled and cheered whenever he came on the TV.”

Quebecor’s working plan is to simulcast Mongrain’s LCN show on Yoopa. Parents can listen to his commentary on current events, while children can just amuse themselves with his over-the-top visual theatrics.

“It’s really a win-win.”

Mongrain’s show airs starting at 10am on LCN. Quebecor expects to begin simulcasting it on Yoopa next week as a trial run.

Raynald Leblanc and Isabelle Dessureault: Opposites in love (photo: Alain Décarie)

They say that opposites attract. Nowhere is this exemplified more than in the case of Journal de Montréal union boss Raynald Leblanc and former Quebecor VP of public affairs Isabelle Dessureault, who shocked friends and colleagues yesterday by announcing they’re engaged to be married.

Dessureault tells Fagstein the relationship began a few months ago, in the middle of yet another public relations battle between the STIJM union and Quebecor. “He was my opponent in this battle, so obviously I had to take the opposite opinion of whatever he said publicly, but there was something about him…”

The two met in person during an STIJM protest, as Dessureault was answering media inquiries about what was going on. They happened to strike up a conversation, and “things just kind of took off from there,” she said.

Dessureault admits the antagonistic position helped ignite the romance. “I was so angry with him at the beginning, telling all those half-truths,” she said. But then the anger turned into … something else. “Sparks,” Leblanc said, laughing.

Because of their jobs, the relationship had to be kept under wraps. “That kept it kind of exciting,” Leblanc said, smiling. They would meet under cover of darkness, even using disguises when they had to go out in public.

Eventually, Dessureault decided she had to tell her bosses what was going on. They acted fairly quickly, pulling her from her media relations job. She says she’s not sure what she’s doing to do now (she’s looking at other opportunities inside and outside Quebecor), but between her fiancé and her job, she doesn’t regret her decision. “Not for one second,” she said.

Dessureault and Leblanc haven’t set a date for the wedding, but they’re looking for some time this fall or next summer.

Reporter's cubicle is now off-limits to all personnel

Firefighters and other emergency services personnel were called in last night after inspectors declared a reporter’s cubicle violated 32 fire safety and other environmental codes and ordered it immediately sealed off.

Shocked that a human could live in such an environment for any length of time, a hazardous materials officer said his team would have to tread carefully into the danger area. There were reports of sounds emanating from the giant piles of papers that may have been from small creatures that have built nests inside.

There are also concerns that the entire area may be structurally unsound.

Police couldn’t say how long the cleanup would take, but not to expect anything for at least a few months.

A (bad) mockup of a promo for the new Daybreak, provided to me by a trusted source

Only a day after the job posting expired for the replacement to CBC Daybreak host Nancy Wood, management unveiled their final decision to staff yesterday: instead of one host, Daybreak will now have three. And they’re all familiar to long-time listeners of Montreal radio.

Fagstein has learned that the new hosts are Terry DiMonte, Ted Bird and Paul Zakaib (aka Tasso Patsikakis), all veterans of commercial radio who have found themselves disconnected from their Montreal listeners in the past year.

Terry DiMonte left Montreal in 2007 to accept an offer he couldn’t refuse at Q107 in Calgary, and though there was a short-lived show on CFQR done remotely from Calgary, he hasn’t been heard on the local airwaves since last summer. DiMonte had nothing but good things to say about his new job and his bosses, but off the record he said the recent departure of co-host and long-time friend “Peppermint” Patti MacNeil caused him to rethink his priorities. It’s unclear how he will be getting out of his contract at Q107 (which still has almost three years left on it), but DiMonte said he’s had discussions with his bosses and they would work something out.

Ted Bird, as readers of this blog are aware, quit his job at CHOM-FM in January, citing creative differences with management. He has been looking for a job since, even with his weekly sports commentary segment on CFCF. (Bird says he’ll try to keep doing that, time permitting.) He hadn’t imagined he’d be paired with DiMonte again so soon, but he said when presented with the opportunity, he didn’t hesitate.

Paul “Tasso” Zakaib was once one-half of the long-running Aaron and Tasso team on CFQR, and hadn’t been heard from much since he was dismissed in August along with Suzanne Desautels. (Coincidentally, Desautels also returned to local radio this week, doing morning weather reports on CJAD.) Zakaib has already indicated he’ll bring back the Tasso name and the personality that goes with it in his new job.

While the Daybreak studio is large enough to hold three co-hosts, the format will need to be tweaked a bit. So far the plan is for DiMonte to do interviews, Bird providing sports news (and his famous sports commentary) and Tasso will be doing something they call “Wacky Weather.” The biggest change will be adding more time for chit-chat between them, as well as listener contests and other popular, entertaining features designed to put CBC Radio back into the ratings game.

But, local CBC brass have assured staff, their main mission of doing quality journalism hasn’t changed. They will still be talking to newsmakers and discussing the issues that affect all Montrealers.

Daybreak’s regular columnists, such as Sonali Karnick and Shawn Apel are expected to be reassigned, most likely to the afternoon show.

An official announcement of the change is expected some time next week.