Monthly Archives: January 2011

| In the news, Opinion, Radio

Whining for nothing (and the hits for free)

Columnists desperate for something to whine about this week were given a big gift by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, which ruled that the Dire Straits song Money for Nothing was unfit for air because it contained the word “faggot”.

I won’t begin to try to put together an exhaustive list of everything that’s been said. But to give you an idea, there’s a column by Mark Lepage in The Gazette. Matt Gurney in the National Post tries to prove a point suggesting other songs that must be banned. Kelly McParland adds it to a couple of other unrelated stories to advance the hypothesis that Canada is an easily offended country. CTV and CBC in Calgary interviewed former CHOM personality Terry DiMonte, who said the CBSC took the song out of context. Current CHOM personality Rob Kemp wrote about it in a Facebook post, questioning how such a decision could be made based on a single complaint, and saying that “CHOM’s position is, rather than have a butchered version of the song on the air…we’re just not going to play it.” Sharon Hyland also wrote about it on her CHOM blog.

The news reached across the border, with a piece in the Washington Times, which notes the decision is unappealable.

Even (part of) the band itself reacted. Guitarist Guy Fletcher called the decision “unbelievable,” but said the word would be substituted.

The news has spread so much that the album the song is on has climbed the iTunes charts in Canada.

I understand, but…

I’m not here to defend the CBSC’s decision. I don’t particularly agree with their reasoning, and the decision itself is a bit unclear, as you can tell from the following excerpt:

… the Panel acknowledges that the word “faggot”, although lightly sarcastic in its application in the song, was not used in a “sneering, derisive, nasty tone”, as the Comedy Now decision anticipated in its evaluation of “fag”.

Still, the Panel concludes that, like other racially driven words in the English language, “faggot” is one that, even if entirely or marginally acceptable in earlier days, is no longer so.

In other words, the panel doesn’t think the word was used in a bad way, but it thinks the word shouldn’t be used at all.

My issue is with the response to this, which has been one-sided and very repetitive. People complaining on one hand that the decision came out of a single complaint for a song that was released decades ago and has been popular for a long time, as if either of those things should automatically disquality something from being judged as obscene or discriminatory.

And then there are the outraged classic rock radio DJs who stand up on principle and declare that the artistic integrity of classic songs cannot be violated. Two stations even decided to protest the decision by airing the song over and over for an hour.

Forgive me for raising an eyebrow, but it’s hard for me to feel moved by outrage from radio stations that air the radio edit of Brown Eyed Girl, and cut Layla in two to save time. It’s hard for me to feel moved by the need for keeping songs untouched after seeing Cee-Lo Green appear on Saturday Night Live and have to change the lyrics (and title) of his first song.

And then there’s Money for Nothing itself. As the decision notes, the song is regularly played in an abridged version, mainly for length, that doesn’t include the offending lyrics (actually, the more popular abridged versions do include those lyrics). And the “F” word is often changed when the song is performed live, as you can see in the above video.

I understand the need for debate about censorship of music (and censorship for broadcast in general), and I think it should continue (particularly at the political level, because it’s the federal government that ultimately sets the rules). But let’s not pretend that this form of government censorship is new, or that radio stations playing popular music really care that much about artistic integrity.

UPDATE (Jan. 19): CHOM has decided to defy the council’s ruling and play the song with the offending lyrics included (I’d say they’re playing the original song, but they don’t care about artistic integrity that much – half the time they’re playing a shorter version). Astral Radio, which owns CHOM, tells the Journal de Montréal it doesn’t agree with the decision.

Meanwhile, Marc Weisblott looks at how this controversy has affected iTunes sales of the song and album.

UPDATE (Jan. 21): The CRTC has asked the CSBC to review the decision in light of the controversy.

| Business, Media, Opinion

Journal de Montréal Lockout Anniversary 2: The Boring Sequel

Three TV cameras and a handful of reporters at a press conference on Monday about the second anniversary of the Journal de Montréal lockout

Having nothing better to do on a Monday morning, I headed to a press conference announcing the second anniversary of the lockout at the Journal de Montréal. Miscalculating public transit travel time, I arrived a few minutes late, and passed a man carrying a TV camera down the stairs. I missed little of the press conference, but it was clear none of the journalists there were particularly impressed by what they were witnessing.

That impression was confirmed in the news coverage that came out of it, or the lack thereof. Articles for Métro, The Gazette, Radio-Canada, and, of course, Rue Frontenac. No mention, despite the three TV cameras present, on any of the local newscasts that evening, not even as a 10-second brief with anchor voice-over.

I have a feeling some of them might have expected the artists invited to this Jan. 24 concert to be present, giving at least a minimum amount of interesting video. Unfortunately, though this lockout affects dozens of people who know media very well, the union failed to create an event that would be interesting enough to capture the media’s attention.

I noticed that fellow media-watchers like Nathalie Collard, Steve Proulx and Stéphane Baillargeon weren’t at the press conference either. That’s perfectly understandable. They’ve all written quite a bit about the lockout, and wouldn’t have learned anything new here they couldn’t pick up from the press release that was published during the press conference: there’s a concert with Les Zapartistes, Bernard Adamus, Karkwa and Damien Robitaille, and nothing earth-shattering on the negotiation front. To have them transcribe a predictable statement from these people and then try to get a reaction from Quebecor would have been a waste of their talents. (Fortunately, I have no problem wasting my time on stuff like this.)

Notice the banner covering the window, reducing the amount of light coming in

On my way to the press conference, I bumped into a colleague in the journalism business, and we briefly discussed the lockout and how other journalists deal with it. We disagreed on whether people feel free to criticize the locked-out workers and are too afraid to be seen as cooperating with Quebecor (see Deschamps, Yvon). I have, on occasion, been critical of the union’s positions and of Rue Frontenac (as I’m being here) without feeling as though I would be attacked for it or be punished for it somehow. (Then again, I haven’t given any exclusive interviews to the Journal, either.)

But this all makes me wonder: Are we just getting tired of this conflict? The “253” workers who have been “on the street” for two years certainly are. Even if they’re still getting paid a significant salary, even if they’re playing in a media sandbox where they can do just about whatever they like without having to answer to any big corporate boss, even if they know most of them will probably never again set foot in the building at 4545 Frontenac St. The uncertainty of the future, living in limbo, it must get tiring after a while.

The rest of us, meanwhile, even those who follow the local media and think that the Journal de Montréal conflict is the biggest story of the past two years, we’ve run out of things to say. Negotiations are barely proceeding (Jean-François Lisée notwithstanding) and in some cases even going backwards. Even the name of this show they’re organizing, Le Show du cadenas 2, reflects that Year 2 of this lockout is just the same as Year 1, and Year 3 probably won’t be any different.

The print version of Rue Frontenac has spiced things up a bit, but even then the tiredness sets in. Richard Bousquet, who coordinates that project, took a two-week vacation over the holidays after working seven days a week on it since August.

Everyone is tired of this. But both sides will keep struggling to push ahead, and there’s no end in sight.

The Show du Cadenas 2 is at 8 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 24, at Metropolis. Tickets are $20 at Admission or the STIJM/Rue Frontenac offices just north of the Journal de Montréal.

UPDATE (Jan. 31): Video highlights of the show from Rue Frontenac.

| Montreal, Opinion, TV

CFCF-50

Don McGowan (left) and Bill Haugland with their archival selves

CFCF-12, or CTV Montreal as it prefers to call itself now, will be turning 50 years old on Jan. 20. It was on Jan. 20, 1961 – the same day as John F. Kennedy’s inauguration – that the station first went on the air (they even have the video of the first broadcast), and though it has changed owners, studios, programming and staff since then, it has the same call letters, the same channel (at least until the digital transition later this year) and the same position as Montreal’s top English-language television station.

As part of the anniversary, the station is devoting most of its 6pm newscast on Jan. 20 to an anniversary look back, with invites like long-time personalities Don McGowan, Bill Haugland and Dick Irvin. Jed Kahane, the station’s news and public affairs director, also tells me a special song from comedy duo Bowser and Blue will be presented (those who remember the Terry DiMonte-hosted consumer affairs show Fighting Back know that it gave the duo a lot of exposure during the 90s).

The anniversary show will repeat at noon on Jan. 21.

Those who can’t wait until then can see some stuff they’ve already put online, including minute-long vignettes they’ve been putting together for each day leading up to the anniversary.

Among the things online:

“Starting the 17th, we’ll also have extra content and interviews at noon and 6 relating to the anniversary, Montreal history, how our industry has changed, etc.”, Kahane wrote me in an email shortly before heading for the ski slopes.

Mutsumi Takahashi and the fashions of the day in a 1990 episode of Park Avenue Metro

Take a step back in time

I was going to devote the second half of this post to a suggestion that CFCF take advantage of those vast archives and bring back more than just 10-second clips. I was going to say that they should put full episodes of these beloved (and, by today’s youth, unknown) shows online so we can watch them.

Turns out they’ve done exactly that. From the “Flashback” section, you can watch one full episode from a dozen entertainment and current affairs shows. You can see:

This is great stuff (well, mostly great, some of it is kind of dull by today’s standards). I hope it doesn’t stop here, and they can wrestle more stuff out of the archives to be enjoyed again.

UPDATE (Jan. 19): They have added more stuff, including:

It would be fun, I think, to air some of this stuff again too. Perhaps overnight, or during the weekend, when there isn’t much to watch anyway but people who have nothing better to watch can see the shows or record them using their VCRs and DVRs.

Why can’t we write new history?

Watching some of these past shows, the prevailing thought in my head is: Why aren’t shows like this being produced anymore? Why are we seeing American programming in prime-time, NFL football games on Sundays and celebrity gossip shows from 7 to 8 pm weekdays on CTV?

I realize that, in a 500-channel universe, local television isn’t the destination it used to be. But all that tells me is that CFCF should be striving to increase its local programming, rather than airing reruns we can find online or see on those cable channels.

I realize that local television stations don’t have the kind of budgets they did back then and can’t hire the same staff they had in the 60s and 70s. But with new technology, it’s cheaper than ever to produce good-quality video. If YouTube has shown us anything, people can produce shows all by themselves (though realistically it would take at least one or two more people to produce something of any quality).

I’m not eager to see a return of Mr. Chips or poorly-lit local wrestling shows. And I don’t think it’s realistic to expect local programming that rivals what’s being produced by major U.S. networks or nationally out of Toronto.

But surely there’s something between the big-budget national shows and no-budget cable access.

At some point next year, Global Montreal will be bringing back its local morning show, thanks to a promise Shaw had to make in order to buy the TV network. And though it looks cheap as hell, Global does have a half-hour local interview program.

CFCF-12, the leader among anglo Montreal stations, has only its newscasts, as great as they are. Its morning programming consists entirely of a news ticker that runs at the bottom of the screen during Canada AM. Current affairs, arts and entertainment, sports, interviews and everything else has to fit into those newscast hours.

Of the shows the station has put online, there are three I’d like to see as inspiration for new ones. Park Avenue Metro, though a silly name, was a show that allowed reporters to spend more than three minutes looking at an issue. Occasionally longer reports will air during newscasts (those are the ones that are heavily advertised beforehand). But it doesn’t happen with enough regularity.

It’s Your Move was a silly little game show with pretty cheap prizes, but I found it fun to watch, and it’s nice to see people from our community on television.

And the show with Pierre Lalonde showed something that local television could really use: live musical performances. I can’t remember the last time I saw a musical artist or band perform a complete song live on CFCF. If local college radio stations can setup a studio and bring in bands to perform live, why can’t our highest-rated local TV station do the same?

Accuse me of being a dreamer of things impractical, but I think that, in the long run, the future of local television can only be local television.

Happy anniversary, CFCF-12. Here’s hoping for 50 more years, and that the second half-century will bring memories as rich as the first.

CFCF-12’s 50th anniversary show airs Jan. 20 at 6pm and Jan. 21 at noon.

UPDATE (Jan. 15): Bill Brownstein has a long feature in Saturday’s Gazette about the station and its anniversary. In addition to quotes from old-timers Haugland, McGowan and Irvin, it includes this bit about the newscast’s ratings:

In fall 2010, BBM ratings indicate that 202,300 viewers took in CTV Montreal’s 6 to 7 p.m. weekday newscast, as opposed to 32,300 who caught the local CBC-TV package from 5 to 6:30 p.m. and 6,900 who tuned into Global here from 6 to 6:30 p.m.

For the math-challenged, that’s 84% of this share to one station.

Richard Therrien, the TV columnist for Quebec City’s Le Soleil, also notes CFCF’s anniversary. As does The Suburban’s Mike Cohen and Team 990 host Mitch Melnick.

From a comment below, a link to Google’s newspaper archive of a special section of The Gazette devoted to CFCF’s launch on Jan. 20, 1961. Similarly, here’s an article from Mike Boone on the station’s 25th anniversary in 1986.

UPDATE (Jan. 19): The blooper reel is, sadly, only about three minutes long. But there’s also a report from Annie DeMelt on the “lighter side” of news.

| Opinion, TV

Made Marilyn

I’m not the kind of person who’s going to say much about the physical appearance of people I see on TV. I honestly don’t (seriously) care whether you’re a blond or a brunette, or what colour jacket you’re wearing, nor do I care if you had a face lift or gastric bypass surgery or anything else done to yourself. It’s the stuff that comes out of your mouth that makes you look like an idiot.

So on the subject of Marilyn Denis*, whose daytime talk show premiered on Monday on CTV, I’ll only say this: Be careful about Photoshopping TV personalities, especially now in the age of high definition.

I wish I had more to say about this new national Canadian daytime TV talk show – that airs at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. (and then a third time at 5 p.m. on CTV-owned A channel) – but a show that has about five men in a studio audience of 75 is clearly not something I’m meant to relate to.

So I might criticize its cramped-basement-looking set (despite the effort put into it), its fluffy content devoid of interest, or its cliché “fashion trends” segment that showcases mute, unrealistically-thin models wearing clothing few non-hipsters will actually be seen in over the next year, but it would be pointless because people like me don’t watch the show anyway.

And besides, sarcastic criticisms have already been taken care of by Marc Weiscrack.

*The name might not be familiar to Montreal anglo TV viewers, but Denis was a long-time CityTV personality, host of CityLine for almost 20 years.

You can watch the first episode of the Marilyn Denis show online.

| Montreal, Opinion

The Clique de Concordia

Judith Woodsworth and some of the Concordia board members who may or may not choose to eventually find out why she left her position as president

I find myself, more than anything else, amused that everyone is focusing on Concordia University’s Board of Governors in the wake of the sudden departure of its president, Judith Woodsworth.

When I was a student at the university from 2000 to 2005, I tried to attend as many of these board meetings as I could, to get an idea of how the university operates. It didn’t take me long to figure out how things work there.

Like many other such bodies, the Board of Governors is largely a rubber-stamp organization. The big decisions are taken at the level of the executive committee, who presents them to the board as a fait accompli. Sometimes there is debate – particularly when someone outside the ruling clique has a problem with the decision – but the result of the eventual vote is rarely in doubt.

Strange definition of “community”

Concordia’s Board of Governors is made up of 40 voting members. The largest group – and one which by itself forms a majority – is 23 people selected from among the “community at large”. The others are a mix of faculty (6), staff (1), students (5) and alumni (3), each appointed by their respective associations, plus the president and chancellor.

A look at the list of those representing the “community at large”, and you see the words “chairman”, “president and chief executive officer” and “corporate director” a lot. They’re all from the crowd you see at black-tie galas for hospital foundations (in fact, many members of the board are also on the boards of hospital foundations), not the ones setting up community gardens or organizing festivals or doing all the other stuff you think of when you think “community”.

The biggest problem with this group is that it is de facto self-appointed. The board has a nominating committee, which recommends candidates to the board, which appoints them to a body called the Corporation of Concordia University (whose makeup is identical to the board), who then appoints them to the board. The “community at large” group forms a majority on each of these bodies.

The inherent problem with this setup has been obvious to the Concordia Student Union for more than a decade. But they control only four seats on the board. Occasionally, they might get support from the one graduate student, but their cause is always a losing one. Faculty, staff and the general public weren’t on the side of the crazy anarchists.

Questions from unexpected places

The sudden departure of President Judith Woodsworth just before Christmas was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Concordia’s previous supposedly-permanent president, Claude Lajeunesse, also left well before his first mandate was to end, and also for reasons that were never made clear. Meanwhile, the university has lost a lot of other senior administrators over the past couple of years.

Now people are starting to take notice. Donald Boisvert, who was the university’s dean of students while I was a student there, wrote a piece in The Gazette demanding an explanation from the board. Lucie Lequin, president of Concordia’s faculty association, wrote a public letter to members (PDF) saying they should also demand to know why so much money is being spent forcing senior administrators to leave.

The situation has attracted the attention of the news media. Peggy Curran, The Gazette’s universities reporter, is writing a piece every day or two about it. On Saturday, an article in the Globe and Mail. Chris Mota, the university’s official spokesperson, has been working overtime the past couple of weeks doing interviews for TV and radio, trying to explain a statement that Woodsworth herself has reportedly admitted isn’t true.

Meanwhile, that “community at large” group remains silent. The chair, Peter Kruyt, and the other members of the board have not been heard from. A complete blackout on public statements.

Time to shine some light

Clearly someone needs to step in and demand explanations. Unfortunately, the only body with the power to overrule the Board of Governors is the Quebec government, and they have shown a strong reluctance to do so in the past. We don’t know yet whether this latest scandal will be enough for them to step in.

If they do, though, questions should be raised not only about the process for hiring and firing senior administrators, but about whether there is something inherently wrong with an organization that controls millions of dollars having a self-appointed board of directors. The government should investigate whether this is a good idea, or whether it is likely to lead to the formation of a clique, conflicts of interest, and the negative consequences that come with it.

Concordia, like all universities, is a publicly-funded institution. It needs to be responsible to the public.

Want your name on something? Just donate some money

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| On the Net, Opinion, Technology, TV

The ho-hum Bye-Bye

This parody of Céline Dion and Julie Snyder: Funniest segment of the night, or mean-spirited attack on Quebecor? In this case, funny is in the eye of your employer

It’s tradition in Quebec media to review each year’s end-of-year special from Radio-Canada, the Bye-Bye. It went a bit crazy two years ago when Véronique Cloutier and Louis Morissette decided to take their first crack at it. So much so that there wasn’t one to end 2009.

So you can imagine how much everyone was anxious to see what would happen when Cloutier and Morissette decided they would throw themselves into the gauntlet again and host the Bye-Bye 2010.

I watched it, along with my family, on New Year’s Eve, and followed the reaction live on Twitter. My first thoughts were that it was pretty impressive, that they weren’t overcompensating by pulling their punches compared to 2008, and that it wasn’t likely to offend anyone … or at least, no one not working for Quebecor.

The consensus was that the production values were good (particularly makeup and prosthetics, which in some cases made the actors barely recognizable as themselves and instantly recognizable as their targets), the parodies were well done, and the music videos were great, but the jokes fell flat, which is kind of the most important part.

The first professional reviews came quickly afterward (Richard Therrien’s was up in less than an hour). But many others waited because they were to go in newspapers, and many of them published neither on New Year’s Day nor on Sundays. It would be more than 48 hours before some people would read anything about it.

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| Media, Opinion

Badly-timed celebrity deaths

Jerry Orbach, Susan Sontag, Benazir Bhutto, Michelle Lang, Tony Proudfoot, Rémy d’Anjou.

What do these people have in common?

They had the misfortune of dying in late December in recent years, meaning their presence on year-end obituary lists is hit-and-miss.

Orbach and Sontag died on the same day, Dec. 28, 2004, according to Wikipedia. That, more than some editorial decision that they weren’t important enough, was why they were left off lists of celebrity deaths that year, like this one from Associated Press and this one from Hour.

This year, Radio-Canada’s Regards sur 2010 special ended with a long list of important people (particularly Quebecers) who died during the year. Missing from that list is former Alouettes player Tony Proudfoot, because the news of his death came the morning of Dec. 30, the day after the show aired. Some print lists, like this one from Postmedia News and this one from Canadian Press, include his name (at least in their latest versions – this one from Postmedia and this one from CP don’t have it).

Radio-Canada’s year-end special, which was repeated on Jan. 2, is also missing Rémy d’Anjou, who died on Dec. 27, even though he was important enough for Radio-Canada itself to run an obit.

This is the problem when you summarize something before it’s over. I realize there’s a desperate need to fill space just before New Year’s, but publishing a list of people who died during a calendar year before the year is complete is like printing the boxscore of a hockey game before the last buzzer, or publishing a review of a movie before the final act. It’s inaccurate, and obituaries is a place where accuracy is pretty important.

And it’s not like you can just hold them over for next time. Tony Proudfoot and Rémy d’Anjou won’t be appearing on any “they left us in 2011” lists.

| Montreal, Public transit

STM bus route changes coming Jan. 3

A few changes to some bus routes as the new schedules take effect Monday morning:

New route for 25 Angus as of Jan. 3, 2011

25 Angus: The most radical change happening Monday is the 25 bus, which is being redirected to the Rosemont metro station instead of doubling the 24 to the Sherbrooke metro station. It now takes Molson, Masson, Iberville and Rosemont. Though still a rush-hour-only bus, the number of departures is nearly doubled, going from five to nine in each direction during each rush hour.

46 Casgrain: The westbound part of this tiny route is being modified. Instead of taking Laurier westbound from Rivard to Casgrain, it takes Saint-Joseph west to Saint-Laurent, and then doubles back to Casgrain along Laurier.

89 Gouin/Perras: This line is discontinued, merged into the nearly identical 48 Perras. About every second departure of the 48 becomes 48X, taking a minor detour via Langelier and Ozias-Leduc