Global Montreal has found an innovative solution to the technical problems that have plagued its morning show since its launch two months ago: It will be asking members of the audience to come in and handle the duties of an audio technician for a day.
The hosts announced the contest this morning on the air. Winners, if I can call them that, will be brought in at 5am, taught how to control the audio levels for hosts, callers, studio guests and prerecorded video, and then given the job for three hours from 6 to 9. Afterward, they’ll be given a tour of the studio, a chance to meet the on-air staff. They’ll even see their name in the credits for that show, and to top it all off a free dinner at a mid-scale restaurant.
Asked whether this is a sly method of getting people to work for (near) free, Global News spokesperson Rich Aufmaias said he didn’t see it that way. “We made it as our goal when we started this show to connect with the community. Bringing them in one at a time is a great way to do that, and allowing them to push buttons and work at a real live television station is something many of them will jump at, I think. Besides, it’s only for one day.”
The better question isn’t so much whether this is legal but how long it could last considering the number of viewers the show has, and the number of them who would want to drive downtown for 5am on a weekday.
“We expect we won’t be able to do this forever,” Aufmaias said, “but that’s no reason not to do it. When we’ve run out of volunteers, we can move on to something else.”
The contest will commence next week, with the first winners brought in the week of April 15.
Excellent Steve, this is one of the best PR stunts I’ve heard of in a while.. Did you also hear that besides CJAD annouicing this morning that the Habs signing Alex Kovalev to play as a power play specialist for the rest of the year, they will also announce later this year that Hall of Famed Guy Lafleur will be brought in as a point man on those same power plays. This power play will ve awesome.
This would be funny if it weren’t so sad. This morning at 0600 they were off again, getting tired of this, don’t want to watch national news from Toronto, and finding that I really don’t like Dagenais in this spot, sorry Richard, but I’m sure you’ll do fine elsewhere.
I don’t think it was scheduled to air this morning because of the holiday (despite what the electronic schedule says).
Steve, I would normally agree with you, but they “replaced” it with the same 16×9 show (jewelry thieves) that they used on the last few breakdowns….
Yeah! I don’t think it was scheduled, but I suspected it would happen(as you say Fagstein despite what the electronic schedules says). I tuned in around 6am this morning, just to see if they would have a live Morning Show(to be sure it was not due to technical problems again, I checked on Twitter for Richard Dagenais etc). How come no Morning Show on Global Montreal, while Global TV stations in rest of Canada had shows(I checked several including Global Toronto & Global Maritimes, & they all had live shows)? And Sunday(March 31), there was no Global Montreal supper hour & late-night newscasts.
The anchors confirmed on air this morning that they had a (scheduled) four-day weekend. Camille Ross took advantage of it to make a trip to Toronto.
Sunday’s newscasts were also cancelled because of the holiday. The late-night newscast was replaced by Focus Montreal.
1-800-GEEKSQUAD.
L O L – hope they can take a hint!