Monthly Archives: September 2015

| TV

Tamy takes on America

Tamy Emma Pepin in #TamyUSA

Tamy Emma Pepin in #TamyUSA

A year and a half after taking a social-media-fuelled trip through the U.K., Tamy Emma Pepin is back with another similar travel show for Évasion: #TamyUSA, which starts this week with a show from Seattle.

#TamyUSA follows Pepin through a road trip along the U.S. west coast, exploring the sights of its cities by meeting with people in them who are active on Instagram.

Unlike Tamy @ Royaume-Uni, in which Pepin would go to bed not knowing what she was doing the next day, this time her activities are much more planned. It’s much less chaotic and stressful this way, Pepin tells me.

There are also changes behind the scenes. It’s a different production company, for one. Toxa has been replaced by the tiny Parce Que Films, which has more experience in music videos than television series.

And the series is being put together in a hurry. Pepin returned from the U.S. trip only last month, and with only 40 days between the end of filming and the airing of the first episode, she has spent long nights in the editing room since then.

But the feel of the show is the same as before. From the low-contrast colouring to the creative music selection (thanks to Third Side Music), and particularly the stunning visuals from director of photography Émilie Ricard-Harvey, it’s very familiar to those who followed the U.K. adventure.

And, of course, Tamy is Tamy, a very charismatic host who can be bubbly without being fake, fun-loving without being irresponsible. It’s fun to explore the world with her because her genuine enthusiasm for discovery shines through the camera.

Plus, since Tamy is travelling through another English-speaking country, the show is effectively bilingual, with most interviews happening in English and subtitled in French.

The series isn’t available online, and no one finds that more frustrating than Pepin, who said she’s trying to change that. But Évasion, owned by independent Groupe Serdy, needs shows like this to drive subscriptions to the channel, particularly with rule changes that are pushing people toward pick-and-pay cable packages.

According to the latest data from the CRTC, Évasion gets 78% of its revenue from subscriptions, and a profit margin below 10% with its subscriber base stable at about 2 million subscribers.

Nevertheless, #TamyUSA has a very active website, and after each show premieres on Monday night there’s a free webcast chatting with local Instagrammers in her living room. That’s much less visually interesting than the show, though.

#TamyUSA airs Mondays at 8pm, and rebroadcasts Tuesday 10am, Wednesday 1pm, Friday 3am, Saturday 9am and 8pm and Sunday 4pm on Évasion.

Further reading

 

 

| Montreal, TV

MAtv begins English programming with five shows

Two years after Videotron first proposed creating an English-language community channel for its Montreal-area subscribers, the first English programs on MAtv began airing today, making the service bilingual (about 20% English, which represents about the proportion of the area that speaks English at home).

Over the next two weeks, MAtv launches five new shows in English. Another eight are set to air later in the year, and of the 13 total series, Videotron says 10 were submitted by the public.

The five English shows MAtv starts now are three community-submitted shows and two local shows that MAtv put together.

Community access programs

Street Speaks host Paul Shore

Street Speaks host Paul Shore

The Street Speaks: Submitted and hosted by Paul Shore, this “speaker’s corner” type series features interviews with “everyday” people on the street, which are then cut up and edited into shows on specific themes. Shore notes in his introduction that most people have never been asked their opinions on issues, and this is his attempt to bring their opinions to light.

Living 2 Gether host Vahid Vidah, left, with first filmmaker Andrew Andreoli

Living 2 Gether host Vahid Vidah, left, with first filmmaker Andrew Andreoli

Living 2 Gether: Submitted by Vahid Vidah, each episode of this half-hour series hands the camera over to an amateur filmmaker and has them explore some aspect of the social fabric of the city.

StartLine: Submitted by Gregory Fortin-Vidah, this series doesn’t have a host, but is a documentary-style series about local businesses in the food, arts, multimedia and entrepreneurial sectors.

MAtv local programs

Montreal Billboard is basically Montréalité in English, right down to the weird leave-the-first-guest-sitting-alone-while-you-talk-to-the-next-guest thing.

Montreal Billboard is basically Montréalité in English, right down to the weird leave-the-first-guest-sitting-alone-while-you-talk-to-the-next-guest thing.

Montreal Billboard: Hosted by Richard Dagenais, who was let go from Global Montreal earlier this year, this series features interviews with people who are involved with local community organizations. It’s similar in style (and uses the same set) as Montréalité, hosted by Katerine-Lune Rollet, and is basically an English version of that program. Regular contributors include Amie Watson.

Anyone who watched Dagenais hosting Focus Montreal on Global will find this pretty familiar. In fact, both Montreal Billboard and Focus Montreal this week started their shows with interviews with people from the N.D.G. Food Depot.

CityLife host Tina Tenneriello

CityLife host Tina Tenneriello

CityLife: Hosted by Tina Tenneriello, formerly of CJAD, this show is a weekly current affairs talk show about Montreal, and is basically an English version of Mise à Jour. Contributors include Martin Patriquin on politics, Toula Drimonis on women’s issues, and Egbert Gaye on social and minority issues.

I haven’t listed times for these shows because each one is in about a dozen spots on the schedule. You can look for them here.

I’ll have more on these series and the state of community television in an upcoming feature. In the meantime, enjoy the shows. And if you have an idea for your own, MAtv is eager to hear it.

| Media, Video

The Oasis trademark dispute gets short documentary treatment

You might recall back in 2012 there was a big scandal because of a dispute between Lassonde, the Quebec-based maker of Oasis fruit juice, and Olivia’s Oasis, a small company that makes skin care products.

It wasn’t the cease-and-desist letter that made headlines, or even the court case itself, which resulted in a judge not only dismissing Lassonde’s lawsuit but ordering it to pay costs. Instead, it was a court of appeal judgment that reversed the lower court’s ruling on costs that sparked social media attention when it was written about in La Presse.

Olivia’s Oasis was a small operation, and lawyer’s fees fighting the case would have put it out of business were it not for social media attention (including a Guy A. Lepage tweet) that prompted so much bad publicity for Lassonde that it quickly reached a settlement — on Easter weekend — with Deborah Kudzman, surrendering to a woman they had just beat in court.

Now, Ottawa producers Heidi Lasi and Pat McGowan have published a 14-minute documentary on the subject, which is posted on YouTube, called The Oasis Affair. It’s financed by Bell Media’s BravoFactual production fund.

The documentary is professionally produced and interesting, but it suffers from Lassonde’s refusal to participate, beyond sending an impersonal letter. I get that the company would rather forget about this story, but it would have been great to hear from people in the company at the time about how they reacted to the media onslaught and what they learned through the process. It might even have made the appear more human.

Another wasted opportunity, unfortunately.

| Media

La Presse to become a weekly newspaper on Jan. 1

I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure they had the guts to do it.

Today, La Presse publisher Guy Crevier announced that as of Jan. 1, 2016, La Presse will be published in print form only once a week on Saturdays, down from six days a week. The rest of the week, it will be tablet app La Presse+ that carries the daily news.

People with print subscriptions will see them converted to Saturday-only subscriptions, be extended if they’re prepaid, or reimbursed depending on the payment plan and preference of the subscriber.

The news comes the day after the launch of Star Touch, a tablet app based on La Presse+ by the Toronto Star.

The news isn’t all that surprising. Crevier has said since the launch of La Presse+ that the tablet is now the main platform and that the print edition will eventually be discontinued. His explanation today includes a lot of numbers showing the decline of the print newspaper industry.

And La Presse+ has been successful, reaching 460,000 readers weekly. I’ve heard a lot of skepticism about those numbers, but La Presse had them independently verified, and NADbank, which surveys the population about their reading habits, confirms La Presse’s high digital readership, which makes it more read than Le Journal de Montréal when print and digital readership is combined.

But there’s a psychological shift here, perhaps more significant than the economic one. Is La Presse a daily newspaper? Does it still belong in the same category as papers like the Journal de Montréal, the Montreal Gazette and Le Devoir?

There are also worries that, even with print’s inevitable decline, putting all your eggs in the basket of a tablet app — a platform that didn’t exist more than a decade ago — is risky. Tablets became really popular when they launched, and reached 10% of the population faster than the telephone, television, smartphone or other media-related technologies. But growth has slowed in recent years, and people who watch the industry aren’t nearly as bullish on it as they once were.

And, of course, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs. The exact number isn’t known yet. Crevier is expected to meet with employees on Sept. 24 to lay down the fallout for them.

UPDATE (Sept. 24): La Presse is cutting 158 jobs (102 permanent, 56 temporary), including 43 in the newsroom. The result will be a staff size — 633 — about equal to what it was before La Presse+ launched.

Cutting down print editions means a lot of work no longer becomes necessary. From print edition designers and editors to press operators at Transcontinental to the people who actually deliver the paper door to door, it’s a lot less in expenses for La Presse and a lot less money in the hands of people whose careers depend on this newspaper.

Crevier told the Globe and Mail the paper will save $30 million a year by dropping to one day a week in print.

We’ll see how La Presse’s print subscribers feel about this decision. Many of them don’t have iPads, and will no doubt be disappointed they can’t get their daily news (or, more importantly, comics and puzzles) in the format of their choice.

Meanwhile, La Presse and the Star announced they are shutting down Olive Media, an advertising company they jointly owned. Some of its employees will be laid off, others will be absorbed into the respective papers’ ad teams.

UPDATE: The unions representing La Presse employees sent out a press release complaining that La Presse isn’t being more transparent about it financial situation. They also note that their contracts also expire on Dec. 31.

Meanwhile, Quebecor sent out its own press release that basically trolls La Presse, saying the Journal de Montréal won’t abandon its print readership.

Further reading

| Media

Different strategies as Edmonton Journal, Toronto Star launch new products

This morning, two major Canadian newspapers made big announcements about new ways of consuming their news. One, the Toronto Star, has put a lot of its eggs in the basket of a new tablet app based on La Presse+. The other, the Edmonton Journal, has redesigned its print edition, website and smartphone app based on Postmedia’s 2.0 template, but hasn’t launched a new tablet edition, unlike its Postmedia sister papers.

It’s two very different strategies toward finding new ways to connect with audiences and increase advertising revenues.

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| Media

Journal de Montréal plagiarizes PressProgress, blames “simple omission”

Stories about newbie candidates (usually in no-hope ridings) being shamed for their views expressed on social media seem to be a dime a dozen these days. Opposition researchers and party activists are scouring every Twitter and Facebook account associated with a candidate to find something they wrote years ago that is either downright awful or can be spun in a way to make them intolerant, mean, disgusting or just stupid.

So when the left-wing website PressProgress published a story about a Conservative candidate’s sharing of Russian stories on Facebook, it just got added to the pile. Apparently some of these articles are, to be generous, not politically correct when it comes to gender.

Because the original articles are in Russian, people who don’t understand that language kind of had to take PressProgress’s word on its translations. So there was initial skepticism about the story.

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| TV

Antenna work on Mount Royal tower means more overnight transmitter shutdowns

Mount Royal tower.

Mount Royal tower. (Fagstein file photo)

I’ve been getting a lot of questions (and a few conspiracy theories) from irate over-the-air TV watchers over the past few weeks because Montreal-based stations have been going off the air overnight.

Overnight shutdowns aren’t new. The same thing happened last year when they installed a microwave receiver on the tower.

So I asked Martin Marcotte, director of transmission for CBC, which owns the tower, what was up. He explained that this time they’re installing a standby antenna for UHF digital TV stations — CBC, Radio-Canada, Global and V — which allows those stations to be switched to that antenna in case the main one fails. (Ironically, that requires shutting down the transmitters for safety reasons.)

“Our current UHF antenna for DTV is now over 30 years old. Because of new code restrictions on work in confined spaces, we are no longer able to service that antenna. So the standby antenna is required to ensure continuity of service if ever there are problems on our main antenna as we can no longer repair the main antenna,” Marcotte explains.

The shutdowns, which start shortly after midnight, don’t just affect the four stations broadcasting on the UHF DTV antenna, but also the two using the VHF antenna (CTV and TVA) as well as most of Montreal’s FM radio stations, though most of those have standby facilities that allow them to stay on the air at reduced power (you may have noticed some of them being a bit noisy at night — Virgin Radio in particular seems to have a very poor standby signal).

The plan is to keep the UHF DTV antenna until 2022 when it’s scheduled to be replaced. If something breaks before then, that replacement would be moved up.

Installation work for the standby antenna is continuing. It’s expected to be done by Sept. 18, but that assumes ideal weather and no unforeseen problems.

Delivery of TV and radio signals through cable, satellite and online are not affected by this work.

The work has annoyed OTA viewers partly because the CBC doesn’t have a webpage that explains what they’re doing, and partly because there are often things to watch just after midnight. People missed Jon Stewart’s final Daily Show on CTV and part of Stephen Colbert’s first Late Show on Global because of these shutdowns.

You might wonder if delaying the start of work until, say, 1am each night might solve that problem. But then it would either have to continue later into the morning or be extended over more days.

So I guess you’re just going to have to live with it for another week.

| Media, Navel-gazing

CROP poll of how anglos and francos drink is garbage, based on sample of 30 people

Breakdown of results of CROP poll show sample size of 31 for anglo Montrealers.

Breakdown of results of CROP poll show sample size of 31 for non-francophone Montrealers.

This morning, Éduc’alcool, an organization devoted to moderation in alcohol consumption, released the results of a poll it commissioned from polling firm CROP related to how people in Quebec drink.

The results were offered to the media under embargo yesterday, and stories appear today in the Journal de Montréal, La Presse, Métro, Rouge FM, Radio-Canada, CJAD and elsewhere that focus on interesting results outlined in the organization’s press release: that there’s a significant difference in how francophones and non-francophones in Montreal drink. Francophones drink more and more often than the rest of the city.

You won’t find a story about this in the Montreal Gazette, despite how relevant this kind of information is to its readership. It’s not because there wasn’t a journalist to cover it — a story was written about it and was set to be given good play in today’s paper. But I had it killed last night.

Well, actually the city editor is the one who made the call, but I’m the reason why, and it sounds cooler to say “I had it killed” than “I noticed something and brought it up to an authority figure”.

The reason is simple: All that data about how non-francophones in Montreal drink is based on sample sizes of 30-40 people, which is laughably small for any survey. None of the conclusions on the difference between language groups could be taken seriously, and without that data there’s really no story here.

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| Radio, TV

CBC Daybreak on TV: Slightly enhanced radio makes for awful television

Host Mike Finnerty, right, with sports reporter Andie Bennett in the Daybreak studio.

Host Mike Finnerty, right, in the Daybreak studio.

For almost two weeks now, CBC has been broadcasting an hour of Montreal radio morning show Daybreak on television, with cameras installed in the radio studio. Managing Director Shelagh Kinch explains a bit how it works on her blog. But basically, a handful of cameras are set up in the studio that allow us to see the people on the air as they’re speaking. Because the cameras are voice-activated, the switching happens without the need for human intervention (i.e. without needing to hire someone for it).

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