News about news

• Canada’s spy agency can’t confirm whether it’s spying on journalists. The Toronto Star had the story this morning, apparently unaware that La Presse had secured the exclusive on it. This development is unsurprising since, besides the difficulty in defining who is and isn’t a journalist, one would not expect one’s spy agency to provide any such assurances unless they were required to by law.
• Influence Communication has come out with its media zeitgeist for 2016. There’s one for Quebec, one for Canada and one for the world. Among its findings is that francophones outside Quebec are basically ignored.
• The FPJQ has come out against a proposed law by the Quebec government that, while seemingly protects whistleblowers, does so only when the acts they’re denouncing are a threat to public or environmental safety.
• BuzzFeed is looking for a reporter “to cover Muslim life and Islamophobia in America.”

At the CRTC

• The commission has reiterated a preliminary view that Internet providers can’t block websites without its approval (and such approval would not be given lightly) regardless of a new Quebec law that would make that mandatory for a Loto-Québec-provided list of illegal gambling websites. There’s a court case pending over this, so that view could be overturned by a higher authority.
• During hearings over the renewal of its licences recently, the CRTC asked Corus (which runs The Disney Channel, Teletoon, YTV and other youth channels in Canada) how long its contract with Disney lasts. Corus wrote in a letter that Disney won’t give it permission to tell the commission (even confidentially) that information. I imagine the commission won’t like that.
• Yet another transmitter being converted from AM to FM, in Channel-Port-aux-Basques, N.L.

Verne signs off from college football one final time. pic.twitter.com/HKWeh84Pp8

— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) December 10, 2016

TV

• Verne Lundquist called his last college football game for CBS after 17 years there, and more than 40 in broadcasting.
• CTV Montreal now has a new segment on the 11:30pm newscast called The Last Word, in which the anchor reads viewer tweets and Facebook comments about some issue of the day. (It’s not actually the last word, it comes just after sports and before the last commercial break before the wrap-up.)
• Videotron finally added some long-awaited HD channels, including CTV News Channel and The Comedy Network. But they’re only available in areas that have modernized networks and on next-generation receivers capable of decoding MPEG-4.
• A bunch of TV channels are on free preview over the holidays on most major providers. The below are available on Videotron, Bell, Cogeco and Shaw until Jan. 16 unless otherwise indicated.
  • Animal Planet (to Jan. 10)
  • Bloomberg TV Canada (to Feb. 28 on Videotron)
  • Canal D
  • Canal Vie
  • CASA
  • CHRGD (to Jan. 31 on Videotron)
  • Cooking Channel (formerly W Movies, to Jan. 31)
  • Euronews (Videotron)
  • Évasion
  • Fight Network (to Jan. 2 on Bell, Shaw and Cogeco)
  • Food Network (to Jan. 4)
  • HIFI (to Jan. 1 on Bell and Shaw)
  • History (to Jan. 4)
  • Hollywood Suite (to Jan. 7 on Bell and Shaw)
  • Gusto (to Jan. 10)
  • ICI Artv
  • ICI Explora
  • Investigation (fr)
  • Love Nature (to Jan. 1)
  • MAX (formerly Musimax)
  • Mezzo Live HD (to Dec. 31 on Bell)
  • MusiquePlus
  • Planète+ (Videotron)
  • RDS
  • RDS2
  • RDS Info
  • Rewind (Videotron)
  • Seasons (to Jan. 27 on Bell, Jan. 3 on Cogeco)
  • Silver Screen Classics (Videotron)
  • Smithsonian Channel (to Jan. 1 on Bell and Shaw)
  • TSN (to Jan. 7 on Shaw)
  • Vrak
  • Z
  • Zeste
• The MLS Cup final attracted 1.5 million viewers to TSN/RDS on Saturday, setting yet another new record for viewership to an MLS game. Since Toronto was in the final and Montreal wasn’t, less than 100,000 of that viewership was on RDS.
• Global launched its Durham region local news operation. Global News was there.
• The Bell Media drama Cardinal has a debut date: Jan. 24 on Crave TV, Jan. 25 on CTV and Jan. 26 on Super Écran. CTV thinks it’s significant that this show is taking over the Designated Survivor timeslot for the winter.

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Radio

• 98.5fm has inaugurated what it calls the Espace Jean-Lapierre, in honour of their former political columnist. It’s a communal meeting space/waiting room for guests.
• CBC’s The Vinyl Café is going on hiatus as host Stuart McLean undergoes cancer treatment again.

Dernier deadline au 2050 de Bleury. Vague impression de chaos. pic.twitter.com/SU2SBfwueI

— Brian Myles (@brianmyles) December 10, 2016

Print

• Two newspapers moved last weekend: The Globe and Mail to its new building in Toronto, and Le Devoir to new offices on Berri St. Naturally both wrote sappy stories about their histories.
• More departures at the Montreal Gazette newsroom this week: lifestyle journalist Susan Semenak, universities reporter Karen Seidman, editor Evangeline Sadler and photographer John Kenney.
• La Presse is eliminating some positions, reassigning people and choosing not to fill some vacant jobs. No one is getting a pink slip, though.
• Metro Ottawa’s office is being moved to Nepean so Torstar can save on overhead costs and foster “further collaboration” with community newspapers.
• The last issue of Sportsnet magazine as a print product.
• Good news! The Washington Post is profitable!

Online

• Amazon Prime Video launched in Canada and around the world today.
• Breaking News, the Twitter account and mobile app that focused purely on breaking news from around the world, is being shut down by owner NBC News.
• Being unable to regulate Netflix, YouTube and other video streaming services on its own, Canada is looking to gang up with other countries to rope them into a more regulated system with more contributions to Canadian programming.
• Songwriters have reached a deal with YouTube over royalties.

News about people

• More Postmedia depatures include Kathryn May of the Ottawa Citizen
• Rogers has made Maureen Holloway’s hiring as morning host on Toronto’s CHFI official. She starts Jan. 9.

Good reads

• The Washington Post on how a paranoid conspiracy theory about a Hillary Clinton child prostitution ring ended up with an armed man terrorizing a D.C. pizzeria.
• J-Source on the “death knock” — having to contact relatives, neighbours or friends of a person who has just died unexpectedly in a newsworthy story.

Obituaries

• Jennifer McClintock, aka Jennifer Foxx, radio host at Star 92.9 in Burlington, from pancreatic cancer. She chronicled her battle with the disease in an online diary.

Jobs

• Digital content editors at CTV Montreal (1-year contract; deadline: Dec. 14)
• Métro is looking for temporary fill-ins on the desk
• Ontario Bureau Chief for The Canadian Press
• Bourse AJIQ-Rogers (deadline: Feb. 13)