News about news

• RTDNA Canada announced the winners of its national and network awards. Of the 75 awards (a bit much, don’t you think?), CBC Montreal won two digital awards and a radio award, CBC Quebec won a radio award, and other local broadcasters were shut out.
• The New York Times is axing the job of public editor, finding that its other methods of attracting feedback from readers are more effective.
• The Denver Post is no longer employing a sports reporter after he made a tweet that was a bit too honest about his feelings after a Japanese man won the Indianapolis 500.

At the CRTC

Demande soumis au #CRTC pour autoriser la distribution de Canal+ International (France) au Canada. Voici la grille horaire. pic.twitter.com/3ntOqgQk3h

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) May 29, 2017

• An application has been filed to allow France’s Canal+ International to be distributed in Canada, including signature shows like Le Petit Journal. No word on what distributors might be interested. The last time Canal+ came here was with a deal with video website DailyMotion that eventually died.
• Newcap says it has received CRTC approval to sell radio station CISL 650 AM Vancouver to Rogers, which will use it to launch a Sportsnet station there. No price is listed, and the CRTC has not yet posted the application or approval to its website.
• The commission is advising those whose radio broadcast licences expire in 2018 to submit their renewals by the end of summer. That includes TTP Media’s CFNV 940 AM in Montreal, which still isn’t producing regular programming. The 600 AM station has exactly one month from today to launch.
• Chairperson Jean-Pierre Blais wrote an open letter to those criticizing the commission’s recent television licence renewals, particularly the decision to eliminate a special licence condition for Corus’s Séries+ channel that requires a certain amount of spending on original French-language programming.

TV

• The Ottawa Senators’ Game 7 against Pittsburgh became the most watched NHL broadcast of the year, with 4.29 million viewers in English. At the peak of the second overtime, there were 4.71 million watching in English and 1.2 million watching in French.
• TSN and RDS have renewed their agreement as official broadcasters of Canada’s national soccer teams.
• Bell Media has announced CTV’s U.S. acquisitions for 2017-18, which continue to show that sequels, reboots and spinoffs are a driving force behind television series.

Print

• The National Magazine Awards were handed out Friday. The list of winners is here. The NMAs are being boycotted by major publishers like Rogers and TVA Publications, who have gravitated toward a new competitor, the Canadian Magazine Awards. But many freelancers for those publications submitted for awards anyway, and in some cases won.
• Dave Bidini is starting a new newspaper in west-end Toronto called the West End Phoenix, supported largely by donations.
• The Toronto Star has decided that, for mainly political reasons, it will begin using uppercase letters on the words “indigenous” and “black” (the latter when dealing with the people and culture, naturally). The Canadian Press, whose style guide is used by most publications in Canada, still uses lowercase letters in these contexts.
• La Presse has lost a case against its union in arbitration, and will have to bring back 26 employees it laid off.

Online

• Videotron, which has been ordered by the CRTC to cease offering its “Unlimited Music” plan because it discriminates based on types of data, has asked the commission to give it some leeway related to existing customers, at least until the end of their current contracts, because it doesn’t want to unilaterally take that bonus away from them. The CRTC has begun an expedited process to reach a decision on that well enough before the July 19 deadline that subscribers can be informed.

Other

• Bell has renamed the MTS Centre, home of the Winnipeg Jets, as Bell MTS Place.

News about people

• With Mutsumi Takahashi getting a lifetime achievement award from RTDNA Canada, Bill Brownstein profiles the normally very private CTV Montreal anchor for a story in the Gazette. Takahashi also got a special video from her former co-anchor Bill Haugland (who never gets up from the desk in that video so you know he ain’t wearing pants)
• Mary-Jo Barr, who was once the news director at CBC Montreal, has a new job as Christine Mota’s replacement at the head of media relations at Concordia University.
• Some staff changes at La Presse:
  • Hugo Pilon-Larose moves from culture reporting to Quebec’s National Assembly
  • Gabriel Béland is now a general assignment reporter
  • Marie-Eve Morasse is covering education
• Scott Oake, reporter for Hockey Night in Canada, speaks to the Winnipeg Free Press about his son Bruce and the institute being set up in his memory.
• Catherine Verdon-Diamond had a bad experience at a restaurant and wrote about it on Facebook. Eater Montreal wrote it up, and mainly takes her side.
• Sue Montgomery, former justice reporter for the Montreal Gazette, is considering another run at politics, this time for a borough mayor job with Projet Montréal. An announcement is scheduled for tomorrow. Montgomery will need to fight for the party’s nomination. She tried a run with the NDP in the 2015 federal election, but lost that nomination battle.
• Brennan Neill is taking a job as afternoon assignment editor at CBC Montreal.
• Scott Pelley is being pushed out of the anchor chair at CBS Evening News. He will continue with 60 Minutes.
• CNN has dropped Kathy Griffin from their annual New Year’s Eve show after she was photographed with a fake severed Donald Trump head. (She apologized.)
• Megyn Kelly is back on the air starting this Sunday, now with NBC.
• Elliotte Friedman opens up about that time he screwed up calling a swimming race during the Rio Olympics.

Good reads

• The depressing economics of the book industry in Quebec, by Pierre-Yves McSween

Obituaries

• Frank Deford, sportswriter

Jobs

• La Presse diversity bursaries and internships (deadline: June 9)
• Digital journalism instructor at Concordia University (deadline: June 19)