News about news
- NDP MP Romeo Saganash has apologized after plagiarizing parts of a Globe and Mail opinion piece attributed to himself. The piece now includes an editor’s note at the end, and has been modified to add attribution.
- CBC did a live interview with right-wing troll Gavin McInnes and people lost their minds. There was an apology of sorts on Thursday’s show.
- The Canadian Press has pushed through two style changes related to capitalization: Making Indigenous and Aboriginal uppercase in all uses (effectively treating them the same way as national descriptors like English and French), and making internet a lowercase common noun. Expect most Canadian journalism institutions that rely on CP style to follow suit (Postmedia has already done so).
At the CRTC
- After receiving an application for an ethnic AM radio station, the CRTC has determined that the Ottawa-Gatineau market is not healthy enough to support another commercial radio station, and has returned that application. It’ll be two years until the commission will consider another attempt at a commercial station.
- It’s licence renewal time for radio stations. Decisions giving full seven-year licence renewals for stations owned by Bell Media, Pattison, and some smaller independents.
TV
UPDATE: Don Cherry to @GreggZaun: “You’re the champ this year. You look beautiful. You look like Elvis. You look good I’ll tell you that." pic.twitter.com/mEqQJHYvn2
— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) July 1, 2017
- The Washington Post looks at One America News, the all-news channel that makes Fox News look liberal by comparison.
- U.S. home shopping channel QVC is buying its rival Home Shopping Network.
- The Wall Street Journal says U.S. networks are deliberately misspelling the names of their shows in order to game the ratings system.
- A salary negotiation failure led to two actors leaving a network drama. The actors wanted salaries equal to their co-stars. Oh, and the actors in question are asian while the co-stars are white. But CBS says it made generous offers to Hawaii 5-0 stars Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park.
Radio
- Bell Media has activated two HD Radio signals in Toronto: CKFM-FM (Virgin Radio 99.9) is simulcasting itself and CFRB (Newstalk 1010) on digital, and CHUM-FM (104.5) is sumulcasting itself and CHUM (TSN Radio 1050).
- Rogers has announced the hosts of the morning show on the new Sportsnet 650 AM in Vancouver: James Cybulski, Steve Darling and Mira Laurence. Cybulski is probably the best known of them nationally, having worked at The Score, TSN and Sportsnet.
- Laurie Brown is leaving as host of CBC Radio’s The Signal, and plans a farewell tour, which stops in Montreal on Aug. 17. A recent profile chronicles Brown’s history with MuchMusic and CBC Television.
Happy Canada Day ad in Saturday’s Gazette (paid by taxpayers) from all Montreal-area MPs. Except any MP who isn’t in the Liberal Party. pic.twitter.com/QHaYvpqOl8
— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) July 2, 2017
Online
- Canadaland did a tour of Canada this spring to promote its new book about Canada. The show in Montreal was recorded and has been posted to YouTube.
- MobileSyrup has learned how Videotron is dealing with the CRTC-mandated shutdown of its Unlimited Music plan: It’s boosting subscribers’ data caps by the amount they used Unlimited Music at its peak. It’s not a perfect solution, but it will probably satisfy most consumers.
- You can tell the online clickbait game has gotten ridiculous when one site sues another for regurgitating their regurgitated content.
Other
- Quebecor Media has bought back a small chunk of itself owned by Quebec’s Caisse de dépôt for $38 million. The deal reduces the Caisse’s stake in the company to 18.47%, and by my calculation evaluates the company at about $6.7 billion.
- DHX Media has closed its acquisition of 80% of the Peanuts comic franchise and 100% of Strawberry Shortcake for US$345 million.
News about people
Peter Mansbridge signs off from The National for the final time as host and chief correspondent of CBC News https://t.co/cX37MUe1iY pic.twitter.com/ptVDlofEXj
— CBC News: The National (@CBCTheNational) July 1, 2017
- Philippe Lapointe has been named the new general manager at 98,5 fm (CHMP-FM) in Montreal. He replaces Michel Lorrain, who was promoted to executive vice-president at Cogeco Media.
- CBC’s Up Close series on black women interviewed CTV’s Maya Johnson about herself, her Jamaican immigrant parents and how her aunt arrived in this country to kick off the family’s immigration.
- La Presse talks to Julie Snyder, host of a summer Radio-Canada radio show from the Îles-de-la-Madeleine
- Jean Gagnon is leaving his job as editor-in-chief of Le Droit.
- Yannick Villedieu has retired from hosting Les années lumière on Radio-Canada.
- TSN’s Kate Beirness has her employer’s backing for a conference about female leadership, featuring plenty of women associated with sports.
- Fox Sports president Jamie Horowitz is out of a job amid an apparent sexual harassment investigation.
- New appointments to the Order of Canada include:
- Former CBC journalist, producer and VP, Toronto Life publisher and TVOntario CEO Peter Herrndorf (promoted to companion)
- Actors Mike Myers and Catherine O’Hara (officers)
- Jeopardy host Alex Trebek (officer)
- Director Jean-Marc Vallée (officer)
- Actors Rod Beattie, Susan Coyne and Rick Green
- Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter
- Musician Alan Doyle
- Former MP and TV host Liza Frulla
- Globe and Mail cartoonist Brian Gable
- Book publisher Douglas Gibson
- Performance artist Margo Kane
- Music distributor François Mario Labbé
- Music producers Daniel Lanois and Paul Mills
- Radio broadcaster Sylvia L’Écuyer
- Walrus editor John Macfarlane
- Former Radio-Canada broadcaster Pierre Maisonneuve
- Science publisher Félix Maltais
- Structural engineer and frequent Montreal news report source Saeed Mirza
- Makeup artist Gordon J. Smith
- Border Crossings magazine editor Meeka Walsh
Jobs
- Videojournalist, CityNews Montreal
- Associate Producer, VICE du jour in Montreal
- Digital journalist, CBC Quebec City (deadline extended to July 11)
- Business reporter, Canadian Press in Toronto (deadline: July 17)
- General manager, FPJQ (deadline: July 20)
- On-Air Host, CHOM 97.7 (deadline: July 28)
- CEO, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (deadline: Aug. 15)
The CRTC’s decision in Ottawa is regulatory capture at work.
If there is space on the radio dial and no technical issues, then people should be allowed to apply to open a new station. Quite simply, the existing station owners don’t want new competition, with no other valid reasons given.
Yes, Ottawa has 19 stations. However, but their own admission tuning hours are dropping, which suggest that the existing stations are not meeting the public demand. With the population of the area stable or increasing, a drop in tuning hour reflects on the on air product and how it may or may not fit the lifestyles of the population they are suppose to serve. A new station in the market might be able to change that. In fact, many of the existing players have changed the programming, call signs, and even frequencies of their stations in the market in an attempt to improve their share of the market. It suggests that more competition would be good for the public who would be offered more new choices to consider.
Protecting incumbent stations because they say so is regulatory capture at it’s finest. Once againm the CRTC does the shameful thing of kowtowing to big business, and ignoring the benefits to the public they are suppose to serve.
It would be if that’s what’s happening. The commission makes its decisions on these matters based on policy, and has not shied away from authorizing new stations in markets that could use them.
In any case, the application here was for an ethnic station, not an English or French one (and so no direct competition with “big business”), and there were no other parties that expressed interest in starting a new station in the market.
Yet, big business was there to say “no, it would some how affect our bottom line”. That doesn’t add up.
Actually, the major broadcasters didn’t object to a new ethnic radio station (though the existing ethnic broadcasters certainly did). The big guys simply wanted to make a case against a new English or French-language station in case there were expressions of interest in those.
I think that 5 PM CP24 simulcast on CTV Toronto is permanent. They announced this along with the other new CTV News at 5 newscasts – http://www.bellmedia.ca/pr/press/ctv-news-announces-major-expansion-of-local-news-programming-with-all-new-weekday-newscasts-at-5-p-m-debuting-across-canada-this-fall/