News about news
Always be nice to your competition @CTVToronto @globalnewsto #needaboost pic.twitter.com/x08eWl9tu3
— Jimmy Dee (@JD_Camera) October 12, 2017
- Canada has passed its journalist shield law, which makes it tougher to compel journalists to identify confidential sources. The bill applies protections only to those whose “main occupation” is journalism.
- CTV Montreal, CJAD and the Montreal Gazette will jointly host the English-language Montreal mayoral debate between Denis Coderre and Valérie Plante, Oct. 23 at 7pm. CJAD will broadcast it live, but CTV will not. CTV and the Gazette will livestream it instead.
- Catherine Wallace, the former Montreal Gazette manager, has reached the end of her one-year Atkinson fellowship studying the news media. She files her final stories, about a day in the life of the Winnipeg Free Press, about an editorial partnership between the Montreal Gazette and Concordia University, and a general look at the search for new business models for news.
- Influence Communication president Jean-François Dumas writes in La Presse about how we’re facing information overload, how news expires much more quickly than it used to, and how opinion-making has gotten much faster.
- The FPJQ has announced nominees for the Prix Antoine Désilets for photojournalism. Nominations include 12 for La Presse, 3 for Le Devoir, 2 for Le Soleil, 2 for Journal de Québec, 1 for Journal de Montréal and 1 for L’actualité.
- CBC profiles the Westmount mayor’s race and talks to Beryl Wajsman, who is a candidate but also editor of The Suburban newspaper. It asks him about the potential conflict: “If I wasn’t allowed to do it, I wouldn’t have run. Obviously, the law allows it,” he said. “I have been scrupulous in not one word being written about my candidacy.” — He is correct. The Suburban hasn’t written at all about the Westmount election. But is that a good thing?
- A new idea to fund the news from Policy Options: Allow Canadians to redirect $100 of their income tax to a journalism outlet of their choice. Of course, this begs the question of how the government defines what a journalism outlet is.
At the CRTC
- The commission has launched a public consultation on the report it’s supposed to give Mélanie Joly next year. It plans a two-phase process, with the second phase going into more detail about the issues it wants to address. The first phase gets the discussion going by asking nine questions about the future of programming.
- The CRTC has approved the distribution of Canal+ International in Canada. The channel is similar to the France TV network for which it’s named, and its proposed schedule included shows like TPMP, Le Grand journal and Le Petit journal, though the latter has since been cancelled.
- The commission begins its hearing into TV providers’ licence renewals on Monday. The agenda is posted (the first under a new policy that announces the names of the commissioners on the panel before the hearing) and includes presentations from various community television groups, who will argue that the big cable companies have not been meeting their obligations.
- The CBC has been granted temporary relief from two conditions of licence for CBC and Radio-Canada during the Pyeongchang Olympics: local programming and described video. This request is now standard practice for Olympics, which completely take over the TV schedule during their two weeks, reducing the amount of drama and local news.
- CJUI-FM Kelowna (103.9 The Juice) has had its sale to Avenue Radio from Vista approved by the commission. A request to be exempt from tangible benefits payments for the sale has been denied because the station is two years too young to quality for such an exemption.
- Videotron has filed a complaint against Rogers, saying that Rogers is demanding illegal minimum penetration or minimum revenue guarantees in exchange for carrying the NHL Centre Ice and NFL Sunday Ticket services. Rogers appears to argue that these premium sports services aren’t subject to the same rules as discretionary channels. The two seem to also disagree on whether the conditions of the contract (which are confidential) are de facto minimum revenue quotas.
Toronto’s Indie 88 (CIND-FM) has applied to #CRTC for power increase (4kW to 12kW max ERP) for better signal east and west pic.twitter.com/7S0Z0S9RMr
— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) October 5, 2017
- Toronto’s Indie 88, trying to make a living in the crowded Toronto market, has asked the CRTC for a power increase, finding a way to improve its signal in the city while still protecting other stations’ allocations. The application can be downloaded here and comments filed here until Nov. 6.
TV
Even in PVR households, majority of TV viewing is live @thinktvca 2017 report pic.twitter.com/BBpVWFPkrW
— NLogic (@_NLogic) October 12, 2017
- Bill Brioux writes for The Canadian Press about how Canadian TV networks are sending the stars of its original shows on tour in order to connect with fans and drive up ratings. He also mentions that the City series Bad Blood, about the Rizzuto family, got 209,000 and 216,000 in overnight viewership the first two weeks, though those numbers went up 31% with PVR viewing taken into account.
- Bill Brownstein on the CBC Montreal-produced documentary series Interrupt This Program, which begins Season 3 on Friday.
- The trainwreck that was DAZN’s first few weeks with exclusive rights to out-of-market NFL games has led to deals with two Canadian TV providers to bring back NFL Sunday Ticket to regular TV.
- CTV has unsurprisingly ordered a sixth season of summer hit The Amazing Race Canada. The casting call for the next season is looking for “heroes” — emergency workers but also people who have done heroic things in their regular lives. Just apply and they’ll figure out how they can shape your life story into becoming a hero.
- Numeris, the company that measures TV and radio ratings, has announced a partnership deal that will allow it to combine regular TV ratings with online streaming numbers to produce ratings information that combines the two.
- Two candidates on reality show Occupation double had a talking to after saying racist stuff.
- Videotron has brought back the music video channels Retro, Juicebox and Loud, which used to be Much channels owned by Bell but have since been sold to Stingray. The new channels are HD-only. It’s also added classical music channel Classica. All are on free preview until Nov. 7. And it added Stingray Festival 4K, bringing its 4K channel count to four.
- Miniseries Cardinal has begun production on its third “cycle” (i.e. season). Cast additions include Aaron Ashmore and Tom Jackson. Podz returns to direct.
- Hugo Dumas reports that production companies Attraction Images and Zone 3 are considering a merger.
https://twitter.com/christinedobby/status/918244087723151366
- TC Media has shut down Le Mirabel, having failed to find a buyer for the community paper. Three journalists lose their jobs.
- The Atlantic says people have been posing as its editors contacting freelancers as part of a scam.
- Maisonneuve Magazine has removed a short story from its website after learning it had “striking similarities” to another work.
Online
- Netflix has finally decided it should say something about that $500-million deal with the federal government and the whole sales tax thing. In short, it says the $500 million is new money and not stuff they were already spending here, and that there was no quid pro quo for getting out of charging GST. If Mélanie Joly had just explained when asked, we might have saved several hundred column inches.
- Dove apologized after a backlash over a racist ad that showed a black girl transforming into a white one. But The Guardian talked to the black girl in the ad and it’s not quite so simple. For one thing, the ad features several women transforming into each other.
News about people
- The Harvey Weinstein fallout continues to grow as more women are coming forward with stories. The head of Amazon Studios has been suspended after one such report.
- Host Varda Étienne has been fired by Quebec City’s Énergie 98.9 after suggesting on air that the U.S. may have deserved the Las Vegas mass shooting, because like a battered woman, they haven’t done anything to stop the violence after so many incidents.
- Luc Lavoie got his job back at LCN’s La Joute.
- Caroline Jamet has been named general manager of radio, audio and greater Montreal at Radio-Canada.
- Julie Tremblay has retired from her job leading Groupe TVA. She has been replaced, effective immediately, by France Lauzière, who was head of programming. Martin Picard also gets a promotion, to COO.
- CTV’s W5 has hired Avery Haines from CityNews. Haines gave an on-air goodbye yesterday. (The last time she worked at CTV, it didn’t end well.)
- Marc Dumont has stepped down as managing editor of Eyes on the Prize after accepting work at The Athletic and a column in the Montreal Gazette.
- Reporter Justin Ling is leaving Vice News to go back to freelancing.
Obituaries
- Ray Turnbull, TSN curling analyst
- Mark Mooney, a journalist who chronicled his experience with a terminal diagnosis and wrote his own obit
- Rafe Mair, former B.C. radio host
Jobs
- Managing Editor, Nunatsiaq News (deadline: Oct. 13)
- CBC/QWF writer in residence (deadline: Oct. 15)
- Pupitreur surnuméraire, La Presse
- Tenure-track assistant professor in visual journalism and data negotiation at Concordia University (deadline: Oct. 20)
- Journaliste-pupitreur, Métro (deadline: Oct. 22)
- Columnist – Researcher / Technician, CBC Breakaway in Quebec City (deadline: Oct. 25)
- Summer intern, Globe and Mail (deadline: Oct. 27)
As a daily viewer of CITY News Toronto I can tell you the departure of Avery Haines will be a big blow. Rogers has cleaned out most of their experienced news staff over the last couple of years replacing them with a much younger less expensive and less experienced crew. The work she did on the daily local grind and the incredible long form features she compiled were the class of the show. I don’t know her but a lot of her fellow workers referred to her as a friend and mentor. I wish her luck on W5 but geez that show conflicts with Saturday night hockey. It will be interesting to see If CITY News pockets the savings or if they try to hire an experienced replacement.
Hopefully with the expansion of the city news in Montreal, experienced reporters don’t end up going too. That or become more shared like Global News. I only seen Avery Haines on need a few times but she was amazing.
When I read the story about the CRTC, I had quite the laugh.
Study the future of TV. Use a two phase process, report to the minister some time next year.
Meanwhile, the future of TV will have moved on so much, that the two phase process will be meaningless. It’s not quite “deck chairs on the Titanic” silly, but it’s rapidly approaching.
The CRTC (and the Canadian government) need to understand that the silly think called a border isn’t particularly relevant anymore. Content comes from wherever it comes. You can listen to streaming music from the other side of the world – you can watch TV from the other side of the world, and things like YouTube have created a whole new world of entertainment possiblities.
None of them, not a single one of them, can in any way be “regulated” by the CRTC or the Canadian government in any meaningful way. The only thing keeping the digital future from flooding Canada at this point is the gatekeeper incumbent players who impose usage caps on their internet subscribers such that accessing this buffet of entertainment because too costly if overdone.
More and more, the government and CRTC are left to regulate what is left of a spoiled feast. It’s really only a short step from where we stand today to the point that CanCon rules and such become meaningless. The cord is being cut, cut rapidly, cut often… and if the CRTC had the ‘nads to force the old school mega companies to open the taps on the internet, it would already have happened.
So yeah, enjoy your two phase inquiry. Ask a bunch of questions, and then hand in a report that is no longer relevant, overtaken by events again and again.