News about news
- Radio-Canada published a story about Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre’s government and its strict control of information, punishing unfriendly journalists and muzzling city employees.
- The federal government of Justin Trudeau promised to make access to information easier, but as Justin Ling explains, the new rules don’t do anything of the sort. If anything, they make the situation worse.
- The Athletic’s co-founder Alex Mather apologized after telling the New York Times: “We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing.” It was needlessly aggressive, and Mather later clarified that “I am not rooting for newspapers to fail.”
- The FPJQ has announced finalists for the Judith-Jasmin journalism awards. They include two for the Montreal Gazette and one for Vice Quebec. La Presse reporter Gabrielle Duchaine alone has three nominations in the eight categories. For the penis-measurers (*Jeff Yates is nominated for both Radio-Canada and Métro covering fake news):
- La Presse: 8
- Radio-Canada: 6*
- Le Devoir: 3
- L’actualité: 2
- Montreal Gazette: 2
- Journal de Montréal: 1
- Vice: 1
- Québec Science: 1
- Métro: 1*
- Britain’s Evening Standard apologized after digitally manipulating a cover photo of Solange Knowles to remove an elaborate construction of her hair so that the photo would fit better on the cover. They refer to what they did as a “decision to amend the photograph.”
- La Presse reports on the investigation into police leaks to the media thanks to … well, police leaks to the media.
- Le Devoir looks at paid subscription sports journalism sites The Athletic and Recrutes.ca. The Canadiens have accredited both for a year, saying they’re the first online-only news outlets to get media accreditation, and say they’ll re-evaluate after that.
Yet more Weinstein fallout
- Éric Salvail and Gilbert Rozon are selling their ownership stakes in their companies in an effort to save them from artistic blacklisting. But En mode Salvail is gone and its employees have been laid off. And a French publisher has had to pulp 45,000 copies of a book tied with Les Recettes pompettes.
- Julie Snyder has been added to the list of those accusing Gilbert Rozon of assault.
- Michel Venne, former Le Devoir journalist, is another personality to be accused, first by Léa Clermont-Dion but now also others. Columnist Lise Payette defends against the charge she tried to cover it up, saying she was just giving Clermont-Dion advice. The Institut du nouveau monde, has suspended its links with him.
- Catherine Bachand told a gut-wrenching story on the air about Quebec City radio host Gilles Parent grabbing her breasts live on air, presumably as a joke. Parent has been suspended while his behaviour is investigated.
- One anecdote from an interview La Presse journalists Katia Gagnon and Stéphanie Vallet gave to Tout le monde en parle: Rumours about Éric Salvail began years ago, but nothing could be pinned down until the Weinstein scandal broke and people reacted to it on social media. People in Quebec started posting stories on Facebook and Twitter, without naming names, but the journalists picked up on that and managed to get enough to publish a story.
- American political journalist Mark Halperin is the latest casualty of allegedly being a serial abuser of women.
- Director James Toback has had more than 200 women come forward to accuse him of harassment, including Selma Blair and Rachel McAdams.
At the CRTC
- The CRTC is holding a hearing Jan. 11 at which it will consider measures related to two radio stations with severe compliance issues: CFOR-FM Maniwaki and CKFG-FM Toronto. Both are accused of failing to meet a series of licence conditions and regulatory requirements, and could face sanctions as high as losing their licences.
- The notice for the same hearing includes details on the Bell acquisition of four FM stations in Ontario from Larche Communications. The deal is worth $15.64 million.
- Finally, three applications for new radio stations, all Christian music stations by different owners: Sydney, N.S., Regina, and Kelowna/Kamloops, B.C. Deadline for comments on all three of these is Nov. 24.
- The coming review of mandatory distribution orders has all the applicants pushing for public support. AMI, APTN, Canal M, TV5 and the Weather Network have put up websites asking for people to write letters of support to the CRTC. (TWN even has a video to guide people through the process.)
- The commission is giving Cogeco an extension until March 31 to implement changes to its customer service contract required by the new TV service provider code that went into effect on Sept. 1. Cogeco said an “internal structuring project” was delayed, which meant it couldn’t meet the deadline.
TV/video
- Greg O’Brien at Cartt.ca has a long interview with Randy Lennox, the head of Bell Media, mainly talking about the future of television. It describes the strategy of partnering with “rich uncles” like Netflix and Hulu for big projects to increase budgets and get international exposure. It gets Lennox to describe Book Television and Fashion Television as “dormant, non-strategic” channels and confirm that Comedy Gold is the channel that has been sold to the company Wow Unlimited in exchange for an ownership stake. And it discusses why Bell went with iHeartRadio for its radio streaming app while all its competitors went with RadioPlayer.
- TSN has cancelled The Reporters — again.
- V says it’s not for sale even though its biggest star just had his career destroyed.
- Someone complained to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council about the finale of Les Beaux malaises on TVA, that it sexualized children and promotes transgenderism. The CBSC found no issue with the existence of transgender people, but found a scene in which a preteen girl does a pole dance was unacceptable. It also cited TVA for not using both an auditory and visual viewer advisory at all times.
- Star Trek Discovery has been renewed for a second season on CBS All Access and Space. The show is setting records for viewing of specialty drama in Canada with more than a million viewers on average.
- New coaches won’t be the only change to TVA’s La Voix this coming season.
- Bell Media gave some late PR love to SIDES*, which is a Twitter broadcast that is produced by and also airs on Much, where youths talk about stuff that’s in the news. It’s part of “Much’s revamped lineup of topical, millennial-focused programming.” Unfortunately the programming here doesn’t have much in the way of production values, and failed to generate any interest from me. But maybe I’m just not young and hip enough.
- The Globe and Mail has some numbers on (English) Canadian households’ subscriptions to streaming services that show the dominance of Netflix. Of note: 40% of households subscribe to Netflix and no other similar service.
- BuzzFeed is getting into the movie and TV business.
- Canadian TV networks are experimenting more with six-second ads.
Radio
- The Journal de Montréal has launched a tablet version of its J5 app. More details in their press release.
Online
- Facebook is testing a new system whereby posts by pages people follow are separated into a separate feed. The result in the areas being tested is that traffic to such pages is down significantly — more than half. Unless of course they pay for Facebook ads.
News about people
- Former CTV Winnipeg broadcaster Steve Vogelsang is accused of robbing two banks in Alberta. More details behind the Free Press paywall.
- Tabatha Southey has been picked up by Maclean’s after being dumped by the Globe and Mail as a columnist. She settles some scores with Canadaland.
- Jeff Glor has been named the new anchor of CBS Evening News.
- Abigail Bimman is joining Global News’s national bureau in Ottawa. She was previously a reporter at CTV Kitchener.
Jobs
- Summer intern, Globe and Mail (deadline: Oct. 27)
- Web journalist, Le Soleil (Quebec City) (deadline: Oct. 27)
- Reporter, TFO Sudbury (deadline: Nov. 3)
- Summer intern, Montreal Gazette (deadline: Nov. 10)
Thumbs down to TSN for cancelling The Reporters.
Love your blog, wish you wouldn’t link to subscription sites though, was interested in that Bell Media one but not going to sign up or subscribe to anything more….
I try to link to non-paywalled sites where possible, but the Randy Lennox interview wasn’t available elsewhere. In any case, the big facts from that interview are listed here.