News about news
- The Ottawa CItizen’s tradition of putting together a biography of a fallen soldier based on a name tweeted out at random at 11:11am on Remembrance Day continues. Here’s the latest edition.
- CBC’s ombudsman put out a decision related to a CBC Halifax radio discussion about the Pittsburgh Penguins’ decision to visit the White House to celebrate their Stanley Cup win. A listener complained that more effort should have been made to find balance in their coverage of this, and find more pro-Trump sources. The ombudsman agreed, saying “the coverage was flawed.”
- Various news organizations are reaching deals with these new smart speakers or assistants or whatever you call them: Google Home and Amazon Echo. Amazon’s Alexa service will carry content from CBC, Global News, CTV, TSN, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, National Post and Montreal Gazette. Google Home has a deal with Postmedia.
- Rebel Media’s Ezra Levant has pushed his defamation lawsuit against the man behind the @CanadianCynic Twitter account past a preliminary look at whether it’s an abusive suit against public comment. A judge found that Robert Day’s Twitter posts accusing Levant of fraud in a Fort MacMurray fundraiser were not public comment and not protected by the law.
- Montreal city hall’s new administration is looking for an attaché(e) de presse. The previous media relations person for Montreal’s mayor, Catherine Maurice, previously worked for Projet Montréal before she jumped ship for Coderre’s team.
At the CRTC
- New CRTC chairman Ian Scott gave a speech and did media interviews in which he makes it clear that he plans to do his job fairly and isn’t being guided by some overall vision. The non-vision vision is a break from his predecessor Jean-Pierre Blais, who was seen as being very pro-consumer and tough on the big media companies.
TV
- Based on a suggestion on Twitter, journalist Justin McElroy has created a bracket of Canada’s 64 best television shows and put it up to public vote. We’re now at the round of 32, and already we’ve lost Kenny vs. Spenny, North of 60, E.N.G., My Secret Identity, Street Legal, Flashpoint, You Can’t Do That On Television and The Edison Twins (DAMMIT!).
- Canal+ International is now live on Videotron, channels 28 and 628. Free preview until Dec. 15.
- APTN has begun broadcasting the final season of its comedic drama Mohawk Girls, based in Kahnawake. The Gazette’s T’Cha Dunlevy talks to its creators, and the Canadian Media Producers Association has put out a (self-serving) study about its economic impact. Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail’s John Doyle gives it a positive review.
- Tout le monde en parle host Guy A. Lepage got some flack last weekend for not inviting comedian Guy Nantel to his plateau even though Nantel had received death threats over jokes made in his comedy show and needed a police presence during its premiere. Though Lepage initially defended his decision not to invite Nantel (which became ironic when he invited an army of comedians to talk about their plan to create a comedy festival to replace Just For Laughs), and got into a childish war of words on Twitter, Nantel has been added to the list of guests for this week’s show.
- Hamilton’s CHCH TV, which made a big fuss of getting the rights to broadcast House of Cards, has pulled it from their schedule amid the Kevin Spacey scandal.
- RDS/Canal D series 24CH has dramatically changed its format, and not for the better. Instead of documentary-style footage of the locker room during games, it’ll take players onto sets and chat with them about non-hockey stuff with non-hockey celebrities.
- Richard Therrien is reporting that Radio-Canada will be bringing SNL Québec back for a holiday special. The Saturday Night Live format was bought by Télé-Québec and proved popular but expensive for the provincial public broadcaster, so it was dropped. The series helped drive the careers of young comedians including Katherine Levac, Virginie Fortin, Phil Roy and Pier-Luc Funk. It’s unclear if they’re going to try with the same cast or a brand new one.
- Reviews for CBC’s new The National are in, and they’re not good: John Doyle and Warren Kinsella don’t like it.
Radio
- Newcap Radio, which is Canada’s second-largest radio station owner by number of stations (after Bell Media), has bought two more stations: CKEC-FM (94.1 East Coast FM) and CKEZ-FM (Classic Rock 97.9) in New Glasgow, N.S., from Hector Broadcasting. The deal requires CRTC approval.
- Corus is continuing the TV-on-the-radio trend by simulcasting weekly Global TV political show The West Block on seven AM stations across the country.
Le 30 décembre, votre presse papier vous quitte ? Vous êtes sous le choc? C'est normal. Christian Bégin vous aide à reprendre vos nouvelles en main. Une étape à la fois. Pour voir toute la campagne…
C'est par ici ? https://t.co/3pV462Nkdf pic.twitter.com/usYlm2t0Gb— Le Devoir (@LeDevoir) November 13, 2017
- Le Devoir is aggressively going after La Presse print subscribers who want to keep receiving a physical newspaper after La Presse stops printing at the end of December.
- Transcontinental has made another newspaper transaction, selling the Courrier Laval newspaper to a company run by two former TC Media managers. This brings to 43 the number of Quebec titles sold in 11 deals with local owners as part of a process that began in April.
- The McGill Daily newspaper has to undergo a referendum to justify its existence, a requirement the student union imposes on organizations wanting a per-student fee levy.
- Quebecor published its quarterly report and included some mention of senior management changes. Included in that is this statement: “Music, newspaper, book publishing, out of home and printing operations now report to Pierre Karl Péladeau.”
Online
- A study by UQAM professor Jean-Hugues Roy concludes that only 11% of articles on HuffPost Québec are original stories (meaning not aggregated content or wire stories). For HuffPost Canada, it’s 15%, but for every other jurisdiction studied it’s at least 40%.
- Videotron is making Club Illico subscriptions available to people who subscribe to new wireless plans. This will have the effect of inflating Club Illico subscriptions and, Videotron hopes, getting people to sign up for new plans.
News about people
. Et voilà! Baby number 2 has arrived! Introducing Axel Monet born Nov 10th weighing in at 7.5lbs We are exhausted and thrilled! pic.twitter.com/ZzB03fF5pQ
— Joanne Vrakas (@joannevrakas) November 13, 2017
- Breakfast Television host Joanne Vrakas delivered baby No. 2 last week, a boy she and her husband have named Axel.
- CJAD Car Show host Lisa Christensen will have to wait a bit before she can be sworn in with her 50 Projet Montréal colleagues who were elected on Nov. 5. Someone (presumably her opponent) has requested a recount of the result of the RDP-PAT borough council race Christensen won. It’s the only recount that was requested in Montreal.
- Former Ottawa Sun publisher Rick Gibbons, who was until two years ago a host on Ottawa’s 580 CFRA radio, has been hired by Rogers to host the afternoon show on 1310 News. He starts Nov. 27.
- Quebecor has put Claude Villeneuve in charge of opinions for the Journal de Montréal and Journal de Québec.
- Taylor Jukes has been made Senior Manager, National Content for Bell Media’s iHeartRadio Canada. Her previous job as program director of Virgin Radio 99.9 in Toronto has been given to Karen Steele, who keeps her previous role as PD of Virgin Radio Kitchener.
Obituaries
Jobs
- Digital content creator, Institute for Research on Public Policy in Montreal (deadline: Nov. 24)
- Attaché de presse, Montreal city hall (deadline: Nov. 24)
- Fellowship for aboriginal investigative journalism (deadline: Dec. 1)
Not a busy week I see, but as for the new CRTC Chair Ian Scott, not having any sort of vision, can be either a bad or a good thing, depending on what side of the fence you’re on.
As for his predecessor, being hard on the companies, I didn’t see a problem with that, but I thought Jean Pierre Blais wasn’t tough on the Bell Astral merger… That was his big mistake, and most employees that have been fired or unhumanly laid off would agree just for the sake of saving a few bucks for the shareholder pockets.
He rejected it the first time, along with other members of the CRTC panel. You could argue he could have been tougher, but I don’t see how you can argue that he wasn’t tough at all.
Shareholders aren’t interested in keeping people employed if they have a negative impact on the company’s bottom line. If you don’t like that, become a controlling shareholder and vote in a board of directors that will set a different direction.
Of course he wasn’t tough on the merger – he just pushed it every so slightly to make it look like the CRTC was doing something. The reality is that the deal accepted by the CRTC wasn’t hugely different from the original, and has had exactly the same net effect: Bell got much larger and much more dominant , and the Canadian broadcast landscape lost a larger tier 2 media company (there are fewer of them all the time). The result was published by the CRTC last week (remember?) where they showed that a very few companies control just about all of the money and all of the access to media.
Blais had the chance to stop that from happening, and didn’t.
Glad you agree. In fact on most posts we tend to agree 99% of the time by virtue of our insightful comments.. :-)
Was there ever a satisfying post-mortem done on Canal+’ first foray into the Canadian market? They were poised to set up their own Netflix in the market, then… nothing. Was it lack of market demand? Infrastructure? Is there a story there?
It is not the student union at McGill (SSMU) that requires this existence referendum, but the university administration. The Daily, combined with its French sister paper, Le Délit, are run by the Daily Publications Society, which is completely independent from SSMU (or PGSS, which represents grad students), with SSMU not having any control over DPS formally or informally (though the DPS contracts with Elections SSMU to run this referendum; also, I can’t recall if the DPS offices, which are in the student union building, are leased from the university directly or subleased from SSMU, though I think it’s the former). Since 2007, the university administration started unilaterally requiring all independent student groups, such as CKUT and QPIRG-McGill, to hold these referendums to continue collecting student fees when students pay tuition and to be allowed to lease McGill buildings.