News about news
- Global News journalist Jeremy Cohn, who found himself arrested by Hamilton police when he showed up at the scene of a fatal accident before the police tape went up has filed a lawsuit against the force. His employer is standing behind him.
- Le Devoir looks at the hyperlocal journalism sites in the Quebec City area that are thriving after more than a decade.
- Bombardier is really unhappy with a recent Globe and Mail feature investigation about it alleging corruption overseas. Bombardier accuses the newspaper of ignoring its own policies about anonymous sources.
- Carrie Grace, BBC’s China editor, has quit her post over the public broadcaster’s gender pay gap.
- Donald Trump’s use of the term “shithole” to describe Haiti and African countries led to a lot of discussion in newsrooms about whether to use the term on the air or in print. Many news organizations used the term uncensored, arguing that the very word was itself newsworthy.
At the CRTC
- The Public Interest Advocacy Centre has made a formal request for the CRTC to investigate high-pressure sales tactics used by large telecommunications providers in the country, following media reports.
- Bell Media has applied to the CRTC to increase the power of CKKW-FM (KFun 99.5 Kitchener) from 4.3kW to 37.5kW, mainly to counter increased interference from WDCX-FM Buffalo, which operates on the same frequency. The increase would improve the signal in Kitchener-Waterloo, but also towards areas like Hamilton and Guelph.
TV
Congratulations, Montreal protesters. You made it into an episode of the X-Files as stock footage. pic.twitter.com/hFfgGkGKZq
— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) January 4, 2018
- Bell Media and Bloomberg have reached an agreement that will see Business News Network rebranded as BNN Bloomberg, months after CHCH owner Channel Zero threw in the towel of its Bloomberg TV Canada channel. As a result of the agreement, BNN gets exclusive access to Bloomberg TV content and Bloomberg TV will no longer be distributed in Canada.
- CBC is sorry that its closed captioning during the broadcast of the Leonard Cohen concert referred to French as a “foreign language”.
- TBS has renewed Full Frontal with Samantha Bee for another two seasons. The show celebrated by trolling its critics.
- TSN has released its full MLS broadcast schedule. It includes all Toronto FC and Vancouver Whitecaps games, and 12 Montreal Impact games, of which three will be broadcast Saturday afternoons on CTV. The Impact still lacks an English TV broadcaster, so those 12 games will be the only Impact games broadcast in English in Canada. TVA Sports has rights to all Impact games in French.
- A Minnesota fitness chain banned cable news outlets from its television screens for the sake of its clients’ (presumably mental) health, a decision that generated national attention.
- FX Networks crunched some numbers to find that 2017 saw 487 original scripted series on U.S. television, a new record. Of them, 117 were on streaming services like Netflix (more than double what it was two years ago), 153 on broadcast networks, and the rest on cable.
Radio
- Metro has a story about APTN’s Indigenous radio stations in Ottawa and Toronto, saying they’re planning to launch by June. I have no idea why editors put a photo of an HF ham radio transceiver on this story.
- Quebec City’s FM93 has reversed course, deciding to go back to having music on weekends instead of talk. Similarly, 98.5 FM in Montreal has pulled three weekend talk shows it put together in August, replaced with best-of-the-week shows. Its weekend morning show will stay.
Si au moins c'était tombé sur une nouvelle de sport.
Merci à notre contributeur anonyme. ;-) pic.twitter.com/WKB8pRfJYB
— Influence Comm. (@InfluenceComm) January 10, 2018
- A potential buyer for Métro in Montreal and Transcontinental’s community weeklies on the island has dropped out, Le Devoir reports. Transcontinental is still interested in selling the paper and the others it still owns in Quebec.
- HarperCollins has reached an agreement with the Competition Bureau over price-fixing for ebooks, after its competitors had done the same. As part of the agreement, HarperCollins will make a $150,000 charitable donation.
- The Montreal Gazette has begun running classic Aislin cartoons once a week as the editorial cartoonist begins semi-retirement and drops to a once-a-week schedule.
- Sports Illustrated is going from weekly to biweekly.
- Postmedia reported its quarterly financial results, which show a slight profit and improved digital revenue, but print advertising revenue declined $20 million, which is a tenth of total revenue.
Online
- The Montreal Gazette has created a Facebook group so that fans of its former Hockey Inside/Out website (many of whom are displeased that its content has now been moved over to montrealgazette.com) can chat among themselves. The group can be found here.
- Not completely unrelated, Facebook is changing its news feed algorithm to give more attention to friends and less attention to celebrities and brands when deciding what to put in people’s feeds. That will result in news organizations and others losing a lot of traffic.
- Peter Thiel, the guy who bankrolled the Hulk Hogan sex tape lawsuit that ended Gawker, has submitted a bid to buy it.
Other
- Bell’s purchase of AlarmForce has closed, but with a surprise: Telus is buying its customers in western Canada.
- Quebecor is seeking an injunction to prevent Gilbert Rozon from selling his stake in the Just for Laughs festival without respecting Quebecor’s right of first refusal.
News about people
I used to listen to Ted Tevan, @HunterZThompson & @mitchgarber They way they did sports talk radio inspired me. Today, is my 15 year Anniversary (started JAN 6, 2003 as co-host of Drive w/ @bruins_514) Big thx to listeners, sponsors, colleagues, family & friends for their support
— Tony Marinaro (@TonyMarinaro) January 6, 2018
- More Canadian Weinstein fallout: filmmaker Paul Haggis (he denies it and even his ex-wife comes to his defence with some compelling evidence), and theatre director Albert Schultz.
- The Transportation Safety Board has released its report into the plane crash that killed former political analyst Jean Lapierre and his family. The report showed that the pilot intentionally delayed descent to save on fuel, and found himself too high and too fast, rushing the plane down. The unstable approach to the airport led to the plane almost stalling, which prompted the pilot to suddenly increase power. The propellers’ speed-up put a torque pressure causing the plane to roll, and there was insufficient altitude to recover. Seven people died in the crash. Despite much speculation at the time, the TSB found that the weather at the Îles-de-la-Madeleine airport was not unsafe for landing.
- Pierre McGuire, hockey analyst with NBC and TSN, is recovering after surgery for prostate cancer. He expects to be back on the job in time for the Olympics.
- Your Morning’s Lindsey Deluce is pregnant. She surprised her co-hosts with the news on air.
- CBC’s Douglas Gelevan is getting married and then joining CBC’s Olympics coverage. His fiancée is Global Montreal’s Gloria Henriquez.
- CBC has announced its broadcast teams for the Olympics. Among them are former Olympians acting as analysts (including Jon Montgomery), Ron MacLean and Don Cherry during hockey games, and TSN/Sportsnet personalities Kate Beirness, Chris Cuthbert, Ray Ferraro and Nigel Reed. Alexandre Despatie, who hosted in French for the 2016 Olympics, is one of the hosts in English this time.
- A bit of a shuffle in Montreal Gazette beats. Among them, Andy Riga becomes a municipal affairs reporter, René Bruemmer moves to mobility/transit and Jesse Feith to crime and justice.
- Mike Therien, former Transcontinental and Sun Media executive, has been named editor of the New Brunswick Telegraph Journal.
- Tom Henheffer is leaving Vice Canada, three months after being named its news director.
- Ryan McKenna is leaving Toronto for Regina to become a Saskatchewan reporter for The Canadian Press.
- Radio-Canada’s Stéphan Bureau sits down with controversial commentator Richard Martineau for an hour-long radio interview. Martineau discusses how the left has changed without him and how he deals with criticism of what he says and writes.
- Cult MTL has a surprisingly detailed look at Gazette editorial cartoonist Terry Mosher, aka Aislin.
Obituaries
Jobs
- Senior National Online Journalist – Health and Smart Living, Global News (deadline: Jan. 22)
- Editorial coordinator (French) for the Canadiens (deadline: Jan. 26)
- Summer reporting intern, Vancouver Sun/Province (deadline: Jan. 26)
The FX numbers of scripted series isn’t surprising. First off, Netflix, Amazon, and the like have brought series in. Also, many of these series are incredibly short. So instead of 24 – 26 weeks of series (and repeats all summer) they have running “series” that are only 6 to 10 shows long, and then not repeating them. So they need more new series to fill in the wholes, at about a 3 to 1 ratio.
It should also be said that Netflix and Amazon in particular are heavy in the short rotations as they are trying to justify people paying $X per month for service on a month to month basis. It’s very easy to walk away from these services (unlike cable) and so they are in the position of having to have fresh stuff every week, every month, all year long to try to maintain and grow their subscriber base.
The death of most of the reality based TV programs and the “news magazine” style shows doesn’t hurt either. It’s not that long ago that NBC was running dateline 3 or 4 times a week, which was insane!
Enjoyed this update. Particularly about tc.tc ?
I hope that now Videotron will finally give us BNN Bloomberg in HD. It has up to present only made Bloomberg available in hi-def, but not BNN. Can you confirm whether Videotron will do the smart move towards this?
There has been no announcement either way on this, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they did upgrade BNN to HD. They make these decisions based on customer demand, so be sure to let them know that’s what you want.