Monthly Archives: February 2018

February 27, 2018 | Sports, TV

My top 2018 Olympic moments

Well, it’s over. After 16 days of competition, 29 medals for Canada and dozens of stories of triumph, heartbreak and fun (and only one DUI that we know of), the Pyeongchang Olympic Winter Games are over.

It was a good year for Canada. The number of total medals was a record, though when you take event inflation into account we did about as well as Sochi and Turin and a bit behind Vancouver.

There were great stories about medallists like Kim Boutin, Ted-Jan Bloemen, Alex Gough and of course Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. There were equally great stories about athletes who didn’t make the podium. And, thanks to the hard-working team at CBC Sports, we got to see as many of those stories as they could cram into their coverage.

I was glued to the Olympics, sacrificing sleep to wake up at 6am to watch competitions live. It was fun to be so caught up in it, cheering every victory and feeling for every defeat. The Olympics are big money, and for the athletes involved it’s their entire lives, but for the rest of us, it’s two weeks of entertainment before we go back to our regular day-to-day.

It might come as cold comfort to those who were expected to win and didn’t, but the Olympics are a crapshot. For most sports, the level of competition is so high that the margin for error is virtually nonexistent. And, frankly, if the results could be so well known in advance, there wouldn’t be much fun doing it in the first place.

So while not every Canadian could finish on the podium, or in the top 10, the more that achieve that level of greatness, the more chances the country has of finding success in unexpected places.

Anyway, based on my experience watching these games, here are some top (mostly Canadian) moments, in chronological order, that got me right in the feels.

Continue reading →

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February 23, 2018 | TV

Barry Wilson returns with his Postscripts on YouTube

Barry Wilson said he wasn’t ready to retire when he was laid off in November. And on Friday he showed it by launching a YouTube version of his Postscript political opinion series.

The first video, which tackles the same subjects he did weekly on CTV Montreal, albeit shot at home and illustrated with still photos instead of video, is well produced, thanks mainly to Dave Maynard, former chief director and operations manager at CFCF.

Wilson has also launched a website and Facebook page for his new venture.

“I think the English speaking community of Quebec needs as many voices as it can get and I’m so happy to be part of the dialogue,” he explains on the website. “Quebec politics never ceases to surprise me. It is never boring. And the challenges it presents to our community are sometimes formidable. I hope my voice can continue to be part of the conversation because as I have said so many times, ‘This is our home’.”

What happens now is a good question. Can this gain a large enough audience to be viable economically? Will someone take notice and offer him a paying gig out of it? Or will it just be a side project that keeps his name in the conversation, perhaps supplemented by some freelance work that can keep the money flowing?

“This is more of a sideline than anything,” Wilson tells me. “I realized after I had been laid off that Postscript was more popular than I had even believed. It really struck a nerve with a lot of people. Bringing back an online version was Dave’s idea and we will see how it goes. Not expecting to make money with this. But it’s nice to know that (there) can be life after corporate media. It’s nice to have another voice out there for English-speaking Quebecer, especially in an election year.”

Wilson’s new Postscript, like its TV incarnation, is planned to be published every Friday, and he says he’ll try to keep to that schedule. In the meantime, he says he’s “still open to other opportunities.”

February 21, 2018 | Media

Media News Digest: English on Télé-Québec, Le Soleil stops printing Sundays, CBC poaches Vassy Kapelos

News about news

There was another school shooting in the United States. That’s not a media story, but there were a few problems with social media reaction to it. Poynter points out that people were creating fake tweets from real journalists to make them look bad (and reduce public confidence in professional journalism). Meanwhile, an oft-reported fact about there being 18 school shootings so far in 2018 was debunked by the Washington Post as an exaggeration based on overly broad criteria from an interest group about what constitutes a “school shooting.”
Two Quebec journalists won’t have to divulge their sources of leaks from the province’s anti-corruption squad UPAC. The judge cited the federal government’s new journalism source protection law. The decision is being appealed.
Meanwhile, the province’s minister responsible for access to information is presenting a new law that would restrict it somewhat, exempting communication between ministers. That isn’t playing well with the government’s promise of more transparency.
A Newfoundland judge has dismissed a charge against a man who yelled FHRITP at a journalist, ruling that emotionally disturbing a news reporter did not constitute a public disturbance according to the law. He was careful to note that this doesn’t make FHRITP legally protected, and suggested the government could amend the law to add emotional disturbance to the criteria.
The Globe and Mail explains why media are using Facebook photos of accused killer Bruce McArthur instead of his mugshot. Simply put: because police didn’t release the mugshot.
Quebec superior court has upheld a labour board decision ruling that a government employee who gave a whistleblower interview to Radio-Canada denouncing insufficient resources for environmental protection should not have been fired for giving an interview without authorization.
CBC’s ombudsman ruled that a former Calgary school board trustee candidate cannot get previous articles about her de-indexed.
Quebec’s journalism federation is offering government-subsidized workshops to teach high school students how to recognize fake news.

At the CRTC

Télé-Québec’s CRTC licence is up for renewal, and among the interventions was one from the English Language Arts Network, which Vincent Brousseau-Pouliot found, writing a story about its demand that English be more represented in TQ’s programming, and even a 10% English quota imposed. Specifically, ELAN is asking the CRTC to:
- Require TQ to develop and publish a policy to reflect the full diversity of Quebec society,
- Require TQ to develop and publish an action plan for creation of content that fulfils its diversity policy and a promotion policy to encourage viewership from members of Quebec society who have not traditionally felt reflected,
- Require TQ to track the language of its viewers so that it knows which language groups are watching which programs,
- Create a consultative committee that includes the diversity of Quebec society, which will advise the board of directors on issues concerning the broadcasters diversity of programming throughout the license period.
- Place ads in English-language media when pertinent programming for the English- speaking minority is scheduled and when new programs are being developed,
- Create an on-line playlist of Anglo-Que?be?cois reflective content (following the NFB’s example),
- Require TQ to increase the production and programming of content reflecting the Quebec minorities, especially English-language, indigenous, and visible minority communities to at least 20% of the schedule, and at least 20% of the production budget; and
- Require TQ to establish English-language programming for 10% of its schedule, and 10% of its production budget, to reflect the English-language community in Quebec.
The commission has approved the acquisition of four Ontario radio stations by Bell Media, which will pay $15.64 million to Larche Communications for CICZ-FM Midland, CICX-FM Orillia, CJOS-FM Owen Sound and CICS-FM Sudbury. Bell will pay $1,022,004 to various funds and development initiatives as a CRTC-mandated tax on the acquisition.
The CRTC has dismissed a complaint by Electronic Box (aka EBOX) against Bell Media, which accused the company of refusing to make Bell’s specialty channels available for a TV distribution service EBOX plans to launch in Ontario and Quebec. Bell says it is willing to negotiate, and the CRTC agreed Bell was willing to act in good faith. If they can’t come to an agreement, they can come back to the commission for mediation or arbitration.
TVA is appealing a CRTC arbitration decision to the federal court of appeal, arguing that the commission was wrong to accept a Bell deal that would set Bell TV per-subscriber rates for TVA Sports lower than Bell’s RDS.

TV and video

Unifor is raising the alarm about cuts at Global News, and in particular the decision to have local evening newscasts in Atlantic Canada be anchored out of Toronto. (Late-night and weekend newscasts are already done this way.) On the other hand, Global is expanding its local newsgathering operations by hiring online journalists in three markets where it doesn’t have local TV stations: Ottawa, Barrie and Kitchener. (CTV has stations in all three markets.)
Télé-Québec is turning 50, and has some special anniversary programming this month.
A judge has ruled against a website called TVAddons, which provided add-ons for the Kodi media player that allowed users to access copyright-infringing content. The ruling overturns a lower court ruling that denied an injunction.
Britbox, an over-the-top service providing classic British TV series, has launched in Canada. It costs $8.99 a month.
CBS All Access is launching in Canada in June. But its exclusive series Star Trek Discovery and The Good Fight will remain on Bell Media’s Space and Corus’s W Network, respectively.
Richard Therrien at Le Soleil is wondering if the ubiquity of viewer content warnings at the end of every commercial break is desensitizing TV viewers to them, which causes them to miss when there are scenes that really need viewer discretion.
CBC says more than 23 million Canadians tuned in during at least part of the first three days of the Olympics, including an average audience of 1.3 million for the opening ceremony. About 4.3 million tuned in to watch Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’s gold-medal-winning ice dance free skate, plus another 700,000 on Radio-Canada. On NBC, Olympics ratings are down 6% from Sochi, but the network says that’s what they expected.
APTN has responded to popular demand and added the classic Canadian drama North of 60 to its schedule.
YouTube is promising changes after top recommended videos related to the Parkland Fla. shooting were found to be conspiracy theory videos accusing people involved of being actors.
The New York Times explains how TV networks like NBC handle compensation for the rights to broadcast music that is included with figure skating performances during the Olympics.

Radio

Jerry Howarth, radio voice of the Toronto Blue Jays, announced his retirement, effective immediately. He says health issues are affecting his voice, and it’s time to pack it in.
CIBL 101.5 has slowly resumed programming as it continues to try to find a way out of its financial crisis.
Corus-owned radio stations have suspended play of songs by Canadian band Hedley after sexual misconduct allegations were published against the band. The band has also pulled out of the Juno Awards following this flurry of anonymous Twitter allegations.
Urbania did a statistical analysis of CHOM’s playlist to determine objectively if it really is playing the same songs over and over again. Its conclusion: songs aren’t being repeated that often, but you do hear the same artists a lot.
The New York Times is offering its Daily podcast to public radio stations.

Print

Le Soleil will stop printing a Sunday edition starting March 18, and instead publish a digital-only edition on Sundays. Groupe Capitales Médias’s other newspapers (which didn’t have Sunday editions) will also add Sunday digital editions. The move will leave only the Journal de Montréal and Journal de Québec as Quebec newspapers printing seven days a week.
Quebecor is asking the court to invalidate a $10-million aid package from the Quebec government to Le Soleil publisher Groupe Capitales Médias, arguing that the investment, through Investissements Québec, is discriminatory and unfair. GCM says it’s a political move by Pierre Karl Péladeau.
The Toronto Star is sounding the alarm about the industry’s financial state in dramatic fashion: it has put its internship program on hiatus, cut budgets for travel and freelance, and its chair gave an interview to the Globe and Mail in which he says the paper is “very, very close to the end.” (At least one person thinks the Star’s internship program, while very useful, has some serious structural problems.)

Online

A new website, La Torche 2.0, is offering editorial cartoons as a subscription service for $1/week. It’s already signed up Beaudet, Bado and Fleg, former newspaper standards. Le Devoir has details.
The New York Times profiles The Players’ Tribune, the website that features first-person essays by athletes, and the thorny issue of giving them a public forum unfiltered by journalists.
Google’s Chrome browser has begun blocking website ads by default from sites that don’t respect ad standards.
The Globe and Mail has a long (paywalled) feature about 5G, the new wireless technology being tested that would increase mobile data speeds mainly by adding many more smaller cell towers in big cities.
Newsweek is continuing to implode, as evidenced by the epic editor’s note atop this story reporting on itself.

News about people

CBC has poached Vassy Kapelos from Global to host its Power & Politics show, finally replacing Rosie Barton, who left for The National. Kapelos had been host of Global’s weekly politics show The West Block.
V’s new late-night talk show hosted by Stéphane Rousseau has announced a co-host (or, perhaps more accurately, sidekick): Sonia Cordeau, best known from Les Appendices.
Former Impact captain Patrice Bernier has been added as a contributor to TVA Sports.
Jonny Harris (Still Standing, Murdoch Mysteries) and Emma Hunter (The Beaverton, Mr. D) will co-host the Canadian Screen Awards on March 11.
TSN 690’s Sean Coleman is going back to school to get an MBA.
Gerry Forbes, CJAY Calgary morning man, is retiring.
Jean-François Breau replaces Jean-François Baril as host of La guerre des clans, the Quebec version of Family Feud, which V is bringing back from the dead.
La Presse profiles Mathieu Beaumont of 98.5 FM.
NPR has released a report into alleged sexual harassment by Michael Oreskes, former senior vice-president of news. It’s not good news for Oreskes.

Jobs

February 15, 2018 | Montreal, TV

CTV Montreal adds local news updates to Your Morning (UPDATED)

Caroline Van Vlaardingen anchors her first morning news break on Monday, Feb. 19, 2018.

Of Montreal’s three English-language local TV stations, CTV is the only one without any local programming. Starting Monday, they fix that with the addition of local news updates to the Toronto-based Your Morning show.

Caroline Van Vlaardingen will anchor the segments, which will be inserted into the show just before each half-hour except the last.

Your Morning, the Canada AM replacement hosted by Ben Mulroney and Anne-Marie Mediwake out of Toronto, has a segment each half hour that, in Toronto, is filled with a brief local newscast anchored by Lindsey Deluce. In other markets that don’t have local cut-ins, and on CTV News Channel, it has a local news story taken from a CTV newscast somewhere in the country. (Originally it was an additional national weather update — if you wondered why there seemed to be so much weather on Your Morning, this was why). These segments last two and a half minutes, including pre-recorded intro.

Starting Monday, Montreal adds its own local cut-ins during this segment.

It’s a far cry from a local morning show like you see on City’s Breakfast Television, and not even the two-thirds-local morning show on Global, but it’s better than nothing, or the local ticker updates that Canada AM had after CTV Montreal last had a local morning newscast or local cut-ins.

CTV Montreal News Director Jed Kahane didn’t want to comment beyond the press release, but I’m told that the newscast’s staff was hired internally, giving a bit more work to existing part-timers, and that the newscast will run for a three-month trial period. There is no dedicated morning reporter (though there is an overnight cameraman chasing fires and car accidents), so any overnight updates will be the anchor’s job.

This move comes just under six months after CTV Montreal and other local stations added 5pm weekday newscasts, which similarly tried to produce more local news without making significant additions to staff.

UPDATE (Feb. 20): I watched the first two episodes of Your Morning with the new local inserts, and here’s how it breaks down:

Each insert is a firm two and a half minutes:

The Newsbreak intro graphic that you’ve seen during afternoon commercial breaks on CTV
A live shot from the roof camera as the anchor begins talking about weather
Current weather conditions graphic (temperature, humidity, pressure, wind)
Between four and six local news briefs, usually about 15-20 seconds each. Almost all consist of an anchor voice-over with B-roll
A live shot from a remote camera showing a traffic location (it changes each day but stays the same throughout the morning), with anchor voice-over about traffic conditions
A five-day forecast, and if there’s time, a daily planner forecast and/or current temperatures map
A quick goodbye

Generally, one new brief will be inserted in each half-hour break. Often the briefs are quick recaps of news from the previous day, and sometimes new briefs that come from overnight emergencies. In one case there was a short sound clip, but otherwise it’s all voice-over and there are no packaged reports.

February 11, 2018 | Media

Media News Digest: La Presse Olympics editions, new Gazette columnists, L.A. Times sold

News about news

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that the CBC did not have to “unpublish” a story it posted about a homicide victim after a publication ban was ordered because the victim was a minor. The decision does not set a precedent that publication bans don’t apply to previously published online articles, but rather says that an injunction to order a news organization to remove such stories has a much stronger test than the appeal court thought. A separate ruling acquitting the CBC of contempt of court is being appealed by the Crown.
Concordia University’s journalism program is starting a sports journalism course, funded thanks to a 2015 donation from Sportsnet that helped Rogers satisfy CRTC-imposed conditions related to its acquisition of The Score (now Sportsnet 360). The Concordian has also published Concordia’s 2015 pitch to Sportsnet for the donation, which it got through an access to information request.
La Presse+ is putting out a special edition at noon every day of the Olympics with the latest from Pyeongchang, whose time zone doesn’t work well with its 1:30am ET deadline.
NiemanLab has a story about the Washington Post’s Arc Publishing system and its growing popularity among newspaper publishers. Its clients include the Globe and Mail.
Fox News pulled an opinion piece published online that basically said that the Olympics were too diverse.

At the CRTC

The commission sent a flurry of letters to various media companies asking for confidential information about their users. Included in that list is Netflix, which famously refused to provide similar data during the Let’s Talk TV proceeding. This time the CRTC says explicitly that it has already decided that all information provided will be kept confidential and that decision is final. Other companies who received such requests are Google, Amazon, Apple, Spotify, Facebook, and the usual Canadian broadcasters and telecom companies.
The battle continues over a proposal by an industry coalition to block piracy websites. The number of comments at the CRTC has passed the 4,500 mark as I write this. The deadline is March 1.

TV and video

Cop Life. Real Life. It’s Messy. @TheDetailCTV premieres March 25. #TheDetail cc: @ShenaeGrimes @Angela_Griffin @Wendy_Crewson pic.twitter.com/2DKcTFuCls

— CTV (@CTV) February 5, 2018

You probably missed it because it was announced during the Super Bowl broadcast on CTV, but the new Canadian cop drama The Detail has a premiere date: March 25.
Similarly, the new animated version of Corner Gas debuts April 2 on Comedy.
Speaking of the Super Bowl, CTV’s ratings were about on par with last year, about 4.4 million, versus 7.3 million when its signal was substituted over the U.S. network feed. Though we don’t know how many Canadians watched on NBC across the country, in Toronto according to Bill Brioux it was 947,000 watching on CTV and 529,000 on WGRZ Buffalo.
Bell Media has launched an app called Snackable TV, which offers short-form video content, mainly of the comedy variety. Bell says it will be ad-supported and free for consumers. But the design of the app is very clunky, and in general it seems like more of a consultant’s idea of what young people want than something that young people have actually been demanding. Most of the videos on the app are already available on YouTube, FunnyOrDie or other websites.
Hulu lost almost a billion dollars in 2017.
Radio-Canada is cutting deep into its daytime TV programming, cutting the number of episodes of Marina and Entrée Principale, and cancelling summer replacement show Indice UV.
CBC has ordered a second season of The Great Canadian Baking Show.
Sportsnet has announced its Blue Jays spring training schedule. The first game is Feb. 23, and the preseason ends once again with the two games in Montreal on March 25 and 26, on Sportsnet and Sportsnet One, respectively.
Professional actors in Quebec are upset that TV and film productions are hiring actual police officers to act as extras. Quebec’s actors union says as long as those off-duty cops are members of the union they can’t stop the practice.
A story in the Montreal Gazette on how anglos have found success on TVA’s La Voix, which begins its next season on Sunday.
A new collective agreement has been ratified at City and OMNI in Toronto.
The New York Post got hold of ratings for the U.S. version of Viceland, and they’re pretty awful.
NBC apologized after an analyst put his foot in his mouth during the Olympics’ opening ceremony by suggesting that Japan acted as an “example” to Korea.

Radio and audio

Radio Centre-Ville (CINQ-FM 102.3) is still not out of its financial crisis, and it got to the point last week where a creditor threatened to start seizing equipment forcing the station to shut down.
CIBL 101.5 finally has its rescue committee in place. Names include Jacques K. Primeau, Alexandre Taillefer and Jean-Martin Aussant.
BLVD 102,1 in Quebec City has terminated the contract (apparently by mutual agreement) of late morning host Sophie Durocher, as well as dismissing morning show co-host Maude Boutet.
Nominees for the Juno Awards have been announced. The big show is March 25, on CBC TV.
Andy Oudman of CJBK radio in London, Ont., has apologized after an open letter accused him of misogynist and sexist comments.
Canadaland has a new politics podcast, hosted by Jen Gerson (formerly of the National Post) and Justin Ling (formerly of Vice News).
Shari Okeke is working on a new CBC podcast featuring the voices of teenagers.
Radio-Canada has a new podcast called Si j’ai bien compris avec Louis T, reviewing the week’s news with the comedian’s unique explanatory touch.

Print

The Montreal Gazette has new columnists: Karl Lohnes on home decor, and Fariha Naqvi-Mohamed, who previously wrote for the West Island section. Their additions are announced in an editor’s note that also gives the Christmas Fund donations total as $812,186, which is great but also an indication that donations are slipping as readership and ad revenue decline.
Everyone is abandoning ship at Newsweek as the company self-destructs. To make things worse, the guy who was put on leave after it became public that he lost his previous job as a result of sexual harassment allegations has been reinstated.
The Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union Tribune have a new owner: a guy with a lot of money spent $500 million on them. Staff there seem more hopeful than under the previous owner, Tronc, which seemed more concerned with cutting costs than investing in a new business model.
Unions at Postmedia-owned newspapers are banding together to resist the owner’s demands in contract negotiations. The Windsor Star has joined the Montreal Gazette (my union) and Ottawa Citizen/Sun in passing near-unanimous votes in favour of strike mandates. The union locals have vowed to work together, refusing to accept new contract terms unless they apply to each other.
The editor in chief of The Baron, the student newspaper at the University of New Brunswick Saint John, learned a lesson the hard way about taking a hard line on free speech. After the newspaper published an op-ed by what has been described as a neo-Nazi group, the newspaper’s board has apologized for the incident and has a new interim editor.
J-Source has some details about staff cuts at the Victoria Times Colonist, owned by Glacier Media.
The New York Times beat expectations as digital subscriptions went up again.

Online

News about people

A La Presse investigation into former Université de Montréal professor and Radio-Canada host Jean Larose shows several former students he allegedly sought to begin sexual relationships with, including by just jumping them in his office. Some of them complained, including one to the police, but those complaints were rejected, and the police case was closed as “unfounded” (you may have heard that term before). The university admits it didn’t handle the cases well and has changed the way it operates.
TVO has launched an independent investigation after former Toronto mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson accused Steve Paikin, host of The Agenda, of asking her for sex. Paikin says the accusation is completely false, and several people in the media are coming to Paikin’s defence.
Former Impact player Hassoun Camara will join TVA Sports as a soccer analyst.
A change at Radio-Canada’s Saguenay station: Christian Grégoire is the new manager there, replacing Michel Gagné, who is retiring.
Whitney Stinson is the new managing editor of Global News Saskatchewan.
Justin Ling, in addition to his new Canadaland podcast, is also joining the Globe and Mail on contract. He did reporting on homicides in Toronto’s gay community that has come to the forefront in the Bruce McArthur case.
Jason Chow is the new Toronto dining critic for the Globe and Mail.
Matt Frehner heads the new visual journalism department at the Globe. He’s looking for contributors.
Ron Kronstein, anchor of Global Halifax and Global NB, is moving to Peterborough, Ont., to become news director for CHEX TV.

Obituaries

Jobs

February 9, 2018 | TV

Videotron reaches last-minute deal to keep AMC

A month after telling subscribers it is being forced to drop AMC because it couldn’t reach a deal on renewing its contract, Videotron announced on Friday that it has reached a new deal with the popular American channel on the last business day before the channel was to be dropped.

Videotron tells me that “thanks to much effort and perseverance” it has managed to “make the voices of our clients heard.”

Details are confidential, and Videotron declined to tell me even how long their new deal is, but it says the deal “responds to the reality of our regional market” and is satisfactory to both parties. Videotron had previously suggested that AMC’s previous offer was unreasonable because it’s in a francophone market where a smaller fraction of its subscribers would be interested in such a channel.

Videotron tells me that there will be no change to AMC’s packaging. The channel is in some grandfathered theme packages, the Movie Network package, build-your-own packages (with a $2/month surcharge), or completely à la carte for $10 a month.

Thanks to the new deal, there will be a free preview for all digital cable subscribers, from Feb. 12 to 28.

AMC isn’t quite as popular as during the days of Mad Men and Breaking Bad, but it still has The Walking Dead, whose new season begins Feb. 25, as well as series like Better Call Saul and Halt and Catch Fire.

UPDATE (Feb. 10): Videotron’s press release is here.

February 4, 2018 | Media

Media News Digest: Coalition wants to block piracy sites, André Arthur fired again, Le Devoir’s new website

News about news

A lot of people got really upset when a story on the Globe and Mail website had a headline saying Tina Fontaine was found with “drugs and alcohol” in her when she died. It was a headline on top of a Canadian Press story that said pretty much the same thing, based on testimony in the murder trial given by a toxicologist. The story was later updated by CP to say that while there was THC (i.e. weed), there weren’t harder drugs. And the Globe changed its headline. But the outrage led to a public editor piece that talked about remembering victims in general but gave few specifics about what happened, and a column from Denise Balkissoon criticizing media treatment of the trial.
Radio-Canada is correcting the latest episode of its investigative news show Enquête after it broadcast video it believed was from the Sûreté du Québec’s official YouTube account but turned out to be from an account the SQ says is not theirs. The SQ says Enquête never asked it about the video before the show.
Graeme Roustan, the guy who just bought The Hockey News from Quebecor, now wants to buy La Presse, and get its mysterious but probably negative finances off Power Corp.’s books.
YouTube is going to start labelling content from state-funded broadcasters, in an effort to counter propaganda concerns about outlets like Russian-funded RT. But that also means labelling videos from PBS and CBC. And that’s ignoring the heavy subsidies that come to just about everything else on Canadian TV these days.
Quebec’s Liberal Party has started a new Facebook page called “Actualités politiques Québec” which features videos of ministers. But it’s raising concerns about downplaying its partisan nature and possibly misleading people into thinking it’s a news outlet. The party says that’s nonsense even though it has the word “Actualités” in its name.
A man who tried to sue after TVA didn’t return a book he had sent them has lost his court case.
The Chicago Sun-Times has reinstated writer Richard Roeper after discovering he had purchased 50,000 of his Twitter followers. Roeper apologized, and the Sun-Times had no specific policy forbidding such actions.
Bernard Drainville, former PQ minister now radio host, and Gaétan Barrette, former CAQ candidate now Liberal health minister, got into a spat that involved Barrette publishing text messages between Drainville and a member of his staff, and Drainville saying he won’t trust Barrette’s staff ever again.
The editor of a small-town Kentucky newspaper rushed to the scene of a school shooting to discover that the alleged shooter was her son.

Yet more Weinstein/#MeToo fallout

Carol Off writes for the Globe and Mail about how the political and journalistic scene acted against young female journalists after they were sexually assaulted or harassed by politicians and political staffers in Ottawa.
Similarly, the National Post’s Marie-Danielle Smith writes about the little things that women journalists have to deal with on Parliament Hill.
Uma Thurman opens up to the New York Times about Weinstein, and what she sees as director Quentin Tarantino’s complicity in what happened to her.
La Presse talks to musicians at the Montreal Symphony Orchestra about former conductor Charles Dutoit.
The chief content officer at Newsweek, Dayan Candappa, has taken a leave of absence after BuzzFeed discovered he was dismissed from his previous job at Reuters because of a sexual harassment allegation.
Vice has fired its Chief Digital Officer Mike Germano (though he says otherwise) after two women accused him of sexual harassment.

At the CRTC

A coalition including Bell, Rogers, Quebecor, Corus, CBC, Cogeco, and lots of artist and distribution groups is asking the CRTC to start allowing internet providers to block piracy websites. You can imagine how Michael Geist felt about that idea. But the coalition is not impressed by his arguments.
The commission has approved the acquisition of independent TV distributor Zazeen by Distributel. The purchase price, which the companies tried hard to prevent from becoming public, is $3, or $1 to each of Zazeen’s three founders. Distributel is a major creditor, according to the application, so it looks like the purchase price is equivalent to whatever the cost of that debt is. Distributel already offered Zazeen TV with its telecom services, and says other companies that offer Zazeen can still do so.
Victoria’s CHEK TV has gotten approval for a share buyback plan that would technically result in the local Sampson family moving from a minority shareholder to having more than 50% control when the family’s shares are combined. CHEK made it clear in its application that the Sampsons have no interest in having effective control of the company, which is run by the union, the employees and management, and a special shareholders’ agreement will limit their power. CHEK was bought out by its employees and local investors in 2009 when previous owner Canwest Global decided to shut its secondary E! network down. Several of those employees have since retired or otherwise left and are interested in selling their shares because they provide no income and have actually decreased in value since they were bought.
You might remember some anonymous person complaining to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council that The Weather Network’s 30-day forecast had only 27 or 28 days in it (and other minor errors). When the CBSC ruled such minor errors do not amount to breaches of its code, the complainant took the matter to the CRTC, which found no reason to intervene. We still don’t know the identity of the complainant.

TV

Radio-Canada has proposed an increase in power of its Quebec City digital television transmitter (CBVT-DT) from 291kW to 361.7kW. Minimal difference in signal pattern (dotted vs. solid) #CRTC pic.twitter.com/Qt5Z8J7k5q

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) January 30, 2018

It’s Super Bowl Sunday, and CTV is once again pulling out all the stops to get people to watch its feeds instead of the U.S. channel (NBC this year) because NBC’s ads won’t be replaced with Canadian ones (this applies from kickoff to the end of the game only). Bell is broadcasting the game on three channels — CTV, CTV Two and TSN2 — is bringing back its Watch to Win contest, and will have some short segments from Russell Peters throughout the broadcast. It also has its website for Super Bowl ads, though that’s still just a series of YouTube links.
Speaking of ads only Americans get to see, Old Spice ran an ad during the Grammys that was entirely in French, with no subtitles.
The NFL finally has some stability for its Thursday night games, with Fox signing a five-year deal.
The FCC has approved the voluntary roll-out of ATSC 3.0, a new standard for over-the-air television that is incompatible with the current 1.0 standard. The new standard allows two-way communication, which opens up possibilities like dynamic ad insertion. It also offers the possibility of higher-quality picture, sound and a higher frame rate.
It only lasted a couple of seconds, but TVA’s La Voix got some free attention south of the border when Kelly Clarkson brought up its theme during a day-drinking segment with Seth Meyers.
British Columbia has surpassed Ontario as the biggest province for television and film production, measured in dollars invested.
Global is carrying CBS’s Big Brother Celebrity Edition starting next week, which means it has moved the season finale of original drama Mary Kills People to Thursday at 9pm. Which is fine except that it puts that episode right up against the finale of CTV’s own six-part original drama, Cardinal.
CBC’s ombudsman found that a point-of-view documentary on sled dogs that aired on the Documentary channel and was called Sled Dogs was okay as a POV, but should have been more clearly labelled as such.

Radio

Quebec City’s BLVD 102.1 has fired André Arthur, apparently for making homophobic comments on the air. This isn’t the first time Arthur has been fired, and the station was banking on his controversial — but popular — speaking style when it hired him in the first place.
Speaking of controversial radio loudmouths, Doc Mailloux got another hand slap from the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, not for saying men have no control over themselves when sexually aroused, but because his morning show aired sexually explicit comments and vulgarity.
The city of Gatineau has decided to boycott local Cogeco radio host Roch Cholette, judging him to have been unfair and making personal attacks on politicians rather than their ideas.
Both the Montreal Gazette and La Presse used the first anniversary of the Quebec City mosque shooting to look at the state of the city’s talk radio scene.
CBC’s The Current is doing a live taping in Montreal on March 6 on the subject of race in Quebec. Tickets are free but must be reserved in advance.

Print

The Montreal Gazette profiles Boris (Jacques Goldstyn), a cartoonist whose work is being seen more often in the paper as Aislin (Terry Mosher) transitions into semi-retirement.
The Globe and Mail has another story (behind its paywall) about Postmedia’s rocky financial future.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail, a West Virginia newspaper that won a Pulitzer prize, has declared bankruptcy, though it is expected to be bought.
Recently unionized L.A. Times staff are worried about their employer building a shadow scab news operation in case of a strike or lockout. Meanwhile the paper in general is being described as a “hot mess”.

Online

Le Devoir has redesigned its website. The new layout is responsive and modern (which also means it looks like every other news website out there and far fewer stories are visible at a time on its homepage). It’s also changing how it does comments: rather than open every story to comments from paid subscribers only, it’s opening a limited number of news stories to comments from anyone — but everyone who comments has to use their real names.
If you haven’t read it yet, here’s the New York Times feature on the fake Twitter follower game.
The Columbia Journalism Review looks at news organizations’ use of Facebook’s Instant Articles feature, which allows news stories to be read within Facebook, and finds that about half of the organizations announced in its launch never used it, and most of those who did have reduced their use or dropped it completely.
Facebook is banning ads from all cryptocurrencies in an effort to eliminate scams.
Newsweek’s chairman and finance director have resigned amid some sort of financial fraud probe. A BuzzFeed investigation also showed Newsweek bought traffic that it alleged was fraudulent in order to collect ad revenue from fake visits.

Other

The Financial Post looks at the Bell Let’s Talk campaign, its genesis, longevity, impact, and criticisms.

News about people

Zarqa Nawaz, creator of Little Mosque on the Prairie, is taking over as host of Morning Edition, the Saskatchewan radio morning show on CBC. She’ll be replaced by Stefani Langenegger, the permanent host, in August.

Obituaries

Jobs

Contract producer and associate producer, Canadaland