News about news

• The Associated Press’s blind republication of press releases on its website has gotten it in hot water after a press release with right-wing misinformation got published this way. The pages include AP logos and could easily lead people to believe they are AP news stories. Several Canadian websites also automatically post press releases, including the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Montreal Gazette, the Toronto Sun (and other Postmedia papers).
• The federal government is investigating itself after queries from a Postmedia journalist about Irving Shipbuilding were sent by the government to the company before it even responded to the journalist.
• Exo, which runs Montreal’s commuter train network, has ended its agreement with free newspaper 24 Heures that distributed the paper in its stations. Quebecor did an access-to-information request and found an email suggesting the organization may have ended the contract because it was not happy with the paper’s coverage of its service. It’s unclear if that was the main reason, but Exo’s bosses have refused to explain themselves.
• Radio-Canada has cut nine jobs in its Atlantic offices.
• Finalists for the National Newspaper Awards have been announced. The Globe and Mail leads with 20 nominations (including a sweep of the business category), the Toronto Star and La Presse have six each, and The Canadian Press has four. The Montreal Gazette has one nomination.
• RTDNA Canada has announced its regional award finalists (East, Prairies, West). In the Central region (Quebec and Ontario), which gives out the awards April 6 in Toronto, Quebec nominees include:
  • 18 for CBC Montreal
  • 4 for CTV Montreal
  • 2 for Global Montreal
  • 2 for CBC Quebec City
  • 1 for MAtv

At the CRTC

• After concluding that these markets near Quebec City could support new radio stations (but the Quebec City market itself could not), the CRTC has published the applications from Michel Lambert and Arsenal Media for new stations in Portneuf and Sainte-Marie-de-Beauce, respectively. The former would be a pop music station, but the Arsenal station would have a country/folk format, which is pretty rare in Quebec radio (in part because the French-language country music library isn’t as robust). A pro forma hearing will be held May 16, and comments are being accepted until April 11.
• The same hearing will also look at the licence renewal request for Sirius XM Canada. Besides a (seemingly) minor change to the definition of new and emerging artists, the company wants to drastically reduce its required contributions to Canadian content development funds, from 4% of gross revenues to 0.5% by the third year of the new licence. The CRTC believes it hasn’t met its existing licence conditions related to CCD contributions, and it’s generally CRTC policy to deny licence amendments to remove conditions that a licensee has failed to meet. If you want to suggest other changes in light of the Canada Laughs/Just For Laughs saga, now’s the time.

Ethical reviews

• The Globe and Mail’s Sylvia Stead does not believe that anti-vaccination advocates deserve to have their views amplified for the sake of balance alone.
• CBC’s ombudsman investigated whether an explanation given by CBC’s “Gas Guru” about the differences in gas prices between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick was correct. He found that it was, though New Brunswickers can be forgiven for wondering about Irving’s influence on news coverage of gas prices.
• A Radio-Canada segment in which Mordus de politique host Sébastien Bovet referred to Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro “eliminating” his political adversaries was not inaccurate, and never meant to imply that Maduro murdered anyone.

TV

• Canadian Lilly Singh has been named the new host of the late-late-night show on NBC, replacing the departing Carson Daly. It’s quite the accomplishment, even though the show starts at 1:30am.
• APTN will be broadcasting the March 24 Canadiens-Hurricanes game in Plains Cree thanks to a new experiment with Rogers, which has had success with Punjabi-language broadcasts of hockey and Tagalog broadcasts of Blue Jays on OMNI.
• After initially refusing to do so, Netflix now says it will edit the film Bird Box to remove footage of the Lac-Mégantic disaster that was used as stock footage appearing briefly on a TV screen.
• Quebecor boss Pierre Karl Péladeau has started a campaign of some sort to rally public support behind his contention that TVA’s specialty channels should be getting more subscription revenues. He published an open letter in the Journal de Montréal, TVA Sports and Le Devoir, and started a website with charts. But it’s unclear what he’s asking for specifically. Does he want the CRTC to step in and renegotiate its carriage contracts? Does he want it to just change how it evaluates value when it steps in to arbitrate these contracts (putting less emphasis on historical rates)? The website has no real call to action. Péladeau has a point, and is still very peeved that RDS gets more subscriber money than TVA Sports, but he seems to be decrying government intervention in private business while at the same time calling for more of it.
• Discovery Canada has a new original docudrama series called Disasters at Sea, about ship disasters. The six-episode series starts April 16 and will also air on Smithsonian Channel in the U.S. and Seven Network in Australia.
• Radio-Canada is making a new quiz show starring teenagers called 100 Génies, hosted by Pierre-Yves Lord. It will air during the 2019-20 season.
• TSN had to face a bit of embarrassment on Sunday when it couldn’t broadcast the final of the WTA tournament in Indian Wells, Calif., because it didn’t have the rights to do so. Canadians who wanted to watch Bianca Andreescu win the title of the premier event had to either watch it in French on TVA Sports or via DAZN (which broadcast it on Twitter). If Canadian tennis continues to improve like this, TSN might want to be more aggressive about acquiring these rights.
• Netflix is adding the documentary Playing Hard, about the creation of the video game For Honor by Ubisoft’s Montreal studio.
• The popularity of the Canadian comedy series Schitt’s Creek has apparently been enough to get CBS to buy the U.S. channel broadcasting it, Pop TV.
• Temple Street Productions is working on a new series set in the Orphan Black world, stressing it would not be a spinoff or reboot but tell a different story.

Radio

• Numeris is making big changes to how it measures radio ratings in most markets in Canada. For markets that use diary ratings (i.e. everywhere but Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary), instead of just surveying people’s listening preferences twice a year, listeners will be polled every two weeks, and averages will be released twice a year for all measured markets. This is a measure to counteract the increasing unreliability of Numeris data for smaller markets as it becomes more difficult to recruit participants. The transition to the new system will begin this summer.
• Bell Media has made cuts to TSN Radio stations in Vancouver and Ottawa. Dave Pratt, Dave Tomlinson and Curt Appleby have been cut at TSN 1040, while Steve Warne, James Abson and Dean Roberts are out at TSN 1200. The Vancouver station has upgraded its mid-morning team to take over the vacated morning show.
• Hamilton’s 95.3 Fresh Radio has cut its morning show, apparently laying off Colleen Rusholme and Darrin Laidman.

Online

• MySpace has accidentally deleted all data uploaded before 2016, blaming it on a server migration snafu. The result is a lot of data from the days before Facebook, including photos and music, is lost forever.

Telecom

• The Globe and Mail reports a bureaucrat with Canada’s ISED department involved with telecom regulation was hired by Bell and worked as a consultant for that company while still employed by the government, a very obvious conflict of interest, and one that he apparently tried to hide when asked about it in a court case related to the failure of Mobilicity.

News about people

• Mélanie Marquis is joining La Presse’s bureau in Ottawa, leaving Presse Canadienne.
• Bloomberg’s Josh Wingrove is moving from Ottawa to Washington.
• Scott MacArthur is the new host of the Blue Jays postgame show on Sportsnet radio.
• Bell Media has promoted Chloé Boissonnault to National General Manager, Marketing & Communications at Bell Media Sales.

Obituaries

• Randy Turner, Winnipeg Free Press writer (the Free Press has also compiled a collection of his best work)
• Perry Mah, Edmonton Sun photographer
• Brian Scott, Kingston radio host
• Werner Bergen, former Peterborough Examiner entertainment editor

Good reads

• The Montreal Gazette has been publishing photos from its archives every day since the beginning of the year. Editor-in-Chief Lucinda Chodan goes through some of the photos that won’t make it into the series, because they can’t be found or have insufficient information about their context.
• Le Devoir on how young influencers online are using social media to push a pro-environment message.

Jobs

• Digital editor, Montreal Gazette (part-time; deadline: March 20)
• La Presse diversity bursary (deadline: April 4)
• Associate editor, opinion at Maclean’s