Monthly Archives: May 2019

May 26, 2019 | Media

Media News Digest: The journalism panel, Journal de Mourréal loses in court, V kills MusiquePlus brand

News about news

The Canadian government has selected eight organizations to choose a panel that will decide the criteria for news organizations to meet to be eligible for part of its $595-million subsidy: News Media Canada (the newspaper association/lobbying group), the Association de la presse francophone (representing francophone media outside Quebec), the Quebec Community Newspaper Association (representing anglophone media inside Quebec), the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada, the Canadian Association of Journalists, the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, Unifor and the Fédération nationale des communications (the last two being unions representing journalists). Links are to their statements on the matter. Some of those statements are telling: The FPJQ said it was only told Tuesday that it was part of this group. The CAJ says it’s not sure if it will participate. QCNA says it already wants to expand eligibility criteria beyond what the government announced. Unions, naturally, are focused mainly on jobs.
The Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments in a case of a former Quebec cabinet minister trying to get Radio-Canada journalist Marie-Maude Denis to reveal her sources. The decision will set precedent for the limits of journalistic protections.
The Journal de Mourréal, a fake news, parody or satire website depending on your interpretation, lost its court battle against its near-namesake, who convinced a judge it was using the Journal de Montréal’s brand and was profiting off being confusingly similar. The website must change its name and pay $23,500 to Quebecor.
A lawsuit launched by Quebecor columnist Richard Martineau against news website Ricochet has been settled out of court. Ricochet claims total victory, in that they paid nothing and did not apologize or pull the satirical obituary they wrote about him. Martineau said he wanted to avoid a circus and compared himself to a sexual assault victim.
Postmedia has reached a deal in principle with journalism startup The Logic that will see some of The Logic’s stories in Postmedia publications and the two groups partner on “content licensing, marketing projects and events.” Postmedia will take an unspecified minority stake in The Logic, which was started last year by David Skok, formerly of the Toronto Star. The Logic, which covers the “innovation economy,” explains the deal to its subscribers here.
Postmedia (my employer) has registered a lobbyist in Alberta to try to get the company involved in some way with the new Alberta government’s “energy war room”.
An anti-Muslim “pundit” named Kevin J. Johnston was ordered to pay $2.5 million in damages in a libel case brought on by Mohamad Fakih of Paramount Fine Foods. Johnston didn’t hire a lawyer, his defence was poor and his statements so egregious that it warranted one of the largest defamation judgments in Canadian history.
The Canadian Press newsroom in Toronto held a retirement party for a reporter’s guide dog.
The U.S. government is charging Julian Assange of Wikileaks with revealing government secrets under the Espionage Act. This is chilling for journalists, who could in theory face similar charges for publishing leaked classified information.
A CNN Greece journalist’s car was destroyed by a homemade fire bomb. The Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned the attack.

May 23, 2019 | TV

CRTC renews OMNI for three years, rejects 6½ other proposals to replace it

The CRTC has reached a decision on what will replace OMNI. And it’s OMNI.

In a decision released Thursday, accompanied by a press release, the commission found that “Rogers’ proposed service, along with its associated commitments, best meets the needs and interests of Canada’s diverse population and the criteria established by the Commission, and is the most likely to ensure an exceptional contribution to the fulfillment of the objectives of the (Broadcasting) Act.”

The commission will therefore renew OMNI’s licence, but with “no expectation of renewal” beyond that, and only for three years, until 2023, when the mandatory distribution status of OMNI and other services with that status like CPAC, APTN and AMI, will be reviewed at the same time.

In its application, Rogers proposed that the new OMNI would have half-hour daily national newscasts in six languages: Spanish, Tagalog, Arabic, Punjabi, Mandarin and Cantonese, and local newscasts (for Toronto, Alberta and Vancouver) in Punjabi and Mandarin. Rogers told me it also planned to replace the current national Italian newscast, produced out of Montreal, with regional ones in Montreal and Toronto. The licence doesn’t specify the languages of programming, leaving that decision up to Rogers.

OMNI, which has TV stations in Toronto (two), Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, is broken up into four regions: B.C., Prairies, East (Ontario and Atlantic Canada) and Quebec. The Quebec feed is administered by ICI (CFHD-DT), an independent ethnic TV station in Montreal that was born out of Rogers’ conversion of CJNT into City Montreal. Though Rogers doesn’t directly control ICI, the two are closely connected.

Most of the other applicants didn’t propose regional feeds, over-the-air transmitters or local programming.

The commission has set the mandatory wholesale fee for the new OMNI, which begins Sept. 1, 2020, at $0.19 per month, up from its current $0.12 per month (but still less than some other applicants had proposed.) Rogers had requested a rate that started at $0.19 but ramped up to $0.21, but the CRTC found that $0.19 was sufficient. The decision states that the choice of OMNI was in part because of the proposed wholesale rate and the “balance” of that versus the programming commitments made.

OMNI’s commitments will be higher than they currently are, and higher than originally proposed as well:

Canadian programming expenditures: 60% of gross revenues (up from 50% originally proposed and 40% currently)
Canadian content on the schedule: 70% of the broadcast day (6am to midnight) and 70% from 6pm to midnight (up from 55% currently)
Programs of National Interest (scripted drama/comedy, documentary, award shows): 5% of revenues (up from 2.5% currently), all of which must go to independent production companies
Independent productions: 12 hours a week on each of the B.C., Prairies and Eastern feeds (including 2 hours produced from each of Manitoba/Saskatchewan and Atlantic Canada), and 14 hours a week of local original independent productions on ICI.
100% ethnic programming (up from 80% proposed and currently) on the Rogers-controlled feeds, and 90% on ICI.
80% third-language programming (up from 50% proposed and currently) on the Rogers feeds, and 60% on ICI.
Programming for 20 different ethnic groups and 20 different languages a month (same as currently; 18 and 15 respectively on ICI), with a limit of 16% for any one foreign language.
Six hours a week of original local newscasts in Vancouver, Calgary/Edmonton and Toronto (an improvement off local current affairs show obligations).
Six daily first-run national half-hour newscasts, seven days a week, in six different languages (up from four languages currently).
At least 40% of gross revenues spent on news.
Provide for ICI: 3 hours of original, local, ethnic programming in French each week and 1.5 hours of original, local, French-language programming and 30 minutes of local original English-language programming each week.

The licence also requires Rogers to:

Limit U.S. programming to 10% of the schedule each month
Maintain advisory councils for each regional feed, and require they approve the programming schedules and independent producers
Spend $60,000 a year on “scholarship initiatives that support ethnic and third-language post-secondary students majoring in journalism,” as chosen by the advisory councils
Maintain operation of the five over-the-air OMNI stations throughout the licence period
Solicit local advertising only in markets where OMNI over-the-air stations operate
Derive no profit from OMNI, and reinvest any surplus back into OMNI

Rogers will have until Sept. 1, 2020, to put those increased commitments into place. Until then, the existing licence still applies.

Shockingly, the CRTC’s decision includes absolutely zero analysis of the seven other applications to replace OMNI with a different service. It merely states that it had to choose one and OMNI was the best one. Did the commission feel the Ethnic Channels Group’s idea of multiple audio feeds in different languages was feasible? Was it impressed by the ambitious goals set by Amber Broadcasting? Did it think the application from Montreal-based non-profit ICTV was realistic? We have no idea. The other applicants are only mentioned once, in a listing of the applications at the beginning of the decision.

With the increase in the wholesale rate, here’s how much of your monthly TV bill will go to mandatory services, starting in September 2020:

English-language markets:

APTN: $0.35
AMI-audio: $0.04
AMI-tv: $0.20
CPAC: $0.13
OMNI Regional: $0.19
RDI: $0.10
TV5/Unis: $0.24
The Weather Network/MétéoMédia: $0.22
Vues et Voix (formerly Canal M): $0.04
TOTAL: $1.51

French-language markets:

APTN: $0.35
AMI-audio: $0.04
AMI-télé: $0.28
CPAC: $0.13
CBC News Network: $0.15
OMNI Regional: $0.19
TV5/Unis: $0.28
The Weather Network/MétéoMédia: $0.22
Vues et Voix (formerly Canal M): $0.04
TOTAL: $1.68

Meanwhile, the CRTC has administratively renewed the licence for ICI until 2020, which will simplify things as far as new conditions of licence related to its agreement with OMNI.

UPDATE: Rogers has issued a statement saying it is happy with the decision and will announce more specific plans “in the coming months.”

May 13, 2019 | Media

Media News Digest: Reuters journalists freed, Leslie Roberts to CTV, and so. many. awards.

News about news

Two Reuters journalists have been released after being detained for more than a year in Myanmar.
La Presse has updated its public donations website with some statistics from the first three months of the program: they’ve raised $1.7 million, which works out to an average of $40.47 for 42,000 contributors. Presumably the enthusiasm for donations was stronger right off the bat, and many of those are either one-time donations or larger than they will be in the future, but if that pace holds, it would put them well ahead of their goal of raising $5 million a year through voluntary donations.
Former CTV Montreal reporter turned Concordia professor Aphrodite Salas took a group of students to Gull Bay First Nation in Northern Ontario to do a short documentary about a solar power project being set up there, and the history of the community that led to Ontario’s government setting up the project as a sort of apology. The documentary was posted to a special section on CTV Montreal’s website. Bill Brownstein writes about the project in a Gazette story and Salas appeared on CTV News to discuss it as well.
Cult MTL has released the results of its annual readers’ poll. Here are the results in the media category.
The Toronto Star is offering free digital subscriptions until Oct. 31 to post-secondary students and faculty. They only need a school email account to register. Meanwhile the paper says digital subscriptions are up 50%, but that’s not enough to counteract the plummeting print ad sales revenue.
The Toronto Star is also “enhancing” the labels on its online articles to better explain to readers the different types of journalism.
The owners of the New Orleans Times-Picayune put on a master class on how not to fire an entire newspaper. It’s being shut down in favour of its younger rival, also owned by the same company.

Continue reading →

May 9, 2019 | TV

CTV News tells reporters they will have to do their own camera and editing work

Updated with comment from Bell Media and Unifor.

Staff at CTV News departments across the country were called into mandatory meetings on Thursday, and told that they’ll have to tighten their belts a bit more.

I don’t have specifics or numbers (see below), but the headline is that journalists will be transformed into “videojournalists” who do not only their own reporting but also their own camerawork, editing and even writing for the web.

As a result, editors and cameramen will be offered buyout packages or laid off. Layoff notices have been issued in Montreal and Toronto, I’m told, but not everywhere. In Montreal, 15 jobs are being cut and an unspecified number of online jobs added.

CTV bills this as them “innovating” because they’re “expanding our digital news presence” and points out that they are also adding new jobs.

This is a significant project that will require enhanced training as well as job reclassifications for some members of the news team. While we will be creating a substantial number of new digital news positions, some traditional roles may be impacted by the changes. We cannot yet offer a specific number of how many, if any, departures may result.

There is some confusion about changes in our Montreal team. As part of the digital news expansion, we were required to notify Unifor that 15 existing union job classifications in Montreal would be eliminated. However, a similar number of new positions will be filled to support the enhanced digital focus of the newsroom.

CTV News already employs some videojournalists (there are four at CTV Montreal), and they’re used at other networks as well, notably Citytv, which relies almost exclusively on them. Reporters shooting their own stories is more feasible with today’s equipment (some newsrooms are experimenting with reporting using iPhones), and obviously saves on human resources. But more time spent on the technical elements of producing stories means less time on the journalism behind it.

Plus, while younger journalists who are trained on shooting and editing out of school will easily adapt to the new reality, training more veteran journalists will be more difficult, and some might choose to simply retire early or find new jobs.

Because of various union rules, these layoff notices may spark a process of bumping, where less senior workers in jobs not affected by the layoffs get replaced by those being laid off (if those workers prove they can do the job they’re bumping into). So younger workers in these newsrooms will be feeling very nervous over the coming weeks.

And while CTV’s statement suggests it will save jobs, the reality is that the people affected will have to apply for them and be accepted for them. That’s not a given.

Unifor, which represents unionized workers at CTV, issued a statement:

“Today’s announcement from CTV of its shift to ‘digital-first’ airing of local news stories on the Internet was inevitable,” said Unifor National President Jerry Dias. “Retooling local news for digital is necessary and, hopefully, a successful business plan because local TV is being starved for advertising revenues and anything that brings in a bigger audience and more ad revenue is welcome.”

The stations affected by restructuring include the CTV1 stations in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. Bell has told journalists and field technicians to expect a mix of retraining, layoffs, and new “digital” jobs, with a net reduction of staffing.

Dias cautioned Bell Media of its responsibility to guide news staff through the technological changes in job responsibilities, as it is expected that some journalists and field staff will need to acquire new digital skills.

“We are going to ensure no media worker is left behind,” said Dias. “Bell knows us pretty well and they know we mean it.”

Dias is also urging the federal government to accelerate its four-year long review of Canadian broadcasting in the Internet environment, scheduled to continue into 2020. “There are obvious actions the CRTC and the federal government can take to strengthen Canadian programming,” said Dias, referring to the CRTC’s own “Harnessing Change” report on Internet-broadcasting issued in June 2018.

May 2, 2019 | Media

Media News Digest: Pony hoax, TVA Sports lawsuits, magazine awards

News about news

It’s the Semaine de la presse et des médias in Quebec this week. Various local news outlets are opening their doors to tours or holding open houses on May 3. The latter includes Les Affaires and Urbania in Montreal, but many others too.
The FPJQ isn’t impressed by small-town governments in Quebec barring journalists from public information meetings about flooding.
Montreal news reporters and authorities were scrambling to find a pink-maned pony after a photo circulated on social media. The image turned out to be a hoax by Vlog, the TVA viral video show.
The South China Morning Post has a story about Karen Lin Woods, who has been expressing opinions about Canadian politics without fully disclosing her employer’s connections with the Chinese government. Lobbyists for foreign governments are considered diplomats and don’t have to register with the lobbyist registry.
The Walrus has a story about how the cuts to local news affects political reporting in Canada, which is bad news going into a federal election.
La Presse is launching a new mobile app.
The Montreal Gazette and other Postmedia publications have switched from Facebook commenting to a new system run by Viafoura, which hopes to cut down on spam and abusive comments below news articles. So far it seems to have put an end to automated get-rich-quick-by-working-from-home spam comments.
The editor of Your Ward News, convicted of hate speech, is trying to stay out of jail, arguing he was giving a voice to angry people.
The New York Times is “deeply sorry” for a cartoon about the U.S. and Israel that appeared in its international edition and was condemned by critics as anti-semitic. The cartoonist tells the Jerusalem Post he didn’t feel the cartoon was anti-semitic.

At the CRTC

Approved: New English and Indigenous-language radio station in Afton Station, N.S.: Indigenous non-profit, 104.5 FM, 50W. Afton Station is about halfway between Antigonish and the start of Cape Breton.
Approved: New English commercial radio station in Listowel (North Perth), Ont.: Owned by Five Amigos Broadcasting, 100.1 FM, 8,000W. Listowel is about 50 km northwest of Kitchener and is not served by other radio stations. It plans an adult contemporary format.
Licences for 23 Indigenous radio stations, including CKHQ-FM in Kanesatake, have been extended to 2022 as the CRTC prepares a review of its Indigenous radio policy.

Ethical reviews

National Newsmedia Council: A Globe and Mail opinion piece did not include a significant factual error in citing how much money Bombardier received from the federal government, even though it lacked some context and qualifiers (such as the money being adjusted for inflation).
Globe and Mail readers say they want more fact-checking and analysis in election coverage.

At the CBC

The corporation is being less than forthcoming about documents concerning the construction of its new Maison Radio-Canada in Montreal. But Radio-Canada decided to remind people that the new building comes with no additional cost to taxpayers, because they’re paying the same rent as before.

TV

Pierre-Luc Dubois est fin prêt pour le match avec un cri de ralliement très particulier! ? pic.twitter.com/awtXSYSQMq

— RDS (@RDSca) April 30, 2019

Some colourful language got onto the Sportsnet/CBC NHL playoffs broadcast.
Rogers has picked up the rights to the Eurovision song contest, and will be broadcasting the two semifinals and the grand final this month on OMNI and streaming it on OMNITV.ca. (ICI, the Montreal ethnic station that partners with OMNI and carries some of its programming, won’t be airing the shows because of scheduling conflicts, president Sam Norouzi tells me.) Canada isn’t participating (and so Canadians can’t vote), but Greece’s entry is sung by Katerine Duska, who was born in Montreal.
Corus Entertainment has joined a group that’s developing a video measurement standard that hopes to finally solve the problem of how you properly measure the TV, online streaming and social media audience for a broadcast.
Amazon is bringing its Amazon Channels service to Canada, according to The Logic. Amazon Channels is sort of a cross between TV and streaming, offering subscriptions to services like HBO on an individual basis at different prices.
YouTube has scored the exclusive rights to 13 MLB regular-season games this season in the U.S. and Canada. The exact games haven’t been announced, but those games won’t be available on TV.
APTN workers voted 39-1 in favour of a new labour contract.
APTN is still feeling the energy of its NHL broadcast in Plains Cree, though there are no specific plans for future sports broadcasts on the network. They do want to do more sports in Indigenous languages though.
APTN has started airing a French dubbed version of Mohawk Girls, called Belles, fières et Mohawks.
CBC has revived Battle of the Blades, six years after its last season aired. The show will air this fall, and contestants are to be announced.
Bell Media has greenlit a new sci-fi mystery drama series called Albedo starring Evangeline Lilly. It will be broadcast by streaming service Vudu in the U.S. Bell doesn’t say where it will broadcast the eight-episode series.
Bell Media has commissioned a new six-part documentary series for Crave, called We’re All Gonna Die, about the various ways humanity could go extinct.
Séries+ has announced its first original series since it stopped making them during a failed sale to Bell: Winnebago, a six-episode miniseries starring Guylaine Tremblay and Josée Deschênes, to air in 2020.
Radio-Canada is working on a new comedy series that takes place in a universe where the Yes side won the 1995 Quebec referendum.
Netflix’s first original Quebec production, a film called Jusqu’au déclin, has finished filming.
Netflix and other foreign streaming services paid the Quebec government almost double what it was expected to in sales taxes, according to La Presse.
You know that lawsuit that was obviously inevitable from Bell after the TVA Sports debacle? Yeah, it’s happening. Bell wants $150 million, for being forced to offer Sportsnet for free, the additional work for customer service, the misleading ad campaign that tried to blame Bell for cutting the signal, and Pierre Karl Péladeau breaking a confidentiality agreement by revealing the wholesale rate that Bell TV paid for TVA Sports. There’s also a separate class action lawsuit in the works by Bell subscribers.
J-Source has a story about TV newsroom automation, and CBC’s efforts to implement it. It’s using a similar system that Global put in place a decade ago, though it’s not going as far as Global did in terms of centralizing on-camera functions.
RDS’s 85 or so newsroom employees have been accredited as a union.
Jimmy Kimmel is bringing back All in the Family and The Jeffersons for a primetime special.

Radio

A strange story about a Labrador City francophone community radio station called Rafale FM that was collecting ad money for ads that it never aired because it was off the air. And it wasn’t just an honest mistake, either. The general manager confirmed in writing that the ads had aired.
Rogers Media has acquired the podcast company Pacific Content, which mainly creates branded podcasts for companies.
Matt Cundill’s Soundoff Podcast interviewed two people in the radio industry with Montreal connections: Ian Howarth is a freelance writer who wrote a book about Montreal’s top 40 radio heydays of the 60s and 70s. And Steve Anthony worked at CKGM and CHOM, along with stations in Toronto.
The National Post has launched a new business podcast.

Print

The National Magazine Awards nominations are out. Nominees include Toronto Life (19), The Walrus (14), L’actualité (9), Nouveau Projet (9), Maclean’s (9), Hazlitt (8), the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business (7) Maisonneuve (6), Fashion Magazine (5), Canadian Geographic (5), Cottage Life (5) Dînette magazine (5), The New Quarterly (5) and The Site Magazine (5).
La Presse and Groupe Capitales Médias are seeking more bailout money from the Quebec government. The latter, which owns Le Soleil, Le Droit, Le Nouvelliste, Le Quotidien, La Tribune and La Voix de l’Est, says it could run out of money by the end of summer.
Métro Média, the company that owns Métro in Montreal and the former Transcontinental community weeklies on the island, is launching a new free magazine aimed at people over 50, called Nouvelle Liberté.
ESPN The Magazine is shutting down its print edition.
The Guardian in the U.K. has finally stopped losing money. It gets more revenue from online than print, and getting money directly from readers has helped a lot in getting to this point.