At the CRTC

• One word: Reddit.

News about news

• The major magazine publishers that left the National Magazine Awards because it has too many categories have formed their own competing competition, called the Canadian Magazine Awards, or Magazine Grands Prix. Meanwhile, the old National Magazine Awards has a “new strategic plan” which apparently attempts to address the concerns of those who left, including Rogers, TVA Publications, St. Joseph Media, The Walrus and Reader’s Digest. The cost to submit for an award is $100, or $50 for publications with fewer than 5,000 copies.
• The Federal Court is hearing a case this week between Blacklock’s Reporter and the federal government, in which the former accuses the latter of copyright infringement because its employees used a third party’s access code to get around its paywall. The government counters that it’s fair dealing, for non-profit and educational purposes. This case could set a major precedent over whether getting around a paywall is illegal.
• A former deputy minister is suing Radio-Canada because of an Enquête investigation that suggested he avoided paying taxes on a boat he bought.
• BBC News opens its Canadian bureau on Thursday. Former Sun Media journalist Jessica Murphy has been hired as news editor.
• An editor at The Walrus has resigned in protest over a dispute about obscenity.
• The New York Times has a new weekly roundup of news about Canada.
• The Guardian is cutting its U.S. workforce by 30 per cent.
• A French YouTuber was asked to interview the president of the European Commission. But as Rue 89 recounts, she was given softball questions to ask on a pink set that seemed designed to make the interview as fluffy as possible. Instead, she farmed questions from the community and asked tough questions, and feels she was pressured by a YouTube representative not to ask them.
• Twitter will be live-streaming the Bloomberg feed of the U.S. presidential and vice-presidential debates. And yes, it will be available in Canada.

News about people

While perusing @cbc_archives. I came across this 1980's vintage gem by @CBCTerry. pic.twitter.com/AvlcR7VehQ

— Patrick Morrell (@PatMorrell_CBC) September 19, 2016

• CBC’s most famous moustache is retiring.
• Meredith Dellandrea is the new managing director for CBC Quebec. She replaces Shelagh Kinch, who left this spring.
• CTV Montreal reporter Kevin Gallagher has been hired at the network’s Parliament Hill bureau.
• TV and film producer Kevin Tierney has been added as a columnist for the Montreal Gazette.
• Le Devoir has a few new columnists: Fabrice Vil, talking about social issues. He’s black (which is still unusual in media around these parts), but makes it clear off the bat he only speaks for himself. Also Denis Ferland, on politics, and Pierre Trudel, on legal affairs. Plus Élisabeth Vallet covering the U.S. election.
• Mitch Garber gave a speech denouncing the continued existence of two solitudes in Quebec, and saying anglos in particular need to be more exposed to Quebec’s francophone culture.
• Kristine Stewart, the former CBC executive and then Twitter executive, is now at Diply, a Canadian-based clickbait content farm.
• Stephen Maher, who reported on the Robocalls scandal for Postmedia, has been hired at iPolitics as Executive Editor.
• Wendy Metcalfe, formerly city editor and assistant managing editor at the Toronto Star, has been hired as editor in chief of Brunswick News.

TV

• Télé-Québec decided to make this year the year of Quebec music by replacing the theme songs of 23 of its series with Quebec songs. It has posted most of those online, along with links to buy the songs and the artists’ websites. Some of these work better than others. (Also, the inclusion of artists like Radio Radio and Lisa Leblanc is interesting, since Radio Radio are from Nova Scotia and Leblanc is from New Brunswick, though they’re now based in Montreal.)
• CBC/Radio-Canada hosted the Public Broadcasters International conference last week in Montreal, and had two days of discussions about how broadcasters can attract younger audiences. I reported on it for Cartt.ca (subscribers only, sorry), but if you want to watch all 14 hours of panel discussions and speeches, CBC streamed them on YouTube: Day 1, Day 2.
• During the conference, CBC/Radio-Canada talked about Panora.tv, a project where it and fellow public broadcasters (Australia’s ABC and France Télévisions are on board) plan to create a marketplace where TV content can be bought and sold more easily by smaller players. Rather than giving up on a deal because the closing costs are too much compared to the purchase price, this website can streamline, standardize and automate the process. I wrote about that for Cartt.ca as well. The first phase is expected to be up some time in 2017.
• While anglos were watching the Emmys (or the World Cup of Hockey) on Sunday, Quebec francophones were watching the Gémeaux awards, honouring the best in television here. No big storylines coming out of the show, though the reviews are pretty good. Winners are listed here.
• Speaking of Canadian TV: More Anne of Green Gables!
• TV eh? is auctioning off a signed pilot script of the series X Company for charity.
• Le Grand Costumier, the costume shop set up as a non-profit after Radio-Canada shut its costume shop down, has a website now.
• Véronique Cloutier unveiled the programming for her branded channel on Radio-Canada’s Tou.TV. They include a documentary series produced by her husband’s company in which they talk about their careers.
• Speaking of Louis Morissette, he told Eric Salvail on the air Monday night he’s working on a documentary about P.K. Subban’s summer off-season.
• C’est Juste de la TV has a story that explains how the Vrak series Code F. is made.
• It’s still very early, but Viceland UK didn’t explode out of the gate with the ratings on its first night.
• The Hollywood Suite channels now have a streaming GO app.
• Stingray announced on Friday it has closed the purchase of MuchRetro from Bell Media, completing its purchase of the Much sister channels. It had earlier acquired MuchLoud, MuchVibe and Juicebox because they had fewer than 200,000 subscribers and no longer required a CRTC licence, and without a licence the CRTC does not need to approve a change in ownership. MuchRetro had more than 200,000 subscribers, but dropped below that level after Videotron dropped it last month. The four channels have all been rebranded and won’t use the word “Much”.
• CPAC changed its logo.

Radio

• Michel Villeneuve has been fired from 91.9 Sport, hours after Canadiens coach Michel Therrien denied badmouthing Max Pacioretty. Villeneuve, whose report started that rumour, reportedly refused to reveal his source to his boss. (This is standard practice for anonymous sources, to ensure that the source is credible and not fictitious. Even Woodward and Bernstein told their editor who Deep Throat was.)
• Patrick Lagacé and Evan Solomon have been added to the roster of CJAD regular contributors, on Aaron Rand and Andrew Carter’s shows, respectively.
• TSN 690 also has a new regular contributor: Brendan Gallagher, every Monday at 9:35am throughout the season starting this week. Canadiens players talk to the media every week, so there’s nothing groundbreaking here, but it makes it harder for Gallagher to avoid speaking to the media if there’s bad news to comment on. His first interview can be listened to here. The most exciting part of it was him discussing his fantasy football team.
• Meanwhile, hockey analyst Bobby Dollas has been dropped by TSN 690. He was made an analyst on Canadiens game broadcasts when the station acquired the rights in 2011.
• CPAM Radio Union 1410, Montreal’s Haitian radio station, was firebombed. Again.
• Capitale Rock 96.5 in Gatineau has stopped simulcasting programming from Montreal’s 91.9 Sport (it started doing that in February), has shut down its Facebook page and changed its Twitter handle to remove reference to its frequency. These kinds of changes, particularly around this time of year, suggest a branding change to come.

Good reads

• The Hollywood Reporter on Netflix getting too big
• The Globe and Mail on how prevalent rape has become in scripted television series. See also this Salon piece it references. Rape is a real thing and definitely shouldn’t be hidden on television, but expanding it beyond Very Special Episodes runs the risk of normalizing it, of making it be to dramas what explosions are to Michael Bay movies.
• La Presse’s Mario Girard on the lack of television and radio programming devoted to books.
• TSN 690’s Robyn Flynn on how women in sports media have to deal with constant mysogynistic attacks and outright rape threats.

Upcoming events

• Sept. 21: Turtle Island Reads: CBC invites indigenous people to talk about books by other indigenous people at an event in Kahnawake. Will be streamed live on Facebook.
• Sept. 22: Montreal Gazette Editor-in-Chief Lucinda Chodan is getting her head shaved for a good cause at 1pm at Place Alexis-Nihon.
• Sept. 26: Joanne Vrakas returns to Breakfast Television Montreal.
• Sept. 26: Deadline for submission of journalistic work for Quebec’s Judith-Jasmin prizes is at noon.
• Oct. 1: The Bill Lee biopic Spaceman is being screened in town.

Obituaries

• Claude-V. Marsolais, former La Presse political and labour reporter.