CBC crew out in full force- photobomb courtesy of Stephen McCarthy from Valcartier fire department @stpatrick_qc pic.twitter.com/W5fBqd8FRP

— Julia Stewart-Page (@JuliaBPage) March 24, 2018

News about news

• The Canadian Association of Journalists has announced its award finalists. The Globe has 6 nominations, CBC 17, APTN 8, Ottawa Citizen 3, Maclean’s 3. Two are from Quebec:
  • Nicolas Mesly and Hugo Jolion-David of HuffPost Quebec for Quand l’agriculture tue in the online media category
  • Shrinkhala Dawadi and Julia Dick of the McGill Tribune for ‘It doesn’t matter because it didn’t happen on campus’ in the student excellence category
• A survey shows Quebecers have more trust in the media than they did a year ago
• Broadcast Dialogue’s podcast interviews Corus executive Troy Reeb, who’s in charge of news, radio and local stations. He talks frankly about the kind of stuff Global News has been doing lately — the need to rethink TV news stories (get rid of B-roll and make stories shorter), rebroadcasting TV newscasts on the radio (he says the newscasts were rewritten with that in mind), and opening new bureaus in cities they didn’t serve before (Ottawa, Kitchener, Guelph and Barrie).
• Le Devoir looks at Rad, the journalism laboratory at Radio-Canada.
• NBC is reactivating the @BreakingNews Twitter account, which has been dormant for more than a year despite having 9 million followers.
• India is not a safe place for journalists.

Gum’mit money

• The Quebec government announced its budget plan this week. It includes several measures related to culture. Among the changes related to media:
  • Netflix and similar foreign services will be subject to Quebec sales tax as of Jan. 1, 2019
  • $64.7 million over five years to help print media via a 35% employment tax credit for people involved in digital transition or “business intelligence” which I guess means lots of money for consultants. The credit will be capped at $7 million a year per organization and $20 million a year overall. Various conditions apply.
  • Online-only video productions will now be eligible for the Quebec film and television production tax credit. Previously they had to be tied to a TV or movie production. (Cost: $11.6 million over five years)
  • $100 million more over five years to the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Que?bec (CALQ) and Socie?te? de de?veloppement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC)
  • Eliminating the 45% ceiling on labour eligible for the film dubbing tax credit ($3 million over five years)
  • An additional $10.5 million for TV5
  • Télé-Québec’s budget goes up $4 million to $65 million
  • $40 million over five years to “enable cultural enterprises to obtain the tools they need to create modern cultural works and to have the technological means to disseminate them.”
• The federal government also announced its five-year Action Plan for Official Languages, which includes some new funding for minority-language media:
  • A $10 million Community Media Strategic Support Fund over the next five years to give financial support to projects that help sustain official-language minority community media — both radio and newspapers.
  • A $4.5 million boost to Young Canada Works at Building Careers in English and French, which will create 35 internships at English- and French-language minority community radio stations or newspapers.

At the CRTC

• Notice of hearing (a formality) for the following:
  • Wow Unlimited Media is acquiring Comedy Gold from Bell Media for $6,866,892 worth of shares in Wow (about 12% of all shares). The deal was first announced last June, but that announcement strangely refused to name the channel involved. Now we have a price tag for the first time. Wow is acquiring only the licence (and distribution agreements) and no physical assets. It plans to turn the channel into a children’s and youth channel. “WOW intends to produce live, hosted, studio programming,” the application reads.  Wow’s chief executive is Michael Hirsh, who helped found or lead Nelvana, Teletoon and DHX Media. As an independent channel, Wow is requesting its Canadian programming expenditure quota be lowered from 30% to 10% and its “programs of national interest” quota be eliminated. Bell’s share of Wow will give it a seat on the board, and it will name Mike Cosentino, President, Content and Programming, to fill that seat. According to Comedy Gold’s 2016-17 financial disclosure, it had $1.59 million in subscription revenue and $1.43 million in ad revenue, $570,635 in programming expenses ($201,979 Canadian), and $2.02 million in net income. It had 616,747 subscribers.
  • Newcap buying CKEC-FM and CKEZ-FM New Glasgow, N.S., from Hector Broadcasting, for $2.7 million
  • Northern Radio Corp. buying CJBB-FM Englehart, Ont., from 1353151 Ontario Inc. for $100,000
  • Rogers buying CJCY-FM Medicine Hat, Alta., from Clear Sky Radio for $4 million
  • A new national pay radio service with 68 channels
  • New radio stations:
    • Lachute, Que.: LS telcom, 300 watts, 101.7 MHz, French Christian music
    • Kipawa, Que.: Kebaowek First Nation, 6,000 watts, 104.1 MHz, English-language Native music and talk (some of which is Algonquin)
    • Esterhazy, Sask: 5777152 Manitoba Ltd., 50 watts, 99.5 MHz, English country, pop and rock music
    • Cochrane, Alta.: Golden West Broadcasting, 10,000 watts, 91.5 MHz, hybrid Country music (replacing a retransmitter of CFIT-FM Airdrie)
    • Saskatoon: International Harvesters for Christ Evangelistic Association, 2,000 watts, 103.1 MHz, Christian music
    • Kelowna and Kamloops: International Harvesters for Christ Evangelistic Association, 4,200 watts, 88.1 MHz, Christian music
• The commission has approved a schedule for testing of new wireless emergency alerts. The alerts, which begin April 6, will be on all LTE-or-better smartphones. There will be five tests a year, though only one of them, during emergency preparedness week, will be visible to end users.

Ethical reviews

• The Bulletin d’Aylmer has apologized after it was caught plagiarizing texts (complete copy-paste jobs but with changed bylines) from Le Droit. Journalist Natalie Robichaud, whose byline appeared on plagiarized stories, is no longer working for the newspaper.
• The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council says it’s okay that Énergie morning man Stéphane Dupont said “on s’en calisse” on his morning show, because ” the evolution of common language can influence the interpretation of the code and that, in this particular context, the host did not exceed the level of acceptability for offensive language.” Nevertheless, such language shouldn’t be used gratuitously.
• The CBSC also says TSN did not violate policies in airing a commercial for a horror movie during a CFL game.

TV

• A large-sample survey of (anglophone) Canadians gives some statistics about their TV viewing habits. Among them:
  • 73% still subscribe to cable, satellite or IPTV service, though that’s continuing to drop
  • 7% use over-the-air reception of TV combined with online streaming
  • 6% don’t watch any TV at all
  • 54% subscribe to Netflix
  • 8% subscribe to Crave TV
  • 6% have an Amazon Prime subscription (though only half actually make any use of the video service)
• BBC is feeling the heat from Netflix and other U.S.-based services, and so will focus on making its iPlayer platform more inviting.
• Since it doesn’t have to worry about broadcasting any NHL playoff games, RDS is going in hard on the Toronto Raptors’ NBA playoff run, promising to broadcast all of its games and up to 28 NBA games including the Finals.
• Are the Juno Awards too anglo? Marc Cassivi points out that only one prize was given to a francophone artist, and that was in the non-broadcast portion of the awards. He’d like to see it more like the film portion of the Canadian Screen Awards, where Quebec francophone films have their place (but it’s an awkward one surrounded by anglo Canadian TV stars they don’t know).
• The Toronto Star has a behind-the-scenes-at-Hockey-Night-in-Canada story
• Roseanne had 18.2 million viewers in the United States and another 2.16 million in Canada in its debut back on the air, enough for ABC to already be talking about Season 2. Canadians who missed it can watch it on CTV’s website.

Radio

• Wanex Lalanne, general manager of Radio Centre-Ville, appeared on one of the station’s shows to talk about its current status. Lalanne says having a show on the station is a privilege, not a right. He and his interviewer accused Le Devoir of sensationalism in its reporting about the station, though they also acknowledge that the station continues being in a financial crisis. They also say the ground-floor resto owned by the station is operating 100% legally.
• BC Business profiles Vancouver’s Roundhouse Radio (CIRH-FM), which is trying to bring a new flavour to informative talk radio, but is barely registering in the ratings.
• A new podcast from CBC explaining Quebec pop culture to anglophones?
• Corus has dismissed three personalities at its London radio stations: AM980’s Andrew Lawton, Country 104’s Leigh Robert and FM96 host Travis Pelletier. Lawton wrote a goodbye message on Facebook.

Print

• The Montreal Gazette (my employer) is surveying its readers on their preferences for comics, puzzles, horoscopes and movie and TV listings.
• Cineplex is shutting down the French version of its namesake magazine, which has some in the franco film scene angry at the injustice.
• A plaque is going to be installed somewhere in Ottawa to honour Le Droit and its contributions to the franco-Ontarian community.
• There’s a 35% gender pay gap at the London Daily Telegraph

Online

• The Montreal Gazette and other Postmedia websites have switched their main video player from Kaltura to YouTube. That meant posting a bunch of old videos to the YouTube channels. The Gazette’s now has more than 7,000 videos on it.

Other

• Bell Media is buying a majority stake in Pinewood Toronto Studios, which is home to series like Orphan Black and Star Trek Discovery.

News about people

JUST IN: Former CTV Chief News Anchor Lloyd Robertson was in a car crash on the DVP in Toronto. He's 100% fine. And he did a live hit on what happened on our sister station CP24. Glad you're okay, Lloyd! pic.twitter.com/8h3sS5qtca

— Michel Boyer (@BoyerMichel) March 29, 2018

• Reporter Scott Laurie is no longer with Bell Media. The company wouldn’t elaborate on why exactly that is, but Laurie’s Twitter account has been shut down.
• Stéphane Langdeau has resigned from RDS.
• Donald Beauchamp is leaving his job as vice-president of communications for the Montreal Canadiens. He’s held the job since 2002.
• Patrick McGuire, the former head of content at Vice Canada (and the guy who introduced Vice-produced docs on Viceland and City), is leaving Vice for other projects. Meanwhile Sarah Berman has been made senior editor at Vice Canada.
• William Bourque is retiring from ICI Acadie after four decades as a weatherman.
• Quebec’s upcoming election campaign has pulled in some former media stars: Former La Presse columnist Vincent Marissal is to announce next week he’s running for Québec solidaire, while former radio and TV host Caroline Proulx will run for the CAQ.
• The Globe and Mail profiled Leah Hextall just before she did the play-by-play on an all-female broadcast team for the CWHL Clarkson Cup final.
• Paul Zakaib aka Tasso Patsikakis is up to a new project, doing social media with his daughter.

Obituaries

• Jordon Cooper, Saskatoon StarPhoenix columnist
• Betty Ann Bowser, CBS and PBS reporter
• Lawrence K. Grossman, head of PBS and NBC News

Jobs

• Video manager, Montreal Gazette (deadline: March 31)
• Parliament Hill reporter, The Canadian Press (full-time temporary, replacing Joanna Smith; deadline: April 4)
• Desk editor, La Presse (deadline: April 27)
• Diversity bursary, La Presse (deadline: May 3)