News about news

• The federal government has issued an economic update (read: mini budget) that among other things offers $595 million in aid to the journalism industry through tax breaks over five years. A lot of the details (particularly what eligibility criteria there are) are still to be worked out, but this is what is being proposed:
  • Allowing non-profit journalism enterprises (like La Presse) to become registered charities, which would allow them to issue tax receipts for donations
  • A refundable tax credit applied to labour for “qualifying news organizations” as of Jan. 1, 2019, the details of which are still to be worked out
  • A temporary, non-refundable tax credit for subscriptions to “eligible digital news media”
• The Gazette has a story about Cree newsmagazine The Nation, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary.
• The Globe and Mail on the Ontario community of St. Marys, and what happened after it lost its community newspaper, one of several sold by Torstar and immediately shut down by Postmedia.
• Edmonton MP Kerry Diotte is suing the University of Alberta’s student newspaper The Gateway for an article in which it says he “has a history of making racist remarks.” The Gateway has changed the article, but Diotte hasn’t dropped the suit, leading to condemnation from Canadian University Press.
• YouTube is flagging RT videos as being financed by the Russian government.
• The Canadian Media Concentration Research Project has published its annual report. Nothing earth-shattering in it, but it puts some figures to trends we’ve been seeing in media, notably the decline in non-digital advertising and the rise of Google and Facebook.
• Pay rates for freelance journalism in Quebec haven’t increased in the past 25 years.

At the CRTC

• The commission has begun its hearing into the various proposals to replace OMNI as a mandatory subscription channel. You can read the transcripts from Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday here. The hearing concludes Thursday.
• An application has been filed to purchase the corpse of what was once Vancouver’s Roundhouse Radio, a serious talk radio that couldn’t find an audience and went out of business in May. The application is by South Fraser Broadcasting, owned by Sukhvinder Singh Badh, which also owns 107.7 Pulse FM. South Fraser proposes to buy the station for $600,000 and establish a 50/50 mix of music and talk (call-ins limited to an hour each on Saturday and Sunday), on condition that it be allowed to reduce its Canadian content obligations to something closer than the standard for commercial stations. The application blames Roundhouse’s failure on a lack of advertising and on Numeris’s small sample size. Over two years of operation, it had projected $3.7 million in local ad revenue, but got only $137,000. South Fraser is also asking to be relieved of Roundhouse’s Canadian content development contributions, though it will accept to buy the station even if that isn’t granted.
• The CRTC has approved the sale of CJAN-FM in Asbestos, Quebec, to a cooperative made up of three employees of the station, for $103,715. The station is a money-loser, with its current owner taking only $12,000 salary and holding several roles. This transaction is seemingly its best hope of keeping it alive.
• The Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services has released its annual report, showing a 57% increase in the number of complaints. That increase affects all major telecom companies, though the vast majority of CCTS cases get resolved to the client’s satisfaction.
• The Public Interest Advocacy Centre is so displeased with the CRTC’s proposed “Internet Code” consumer rights rules and its tight deadline to comment on them that it is boycotting the proceeding.

Ethical reviews

• Globe and Mail public editor Sylvia Stead deals with some issues related to coverage of the abuse scandal at St. Michael’s College in Toronto.
• The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council received a complaint about HIFI, a Blue Ant Media channel, for inappropriate language and scenes of violence and sexuality that did not have appropriate viewer advisories. When it asked HIFI for logger tapes (i.e. recordings of the full broadcasts), the channel could not provide them, instead saving only the short segments that contained language and scenes mentioned in the complaint. The CBSC cited HIFI for the violation, and required it to broadcast that failure on air.
• CBC ombudsman: Interviews on The Current about Julian Assange’s issues at the Ecuadorian embassy were not inappropriately personal or disrespectful.
• CBC ombudsman: Pointing out that a city council is all white is not racist.

At the CBC

• Radio-Canada couldn’t find a company willing to take over its vinyl archives that met its criteria, so it will be holding onto that collection.
• Michel Bissonnette is temporarily taking over as executive vice-president of CBC as Heather Conway departs that post. Bissonnette is currently doing the same job on the Radio-Canada side, and will maintain that role as the CBC searches for a new boss of English services.
• A radio segment by CBC Toronto technology columnist Jesse Hirsh became a whole thing after he ask why CBC continues to promote Facebook and the CBC declined to post the segment online because the column “did not meet the Journalistic Standards and Practices (JSP) of the CBC.” That prompted a lot of chatter online about whether Hirsh’s on-air statements were accurate, including an entire episode of Canadaland devoted to the topic.
• CBC Comedy is no longer going to try writing stories online, much to the disappointment of smartasses on Twitter that love to make fun of it. The website will keep posting videos from CBC comedy productions including This Hour Has 22 Minutes, the Baroness von Sketch Show and Working Moms.
• Tickets for the CBC Montreal Christmas Sing-In concert are already sold out.

TV

• It’s Bell Media layoff season. Five jobs were cut at CTV Montreal — a researcher and a cameraman/editor have been laid off and three vacancies won’t be replaced. Elsewhere, Devon Soltendieck has left eTalk and there were cuts in Bell Media PR. Bell Media doesn’t announce these publicly so we have to rely on the rumour mill for details. (See below for radio cuts.)
• Netflix has commissioned its first original feature film in Quebec.
• The Hockey Night in Canada retro jacket auctions to benefit Hockey Fights Cancer have ended. Unsurprisingly, Don Cherry’s logo pattern jacket was the highest seller, at $17,709. Ron Maclean was next at $13,510, and Bob Cole at $6,510. Lowest was Greg Millen at $2,030, but most were in the $2,000-$4,000 range.
• Videotron is preparing to add some new channels: BBC Earth, BeIN Sports en Español, ERT World (Greek), MAVTV (motorsports), and Italian channels RAI News and RAI World. They’re also adding Quebecor’s QUB Radio to its audio channels, which might raise some eyebrows because QUB does not have a CRTC broadcast licence.
• VMedia is launching its IPTV television distribution service in Atlantic Canada, bringing it to all 10 provinces.
• Rogers TV is dropping Stingray Juicebox, Stingray Retro, Stingray Loud and Stingray Vibe as of Jan. 1.
• TVA Sports has extended its rights deal for USports university football until 2023.
• A push is underway to take advantage of the high ratings for Radio-Canada’s annual Bye-Bye New Year’s Eve special to turn it into Quebec’s version of the Super Bowl for advertisers.
• The Citytv drama Bad Blood has a deal to be distributed worldwide on Netflix.
• Montrealer Ari A. Cohen has a new documentary for CBC’s The Nature of Things, about animals where the father stays at home and cares for offspring. It airs on Sunday. Here’s a trailer.
• Discovery channel has renewed Highway Thru Hell.
• TSN’s SportsCentre now has an Instagram edition.

Radio

• Cogeco says it has completed its acquisition of 10 RNC Media radio stations in the Saguenay and Abitibi regions, plus Hawkesbury and Lachute, for $18.5 million (or $19.2 million, depending how you count it). The Cogeco network now comprises 23 radio stations. No announcements were made about changes to branding or format.
• Bell Media cuts also affected radio stations. Five people in Kingston, and the Virgin Radio morning shows in Edmonton and Toronto. Bell has already posted a job in Edmonton.

Print

• Postmedia has released its executive compensation details for next year. CEO Paul Godfrey (my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss) sees his rise to $5 million, about half of which is in stock.
• Employees at the Globe and Mail have ratified a new collective agreement by a vote of 70%. The two-year deal includes a wage freeze and no changes to the benefits plan. The employer also promises to make a “best effort” to close the gender wage gap and find a new defined-benefit pension plan.
• Claude Gagnon, president of Groupe Capitales Médias, which owns Le Soleil, Le Droit and other papers in Quebec, says they will likely stop having print editions in five to 10 years, but that wasn’t nearly the kind of commitment that headlines about the speech suggested it was.
• Torstar has cut 13 jobs at StarMetro in Toronto.
• Margaret Atwood is working on a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, for publication next year.

News about people

• Jean-Charles Lajoie, who reassured people that everything was status quo at 91.9 Sports, has left the station to join TVA Sports. He says negotiations began (and were even concluded) long before the sale of the station was announced.
• Aphrodite Salas, formerly a CTV Montreal journalist, is now an assistant professor in Concordia University’s journalism department.
• Parliamentary reporter Janice Dickson will move from The Canadian Press to the Globe and Mail in January. She will remain in Ottawa.
• Véronique Cloutier has been named the host of next year’s Gémeaux gala broadcast on Radio-Canada. She previously hosted the gala solo from 2008 to 2011 and co-hosted in 2015.
• Another obituary for radio personalities Leslie Sole and Terri Michael, this one in the Globe and Mail.
• Cogeco has named Marie-Hélène Labrie as Vice President, Public Affairs and Communications.

News about companies

• Quebecor has acquired Mario Pelchat’s MP3 Disques label.
• Quebecor was accused of making the iconic Archambault sign disappear from the latter’s building at Berri and Ste-Catherine Sts. Quebecor says it only wanted the sign moved, as it now occupies space that Archambault once did.

Obituaries

• Dennis Murphy, Concordia communications professor (also in the Gazette)

Jobs

• Journalist, Métro (deadline: Nov. 30)