For those of you who might have wondered if the Canadiens’ winning record and flurry of 5-goal games might cause financial hardship for the Cage aux Sports’s five goals = eight free wings promotion, never fear: they’re swimming in profits, according to their first quarter report (though that only covers until the end of November).
La Presse has a rumour (and CBC/CP rewrites that rumour) that Rogers is going to be buying the Montreal and Quebec City TQS stations, while Radio Nord (which already owns TQS stations in Outaouais and Abitibi) would buy stations in outlying regions.
Rogers won’t comment and Radio Nord denies they’re buying the stations.
I suppose it makes sense. Rogers owns what’s left of Citytv, a network without a station in Canada’s second-largest city. (I can just imagine the kind of outcry we’d have if they tried to convert TQS into an anglophone City station.) And if they are buying TQS out, chances are it would be for a significant discount.
TQS’s creditor protection lasts until Thursday.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, at Le Devoir, Paul Cochon looks at the blame game, and wonders why Quebecor (which owns TVA) isn’t being blamed in the same way Radio-Canada and the CRTC are.
UPDATE (Jan. 16): TQS gets its extension, and now has until Feb. 29 to decide what to do with itself. Meanwhile, Steve Proulx doesn’t think La Presse’s “scoop” is any more than idle speculation, and he thinks the CRTC is more to blame for TQS’s troubles than Radio-Canada.
As promised, my first opinion/analysis piece appears in today’s business section as part of the new Business Observer weekly page, which includes other pieces from academics and a small glossary of bizl33t from Roberto Rocha.
The crux of the argument is this: YouTube wonders and other amateur producers are being exploited by big media companies who want to reduce costs. Instead of being offered a freelance fee for their work, they’re offered give-us-all-your-rights contracts and no monetary compensation in exchange for the opportunity to have one’s video put on TV.
Some of you might remember a column from Casey McKinnon in the Guardian last year that was along similar lines, and my article is a blatant rip-off an homage and expansion of that idea. I talked to her and to Dominic Arpin, who hosted TVA’s Vlog show during its brief run in the fall. Vlog, as a news show, relied on fair dealing provisions to side-step copyright. They didn’t ask permission before screening 30-second clips of popular videos online.
Though the article focuses on video, the situation is analogous for audio and text. Media organizations seek “user-generated content” because it’s free. That’s fine for letters to the editor and small comments attached to articles, but what about photos and stories? The line between freelancers and free content is blurring.
Casey’s advice is useful for all independent content producers:
Start thinking like businesspeople and stand up for their rights. Demand fair contracts and proper compensation, and ignore fast-talking TV executives when they say “you don’t need a lawyer.”
If you have any comments about this issue, you can of course add them here (I won’t pay you either, suckers). The Gazette is also soliciting responses to the idea: send them to businessobserver (at) thegazette.canwest.com
(I’ll refrain from pointing out the irony of big media soliciting free content on an article denouncing big media’s exploitation of free content. But at least here you’re doing so willingly.)
UPDATE: Digg it?
Gerard Deltel Radio Canada Hors Mandat Nuit aTQS
Uploaded by mediawatchqc
Not that we mean to imply that people at TQS are raving lunatics or anything, but it’s clear they’re a bit frustrated at constantly losing money.
I don’t think even the Tories hate Radio-Canada that much.
The Gazette tomorrow launches a new feature page in its business section called FP Comment Business Observer, a weekly page on Thursdays that will focus on commentary and analysis about the business world.
It will include articles from Gazette staff (including a column by tech columnist Roberto Rocha), academics and businesspeople, as well as some freelance writers like myself:
Always fun to get my name in the paper.
The first article by me to appear will deal with independent web video producers and the mainstream media (particularly television) producers who wish to exploit them.
Stay tuned.
S.O.S. Ticket, the service setup by former Montreal police officer Alfredo Munioz to help people defend traffic tickets, has launched a new service. For 50 cents per message, drivers can subscribe to a radar trap alert service, which will notify them by text message when and where police officers are checking people for speeding.
The service says they find this out through the use of “road agents” (spies) who look around for them and report them.
Aside from the inherent problems essentially keeping track of every police car in the city and every SQ vehicle on the highway, there are serious ethical implications as well. Defending people in court is one thing. Helping them to (essentially) avoid police while committing a road infraction seems a bit more serious.
Not to mention that it encourages people to speed.
La Presse reports that a Montreal company has been given a contract by the Pakistani government to run a voter registration database which will be used in an upcoming election.
The company in question is Cronomagic, a tiny ISP that I used to work for (my first, and so far only, job in the IT industry). I was their 4th employee at the time, so I got to makeup my own job title (Executive Vice-President in Charge of Doing What My Bosses Told Me To Do). It was there that I learned how to manage a room full of computers, how to setup Windows 2000 Server (ugh) and how to make Bash and Perl do funny things together.
Most importantly, I learned the power of connections. Back then a lot of business came from Pakistan because the president had business contacts there. Now it seems those contacts have gotten the company some sweet business.
UPDATE: A story from CanWest and another from Agence France-Presse, with basically the same information.
Montreal is pressuring Quebec to approve a 1% municipal sales tax so that cities can get a piece of the lucrative extra charges tacked onto our purchases, just days after the federal GST got reduced from 6% to 5%.
I hope this isn’t a selective thing, in which some cities will charge different tax rates from others. That would be a recipe for disaster and rampant loophole-exploitation.
Instead, perhaps the provincial government should increase the provincial sales tax by one point, and put that money into something important like health care.
UPDATE (Jan. 8): No dice, Quebec says.
Bell Canada has been awarded the contract to manage Canada’s anti-telemarketing Do Not Call list.
Because when you think “customer service” and “convenience,” the name “Bell Canada” inevitably comes to mind.
No doubt the Bell Canada-run Do Not Call list will be fast, efficient, error-free and in no way a nightmare for thousands of Canadians stuck in customer service hell.
Oh, and the reason Bell won the contract? It was the only bidder.
Can you feel the irony biting you in the ass?
The news outlets were buzzing today about the fact that spending on Boxing Day went down this year compared to previous years.
I find that funny because, you know, Boxing Day hasn’t happened yet.
The news, naturally, comes out of a VISA press release, which they based on a survey that asked people what they planned to do. This, I guess, is somehow infinitely better than waiting two days and just finding out what they did.
But VISA knows a slow news day when it sees one, and the news fell for it.
Roberto Rocha has an interesting article in today’s Gazette about Capazoo, a Montreal-based social networking website that wants to take on Facebook and MySpace.
What’s interesting about this project, unlike the thousands of other social networking sites, is that it’s starting big. Millions of dollars big. Before it even has 100,000 users, it’s going to flood the Web with advertising, spend millions on servers, and get as many famous people involved as possible to lure the young’uns on board. In other words, it’s going to use traditional marketing methods instead of the word-of-mouth methods that created Google, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and everything else.
Their gimmick is a social currency (“zoops”) that people can exchange by “tipping” each other. Voluntary contributions toward people whose content you approve of.
I’ll reproduce here some of the concerns I expressed (and some new ones I’ve added) about the project on his blog:
Here’s my issues with Capazoo:
By now most of Montreal’s technology community has heard about the Station C coworking space being setup by Patrick Tanguay and Daniel Mireault. Patrick especially has been blogging about it since forever, talking about it at BarCamp and related events, and annoying his girlfriend about it.
Last week, I sat down to interview both of them at Laïka, which gave me a pretty good idea of the disadvantages of working in cafés (not that Laïka is particularly bad or anything). Right after our interview they walked over and signed the lease, which means they’ve passed the point of no return and the project is officially going ahead.
My article on Station C appears in this morning’s Gazette (Page B3):
Their jobs didn’t exist 20 years ago. Their offices consist of a laptop and a cellphone. And they want to work from anywhere but home.
They’re freelance geeks, and they’re wandering the streets looking for a place to work. You can see them lugging their laptops to cafés, buying coffee in return for a table, a power outlet and a few hours of wireless Internet.
But Web developers Patrick Tanguay and Daniel Mireault are getting tired of setting up offices in cafés. It’s loud and uncomfortable, the Internet access can be slow or unreliable, there are no printers or office supplies and no place to meet clients privately.
So two years ago, Tanguay and Mireault started toying with the idea of setting up an office that freelancers and telecommuters could share, even though they’re all working on different projects for different people.
It’s called co-working, and it’s already caught on in Toronto, Vancouver and dozens of other cities in the United States and Europe.
I noticed during our interview that there are two types of people at Laïka: those who come to socialize and those who come with laptops to work or study. Some try to do both, but end up looking at their laptop screens more than their friends.
For those who are interested, other Canadian coworking spaces include:
The Network Hub (Vancouver): An incubator for Internet startups, The Network Hub offers an office for people with big ideas and small budgets. It provides funding and administrative services in exchange for 5 to 10 per cent equity in the company.
WorkSpace (Vancouver): Describing itself as “more like a club than an office,” WorkSpace is the first coworking space in Canada that runs as a business. Membership ranges from $95 to $695 per month. It also accepts drop-ins at $25 per half-day or $35 per day.
Indoor Playground (Toronto): Open since February, Indoor Playground is a non-profit space for working, collaboration and events. Rates from $50 to $300 per month, and there are day rates for individual workers or groups.
Centre for Social Innovation (Toronto): Offers private desks and shared desks for $75 to $350 per month. The centre’s goal is to encourage new ideas that foster social change, and it is home to over 100 community and non-profit organizations.
Queen Street Commons (Charlottetown): A member-owned non-profit space in a century-old three-story Victorian home, operating since the summer of 2005. Membership is $35 per month with a 12-month contract.
The RCMP announced today that they have made eight arrests in a DVD counterfeiting network based in Montreal that was selling bad copies of DVDs (and in some cases off-TV recordings) of U.S. television series through multiple websites.
The RCMP doesn’t name the eight people arrested, nor the websites involved, nor the name of the company they were working under. But all signs point to TVBoxSet.com, which The Gazette wrote about in August after many users complained of either not getting what they ordered or getting bad copies of what they were expecting. The website is currently offline.
(I tried to call the RCMP spokesperson to confirm this, but their office apparently closes before 3:45pm on a day they issue a major news release.)
Garcia Media Group, which was the company behind the operation, distributed the DVDs through the following nearly-identical websites:
as well as a number of other domains that have since been turned into spam sites.
Many of the sites listed above are still operational and will still gladly accept your credit card information.
Not that anyone should be held responsible for being defrauded, but some simple sleuthing on the part of surfers could have prevented their losing money to these scam sites:
It should be noted, of course, that this is bootlegging in the traditional sense, profiting off the selling of copied copyrighted material. It is clearly covered under existing copyright law, and it’s clearly illegal.
The RCMP says it started an investigation in February (why did it take them that long?). Let’s hope they have a solid case that will result in long sentences and heavy fines, and that everyone who has been scammed will be refunded.
UPDATE (Dec. 25): Missed this TQS video of the operation, including stacks of dozens of DVD burners that practically bring it into the territory of cartoonish supervillainy.
TQS, which you’ll remember is in serious financial trouble, blaming it on a lack of revenue from cable operators to which they’re not entitled, asked CIBC World Markets to conduct a business review and tell them what they should do with themselves to avoid going under.
The answer, apparently, is bankruptcy protection and a major overhaul. Ouch.
TQS is owned 60/40 by Cogeco and CTVglobemedia.
UPDATE: Le Devoir goes into detail about the network’s troubles and owner Cogeco’s financial situation. It even adds an editorial cartoon.
UPDATE (Dec. 19): More stories about the network’s troubles:
UPDATE (Dec. 20): Patrick Lagacé writes eloquently about how Quebec media, and not just Radio-Canada, have special treatment from the CRTC that forces people to subscribe to their channels whether they want to or not.
The idea of blaming Radio-Canada for being government-funded is kinda funny. People blame the Mother Corp when they waste government money on unpopular programming. Then they blame RadCan for popular programming.
Considering TVA, an entirely private company, is killing TQS in the ratings, the blame seems a bit misguided. Perhaps if they just stopped producing crap…
UPDATE (Dec. 21): The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business has an article about Radio-Canada and how it’s a ratings success compared to CBC’s ratings failure. I’m sure the fact that CTVglobemedia owns the Globe and 40% of TQS has nothing to do with the article’s negative stance toward RadCan.
The article also misses one very important point in comparing CBC and Radio-Canada: French TV receives 22% of the CBC’s budget, and English TV 36%. That’s a pretty significant advantage for RadCan considering the number of francophones in Canada’s population.
UPDATE (Dec. 22): La Presse’s Nathalie Petrowski asks what Quebec would lose if TQS just disappeared.
A successful walkout by freelancers at MTV Networks (or “permalancers,” who still have a lot more benefits than I get) has got me thinking: Could something similar happen here? What if all the freelancers that media outlets rely on for regular columns suddenly decided to stop working for a week?