Category Archives: Media

January 19, 2019 | Media

Media News Digest: La Presse union deal, Cogeco drops TSN/RDS streaming, new CEOs at Postmedia and Videotron

News about news

Why I hate #ATIP. I'm after having trimmed this request a couple of times, and yet I still get this response from a federal department.
2022? Seriousreally? pic.twitter.com/xMZ3mCP3cO

— Tonda MacCharles (@TondaMacC) January 7, 2019

The Canadian Press is eliminating its French-language radio headlines service, as well as its newsroom video editing service. The latter will instead be outsourced to Pagemasters North America, which may hire (at less favourable working conditions) some but not all of the talented people losing their jobs.
Vice is not giving up in its legal battle with the RCMP over an order for journalist Ben Makuch to hand over data related to communications with an Islamic State fighter. Vice’s lawyers are now arguing the order should be quashed because the fighter in question is dead.
The union representing workers at La Presse has reached a deal in principle with the employer on a new contract. It will be presented to members on Jan. 22.
A recently released study looked at how much of a presence public relations has in news articles from Quebec newspapers, repeating (with some improvements) a similar 1988 study. Although the headline is that more stories have some PR elements in them, a key finding is that the percentage of stories that come from a single PR source has dropped by more than half. It’s also worth noting that a lot of things count as PR here, from attending a press conference to stuff posted on Twitter to getting a quote from a spokesperson. I might argue that as organizations have gotten bigger over the pas 30 years, the use of more formalized PR has become a necessity, and is not necessarily indicative of some sort of problem. (Another finding is that, based on a sample size of two editions, La Presse tends to have more sources per article than the Journal de Montréal.)
The Globe and Mail is opening a bureau in Thunder Bay, and will even have its editorial board move there briefly.
The Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec has backtracked on a decision to eliminate the “local and regional” news category from its annual awards, after an outcry from members.
New legislation proposed by the Ford government in Ontario could cause major problems for student media at Ontario universities. The legislation would make it mandatory for students to be able to opt out of fees for student activities, like student newspapers and radio stations.
Canadian University Press held its annual national conference this month, and handed out its John H. McDonald Awards for student journalism. Next year’s conference will be in Montreal.
Concordia University journalism students have voted to strike for a week to protest against unpaid internships. The date of the strike is unclear, meant to coincide with a larger student strike. Note that the strike means not going to classes. It’s unclear how it would affect the internships themselves. The journalism department is reviewing rules that require that for-credit internships be unpaid only.
It’s Canadian Women’s Hockey League All-Star weekend, which means we have the annual why-doesn’t-women’s-hockey-get-enough-attention story. Meanwhile the CWHL is making covering the game itself difficult for journalists. The game will be broadcast Sunday at 1:30pm on Sportsnet.
A fake Washington Post newspaper showed up at protests in D.C. claiming Donald Trump had resigned. Obviously the Post was unamused.

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January 17, 2019 | Radio

Cogeco completes radio stations’ transition to new antenna on Mount Royal

A five-stage reorganizing of radio station antennas on the Mount Royal Antenna has been completed, with the most notable change being that the city’s most powerful FM transmitter CKOI is now broadcasting from Mount Royal instead of the CIBC building downtown.

Cogeco Media president Michel Lorrain told me the process (approved by the CRTC in September) was completed before the holidays, but the stations were at 80% power until everything could be properly tested, and the ramp up to full power happened last week.

(Warning: Lots of technical nerdy antenna talk ahead.)

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January 14, 2019 | TV

CRTC approves Quebecor’s acquisition of Évasion and Zeste TV channels

Quebec’s television industry is about to lose a voice.

On Monday, the CRTC approved the proposed acquisition of Groupe Serdy, owner of French-language specialty channels Évasion (travel) and Zeste (food) by Quebecor’s Groupe TVA for $21 million.

The acquisition was challenged by V, on the grounds that TVA already has too much power in the market, but the CRTC said the increased market share would be minimal, and in any case still lower than the 45% limit above which it would normally deny such applications.

The application to transfer the licences was supported by dozens of interveners, including many producers.

In addition to $1.8 million in tangible benefits, split between the Canada Media Fund, the Quebecor Fund and Telefilm Canada’s Talent Fund, the transaction will also result in an increase in Canadian spending quotas for both channels, as they’re integrated into the TVA group licence. Évasion must spend 40% of its revenues on Canadian content, while Zeste has no quota. As a condition of approval, both must now come up to the TVA group quota of 45%. And 15% of their revenues must be spent on “programs of national interest” (scripted drama and comedy, documentary and award shows) for the TVA group.

A similar transaction, involving Bell attempting to buy Historia and Séries+ from Corus, was blocked by the Competition Bureau.

January 14, 2019 | Radio

CFNV 940 AM begins simulcasting programming from online radio station

Robert Arcand in the CNV studio, via one of its webstreaming cameras

Several radio watchers have noticed that they’ve been hearing live voices on CFNV 940 AM the past few days, talking between the songs and giving weather and news updates.

Though the programming is still mostly music, far from the news-talk-debate format that owner TTP Media promised the CRTC when they first applied for a licence in 2011, or even the wellness-talk format that they seemed to move to when they renewed that licence in 2018, there’s at least something. (The hosts they have are veterans of the low-budget radio scene, where wellness programs have flourished, with shows on stations like CJMS 1040, CJLV 1570.)

But the voices are not original to the station. Instead, the shows are being simulcast from Mirabel-based digital radio station CNV (it appears to be a mix of programming from its main feed and its Succès absolus second channel, but there’s also some music that’s coming from neither of those sources).

Hosts being simulcasted include Robert Arcand (weekday mornings) and Diane Lafrance (weekdays at 11am). On their shows and on social media, they’re noting the simulcast.

No word on anything yet from the English sister station CFQR 600. I’ll update this if I hear more.

January 6, 2019 | Media

Media News Digest: Public editor roundups, Brunette is Breakaway’s new host, Chesterman retires Gazette column

Okay everybody, back to work. Here’s what you missed over the holidays.

News about news

https://twitter.com/PaNormandin/status/1074671122547920897

The number of journalists in Quebec is going down. (But meanwhile, the number of journalists employed by the New York Times and Washington Post is going up.)
The Alberta Press Council shut down on Dec. 31. I’d link to the press release, but the website has already been shut down. The group started in 1972.
Der Spiegel, the German magazine known for having among the most solid fact-checking in the industry, has been humiliated by revelations that one of its journalists, Claas Relotius, apparently invented sources for at least 14 articles he wrote for them. The deception came to the magazine’s attention after a fellow journalist became suspicious of Relotius’s work. This post lays out just how wrong the journalist’s reporting was. It even gets worse, with revelations he was soliciting donations for the fictional people he was writing about. And as the Columbia Journalism Review notes, the magazine is being criticized for being tone deaf in the reporting about its own crisis.
Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson criticizes her former employer for its anti-Trump coverage in her new book, says a story by Fox News. But Abramson tells The Associated Press her words were taken out of context and she has mainly praise for the organization.
The Google News Initiative has announced $25 million in funding to 87 news organizations in 23 countries on various technological development projects. Canadian recipients are Global News, Postmedia and TVO. The announcement doesn’t break down what each group got, or what their projects are.
The Journal de Montréal has started a possibly satirical “Centre d’observation du Québec-Bashing“, and has discovered J.J. McCullough, who for some reason keeps getting published in the Washington Post.
TVA Nouvelles has finally apologized — almost a year later — for a story it ran that accused a mosque of demanding that women be excluded from a nearby construction site. That turned out to be false after an investigation that TVA has not released.
Montreal Gazette editor Basem Boshra (my boss) apologized after its website posted a story from American Media Inc. (originally from Radar Online) about a “Tinder Horror Date” who stabbed a woman and was tased by police, later dying because of it. A lot of people on Twitter criticized the headline and tweets about the story for portraying the attacker as the victim or being apparently flippant about a Tinder date that left a woman seriously injured. (Boshra offers some subsequent advice for editors apologizing for screwups).
Toronto Star public editor Kathy English asked Star newsroom employees about what they wished people knew about their jobs. The result is a bit of a rosy picture of how much journalists care about getting facts right and informing the public.
Star assignment editor Ed Tubb lists the kinds of stories he’d like to see more of in a Twitter thread.
A major hack of prominent Germans’ personal data — including that of Chancellor Angela Merkel — was posted online, prompting a major scandal. The fact that far-right-wing politicians were excluded from this hack points to a political motive, and caution from journalistic sources on making use of the data (or even trusting it).

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January 3, 2019 | Radio

Nat Lauzon on her ears, her job, her love of dogs and random other stuff

Nat Lauzon in The Beat’s studio

In the decade or so I’ve been writing about local media, I’ve met most of the people in local TV and radio, at least in passing. But until December, Nat Lauzon wasn’t one of those people. She has worked weekends since 2011, so that has a lot to do with it. In fact, the only photo I had of her was this one taken of her while she was on the Virgin float at the St. Patrick’s Parade in 2011.

Nat Lauzon in 2011.

Nevertheless, I’ve wanted to write about her for a bit, because of the ironic situation she faces, being a person who deals with audio for a living but is losing her hearing.

It didn’t take long to convince my newspaper that this was a good story, and the result is this article that appears in Thursday’s paper. It focuses almost exclusively on an area in Lauzon’s head that’s smaller than a grape (or, well, two grapes since there’s one on each side), but since I had the chance to sit down with her, we talked about a bunch of other stuff, too.

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December 21, 2018 | Media

Journalists of Tomorrow … or not: Safia Ahmad

Every year, I speak to winners of Concordia’s journalism school awards as they’re presented at the Montreal Gazette offices. Today, one of the 2016 winners of the Philip Fisher bursary, Safia Ahmad.

Not everyone who graduates from journalism school goes into what you would normally think of as journalism. In fact, I would guess that a majority don’t. Some decide that journalism isn’t for them and pursue something entirely different, others struggle to find jobs (not everyone from my graduating class could be a national journalist at the CBC, not that I’m jealous or anything Catherine), but a lot of people find that their skills and passion are more suited to a job that is like journalism, but not quite.

There are a lot of what I would call journalism-adjacent jobs out there. Arguably, as a copy editor, I’m in one myself. And just because you’re not hounding prime ministers with questions doesn’t mean you’re not doing something valuable in the media ecosystem.

Safia Ahmad, after being honoured with a journalism award in 2016, became a summer reporting intern at the Montreal Gazette the next year, writing many stories that I and my colleagues edited.

But she’s since decided that it’s not for her, as she lays out below. Now, the 25-year-old born-and-bred Montrealer works in communications, notably as media relations manager for Les Canadiennes of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, where I’ve run into her at games.

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December 17, 2018 | Radio

Elias Makos to replace Leslie Roberts on CJAD 800

Elias Makos in 2013, before entering television puberty.

Elias Makos, who announced last week he was suddenly leaving Citytv’s Breakfast Television Montreal, has been hired at CJAD to host the 9am to noon show, replacing Leslie Roberts, who leaves at the end of this week.

The news was announced on CJAD’s newscast on Monday, via Bell Media press release, and with a post on CJAD’s website.

The not-very-creatively-named Elias Makos Show will feature “breaking news, debate, interviews, and discussion with listeners,” with a goal to not reinvent the wheel, Makos tells the Gazette’s Bill Brownstein.

In addition to CJAD hosting duties, Makos will be an online media analyst for CTV Montreal, returning to a role he had previously held on a freelance basis before joining BT.

Makos starts in his new roles on Dec. 31.

Update: A confidential source close to Elias Makos, whom I’ll name Malias Ekos, informs me that Mr. Makos doesn’t look like the picture above anymore. My source managed to acquire this image of Makos as he appears currently.

Elias Makos in 2018.

December 14, 2018 | Media

Journalists of Tomorrow: Josie Fomé

Every year, I speak to winners of Concordia’s journalism school awards as they’re presented at the Montreal Gazette offices. Today, the 2017 winner of the Susan Carson award, Josephine (Josie) Fomé.

Josie Fomé

I could write this long introduction about Josie Fomé and her history, but fortunately she’s already done that for a first-person photo essay on Concordia’s website.

In short, Fomé, 24, was born in Cameroon and grew up in Columbia, S.C. She studied at Dawson College and then did an undergraduate degree in Communication Studies with a minor in Human Relations.

“My very first job was as a cashier at my neighbourhood’s mom and pop grocery store, where I got paid waayy below minimum wage but also learned skills that still benefit me to this day,” she says. “After that, various work experiences have included camp counsellor, helpline phone operator, set up and take down of gyms at school, events assistant with Concordia’s Alumni department, receptionist, mail clerk, internship coordinator, etc. I’ve done so many temp jobs, some of my friends like to call me ‘Josie the temp.'”

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December 12, 2018 | Media

Media News Digest: Vice loses in Supreme Court, DeMelt replaces Schwartz at CTV, Makos leaves City

News about news

Maybe I'm being a little unfair. To provide the government's point-of-view, here's the list of their Access to Information progress, per the freshly-unredacted documents. pic.twitter.com/kwqn128evu

— Justin Ling (Has Left) (@Justin_Ling) December 12, 2018

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that Vice journalist Ben Makuch will have to turn over records related to interviews he conducted with Farah Mohamed Shirdon, a Canadian man suspected of being a fighter for the Islamic State (and now believed to be dead). The court ruled that there was no journalistic confidentiality in this case, and that the needs of the government outweighed the interests of protecting journalistic work product. Vice nevertheless called it “a dark day for press freedom.”
Time magazine has named a series of journalists, including Jamal Khashoggi, as its Person of the Year.
Winnipeg police and Global News disagreed on whether the latter should have published graphic images of a dead body. Global said it did not take the decision to do so lightly.
Montreal Mafia leader Francesco Del Balso has pleaded guilty to threatening TVA reporter Félix Séguin.
The Quebec government will study the future of the news media with parliamentary committee hearings.
The Ottawa Citizen editorial board followed Patrick Lagacé’s lead published an editorial in both languages on the Ontario government’s cuts to French-language services.
Le Droit published a special 16-page section on Franco-Ontarians.
The Journal de Montréal has selected a new columnist through its QUB Radio reality show: Madeleine Pilote-Côté. She was interviewed on LCN by Denis Lévesque, while the runners-up got free books published by Quebecor, in what can only be described as the most convergence-y thing ever.
An Arkansas school district suspended a high school newspaper after it printed a story about students transferring schools so they could play for a better football team. The articles have since been allowed to be republished with corrections after a national outcry, but the district still wants to review all stories before publication.
The Grande Guignolée des médias raised more than a quarter million dollars in Montreal.
The National Post’s Tristin Hopper was the latest to accuse CBC of unfairly competing with private media, leading to a rebuke from outgoing VP Heather Conway.
Québec solidaire went into a closed session during a policy debate and kicked out the media because they didn’t want to appear to be a divided party.
A public school board is trying to have a teacher fired for talking to the media about problems at her school that are affecting students’ education. A protest was held to support her.
The Quebec Press Council will not participate in a committee to determine eligibility for the federal government’s journalism tax credits, saying that is not part of its mandate.
An Ontario Court judge found that the editor-in-chief of the right-wing Your Ward News in Toronto did not commit a crime of making death threats by writing “there was the chance that some hothead who cares deeply about me and my family would lose it and do something illegal, like bludgeon the Kinsella’s to death (sic).”

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December 7, 2018 | Media

Journalists of Tomorrow: Stéphane Grasso

Stéphane Grasso in 2016.

Stéphane Grasso is an artist. His specialty is in film production, thanks to his education at Concordia’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema that started 15 years ago.

As he explains below, he produced documentaries for non-profits like World Vision, and that work led to a desire to focus on underrepresented people, so he decided to study journalism.

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December 6, 2018 | Radio

Quebec City still isn’t ready for its first English-language commercial radio station, CRTC finds

Evanov Radio’s controversial plan to launch Quebec City’s first English-language commercial radio station will have to wait some more after being denied again by the CRTC.

In a decision released Thursday, the commission said the Quebec City radio market “cannot sustain an additional radio station at this time” and that the two applications for new stations — the other by Gilles Lapointe and Nelson Sergerie is for a French station — would be returned.

Evanov had previously tried a decade ago to convince the CRTC to move forward with an English music station in the provincial capital, but the commission denied its application in 2010, in a controversial decision that included a dissenting opinion.

The application is controversial because the other stations in the market argue that Quebec City’s English-language population is far too small to sustain a commercial radio station, so Evanov would instead target the francophone population. By being an English station, it would not be subject to the 65% French-language music rule, which would give it an unfair competitive advantage by allowing it to play more American and U.K. hit songs that are very popular among francophone audiences.

Evanov, who wants to launch a Jewel brand station in Quebec City, argues it wants to serve the anglophone community as well as the anglophone tourist market (though Quebec City already has an English tourist information station), and that it has experience in running radio stations in small markets.

The 2010 decision includes a detailed analysis of the anglophone market in Quebec City. But today’s decision only analyzes the market conditions overall, without commenting specifically on the appropriateness of an English radio station in Quebec.

The current applications for Quebec City actually date from 2016, but were put on hold when the CRTC ran low on French-speaking commissioners.

Under CRTC rules, it won’t consider new applications for Quebec City for the next two years. In December 2020, they can try again.

The news was better in neighbouring communities. In Sainte-Marie-de-Beauce, an application by Attraction Radio for a second music station there will go ahead. And in Portneuf, which is technically still the home of CHXX-FM (Pop 100.9), the commission will proceed with an application by Michel Lambert. Both raised concerns from the commercial broadcasters in Quebec City for fear that they might eventually target the Quebec City market. The Beauce application was also opposed by Groupe Radio Simard, which owns stations in Saint-Georges-de-Beauce.

The applications themselves haven’t yet been published, but should be soon. a public hearing is scheduled for Feb. 20 (to hear an application for Leclerc Communication to buy CHOI Radio X and 91,9 Sports from RNC Media), but these items will not require any oral presentations.

December 5, 2018 | My articles, Radio

How The Beat beat Virgin (and other trends of Montreal radio ratings)

Numeris released its quarterly metered radio ratings today. There aren’t a lot of surprises, because it’s mostly the same numbers as the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that.

So instead of just excitedly reposting the top-line numbers or fetching the various spins by the broadcasters that make everyone look like they had the best quarter, I thought I’d take a look at some historical data and see how the stations are trending over time.

I did this exercise for Canada’s five metered markets for Cartt.ca after the last ratings book. If you’re a subscriber you can read them there: Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary, Toronto and Montreal.

In this post, I’ll go into some more detail about the Montreal numbers, with charts!

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December 4, 2018 | Radio

CRTC decision clears way for Kanesatake station to launch rebuild plan

CKHQ-FM Kanesatake in 2014.

There was a sigh of relief in Kanesatake on Monday that relations between the federal government and the Mohawk reserve wouldn’t be strained over a radio frequency coordination issue.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission released a decision denying a licence application for a new Christian music radio station in Lachute. The application by LS Telecom proposed a 300-watt station at 101.7 MHz.

That same frequency is used by CKHQ-FM (Kanesatake United Voices Radio), a low-power (27W) community station serving the reserve about 25 kilometres away. And though the applicant’s engineers said (and the CRTC agreed) that the new station could co-exist with this existing one, because CKHQ is low-power it does not have a right to its frequency and could be forced to find a new one if a licensed station would receive interference. Because of Kanesatake’s proximity to Montreal, there aren’t other frequencies available that would be nearly as good, even for such a low-power station.

The Lachute station would also have limited CKHQ’s ability to seek an increase in power (though the CRTC says it “would not affect the ability of CKHQ-FM to serve its principal market” and “would not prevent CKHQ-FM from expanding to a regular power station”).

The Lachute application was denied, not because of concerns about CKHQ, but because of issues with the application itself. The commission seemed to think it was a bad application in general, that LS Telecom “did not provide a quality application and did not demonstrate an understanding of the regulations and policies for commercial radio and religious broadcasting.” But it particularly showed concern with the complete lack of news programming proposed, even after the CRTC reminded them that such a thing is expected of commercial FM radio stations, religious or not.

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December 4, 2018 | Radio

Leslie Roberts leaving CJAD after two years

Leslie Roberts, who has been hosting the 9-to-noon show on CJAD 800 for two years, announced on Tuesday morning he will be stepping down from the job at the end of the month. His last show is Dec. 21.

Roberts told Andrew Carter he plans to do some travelling, and has accepted a position with travel website TravelToWellness.com, where he says he’s also been asked to launch a video channel, which he jokingly described as “Travel Travel 2.0” in reference to the former CFCF-12 show he contributed to back in the day.

He said his CJAD contract was expiring but he was asked to stay on a bit longer, and he is in talks with station management to continue to contribute in some capacity, perhaps as a regular panelist or analyst.

Roberts, whose father worked at CJAD, began his career in Montreal, mainly at CFCF, until he was hired first by Global Quebec then by Global Toronto, where he anchored its newscast for 14 years. Roberts resigned from the anchor chair at Global Toronto in 2015 after a Toronto Star investigation found that he owned a PR firm and his clients were appearing on his show without any disclosure.

He was brought in to CJAD in November 2016 to fill the hole left by Tommy Schnurmacher. At the same time, the station fired afternoon host Barry Morgan and upgraded Natasha Hall to his former slot.

UPDATE (Dec. 17): His replacement will be Elias Makos, hired away from Citytv’s Breakfast Television.