Simon Lacroix’s Total Crap (I’m a big fan) is returning for a fourth edition at Club Soda Sept. 28 as part of the Spasm festival… which starts a month later. $10 in advance ($12 through Ticketpro), $15 at the door.
Category Archives: Media
Emmy “Interactive TV” award just a gimmick
Al Gore was just on stage at the Emmys to receive an award for “outstanding achievement for interactive television” on behalf of his broadband “TV” network Current.tv (Gore actually got the website’s name wrong, calling it “current.com”. That website quickly crashed under the load of Emmy-watching visitors.) The presentation of this inaugural award came complete with a lame live video feed from MySpace’s Tom Anderson (is he too good for the Emmys already to be there in person?).
The show wasn’t clear on what exactly “interactive television” is. Its call for entries for the award is somewhat more specific, but still leaves a lot of questions. Here’s their explanation for the three categories they have in this area:
- Interactive television “Program” is defined as a single show, originally aired or transmitted during the eligibility year that is delivered via broadcast, cable, satellite, broadband, or mobile networks, and that incorporates one or more participatory interactive features that enhance the viewing experience.
- Interactive Television “Series” is defined as episodic programming that has been or continues to be available during the eligibility year and delivered via broadcast, cable, satellite, broadband, or mobile networks, incorporating participatory interactive features that enhance the viewing experience.
- Interactive television “Service” is defined as a television network or other distributor of programming offering one or more participatory interactive features that enhance the viewing experience across a range of programs or series, and that have been or continues to be available during the eligibility year and delivered via broadcast, cable, satellite, broadband, or mobile networks.
So an interactive show is defined as a “show” (how specific), delivered by just about any medium, with “participatory interactive features” which are also not explained.
If the Emmys want to get into online videos, that’s one thing. Then everything original uploaded to YouTube could be eligible for an Emmy.
But that doesn’t seem to be what they’re doing here. Instead, they go after the mainstream web publishers like Current, have them pay the $600 entry fee, and then explain to the judges what’s so great about their “interactive” programming:
(Entries must include) A linear / non-interactive video recording that demonstrates the viewer experience and highlights the features and functionality of the interactive television program, series, or service. The video recording must not exceed 6 minutes in length and must be submitted on Beta SP or Digi Beta tape format. It must provide a minimum of either two minutes of, OR the combined total running time of, the interactive elements in the program, series, or service, whichever is shorter, and must include the interactive feature(s), either contiguous or edited, in an order that is closely representative of the actual viewer experience.
The academy needs to decide if it wants to include online-produced video in its eligibility criteria (fortunately, it’s at a point now where there’s still a dividing line between television and online video). If it does, then why not include DVDs, advertisements, wedding videos, or any other form of video? If not, then it needs to stick to television as we know it and stop with the stupid gimmicks.
The right way and wrong way to blog the Emmys
There’s nothing better on tonight (except re-runs of Family Guy/American Dad on Global, Anchorman on ABC, the NFL’s New England Patriots on NBC/TSN, and the Weather Network’s long-term forecasts), so I’m watching the Emmys.
Of course, it’s not enough to be watching the Emmys, you have to read someone liveblogging it too. Something to keep you entertained during Ray Romano’s monologue. (It’s clear why some of the awards were previously presented, because they needed more time for long, unfunny monologues and skits.)
There’s a few options for Emmy liveblogging, but I’ll point to two with opposite mentalities:
FOX has five people you’ve never heard of sitting in the audience with blackberries in their hands, contributing to a blog on its website. The blackberries apparently prevent them from using punctuation, capital letters, or from spelling anyone’s name right. Here’s a sampling of some of the comments:
- “ray remono is a comedic genious he had the audience in tears”
- “I’m quick like a squirrell.”
- “whod of thought eva l could get any hotter”
- “hahaha yay justin!”
- “queeny is in the house”
Most of the other posts have about the same level of insight and grammar.
On the other side of the spectrum, The Gazette’s Basem Boshra is sitting in front of a TV liveblogging the Emmys for the Inside the Box blog. A sampling:
- 8:47: Biggest upset of the night so far as Late Night with Conan O’Brien snags the writing in a variety, comedy or music series trophy over heavyweights such as the Daily Show, Colbert Report and Late Show with David Letterman. (Although the winner for best goofy video to accompany the list of nominees – always one of the high points of any Emmy broadcast – goes to the team from Bill Maher, for their priceless send-up of the Sen. Larry Craig mess,)
- 8:59 p.m.: A grizzled-as-ever Robert Duvall spends a little too long extolling the virtues of the western after winning the award for best actor in a minseries or movie for Broken Trail, presented to him by Heroes’ Ali Larter and 24’s Kiefer Sutherland, the latter who was in full-on Sutherland-gravitas mode.
It’s not like the latter tells me much I couldn’t tell from simply watching the show. But at least it doesn’t treat me like an idiot.
UPDATE: From Sunday’s Gazette:
Sacrilege! How could they get the name of his show wrong?
Big media is stealing your photos
Local blogger Julie Belanger is peeved at 24 Heures. They published a photo of hers, without permission or credit, to illustrate a story.
It’s the kind of stuff you expect from amateur operations. Do a Google Image search and copy whatever looks good. Take a stock photo from Getty Images or iStock without paying for it. Or just go on Flickr, ignore the copyright or copyleft notices and use a photo for commercial uses, with or without attribution. TVA isn’t above it.
What makes this case interesting is the response she got from the editor: The photo was sent along with a press release, so they’re not responsible.
Bullshit.
Whether or not this was done (the organization that sent it denies that any photo was attached and the release on Telbec backs them up), it’s the newspaper’s responsibility to ensure that photos and text they publish are not protected by copyright. Just like you can’t get away with having stolen merchandise just because you bought it from someone dirt cheap in good faith, you can’t simply pass the buck on copyright infringement.
If the organization sent the newspaper a photo and made it clear that there was no problem publishing it, then the newspaper should sue the organization and the photographer should sue both.
Sadly, because these photographers don’t have copyright lawyers on retainer, big media can simply screw them over.
UR abdicating ur responsibilities
The Sudbury Star (an Osprey Quebecor paper) is launching a new user-generated web portal, lamely called “UR Sudbury“. As they describe it, it’s a “supernova” of journalism, taking advantage of “citizen media” to expand the newspapers’ coverage and bring the community together.
But to media critics, it sounds like the Star is telling the community to “do it yourself.”
It’s another example of what happens when media managers read about “Web 2.0” from marketing books and fail to get what it’s all about. They miss that whole part about building a community and get right to the part about “crowdsourcing” and how that’s going to save them money.
But crowdsourcing journalism abandons the very strengths mainstream media have: fairness, reliability, fact-checking, sound news judgment and professionalism. It’s not so much a problem with community event listings or stories about grandma’s 100th birthday, but once it starts moving into the area of real news — even local news — then it’s attaching the paper’s name to anonymous postings on a web forum.
Right now, UR Sudbury isn’t a “supernova” or a revolution. It’s a badly-designed Craigslist.
MédiaMatinQuébec: Changing the face of labour stoppages
On the occasion of MédiaMatinQuébec’s 100th edition, blogger Tetoine is encouraging bloggers to show support for the Journal de Québec employees’ alternative paper.
Since the workers at the Journal were locked out (or began striking in sympathy for locked-out workers) in April, what might seem like a simple labour disruption has truly taken on a life of its own. The workers, who wanted anything but picketing outside the offices of the paper where no one would see them, started their own paper, giving it away free.
In the months since, the Journal has been trying to use the courts to shut MédiaMatinQuébec down, claiming that it’s disloyal of striking employees to start their own paper. Quebecor lost that battle last week.
To keep the Journal running, management has been running wire copy, unedited press releases and stories from the Journal de Montréal (despite objections from the journalists writing them), and producing the paper with the help of 14 extra managers they suddenly decided to hire just before the contract expired last year. (The employees won a case last month getting four employees declared “scabs”) To show how seriously they take this matter, they also cancelled employees’ subscriptions to the Journal and banned MédiaMatinQuébec from what few stores they control.
The workers, meanwhile, have been busy. Producing a free paper every day hasn’t been easy or cheap, but they’ve been getting a lot of financial and moral support from labour unions, politicians (PQ, NDP) local businesses, fellow journalists, and of course the Quebec City reading public. They’ve handed out millions of copies, and launched a website at mediamatinquebec.com. They’ve even started stealing away advertisers.
But when it comes down to it, the only real winner in all this is Le Soleil, which is taking advantage of the strike to position itself as the Quebec City paper, and starting to recoup some of the readership it lost to the Journal after Le Soleil’s workers went on strike 10 years ago.
I don’t necessarily blindly support the workers in this case, and I certainly don’t support the Journal. But it’s hard not to be impressed with what’s been done and how they’re still going five months later. Stoppages at transit authorities and cemeteries stopped only after threats from the government. Since the populace doesn’t care much about a paper not producing original journalism, this stalemate looks like it could go on forever.
So long as organized labour keeps funding MédiaMatinQuébec and puts food on its employees’ tables.
For more details, consult this timeline of events.
How many Gazette blogs can we take?
For the past month, The Gazette has been launching a new blog every week on average. Year One, Words and Music, In the Game. Good ideas which sadly use the badly-designed CanWest blogging platform instead of the proven successful formula of Movable-Type-based Habs Inside/Out.
The latest is Inside the Box, a TV blog featuring former TV critic Basem Boshra along with TV Explorer columnist Denise Duguay, Gazette online manager Asmaa Malik and blogging favourite Mike Boone.
It’s nice to see the paper get back to original TV coverage, and hopefully this blog will concentrate on local television instead of what’s coming out of Hollywood and start talking about local TV again. It’s something that’s been seriously missing since the TV column was outsourced to CanWest’s Alex Strachan.
(Some) media return to the scene of the Dawson crime
One year later, Dawson is remembering. A ceremony starts at 12:30, timed to coincide with the incident. Let’s see how the TV networks are covering it.
Continue reading
The Dawson shooting: As it happened
(I don’t quite get this “as it happened” re-run news coverage fad going on. CNN did it last year with its 9/11 coverage, replaying tapes of that morning in real-time. MSNBC did the same this year. But if it works for them, I might as well dredge up something from my archives.)
One year ago today, a tall gunman went into Dawson College dressed in black clothing and a black trenchcoat at about 12:41pm, and fired an automatic weapon at random, shooting students. Anastasia DeSouza, 18, died on the scene, and 19 other people were injured, many seriously. They spent between a few hours and a few weeks in hospital. The gunman, Kimveer Gill, was shot in the arm and then turned one of his guns on himself.
I was at home that day on a day off from work. I first heard about the shooting a few minutes after it happened, when it was mentioned in passing at the end of CTV News at noon. What follows are my observations of news coverage of the incident as it happened that day. (The links are a year old, so some of them may not work anymore)
Newspaper websites still doing things half-assed
Editor & Publisher has a special article on the lessons learned by newspapers’ online ventures. There are 12 in total, but they can all essentially be summed up in one:
The Web isn’t a free lunch. You have to put real effort into it before it can succeed.
But you need details, so let’s get into them. So here’s my take on those 12 lessons.
Copy editors at the Globe are drunk again
I count four errors over the three lines of that headline. That’s pretty bad even by web standards.
CJNT: Multicultural American celebrity news
Once upon a time, Montreal had a low-budget multi-ethnic television station whose mission it was to provide a space where allophones could communicate. The station was called CJNT, and broadcasted over the air on channel 62.
Then the channel was acquired by a media company, which was in turn acquired by CanWest/Global. CanWest forced the station to declare bankruptcy, and has been egging the CRTC to allow it to reduce its ethnic content to put more commercially viable programming on instead.
The latest sad move in this direction came in April, when CanWest announced that its CH stations would be rebranded as “E!” entertainment (read: celebrity gossip) channels. That change took effect last Friday, and the channel’s been running all sorts of “E!” programming from the U.S. network ever since.
But what about its commitment to 60% multicultural programming? The channel still runs its multicultural shows, many during prime-time (the CRTC rules require this). And in between, they provide E! celebrity gossip shows dubbed in other languages. Now you can hear about Britney Spears in Portuguese!
Not only is celebrity gossip bad in and of itself, but to take a channel designed to give a voice to those who can’t get access to commercial airwaves, and use that channel (to the extent allowable by law) to broadcast unimportant information about people who have so much television coverage that they take great pains to limit it…
Kind of ironic, don’t you think?
Needless to say, the only reaction this change has gotten in the blogosphere is bad: “Tripe.”
CTV: Less news, more graphics
CTV News Montreal has flashy new titles super-imposed at the bottom of news reports. In addition to the standard text-over-blue-bar, there’s now clip art or stock photos that are relevant to the story. A map of Iraq for a story about the war. The logo of the city for a municipal affairs story. Flames for a story about a fire.
What gets me is that there are people paid to do this. People spend time during their day finding stock photos and photoshopping them into graphics. People who could otherwise be performing acts of real journalism.
Sadly, it appears CTV is more interested in flashy gimmicks like uninformative graphics and pointless live standups to introduce pre-packaged news reports than it is in hiring more journalists to tell us what’s happening in our city.
Get your overpasses straight
Well, the Quebec government has started inspections on those 135 structures it says are “at-risk”. And of the 20 they’ve inspected so far, nine require major repairs or complete replacements.
Now here I was all eager to update my map of crumbling Quebec overpasses and bridges using this CBC Montreal story. It lists two bridges that will be replaced and eight more that will need major repairs. (Yeah, I know that adds up to 10 and not 9, but journalists don’t do math.)
It didn’t take long before I started having doubts about the list.
First of all, I can’t find out where they got it. The transport ministry’s website doesn’t have it in any of the documents related to their inspections of the first 20 structures, and no other news organization has any specific list of structures.
Secondly, their descriptions are vague. One of the overpasses needing “major repair” is “Highway 10 overpass in Marieville.” That’s great and all, but there are four overpasses on Highway 10 in Marieville on the list of 135 structures under review.
Finally, some of it is just plain wrong. One of the two listed for demolition is “Route 104 overpass in Franklin, Montérégie.” But Route 104 doesn’t go anywhere near Franklin. The western tip of Route 104 (in St. Jean sur Richelieu) is 59km away from the town. It was probably just a typo (there’s a Route 202 overpass in Franklin on the list), but it’s kind of important to get these things right, and without any other sources to back this already-faulty information up, I can’t use it. (UPDATE: LCN uses the same faulty description, so I guess it must be the transport department that got it wrong)
And that makes me cranky.
On the plus side, I found this proprietary (read: sucky) Google-Maps-style atlas of the 135 structures under inspection. Sadly, it doesn’t give any information about the status of the evaluations of the individual structures. But I’ll use it to pinpoint the location of some of the bridges I couldn’t map exactly.
And I’ve updated the list of City of Montreal-run overpasses which needed inspection to show most of them have reopened to heavy trucks.
CKUT Radio-Not-McGill?
Just when you think silly disputes only happen at Concordia, McGill University is refusing to hand over CKUT funding until the radio station comes to a formal agreement with the university over the use of the name “Radio McGill”.