Category Archives: Media

| Media

Media News Digest: Press council reverses Homolka blame, the Roast of Tony Marinaro, Celine Cooper ends Gazette column

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At the CRTC

  • The commission has published the applications for the acquisition of Évasion and Zeste by Quebecor and Newcap by Stingray. The deadline for comments is Sept. 4.
  • Looks like no public comments were filed with the CRTC about the proposed licence renewal of CFNV 940.
  • The proposed acquisition of RNC Media radio stations by Cogeco prompted only two comments, one by ADISQ questioning Cogeco’s plans for expanding the Rythme FM network and suggesting closer monitoring of licence compliance, and one by District Média seeking assurances that Cogeco won’t abandon its affiliation agreement for Rythme FM in Saguenay now that it will own stations in that market.
  • The commission has denied an application by Bell Media to boost the power of CKKW-FM (KFUN 99.5) in Kitchener. Bell argued that thermal ducting was causing interference to the signal and that people in Kitchener were getting the HD Radio signal of WDCX-FM Buffalo. The CRTC said CKKW adding HD Radio to its own signal would probably solve the HD Radio interference, and analog interference problems it reported were not from people in its primary service area.

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| Radio

CHOC-FM in St-Rémi to shut down

After 19 years on the air, and only months after a $220,000 upgrade to boost the power of its transmitter, community station CHOC-FM 104.9, which serves the MRC des Jardins de Napierville, announced on Friday that it is shutting down on Monday.

The station had exhausted both human and financial resources, leading to the decision, the announcement said.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. After about a decade of trying solutions including adding two retransmitters, the station had finally succeeded in getting a power boost that allowed it to be received through its licensed area. The boost, approved in 2016, allowed the station to increase its maximum power from 250W to 1,714W (though in reality the previous transmitter was putting out much less power than that because of technical issues).

The station also worked on the marketing side, organizing a “Tournée CHOC” in 2016 with 50 events over 50 weeks.

And it was also getting its regulatory affairs in order, after the CRTC called it to a hearing to deal with issues of licence compliance. It hired a new general manager, Serge Paquin (who spent 17 years at the Alliance des radios communautaires), to put its administrative affairs in order. In June, he appeared before the CRTC to try to reassure commissioners that the station was on the right track.

Though he didn’t give any hint that shutting down was a possibility, Paquin did foreshadow one of CHOC-FM’s major mistakes: a single-minded focus on dealing with its signal problems, saying it was their “absolute priority.”

Friday’s announcement called this project, which was finally completed in February, its “swan song” and said the many delays and costs associated with it had a major impact on its finances and pushed back other projects that could have helped financially, such as the launch of a radio bingo program and local ad sales.

The station told the CRTC it cost $220,000 to implement the transmitter upgrade.

And now, mere months later, that transmitter is being shut down.

Three permanent employees will lose their jobs as a result of this, including Paquin. The station had about 50 members, of which about half were considered active volunteers.

| Radio

Should the CRTC allow an English-language commercial radio station in Quebec City?

For at least the third time, the CRTC is about to make a call on whether Quebec City should be allowed to have an English-language commercial radio station.

An application by Evanov Radio subsidiary Dufferin Communications, which also owns stations running the Jewel format (including 106.7 in Hudson), plus CFMB 1280 and CHRF 980 in Montreal, prompted a request for comment by the commission in 2016 about whether a general call for applications should be issued. So far two applications (the other one for a French station) have been filed for the use of 105.7 MHz, considered one of the last available usable frequencies in the city.

On Wednesday, the CRTC issued another notice of consultation, effectively reopening the file. It never came to a decision in the case, ironically because of a lack of francophone commissioners. With recent appointments that problem has been solved.

This is Evanov’s second attempt to do this. In 2010, the CRTC denied a previous application by the company, ruling by majority vote that because the English-speaking population of Quebec is so small (1.1% speak it most often at home), “for all practical purposes there is virtually no advertising market in Québec for an English-language station” and “its service is almost entirely dependent on Québec’s French-language audience.”

In 2006, the CRTC similarly denied an application by Standard Radio (which at the time owned Mix 96, CHOM and CJAD, before it was bought by Astral Media the next year).

Why does it matter that an English station would attract a francophone audience? (After all, Montreal’s English-language music stations have larger francophone audiences than anglophone ones.)

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| Media

Media News Digest: White House bars CNN reporter, layoffs at NY Daily News

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At the CRTC

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TV

  • Roku has launched a free ad-supported streaming channel in Canada. The selection is pretty weak — highlights include the 1995 Will Smith/Martin Lawrence movie Bad Boys, 12 seasons of Unsolved Mysteries, some John Wayne movies and 3rd Rock from the Sun.
  • Bell signed a content deal at Just For Laughs with Jae and Trey Richards of 4YE, to produce an eight-part comedy web series called Judge Tyco for Much Studios.
  • Speaking of Just For Laughs, there was a lot of TV taping going on there. I don’t have an exhaustive list, but the ones I’m aware of:
    • The galas, as usual, recorded in both languages for various uses
    • France’s Canal+ at the Quebec/France show at Cinquième Salle, for broadcast this fall
    • An Amazon Prime Video documentary series following some of the New Faces at their Monument National and Katacombes performances
    • Netflix taping solo shows in French and English at Club Soda and Monument National
    • Comedy (soon to be CTV Comedy) recording the Katherine Ryan standup shows and Homegrown Comics show at L’Astral
    • Kevin Hart’s Laugh Out Loud recording LOL Live at Théâtre Berri
  • HBO will broadcast a recording of a live Flight of the Conchords special this fall.
  • OMNI begins the second season of scripted comedy series Second Jen on Aug. 4.
  • A plan is in place to bring back Buffy The Vampire Slayer to TV. But don’t worry, they’re not replacing the characters.
  • Hearst Television in the U.S. has shut down the transmitter for WNNE, its 40-year-old station in Hartford, Vt., which has sold its spectrum for $50 million for wireless companies to expand. WNNE, a sister station (and de facto retransmitter) of WPTZ in Plattsburgh, N.Y., has moved its city of licence to Montpelier and is sharing a channel with WPTZ. The net effect is virtually unnoticeable for viewers in the north of the state and in Canada, as digital channel 5.2 will still carry CW programming, with CW now the primary network of WNNE.

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| Media

Media News Digest: KIC Country licence renewed, Mulcair in and Farber out at CJAD, Tenneriello leaves City

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| Radio

TTP Media’s CFNV 940 plans to change format as it seeks licence renewal

CFNV 940 logo

The process to launch TTP Media’s talk radio stations in Montreal has taken so long that they’re now in the process of getting their licences renewed after the end of their initial seven-year term. And the publication of the application for the first of those stations suggests that the company may be moving away from its proposed news-talk format and toward health and wellness, which sounds like the kind of thing that has been tried on other AM stations in the market.

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| Media

Media News Digest: La Presse officially nonprofit, Comedy Gold sale approved, Globe hiring pot reporters

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| TV

Citytv to launch local evening newscasts in Montreal Sept. 3

More than a year after it was announced that Citytv is creating local evening newscasts in markets including Montreal, we finally have a launch date: Sept. 3.

On that date, CityNews launches newscasts at 6pm and 11pm in Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary.

Rogers has also announced staffing for those newscasts. In Montreal, the anchorless newscasts will be staffed by the following reporters (bios from the press release):

  • Akil Alleyne – Alleyne is a graduate of Princeton University and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he studied constitutional and international law. His previous experience includes stops at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) as a Research and Program Associate; and CBC where he assisted with production, and writing.
  • Andrew Brennan – A newly-minted reporter with Breakfast Television Montreal, Brennan will continue to engage Montrealers with the local buzz on CityNews. For the last five years, Brennan has been a news anchor and reporter at CJAD 800. He graduated from Concordia University with a double-degree in Communication Studies and Journalism. (He announced his move last week.)
  • Emily Campbell – Campbell is an experienced video journalist, most recently having worked in reporting and as an anchor with CJAD 800 News and her work has appeared on CNN.
  • Giordano Cescutti – With a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Concordia University, Cescutti is a recipient of the Sportsnet Scholarship in Sports Journalism for excellence in journalism and sports reporting. His previous experience includes MAtv, Montreal Gazette and CJLO 1690AM, where he was co-host and producer of award-winning sports talk show The Starting Rotation.

They will work under Supervising Producer Melanie Porco, who has been with Citytv Montreal since its launch in 2013. Two people have also been hired to work behind the scenes with the newscast in Montreal, which will be directed out of a centralized control room in Vancouver.

Last fall, Citytv hired two reporters in Montreal in preparation for the new newscasts: Tina Tenneriello and Cora MacDonald. MacDonald left Citytv recently to join Global Montreal. (UPDATE July 20: Tenneriello is also gone. She’s leaving to host a web series about “inspiring people transforming their communities through social initiatives”)

As previously announced, the newscasts will be an hour long, at 6pm and 11pm, seven days a week.

When the announcement was made, the plan was to have the newscasts running in the winter. Rogers wouldn’t say what caused the delay, beyond this: “The fall launch is reflective of our commitment to ensuring we are delivering a gold standard of local news in these markets.”

In Vancouver, the staff is:

  • Ashley Burr, formerly of CKPG in Prince George, Alta.
  • Kyle Donaldson, producer and on-air personality with Breakfast Television Vancouver
  • Travis Prasad, formerly a news writer at CTV Vancouver
  • Isabelle Raghem, formerly of CHEK News and CHCH
  • Tom Walsh, Breakfast Television reporter since 2017
  • David Zura, formerly of Roundhouse Radio in Vancouver
  • Mary Cranston, Thor Diakow and Greg Harper, existing Breakfast Television Vancouver reporters

In Calgary, the newly announced staff is:

  • Kristen Fong, formerly of Global News Radio
  • Kendra Fowler, formerly of 660 News
  • Crystal Laderas, formerly of 660 News.
  • Michael Lumsden, reporter for Breakfast Television Calgary since 2017
  • Jonathan Mumam, formerly of 660 News
  • Brittany Rosen, formerly of CTV Regina

CityNews launched in Edmonton and Winnipeg last fall (those stations had dropped their Breakfast Television programs, so launching newscasts became a requirement to meet new local news quotas). Once the new newscasts are running, City will be able to meet its local programming and local news conditions of licence with just the evening newscasts, meaning Breakfast Television will no longer be required.

“There will be no changes to BT as a result of the launch of CityNews Montreal,” Rogers spokesperson Michelle Lomack tells me, repeating what has been said previously. But that could always change as the decline of ad revenue puts more pressure to cut costs.

| Media, Montreal, Video

Four years later, from Toronto, it’s Parc Avenue Tonight Season 2

This post has been corrected.

Dimitrios Koussioulas interviews comedian DeAnne Smith during the CBC taping of Parc Avenue Tonight in 2013.

Remember Dimitrios Koussioulas? He was a flash in the pan around 2013. He had a web series called Parc Avenue Tonight, in which he interviewed locals late-night-talk-show style in his apartment, and CBC Montreal created a one-hour TV special out of that. That same summer, City TV aired a local lifestyle series called Only in Montreal in which he was one of three hosts.

And then, nothing. A second season of his show was filmed in 2014, but never got released. Only in Montreal was never renewed (though its timeless episodes spent a long time in reruns). And Koussioulas seemed to move on with his life.

And then, last Friday, this:

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| Media

Media News Digest: Cuts at Le Soleil, Jeff Fillion again, Rolling Stone redesign

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| Media

What black people think of SLAV

It’s a Jazz Festival show in which white people sing black slave songs. What could possibly go wrong?

That’s an oversimplification, but it’s what’s at the core of criticism about SLAV, a musical theatre production directed by Robert Lepage and performed by Betty Bonifassi, which was the subject of protests last week claiming it was cultural appropriation.

Whether white people can do things is a popular topic of discussion among white people in the media, so this controversy sparked quite a bit of commentary. Unfortunately, because there aren’t a lot of dark-skinned opinion leaders in this country or this province, we didn’t get to hear much in the mainstream press from people whose personal experiences might give them more nuanced views about this topic.

We’re getting better, though, both because there are more media sources out there and because existing ones are starting to acknowledge their lack of diversity. So here I’ve compiled links to local black commentators who offer their opinions on the subject. And those opinions aren’t all the same.

  • Aly Ndiaye, aka Webster: “Like it or not, the question of race is at the very heart of the American slave system. It was purged from the piece. We cannot talk about slavery in the Americas without addressing this issue.”
  • Fabrice Vil, Le Devoir: “Il n’est pas question de censurer la démarche artistique. Mais comme l’a suggéré Nathalie Bondil, les artistes devraient éviter de pécher par arrogance ou indifférence. La voie qu’elle propose est celle de la conversation, ce à quoi les créateurs, ici, ferment la porte.”
  • Vanessa Destiné, Tabloïd: “J’étais beaucoup sur mes gardes en arrivant dans la salle, mais j’en suis sortie agréablement surprise. Je n’ai pas été émue, ni renversée, mais sachez que la souffrance des esclaves n’est pas minimisée, le rôle des Blancs n’est pas excusé et je n’ai pas non plus senti qu’on cherchait à s’approprier quoi que ce soit. Il y a des passages qui m’ont fait tiquer parce que l’équipe n’a pas su éviter le piège des clichés, mais bon, je vais survivre et vous aussi.”
  • Marilou Craft, Urbania: “À mes yeux, toute œuvre forme un discours qui s’inscrit dans un dialogue plus large : une œuvre reflète la société où elle s’inscrit autant qu’elle l’éclaire. L’analyser, ce n’est donc pas seulement mieux la comprendre, mais aussi mieux se comprendre.” (This post, published in December, proceeds to interview Bonifassi.)
  • Craft, again: “Il se trouve que j’ai vu le spectacle. Et non seulement mes questions initiales quant au processus de création demeurent-elles entières, mais elles se superposent maintenant à davantage de réserves quant à certains choix artistiques.”
  • Émilie Nicolas, Québec inclusif (via a Radio-Canada interview): “Certaines personnes décident de reproduire cette culture, sans donner de crédit ou de récompense financière aux gens qui l’ont créée. Ça reproduit les dynamiques de vol et de pillage qui font partie de la colonisation. Quand on parle d’appropriation culturelle, fondamentalement, c’est ancré dans des rapports de pouvoir inégalitaires dans une histoire très précise. C’est profondément blessant pour les gens de voir encore une fois ce qu’ils créent être pris, sans que rien leur reste en retour.”
  • Frédéric Pierre, actor: “L’appropriation académique de l’histoire des « Noirs » ou des « Peuples des premières nations » me préoccupe et je serai toujours le premier à militer pour que les livres d’histoire soient ré-écrits avec l’accord et la collaboration de ces dites communautés. Mais laissons les artistes tranquilles. Laissons des artistes « Blancs » être touchés et émus par cette histoire et ses chants qu’elle a générés…même si c’est une compréhension différente. Le fond demeure le même.”
| Media

Media News Digest: Postmedia cuts again, journalists allowed to block on Twitter, StarMetro lays off 21

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| Media

Media News Digest: More repeats on CBC News Network, QCNA Awards, new editors at Toronto Star and Le Devoir

News about news

At the CRTC

  • The commission held a hearing this week where four radio stations begged for their lives, err, I mean explained their chronic issues with licence compliance — CKMN-FM Rimouski, CHOC-FM Saint-Rémi, CKWR-FM Kitchener and CKUN-FM Christian Island. The transcript is here.
  • A commission letter to the Bell Fund, an independent production fund set up by Bell to dole out some of its mandatory contributions to Canadian content, says that its board makeup appears to be insufficiently independent of Bell. This is part of a complaint by several broadcasting groups that a new program set up by the fund unfairly discriminates against smaller broadcasters.
  • RNC Media has asked the CRTC to maintain its Independent Local News Fund allocation despite having shut down TV station CKRN-DT in Abitibi. RNC says it has moved all CKRN’s news resources to CFVS (its V affiliate) and produces the same amount of local news in the market as before.
  • Colba.Net has thrown in the towel on a TV distribution service in Ontario, and handed its licence back to the commission.
  • Native radio station CKOK-FM Nain, N.L., has been told it can’t be exempt from the national public alerting system, despite the argument that such a regulation is at odds with UNESCO’s Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.
  • Licence renewals for Pattison-owned radio stations CKWD-FM (Wild 95.3) Calgary and CKNO-FM (102.3 NOW!) Edmonton

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  • The Quebec Community Newspaper Association awards winners list has been posted. In the overall newspaper category, first place goes to Kahnawake’s Eastern Door, and second and third place to two editions of The Suburban.

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Media News Digest: Influence questioned, Rogers cuts 75, Fazioli out at City

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