Category Archives: Media

| Radio

Radio Moyen-Orient complains to CRTC about CKIN-FM’s new Arabic focus

CKIN-FM 106.3, which was recently sold to a Toronto businessman, is in gross violation of its conditions of licence now that it has revamped its programming to make most of its schedule Arabic.

At least, that’s what a complaint by CHOU 1450, Radio Moyen Orient, would have the CRTC believe. And though the complainant’s frustration is understandable, I can’t find the condition of licence it’s accusing CKIN-FM of violating.

Before last year, CKIN-FM was a sister station to CKDG-FM 105.1, owned by Canadian Hellenic Cable Radio. The two stations are commercial ethnic radio stations, each required to serve several ethnic communities in several third languages. CHCR split its language offering between the two stations. It made CKDG English-language during peak hours, with the rest mostly Greek but a few other languages sprinkled in. CKIN was French-language during peak hours, with Spanish, Creole, Arabic, Romanian and Armenian in descending order of weekly airtime, plus a handful of other languages with less than four hours a week.

When Neeti P. Ray took over, there was a major overhaul at CKIN-FM, and the amount of Arabic programming increased from 8% to 68%, according to CHOU’s complaint. The station’s schedule lists it as having Arabic programming from midnight to 7pm weekdays, and all weekends except from 6 to 9am. Spanish programming airs from 7pm to midnight weekdays, and all six other languages the station is required to air get an hour each on weekend mornings.

CHOU, whose entire schedule is Arabic, is crying foul, and demands in its complaint that the CRTC order CKIN to devote no more than 8% (10 hours a week) of programming to the Arabic language, and to stop marketing itself as “la nouvelle voix arabe de Montréal.”

In its argument, CHOU cites comments that Ray made to the CRTC in applying to acquire the station:

The Applicant intends to continue this mix of languages, while maintaining CKIN-FM’s particular focus on programming directed to South Asian communities and a substantial amount of Spanish programming and related world-music programming (for which CKIN-FM is now well-known). … The principal change in programming will likely involve the production of more local and in-studio programming, particularly for South Asian audiences.

…

There is absolutely no reason for the applicant to change the programming mix and focus, which was recently reviewed by the CRTC and has been embraced Montrealers.

CHOU said that based on the information provided in the application, it chose not to intervene in the ownership change application. “If Mr. Ray had, in his application for transfer of assets, expressed his intention to broadcast this many hours of Arabic during the most attractive hours, we would have strongly opposed this change and would have asked the commission to deny the application,” it wrote in the complaint.

And it argues that Ray himself had noted that Montreal was not a large enough market to support two ethnic radio stations targeting the same ethnic group. (He wanted to start up a station for the south Asian community, and opposed (unsuccessfully) an application by Radio Humsafar for that reason.)

And it says that according to its analysis of a sample week, the station was short two ethnic groups and two languages in the number it is required to provide programming for in each week. CHOU says its complaint is valid regardless of the CRTC’s ruling on this particular compliance issue.

(Also unrelated is that CHOU recently got approval for a low-power FM retransmitter of its signal in St-Michel.)

What the licence says

So is CKIN-FM following its licence conditions?

The decision approving the transfer of ownership, and a new licence for the operation of the station, has conditions related to programming, requiring it to be directed to at least six cultural groups in at least eight languages. It also must ensure at least 60% of its schedule is in a language other than French or English, and at least 70% is ethnic programs.

But there are no conditions of licence setting a maximum or minimum for any given language. So legally Ray is allowed to have most of his schedule be Arabic and only an hour a week for all but two of the groups he’s supposed to cater to.

And though CHOU says Ray made commitments not to change the mix of programming on the station, the application does not explicitly state that there would be no change to the amount of programming for each language, nor does it include a sample programming grid.

The station may be ignoring the spirit of the ethnic broadcasting policy, but not the letter. At least not yet. The CRTC promised to begin a review of its ethnic radio policy as part of a three-year plan in 2014-15, then again in 2015-16, then again in 2016-17. At this rate we’re at least a year away from any policy change. But whether a minimum amount of programming should be established for each language/group might form part of that review.

Ray and CKIN-FM have not responded to the complaint. I will update this post when their response is filed.

CHOU’s complaint against CKIN-FM can be downloaded here (1.4 MB .zip). Comments about the complaint can be filed until 8pm ET on May 24. Note that all information submitted, including contact information, becomes part of the public record.

CKIN-FM’s reply

UPDATE (May 27): Ray has replied to the complaint, noting arguments similar to what I outline above. He also brings up that the CRTC responded to a similar complaint issued last fall (that also included Radio Shalom, CPAM Radio Union and Médias Maghreb), in which commission staff found that the increased Arabic programming didn’t break a condition of licence.

In summary:

  • Ray says CKIN-FM has complied with its licence obligations, and almost all of its programming is local
  • Ray acknowledges that for the week sampled, CKIN-FM was two languages short on the number it should broadcast. He explains this as a hiccup caused by a schedule change — Punjabi and Urdu programs were moved from Sunday to Saturday, causing both to be broadcast twice in the same week (the CRTC defines a week as beginning on Sunday and ending on Saturday).
  • Ray notes that the decision granting the ownership change explicitly states that the station is free to use whatever mix of third-language programming it wishes, provided it meets its licence requirements.
  • Ray says the station will reduce overlap with CHOU by skewing younger, and providing more music programming.

In the response, he writes:

We acknowledge that the amount of Arabic programming has increased recently. However, this increase is well justified by the size and continued growth of the Arabic-speaking population in Montre?al. The focus on Arabic programming reflects a considered business decision to place CKIN-FM on a more secure financial footing while providing a much needed improved level of service to one of Montre?al’s largest – and until now dramatically underserved – third-language groups.

…

This decision was not taken lightly. The Commission is well aware of the difficulties that the original owner of CKIN-FM had to maintain the station’s viability. After a lengthy and considered analysis of the needs of the Montreal market and what it would take to maintain viability going forward, it was decided to retain CKIN-FM’s substantial focus on Montre?al’s Spanish-speaking and Latino populations and to expand and update the Arabic programming offered on the station.

…

Originally, it had been intended to continue to offer more programming targeted to South Asian audiences. However, after a deeper analysis of the needs of the Montre?al market and the audiences already served, it became apparent that a South Asian focus would likely not provide the community with the most needed service – or offer the financial stability to support the station. … Whereas the South Asian radio market in Montre?al already had a number of radio programming options, and two new radio stations recently licensed by the CRTC specifically to target these language groups, the Arabic-language audience is considerably larger and has fewer programming options – indeed, really only one station with a substantial amount of Arabic content (CHOU AM).

…

In providing an increased level of Arabic programming, we have, however, been mindful of the existing radio service that is currently available to serve this population. CHOU AM offers programming that, in our estimation, skews toward a more mature audience. CKIN-FM’s programming strategy is to offer a younger format through predominantly music-based programming. This is intended to attract a younger audience and to offer that audience radio programming that is not otherwise available to them in Arabic.

Arabic is the most popular third language in Montreal, after Italian (which is served mainly by CFMB 1280), with 126,865 identifying it as their mother tongue.

Tangible benefits change

In a separate, unrelated application, Ray is asking the CRTC to reallocate funding he was required to provide as part of the CKIN-FM acquisition. Tangible benefits, a kind of tax on acquisitions imposed by the CRTC, normally go to Canadian content development funds according to a standard formula. Ray agreed to provide $41,430 of benefits to groups like Radio Starmaker Fund, FACTOR or MUSICACTION and the Community Radio Fund of Canada, plus some for other eligible initiatives at its discretion.

Rather than split up this money between these organizations, Ray is proposing to divert all of it to a scholarship program at Concordia University’s journalism department.

… given the relatively modest amounts involved, we believe that it would be of greater benefit to the community of Montréal to aggregate the annual benefit dollars and to designate a single beneficiary each year. Each of the annual amounts allocated to the different recipients is, on its own, not material within their overall operations. However, when a single recipient is selected, the amounts together can have a significant positive effect for the recipient.

It’s unclear why Ray is coming to this conclusion now as opposed to when the application was filed.

Diverting all the funding to a discretionary initiative like this not only makes for a bigger splash, but is also more self-serving. Funds like Starmaker and FACTOR obscure the source of funding, while a direct donation can get your logo plastered all over a thank-you event, with the words “tangible benefits” or “CRTC” not even mentioned anywhere in the press release about it.

Whether Ray is considering the promotional value of a donation, or just wants to save money on cheques, is unknown.

This application, which can be downloaded here (725kB .zip), is open for comment until June 15. You can comment on it here.

| Radio

Rob Kemp to host weekend mornings on The Beat

Rob Kemp

Half a year after being let go from CHOM as part of a larger bloodletting at Bell Media, Rob Kemp has landed at Cogeco’s 92.5 The Beat, where he’ll be in the company of many others he used to work in the same building with.

The Beat made the announcement Friday morning, saying he’ll be hosting the weekend morning show, 6-9am, “throughout the summer.” No specific start date is mentioned, but it’s “soon.”

Shaun McMahon, who hosts that show now, will be filling in on other parts of the schedule as everyone takes vacation.

But what about after the summer, when there’s less need for vacation fill-in? No word on that. Promotions Director Stéphanie Lagacé says they’re just focused on summer right now.

Then again, since they don’t know who the program director is going to be this fall, it makes sense not to think too far ahead.

Kemp is hardly the first person to leave Bell Media Radio’s home of 1717 René-Lévesque Blvd. (or Astral’s 1410 Fort St. before it) to move to Cogeco’s HQ in Place Bonaventure. The station has a habit, it seems, of stealing or picking up people from the other guy (particularly people at Virgin Radio). Among them:

  • Morning host Cat Spencer (poached from Virgin)
  • Afternoon drive host Cousin Vinny Barrucco (poached from Virgin)
  • Evening host Kim Sullivan (Virgin alum hired by The Beat after stints in Winnipeg and Ottawa)
  • Weekend host Nat Lauzon (poached from Virgin as she transitioned to part-time work)
  • Pete Marier (took on weekend work at The Beat after a contract dispute with CHOM, now works at Boom FM in Ottawa)
  • Murray Sherriffs (hired by The Beat after CJFM let him go as part of the Mix 96/Virgin Radio transition, let go three years later)
  • Interim Program Director Martin Tremblay (was formerly executive producer with NRJ/Rouge FM in Montreal)
  • General Manager Wayne Bews (former TSN 690 GM shuffled into CTV job when that position was eliminated, hired by The Beat until that position was eliminated as well)
| Radio

15 years of all-sports radio in Montreal

A wall of signatures at the former Team 990 office on Greene Ave. in Westmount.

A wall of signatures at the former Team 990 office on Greene Ave. in Westmount.

The anniversary almost went unnoticed. But 15 years ago this week, an all-sports radio station was created in Montreal. And over that decade and a half, its story has been one of stubborn perseverance, indifference by ownership, constant struggle with limited resources and a small but unusually loyal audience. It’s gone through some things no other station has, but it’s still there.

Rejected leftover of an acquisition

It began in 2000, when CHUM Ltd., owner of CKGM 990 AM (then Oldies 990) and CHOM 97.7 (formerly CKGM-FM), reached a deal with Standard Radio to swap assets in Montreal and Winnipeg. As a result of the deal, Standard Radio would own CKGM, CJAD, CHOM and CJFM (Mix 96, now Virgin Radio), all but two of the major commercial English-language stations — Q92 (CFQR-FM) and 940 News were owned by Metromedia, which was in the process of being sold to Corus Entertainment.

But the CRTC has a policy against a single owner controlling more than three stations in a market of this size. CKGM was the lowest-rated station and so it was left out of the transaction. CHUM considered selling it until it came up with a new idea: It would create a national network of all-sports AM radio stations, called The Team.

The station couldn’t have done worse than it already was. It went from being a top 40 station to adult contemporary to top 40 again, to oldies, to “talk radio with attitude” to being off the air after the 1998 ice storm to coming back as Oldies 990. There didn’t seem to be a format that worked.

A poor start

It would be nice to say that once it switched to all sports, CKGM found its footing and thrived. But that’s not even close to being true.

For one thing, it didn’t have any broadcasting rights deals for live sports. Competitor CJAD had the rights to the Canadiens and Alouettes. And the Montreal Expos couldn’t come to terms with either station on who should pay the production costs for its broadcasts.

The other problem was that the national network wasn’t just about having a common brand. Most of the programming was national, including the afternoon drive show, hosted in Toronto by Jim Van Horne and Stephen Brunt.

Pat Hickey, The Gazette, March 31, 2001:

I have reservations about the viability in Montreal of the new all-sports network that will be launched in May on what has been CKGM.

There are a couple of staples that make all-sports radio work. While there are all-sports networks in the United States with broadly based national talk and interview shows, the most successful stations, The Fan in New York, WTEM in Washington, WQAM in Miami, WEEI in Boston and WMVP in Chicago, offer live coverage of local teams and plenty of opportunity for local commentators and callers to share their opinions.

The local station has already struck out in the first regard. An attempt to wrap up a deal with the Expos collapsed because of a lingering debate over who should pay for the production costs for games. …

An Expos radio deal would have given the new station a strong presence in the community and established it as the place to go, not only for games, but baseball talk.

It was the station’s one chance to make a splash with CJAD already carrying the Canadiens and the Alouettes.

Even the morning show at launch was national, with Paul Romanuk, Brian Henderson and Mike Richards.

Sports television can work nationally because most of its content is live game broadcasts. Sports radio, especially if it doesn’t have those broadcasts, really has to be local.

Things fell into place late. Less than two weeks before launch, the station announced a deal to carry Expos broadcasts, and hired Elliott Price to do play-by-play. The first broadcast would be from San Francisco on Monday, May 7, 2001, the day of the launch of The Team 990. (The Expos lost, 6-2.)

It wasn’t until after it launched that the station finally signed a deal with its desired local morning team: Ted Blackman, the sports director at CJAD; and Mitch Melnick, who was at CIQC until it became an all-news station, and then took over an evening sports show on CJAD.

They started the next week, on May 14. But most of the rest of the schedule was still beamed in out of Toronto. And its content wasn’t exactly compelling.

Pat Hickey, May 12, 2001:

… in its quest to prove that it’s not just another Toronto radio station, The Team has taken to running stories that are irrelevant in any part of the country.

During the past week, I’ve learned more than I want to know about the Winnipeg Goldeyes minor-league baseball team, Russ Jackson’s views on Canadian QBs, Canadian stock-car racing, soccer and anything involving George Chuvalo.

A Team without a Team

CHUM pulled the plug on the concept for The Team a year later. Some stations, like CKGM Montreal, CFGO Ottawa and CKST Vancouver kept the Team brand and all-sports format, others adopted (or re-adopted) oldies or adult standards formats.

Within a couple of years, the station beefed up its local programming. Ted Blackman died in October 2002. Melnick eventually moved to afternoons, and new voices started appearing on the radio, including Tony Marinaro and Shaun Starr.

Pat Hickey, May 8, 2003:

The biggest positive change over the past two years has been the introduction of the afternoon show with Tony Marinaro and Joey Elias. It works because it’s local and because the hosts aren’t afraid to debate with each other, something that’s missing in the interaction between Melnick and Ron Francis. Elias’s occasional bawdy jokes seem inappropriate for the time slot and Marinaro fractures the English language, but the show is a welcome addition.

The station ended up getting comfortable in its niche of sports-talk, with analysis from experts, interviews with athletes and lots of talk from people who were certain they had a better idea how to coach or manage the Canadiens than the people actually in charge.

CHUM Ltd. was sold to CTVglobemedia in 2007, and CTV itself to BCE (Bell Canada) in 2010. It now had rich owners, but that doesn’t mean it made more money. And, as Bell’s only radio station in Montreal, it didn’t have the ability to share costs with sister stations in the same market. Its office at 1310 Greene Ave. in Westmount looked run-down.

As it celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2011, things were looking a lot better for the station. It finally acquired rights to Montreal Canadiens games (a deal most people in the industry attributed to the fact that Bell owned the station and had a significant working relationship with the team). That fall, Bell Media changed its brand from The Team 990 to TSN Radio 990, rebuilding a national all-sports radio network but this time with much more local programming, and the CRTC approved its request to move to 690 AM, a frequency vacated by the shutdown of Corus’s all-news station Info 690. The frequency change allowed the station to move to a clear channel, which gave it an unrestricted 50,000-watt signal day and night, instead of the highly directional one they had on 990.

A year later, though, it almost came to an end.

Abandoned by Bell

July 10, 2012: “Bell Media Files CRTC Application to Create RDS Radio 990 in Montreal”

Bell Media was in the process of acquiring Astral Media, whose many assets included CJAD, CHOM and CJFM, which it had bought when it acquired Standard Radio in 2007. The CRTC’s common ownership rules meant Bell would be over the limit in several large markets across the country. In most of those cities, it said it would sell stations to bring it below that limit. But in Montreal, it had another idea: It would convert CKGM from an English all-sports station to a French one.

It was an idea that made a lot of sense from a management/ownership perspective. Montreal had just lost an all-sports radio station when CKAC switched to its all-traffic format the previous fall. Switching CKGM to French would give it a larger audience, and solve the ownership limit issue because different languages are considered different markets, and neither Bell nor Astral had a French-language AM station. Canadiens games would simply move back to CJAD, which Bell would also own.

It made so much sense to the higher-ups at Bell. But from a human perspective, it was a disastrous idea.

Fans of the station, that had been loyal for more than a decade, revolted. The CRTC was flooded with angry comments from station listeners, with 774 interventions on this application alone, completely separate from the much larger Bell-Astral deal. It prompted CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais to comment that he spent his summer vacation that year reading comments from the public. Three people appeared in person in front of the commission as individuals to make a case for saving the station in some way.

The station’s staff, meanwhile, were stuck in the middle. The application was from its owner, and they couldn’t denounce it on the air. They could only speak in general terms about appreciating their listeners, and quietly offer them moral support away from the microphone. This, even though they would all certainly lose their jobs if this deal went through.

Bell tried its best to deflect blame, and listener anger was directed both at it and at the CRTC. Various demands were made, for the CRTC to make an exception to its ownership policy, for the entire Bell-Astral deal to be killed, or for some other deus-ex-machina solution to the problem.

In the end, it didn’t matter. The CRTC rejected the Bell-Astral deal, judging that Bell’s application would not benefit the Canadian broadcasting system and that it would leave too much market power in the hands of one company. Because the CKGM language change application was dependent on approval of the larger deal, it became moot and so the commission denied it.

The hundreds of comments technically didn’t matter to the CRTC. But they did matter to Bell, and to the station’s staff.

Bell-Astral Take 2

A month later, Bell announced it was trying again. But this time, it pivoted on CKGM, and used those hundreds of comments to argue for an exception to the ownership policy, allowing it to own four of the five English-language commercial radio stations in Montreal.

With Bell and the station’s listeners now on the same side (in as much as a hostage-taker and hostage negotiator are on the same side), the station helped push for hundreds more comments supporting the request.

But it was far from a done deal. As opposition continued to mount against the Bell-Astral acquisition on the grounds that Bell would still have too much market power even after its proposed divestments, competitors said letting it control 75% of Montreal’s English commercial radio market was similarly anti-competitive.

Offers, whose seriousness could easily be questioned, were made to buy the station. One, during the original acquisition process, was from a group that has since become experts in not doing things. The other was from Rogers, but came so late in the game it was hard to take it seriously.

Through all this time, the staff and fans of the station waited nervously. They organized a show of support, but otherwise could do little more than sit and wait to see what would happen.

Uncertainty continued until June 27, 2013, when the CRTC ruled Bell could purchase Astral Media and keep TSN 690 as an exception to the common ownership policy. (The same policy that prevented CKGM from being sold with CHOM to Standard Radio in 2000.)

The station’s staff was so grateful for the support of its listeners it threw a special thank-you party. One by one the on-air personalities gave heartfelt speeches about how touched they were by the support of their listeners.

New normal

Almost three years later, TSN Radio 690 has new life. The Astral acquisition enlarged the family, and the station moved from dilapidated offices on Greene Ave. to newly renovated studios at René-Lévesque Blvd. and Papineau Ave. It now shares offices and resources, including a program director, with CJAD.

With the two under common ownership, Montreal Impact and Alouettes games moved to TSN 690, with CJAD being used as a backup in case of scheduling conflicts.

The station’s ownership hasn’t stopped making decisions that enrage listeners. Casualties of cuts include general manager Wayne Bews and on-air hosts Ted Bird, Elliott Price and Abe Hefter.

Its ratings are better than when it launched, but its share of the market is still in the single digits. Station-level financial information isn’t published, but before the Bell-Astral deal Bell said it had lost $5 million in five years. The acquisition of Canadiens games and cost-cutting from sharing resources probably helped, but we don’t know if it’s making money yet.

But despite having more than its fair share of turmoil, or maybe because of it, TSN 690 has burrowed a place in the heart of thousands of Montrealers.

They say radio is about building a relationship with your audience. For the past 15 years, this station has been proof of that.

It may be a station whose programming involves a lot of complaining about minor management decisions of a professional hockey team, but to both its listeners and its staff, it’s family.

 

| Radio

Tommy Schnurmacher marks 20 years on CJAD, and has no plans to retire

tommy-smile

Tommy Schnurmacher came into the studio this morning a bit disappointed. Today marked 20 years since he started at CJAD 800, but it seemed nobody but him had noticed. Maybe, he thought, they just didn’t care.

In other words, the plan went perfectly.

https://soundcloud.com/cjad800/tommy-tommy-schnurmachers-20th-anniversary-celebration

Schnurmacher was surprised when, at the top of his show, it was suddenly hijacked by a montage of about a dozen of his coworkers’ recorded tributes to him, and a parade of well-wishers crowding into the studio with cake and wine (both kosher) and a martini.

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| Radio

Cogeco lays off The Beat program director Sam Zniber as it plans corporate reorganization

Sam Zniber, who was brought in almost two years ago to manage programming at The Beat 92.5, is no longer employed by the station.

Cogeco Media President Richard Lachance says the company (which recently changed its name from Cogeco Diffusion) is undergoing a corporate reorganization, and “Mr. Zniber did not form part of that plan.”

Staff was told about Zniber’s departure on Monday, without being given much of an explanation for it. According to one Beat staff member, he was supposed to be coming back to work after a sick leave.

Zniber could not be reached for comment.

Martin Tremblay, who used to be part of the management team at Astral/Bell Media’s Montreal radio stations, will continue in as interim program director for now, Lachance said. Though Zniber’s departure was only recently made official, Tremblay has been interim program director since early March.

Lachance rebuffed several of my attempts to explain the nature of the corporate reorganization, whether it would result in fewer managers, or whether The Beat would continue to have its own management. Lachance said he did not want to discuss the plans before they are announced to staff, which he said should be done within the next month.

Zniber was a surprise choice for PD in 2014, since he had no experience in the Montreal market or even in Canadian radio. He had worked in France, the UK, Australia, and Miami. This was his eighth job since 2000, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Zniber’s legacy at The Beat is mixed. During the 2014-2015 winter ratings period, the station jumped to a surprise 20% market share, well ahead of direct competitor Virgin Radio, which it had long trailed. Zniber told me he expected the station to continue to outperform its competitor, while the Virgin/Bell Media folks said The Beat’s ratings spike was due to running Christmas music in December and they’d come back down. The next ratings book proved Bell right, but Virgin and The Beat remain neck and neck in the ratings overall.

| TV

Former BT Montreal producer gets screwed by intergovernmental bureaucracy

You might remember this moment, from Breakfast Television Montreal two years ago: Genevieve Skelton, one of the segment producers on the show, was invited on air, presumably to kick off a new behind-the-scenes series, only to be shocked with a live on-air marriage proposal. (She said yes.)

Skelton got married, and is now Genevieve Yarn. Ten months after this proposal, little Eli was born. She explained that her plan was to be with the father in Saskatoon for the birth, and then come back to Montreal and continue working after her maternity leave. But things changed, and she decided to stay out west. She now lives in Calgary.

Why am I telling you about this? Because she’s getting screwed by two governments.

Recently, the Quebec government determined that, because she left the province two days before the deadline for eligibility, she is not entitled to maternity leave benefits from the provincial government, which paid her $41,000 and is now clawing it all back. Unfortunate, but those are the rules. But when she tried to get benefits from the Canadian government, which handles such benefits for everyone outside Quebec, she was denied.

The reason? Because she got benefits from Quebec. The benefits the government has retroactively denied.

She posted a plea to Facebook, and began a campaign to garner attention to her cause. The Toronto Star wrote up the case. And despite various angry tweets directed at Justin Trudeau, there hasn’t been a followup yet.

I hope this situation gets sorted out, and she gets her Canadian benefits, which are less than what she got from Quebec, but are much better than nothing.

But what really bugs me about this case is how demonstrative it is of the problems that arise when the Quebec government decides it wants to duplicate a federal government service for no reason beyond its own ego.

Whether it’s tax collection or blood collection or maternity benefits, Quebec decides it needs its own separate bureaucracy, which comes not only at a higher administrative cost (paid for by taxpayers) but also increased complexity making it harder for everyone involved.

The nature of Quebec politics means we’re not going to reverse this situation any time soon, unfortunately. Nor are other provinces likely to give up their jurisdiction on things that would just make much more sense being handled on a national level (like securities regulation). But if we’re going to have both a provincial and a federal office doing the same job, can we at least get them to talk to each other? Is that too much to ask?

Because right now it doesn’t look like they’re doing that, and mothers like Genevieve are being unduly punished because of it.

UPDATE (April 16, 2018): Yarn, who hadn’t seen this post until now, says the federal government finally came through and paid her maternity benefits. They aren’t as much as Quebec’s, which she’s paying back in instalments, but at least it’s something.

| Photos, Radio

TSN 690 personalities raise more than $2,000 for charity with surprisingly good standup comedy

Mitch Melnick performs a standup routine during One Mic Stand at Comedyworks Wednesday night.

Mitch Melnick performs a standup routine during One Mic Stand at Comedyworks Wednesday night.

I didn’t know what to expect paying $15* for a ticket to watch a standup show featuring TSN 690 radio personalities, but they took the exercise seriously enough to deliver a decent night of comedy to the sold-out Comedyworks venue on Bishop St.

One Mic Stand raised a bit more than $2,000 for the Erin Sports Association, which is … actually I don’t know what it is other than it being Irish and about sports. But supposedly it’ll be for a good cause.

They didn’t want anyone filming the event, and I was specifically asked to keep the potentially embarrassing jokes off social media (plus I didn’t have time to write any of them down), so if you didn’t make it I’m afraid you’re going to miss out. That’s probably for the best.

They did allow pictures, though.

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| Radio

CRTC explores adding a new FM radio station in Quebec City, possibly an English one

The Canadian Radio-television and telecommunications commission is opening the door to adding another commercial FM radio station in Quebec City.

On Thursday, the commission issued a call for comments, prompted by two applications for new commercial radio stations in the provincial capital — one French, one English. The first step in the process is for people to comment on whether they believe the market can handle another station, and if so whether there should be a general call for applications from all interested parties.

The commission published basic information for the two applications it received. Both are for the same frequency, 105.7 MHz, with a power of a few thousand watts.

The French-language station is proposed by Gilles Lapointe and Nelson Sergerie. The English-language one is proposed by Dufferin Communications, a subsidiary of Evanov Radio Group.

Another chance for Evanov?

This isn’t Evanov’s first attempt at a Quebec City station. In 2010, the CRTC denied a similar application — for the same frequency — for an English-language commercial station using the same easy-listening format of Evanov’s Jewel network of stations. (The commission also denied an application by Evanov for a sister French-language station.)

The decision was controversial, even within the commission itself, prompting a dissenting opinion from commissioner Timothy Denton. The majority found, as it had with a similar application from Standard Radio in 2006, that because Quebec City’s anglophone population is so small, a new English-language music station would necessarily have to target francophone listeners, and would introduce unfair competition because English-language stations don’t have French-language music quotas. (A policy the commission is in the process of reviewing.)

Denton argued that it’s not up to the commission to protect French-language stations from competition from English-language stations, nor to protect Evanov from the danger of trying to make money by targeting only the anglophone community.

Has anything changed?

In the six years since that decision, there’s been enough turnover at the CRTC that none of the commissioners who were part of it are still there, including Denton. That could prompt a change in mentality.

The market, meanwhile, appears to have changed fairly little in the past half-decade. Its nine stations have had a profit margin around 20% over the past five years, which is actually down from 30-40% margins when the CRTC made its decision. And advertising revenue is also flat at around $45 million for the market.

The economics are the same, so if the commission does decide to go ahead with a new station, it will be because of a change of mentality of the commissioners or the strength of the applications.

What’s next?

Interested parties, including incumbent radio stations who want to stop competition, and others who might be interested in applying, have until May 30 to comment. After that, the commission will decide if it makes sense to add a new station. If it does, and there’s clear interest from other parties, it will issue a call for applications and set a hearing. If it’s just those two applicants that express interest, it could simply consider those applications without issuing a call or having the parties appear at a public hearing.

If you wish to add your two cents about whether Quebec City can handle another commercial radio station, you can file your comments here until 8pm ET on May 30. Note that all information submitted, including contact information, becomes part of the public record.

| TV

More than 40 Quebec TV series have celebrity-guest-of-the-week as part of their concept

When musician Pierre Lapointe appeared on Radio-Canada talk show Tout le monde en parle on Sunday, complaining that Quebec television is too timid and is focused on seeing the same faces over and over again, most Quebecers didn’t see it, ironically because they were busy watching the Gala Artis on TVA, the popularity-contest award show in which the same A-list faces as last year got rewarded for still being popular.

After a clip of Lapointe’s montée-de-lait was posted to YouTube and everyone rewatched the interview online or on their PVRs, the inevitable analyses started appearing. Le Soleil’s Richard Therrien dug around and found out that despite Lapointe’s complaints that his music talk-show series Stereo Pop was badly managed by Radio-Canada, it was actually Lapointe himself that was poorly managing the situation and acting like a diva.

Meanwhile, Radio-Canada VP Louis Lalande responded to Lapointe’s complaints that the public broadcaster is asleep at the wheel when it comes to broadcasting culture.

The issue has gotten so much attention that even my newspaper has a column on it.

I never watched Lapointe’s show, and I’ll leave it to others to debate what happened to it. And there are plenty of reasons to suggest Lapointe might be a hypocrite (he was a judge on La Voix, after all) or to defend or complain about Radio-Canada.

But Lapointe hinted at an issue that goes far beyond the public broadcaster: Quebec television is obsessed with celebrity.

Continue reading →

| Radio

Andrea Collins leaves Virgin Radio 96 for Toronto

Virgin's Andrea Collins

Andrea Collins, the Virgin Radio daytime host and occasional CTV fill-in weather presenter, is pulling up stakes and moving to Toronto after five years.

She made the announcement last week on social media, and today was her last day, which prompted a surprise sendoff from her coworkers.

Collins will be taking a job co-hosting the morning show on Virgin Radio 99.9 in Toronto, replacing Maura Grierson, who’s taking maternity leave. She’s also becoming the “iHeartRadio Canada ambassador” — in January, the U.S. radio brand signed a partnership with Virgin owner Bell Media.

She starts May 2, a few days before she turns 32.

Collins was hired by Virgin in 2011, after previous radio jobs in Winnipeg and Victoria, to replace Nat Lauzon, who bolted for The Beat. Then, after Cousin Vinny Barrucco did the same, she was moved to afternoon drive, becoming the first woman in this market to host an afternoon show solo at a music station. She later moved back to daytime when Mark Bergman went back behind a microphone.

When I profiled her for a Gazette feature in 2013, she described her career as a series of being in the right place at the right time. I think that downplays her talent, but there’s also some truth to it.

No announcement has been made about who will host from 9am to 1pm weekdays now (or maybe it was and I missed it, just like I missed this announcement more than a week ago). A job posting for on-air host at Virgin was made last week.

Continue reading →

| Opinion, Radio

Radio host Jeff Fillion fired for insensitive use of sarcasm, emoji

Today, we learned that even Quebec City’s trash-talk radio has its limit.

Or, well, we learned that again. Because it’s happened several times before, including with the man at the centre of the issue today, the king of the format, Jeff Fillion.

At exactly 1pm on Wednesday, Bell Media and CHIK-FM (Énergie Québec 98.9) announced that Fillion, who hosted the afternoon drive show from 3-6pm weekdays, no longer works for the company. (It’s not explicitly clear if he was fired, quit or some mutual agreement was reached, but it’s clear this was more the company’s doing than his.) The station has put Maxime Tremblay in his timeslot for the time being.

Continue reading →

| TV

TVA pulls the plug on Argent

argent-logoArgent, the only French-language business specialty channel in Canada, is being shut down on April 30, owner Groupe TVA announced on Tuesday.

The television and cable industries are in turmoil and TVA Group has concluded that, despite the marketing efforts made in recent years to support Argent, it would be difficult if not impossible to achieve the profitability to continue operating the economic and financial channel.

I’m not sure what those “marketing efforts” were exactly (I’ve never seen an ad for the channel, beyond the branded business pages of the Journal de Montréal), but questions can certainly be raised about TVA’s commitment to the channel, which for one thing was never distributed in high definition, even on Quebecor’s Videotron cable system.

After taking its usual unnecessary swipe at Canada’s public broadcaster (which doesn’t have a business news channel), TVA said the decision would affect an unspecified number of employees. La Presse reports its nine permanent employees will stay with TVA, but their shift to other jobs might affect temporary employees at LCN and elsewhere.

The channel launched in 2005.

According to data submitted to the CRTC, Argent’s financial situation has been in significant decline since 2010-11, going from $4.2 million in revenue to $2.4 million in 2013-14. (Data for the year ending Aug. 31, 2015 should be out within the next month or two.) This is largely because of a decline in subscription revenue (advertising makes up only 2% of revenue), which in turn is because of a decrease in the number of subscribers, from a high of 957,000 in 2010 to 552,000 in 2014.

In the three years from 2012-14, the channel lost almost $2 million, and nothing indicates that 2015 or 2016 would have been any different.

The news of Argent’s shutdown has interesting timing since Canada just added its second English-language business channel (Bloomberg TV Canada) and the first one, Business News Network, is still doing quite well financially, with a 40% profit margin.

And the suggestion that this decision comes out of the CRTC’s recent pick-and-pay TV decision also doesn’t jive with the fact that its financial troubles started long before then and that Videotron, also owned by Quebecor, has been offering custom channel packages for many years now.

But these days it makes more sense for a Canadian business channel to be based in Toronto than Montreal. The only place I remember seeing Argent on TV was at my local Caisse Desjardins bank. I guess they can switch to LCN.

Cuts in QMI’s investigative bureau

UPDATE (April 21): Meanwhile, there were cuts to the investigative reporting team at Agence QMI, Quebecor Media’s shared journalism outlet.

https://twitter.com/AndrewQMI/status/722844090702794753

Andrew McIntosh is an investigative reporter who’s been in the business more than 30 years, working for the Globe and Mail, Montreal Gazette and National Post before joining QMI in 2010 as their top investigative reporter. His awards include three National Newspaper Awards.

You can read some of his reporting for QMI here.

The other high-profile departure is Michel Morin, who was a journalist with Radio-Canada until he became a CRTC commissioner. After his term at the broadcasting regulator ended, he joined QMI’s investigative team. You can read some of his stories here.

| TV

Éric Lapointe gets no respect: A quantitative analysis of La Voix

Is Éric Lapointe the least popular coach on La Voix (TVA photo)

Is Éric Lapointe the least popular coach on La Voix (TVA photo)

If you’re at all in tune with French-language TV in Quebec this time of year (and if you aren’t, you really should be), it’s hard to miss the phenomenon that is La Voix, Quebec’s version of the Dutch singing competition show whose distinguishing feature is blind auditions.

(If you don’t care about that show, don’t bother reading the rest of this post. It won’t interest you.)

The show has an audience that hovers around 2.5 million each week, and will probably reach 3 million during Sunday’s finale. To put that in perspective, there are about 6 million people in the province that have French as their first language. And a bit under 1 million of them are watching La Voix’s direct competitor, Tout le monde en parle, on Radio-Canada. That’s half of francophone Quebec watching one of two shows on Sunday nights.

After ignoring it at first (I don’t tend to watch reality competition shows), I kinda got hooked on it a bit last year and have been following it intently this year (even watching the behind-the-scenes shows on Monday and Thursday nights). That means I’ve had my heart crushed when a contestant I liked got eliminated, and I’ve taken sides in the heated debates among fans about who is the better singer, or scandals where the public complains that popular voting has too little say in who wins or that popular voting has too much say in who wins. (But seriously HOW THE HELL DOES THIS NOT WIN? COME ON! #TeamGeneviève)

Anyway, back to those blind auditions. The way they work is the contestant goes on stage and sings for two minutes, and coaches that want the contestant on their team press a button that causes their chair to turn around. If more than one coach turns around, the contestant gets to choose their coach from among those who did so. The process continues until all four coaches have 12 singers on their team.

It didn’t take me long to notice patterns, both in how the coaches acted and how the contestants did. Éric Lapointe, in particular, would often be the first to turn around, especially if the singer was a rocker. And, it seemed, in battles between him and another coach over a contestant, he would more often lose. After I noticed someone else make a joke on TV that suggested the same, I decided to put that theory to the test, analyzing the choices made by coaches and contestants during blind auditions for Seasons 2, 3 and 4 of La Voix. (Lapointe wasn’t a coach in Season 1.)

Here’s what I found.

Continue reading →

| Radio

Radio Shalom is no more — what happens to CJRS 1650 AM?

Radio Shalom has been shut down.

Kind of.

CJRS 1650 AM is still on the air (you can catch the live stream here), but since last Friday at 6pm it has been broadcasting non-stop evangelical Christian programming supplied to it from CKZW (not an official callsign), a Christian audio service operated by André Joly. CKZW had supplied programming for CJRS during the Sabbath, when Jewish rules prevent practicing members from operating a radio station. Owner Robert Lévy has decided, at least for now, to have them provide programming 24/7.

I explain what happened in this story for the Montreal Gazette. Basically Radio Shalom was not breaking even, and Lévy was no longer willing to fund the station by himself. Despite a public plea in December, it seems no one (or not enough people) stepped up, and despite giving extensions, he’s decided it’s the end of the road.

Though there were some goodbye messages on Facebook, the end on the air was anti-climactic. The last Jewish program was actually a syndicated broadcast from France, and made no mention of Radio Shalom going off the air. It was cut off mid-sentence during an interview, switching awkwardly to CKZW programming with some dead air.

So what happens now? I couldn’t get an interview with Lévy — I was promised a press release that never came — but others provided more detail. Joly will provide CKZW programming 24/7 (including some bilingual programming, he said) and Lévy will remain the owner to satisfy CRTC ownership requirements.

Joly said there are discussions about him buying the station (which would require CRTC approval), but that’s not a given. He suggested there still might be hope of a benefactor coming forward and bringing Radio Shalom back.

But that doesn’t look likely at this point. Despite Montreal’s strong Jewish population, the community hasn’t rallied behind this station. There are various reasons I was given for this. Among them, the French/English split was also a cultural one, between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews. There was a religious versus secular split, with the former following hard-line (and sexist) rules. And the station’s insistence on its independence, refusing to become a mouthpiece for any Jewish community organization.

Plus the running joke that Montreal already has a Jewish radio station in CJAD.

And there were the kinds of problems that any small radio station faces. The AM signal was poor and hard to hear in many parts of the city, the programming was all produced by volunteers and didn’t attract many listeners, and some people at least felt it was poorly managed. (Though no one is stepping up and promising to turn things around if they’re put in charge.)

What happens now is still up in the air. Joly would like to keep CJRS and turn it into a Christian station, but that would require him and Lévy agreeing on a sale price for the station. If an agreement isn’t reached, Lévy’s options are limited, but he could shut down the station, return the licence and sell off whatever assets are still there.

The likelihood of a Jewish radio station returning to Montreal, though, seems slim at this point. There might be better hope of having Jewish-themed shows on ethnic stations — right now I know of only Radio Centre-Ville that has a regular show on Judaism, but others have had shows for that community in the past.

| Radio, TV

With Jean Lapierre’s death, Quebec media loses its chief political analyst

There wasn’t anyone as omnipresent in Quebec news media over the past decade as Jean Lapierre.

The former federal MP, who died with his wife, three siblings and two pilots as their plane crashed on approach to an airport Tuesday in les Îles de la Madeleine, parlayed his political experience into various roles as a political analyst.

While people covering all sorts of beats misuse the term “insider” to describe themselves, Lapierre was about the closest thing Quebec media had to one who had the freedom to speak his mind on political issues. And he had the sense to never claim to be a journalist, even though most of the time he was engaging in journalism.

Lapierre had a busy schedule and many clients. Daily appearances on Montreal’s 98.5 FM, Quebec City’s FM93 and 106.9 FM in Trois-Rivières, columns on several shows on TVA and LCN (Mario Dumont had a segment with him that came to an end with a tribute), a twice daily segment on CJAD (Program Director Chris Bury explains how the station kept adding his segments because of demand) and a weekly appearance on CTV Montreal. Cogeco, Quebecor and Bell Media were all sending him regular paycheques for his insight.

https://soundcloud.com/cjad800/jean-lapierre-cjad-program-director-chris-bury-remembers-jean-lapierre-march-29-2016

So it’s unsurprising that many of his media colleagues were emotional as they relayed the news of his death, from Denis Lévesque to Paul Larocque to Pierre Bruneau to Paul Arcand to Aaron Rand and Andrew Carter. There are so many tributes from media people and politicians it would be impossible to compile them all. TVA/LCN and CJAD have put together entire dossiers on Lapierre, and there are enough obituaries and written tributes to keep you reading for days.

I didn’t know Lapierre personally, and I’m starting to think I’m one of the few people in Quebec media not to be in his ever-expanding circle of friends. I have no personal anecdotes to share, beyond that one time I stood outside the Quebecor office at the National Assembly press gallery and listened to him do a segment for LCN about a budget announcement.

But I know enough about him to know that there isn’t anyone quite like him. Sure, there are other former politicians giving analysis on TV. (RDI has an entire show devoted to it.) But how many of them will give you a colourful seven-minute description of how a politician should shake hands at a campaign event? How many of them will call out BS when he sees it, even if it’s from a politician he knows as a friend?

Lapierre wasn’t perfect, and we should resist the temptation to sugar-coat his life as we summarize it. But even if he wasn’t the most objective source of information about politics, he built this air of trustworthiness because he wasn’t afraid to tell it as he saw it. Perhaps because of that more than anything else, he had a unique ability to clearly explain the political process, and political thinking, to Quebecers in both languages. One that will be surely missed.

And he was someone who enjoyed what he did, who was very successful at it, and made a lot of friends doing it.

We should all be so lucky.