Category Archives: TV
Camille Ross leaves CTV for Global Montreal
Camille Ross (CTV photo)
As we begin a year that will involve a lot of new high-profile jobs in broadcasting, it’s inevitable that some of those will be filled by people already on the air who decide to move up by jumping to a competitor.
We’ve seen our first such move already: CTV Montreal reporter Camille Ross has been hired by Global to join their new morning show set to launch this spring.
Global News spokesperson Nick Poirier confirmed the news on Thursday, saying she will be joining the cast of the new show, but wouldn’t get into details because they weren’t ready to announce just yet.
Ross herself wouldn’t comment on the news, instead referring to Poirier for comment.
Ross grew up in Toronto and went to Ryerson University. She worked at the CTV station in Yorkton, Sask., and Global News in Regina before coming to Montreal to fill a maternity leave at CFCF.
CTV Montreal News Director Jed Kahane said he understood Ross’s motivations, pointing out that she was a freelancer for CTV when she left, and the prospect of full-time employment was an opportunity too good to pass up. Kahane said CTV wishes her well, in that way every employer wishes their former employees well in their future endeavours.
Kahane said CTV still has a rich bank of freelancers that it can continue to rely on to cover the news.
Global announced last month that Jim Connell and Rob Ostiguy had also been hired to run the morning show. Other hires, including other on-air personalities, have not yet been announced, nor has a start date.
(Hat tip to Mike Cohen, who revealed the news on Twitter on Wednesday evening.)
Global’s national morning show: Not worth waking up for
Global’s new national Morning Show: Four people at a desk talking
On Monday, Global television debuted its new national morning show. It was kind of a surprise announcement before Christmas (unlike the local morning shows in Montreal and Halifax, which we’ve been waiting for since 2010), and didn’t get a lot of hype.
Having watched the first episode, it’s easy to see why. Though the idea of something to compete with Canada AM sounds pretty exciting, Global’s national morning show feels like exactly what it is: A half-hour extension to the Global Toronto morning show that doesn’t offer much that would take people away from their laptop screens, recordings of the previous night’s shows, or reruns on cable.
Now, I’ll admit that a lot of what I don’t like about this show is the kind of stuff I don’t like about most morning shows: a lack of actual information and depth, and this idea that we care about the most boring aspects of the hosts’ personal lives or their impromptu, uninformed thoughts about the news. It’s one thing when banter fills the 20 seconds at the end of an hour-long newscast, but to base an entire show off of this sounds like a waste of everyone’s time.
But I’m obviously not the target audience for this show. I might feel differently if I was a stay-at-home mom who apparently wants to watch this stuff.
2013 will be a big year for local radio and TV
I wouldn’t dare say that the crisis affecting news media is behind us, but there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about local media — particularly on the broadcasting side — going into 2013. The coming year will see at least four new radio stations and one additional television station, which will mean more jobs for technicians, editors, advertising salespeople, marketers, broadcasters and even some journalists. And existing media will see some big changes too that will improve the local landscape.
In August, I did a piece for The Gazette going over upcoming changes station by station. Here’s mainly an updated guide to those changes we expect to see this year:
AM radio
The biggest changes will happen on the AM dial, thanks to the Tietolman-Tétrault-Pancholy group which plans to launch news-talk stations in English and French. There’s also another additional station, and perhaps a third by TTP Media. It won’t bring things back to what they were in the 70s, but a lot of those frequencies that once had big-name radio stations and have been silent the past few years will be brought back to life:
600: TTP’s English station will occupy the old CFCF/CIQC frequency, silent since 1999. The station was approved in November by the CRTC. The group wants it to have live programming 24/7, including a journalistic team that puts CJAD’s to shame. That will mean hiring a lot of people.
690 (CKGM): TSN Radio was saved as an English station when the CRTC said no to the Bell/Astral deal, but they’re going to try again, this time asking for an exemption to allow them to keep CKGM along with the three Astral stations. While a popular idea among the station’s fans, it might not work with regulators who would face giving four of the five English-language commercial stations in Montreal to one company. The one thing that might help get this through is the new TTP station at 600 bumping the total number from five to six. But will that be enough to justify an already dominant radio group (CJAD/CHOM/CJFM) getting even bigger? In the more immediate future, an early afternoon host has to be found (or announced) for Randy Tieman’s old slot.
730 (CKAC): The government-subsidized all-traffic station still does poorly in the ratings, though it doesn’t have to worry about that too much because of the $1.5-million-a-year paycheque it gets just for existing. There’s a new government that would love to save as much money as it can, but the deal with Cogeco only comes up for renewal in 2014.
800 (CJAD): No big plans are in the works for Montreal’s News-Talk Leader that I know of. But it might have to change whether it wants to or not. If TTP makes good enough offers to lure away talent from CJAD, the latter might have to reshuffle its schedule.
850: The CRTC has confirmed that there’s an application for the use of this frequency, but it hasn’t been published yet. We do know it’s from the Tietolman-Tétrault-Pancholy group and that it’s for a French-language sports talk station. They’ve seen an opportunity now that there’s no longer an all-sports radio station in French. But with 98.5FM carrying Canadiens and Alouettes broadcast rights, and devoting their evenings to sports talk, will there be enough of a gap for TTP to capitalize? If the application is published soon, it could be approved by this fall.
940: TTP’s French-language station goes here, on the clear channel that was once home to CBC Radio and 940 News. The station was approved in the fall of 2011, which gives them until this November to launch or request an extension from the CRTC. No launch date has been set, but the plan is to launch both simultaneously some time in the spring. And just as 600 could steal talent from CJAD and elsewhere, we could see 940 taking away people from stations like 98.5 or even Radio X.
990: The former CKGM/Team/TSN 990 frequency was vacated on Dec. 1 and is ready for Radio Fierté, a French-language music and talk station run by Dufferin Communications. They have until November to launch or request an extension.
1410 (CJWI): Still waiting for the Haitian radio station (CPAM Radio Union) to switch to this frequency from 1610.
1570 (CJLV): The Laval-based commercial station, which had threatened to shut down if the CRTC didn’t convert it into an ethnic station, had its bluff called when the CRTC ruled that the Montreal market couldn’t take another ethnic station. Its plan B seems to be a partnership with Internet radio station CNV (which you’ll see sometimes if you go to Complexe Desjardins) which sees the latter’s programming on the former’s signal.
FM radio
The FM dial in Montreal is full. That’s really the only thing preventing someone from launching another radio station to compete with Virgin, The Beat and CHOM. Still, there’s room for at least one addition in an adjacent market.
89.9 (CKKI-FM): Kahnawake Keeps It Country has hired a new morning man: local radio critic Sheldon Harvey. The small station with a low-power transmitter in its backyard isn’t even the most popular station in Kahnawake. Can the former pirate station get enough revenue to cover its modest expenses and keep it on the air?
91.3 (CIRA-FM): The religious station has received CRTC approval to launch a subchannel which will carry programming by La Fiesta Latina. The subcarrier signal requires a special receiver to decode.
91.9 (CKLX-FM): Months after relaunching as Radio X Montreal, the former Planète Jazz is still awaiting a CRTC decision on whether it can abandon its status as a specialty jazz music station and be relicensed as a general commercial station. The application for this was first published almost a full year ago, and officially heard at the Sept. 10 hearing in Montreal. Under its current licence, CKLX-FM is required to devote 70% of its musical selections to the jazz/blues format. This doesn’t technically interfere with them being a talk station during the day, since there isn’t much music during talk shows. But it does go against the Radio X model of rock music on weekends. So until its licence changes, CKLX airs jazz/blues music evenings, overnight, on weekend mornings and weekend evenings.
92.5 (CKBE-FM): The Beat has some schedule shuffling to do. Ken Connors has essentially replaced the fired Murray Sherriffs as the morning news man, and Pete Marier has been doing weekend mornings in his absence, but on the website Connors is still listed as the weekend morning man. Will Bad Pete get a permanent gig here? On the regulatory front, the station is awaiting a decision on a request to boost its power from 44 kW to 100 kW. That request hit a bit of a snag because Dufferin Communications has applied for an FM station on that frequency in Clarence-Rockland, Ontario, just east of Ottawa. The CRTC is treating the applications as competing, even though The Beat said it would accept interference caused by the overlapping coverage areas. The hearing was in November, and a decision hasn’t been published yet.
93.5 (CBM-FM): CBC Radio Two is waiting on the CRTC to decide whether, as part of the CBC’s larger licence renewals, it will be allowed to carry commercial advertising. The request received fierce opposition from commercial competitors who believe the CBC will use its government financing to create an unfair commercial advantage for itself, as well as from CBC listeners who believe this will cause the network to make more decisions based on ratings and advertising than on the quality of programming.
95.9 (CJFM-FM): Will Montreal’s top-rated music station face a stronger competitor in The Beat in 2013? Will its schedule undergo more changes as what seems like a revolving door of talent keeps spinning? Will listeners tire of Ryan Seacrest and demand more local talent during peak hours? We’ll see. Otherwise, there aren’t any big changes I know about in the works at Virgin.
96.9 (CKOI-FM): CKOI faces an identity crisis. Its ratings are pretty bad, and the regional network of stations with its brand has been switched to talk, with the exception of the Quebec City station that Cogeco doesn’t own anymore. Cogeco already has a talk station in Montreal with 98.5, so what to do with the low-rated flagship station of a network that no longer exists? Its owners can comfort themselves with the news that it still ranks highly among younger audiences (18-34), but you have to wonder if the station will last the year the way it is without some big shakeup.
97.7 (CHOM-FM): As Montreal’s rock station marks one year since the return of Terry DiMonte (see Bill Brownstein’s story in The Gazette), the schedule is pretty stable: DiMonte and Heather Backman in the mornings, TooTall during the day, Bilal Butt in afternoon drive and Jason Rockman in evenings, with Sharon Hyland, Rob Kemp and Randy Renaud on weekends and Brandon Craddock and Ronny Mack splitting the overnights. Its ratings are decent, and it owns the male demographic (not hard since the other music stations are both targetting women).
100.7 (CBFX-FM): Like Radio Two, Espace musique is seeking permission to carry advertising.
103.7 (CKRK-FM): Kahnawake’s K103 is trying to keep going without the attention that Ted Bird brought. It has a new program director in Al Gravelle, and a new morning guy in Zack Rath to join veterans Paul Graif and Java Jacobs. Will the station find an answer to its main existential question — is it a Kahnawake community station, or a wide-audience commercial station?
105.1 (CKDG-FM): Ethnic station Mike FM quietly lost afternoon guy Patrick Charles, leaving Tasso Patsikakis to carry the show solo. Is he bringing in the kind of ratings (and advertising) needed to make the relationship work for both parties? If not, there’s a limited amount of time to make it work. Earlug ads in The Gazette are nice, but if Mike FM is going to be a general-interest radio station during the morning and afternoon drive hours, it needs some serious efforts in promotion.
106.7: Dufferin Communications, the same company behind Radio Fierté, has received CRTC approval for its radio station on this frequency in Hudson/St. Lazare. The station, which will almost certainly carry Dufferin’s Jewel branding, will air mainly easy-listening music but also carry local news and information, which will be a boon to the local community. Here’s a CTV Montreal report on the planned station. Its launch could be as early as spring but expect it to be closer to fall.
Television
Local television in Montreal is going to see its biggest changes since 1997. The number of stations will increase by one, from 9 to 10, but the changes are more significant than that:
CBMT (CBC) has taken some significant steps to improve local programming, even in the wake of cuts to the CBC’s budget. The evening newscast expanded to an hour and a half, a late-night 10-minute newscast was added and then expanded to 30 minutes, and weekend newscasts added so the station has news seven days a week. This could improve even further depending on how the CBC’s licence renewal goes. The CBC has proposed that its local stations have seven or 14 hours a week of local programming, depending on the size of the market (Montreal’s English market would be considered large). Currently, CBMT has a bit under 11 hours a week of local news, so this would mean an expansion of some sort. The CBC also said that one of those 14 hours could be non-news programming. This could mean the return of cookie-cutter local lifestyle shows like Living or something else. But anything is better than nothing.
CFCF (CTV) is finally making the move toward high-definition newscasts, and a finish line is in sight in the spring or early summer for the 4:3 programming to be replaced by beautiful 16:9 HD. Its newscast also finally has a permanent replacement for Kai Nagata in Quebec City. Former Gazette reporter Max Harrold started there in November and is already working on his TV reporting skills filing reports in Montreal. He should be in Quebec City by the time the National Assembly resumes its work in February.
CKMI (Global) is launching a two-hour weekday morning show, long promised as part of Shaw’s purchase of Canwest in 2010. It’s supposed to be some time in the spring, but an exact date isn’t set yet. There’s also been no announcement of a host, though there have been hires on the technical side. The show will be Montreal’s first local morning show since This Morning Live was cancelled in 2008. That was five years ago, but could we see some of its personalities returning? Richard Dagenais still works there.
CJNT (Metro 14/City) is changing owners, from Channel Zero to Rogers, within the month. Starting in February, its ethnic programming will be stripped (at least from primetime) and replaced with the entire Citytv lineup, including some new original Canadian shows. By September, it will launch a three-hour local morning show, competing with Global, and a weekly half-hour local sports show, the first since SportsNight 360 was taken off CFCF to make room for expanded weekend newscasts. The move will mean 20-30 new jobs, mainly technical ones. Rogers has made clear that it plans to hire locally for its on-air jobs.
ICI is the new kid on the block, taking up the ethnic programming from CJNT. The independent station, with some generous support from both Rogers and Channel Zero, will need to install a new transmitter and setup a complete television station essentially from scratch, but hope to be on the air by late spring or early summer. With more than a dozen independent producers already signed on and many more reportedly waiting to join, the project for an ethnic station financed by its own producers starts with a lot of good will.
I’m sure I’ve missed a bunch of stuff, that’s being worked on in secret, or that’s being done at a station too small to have a PR person keep me abreast. (If you know of stuff, let me know.) But even with just this, we can be confident that there’s a lot happening in this city in 2013. And I’ll try to document as much of it as I can.
Happy new year.
CRTC approves CJNT purchase, new ICI station
It’s a yes.
On Thursday, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission gave its approval to applications by Rogers and 4517466 Canada Inc. to reorganize over-the-air television in Montreal and add a 10th television station to the market, the first new one in 15 years.
The applications were essentially approved as submitted, which is great news to everyone involved. CJNT, which will become a Citytv station, will be stripped of all ethnic programming requirements once the Rogers purchase is complete, and will launch a local morning show. Rogers and CJNT’s current owner, Channel Zero, also made significant commitments to support a new station, ICI, which will assume ethnic programming requirements as a producers’ cooperative. (The decisions were important enough that the CRTC even issued a press release on the matter, in which chairman Jean-Pierre Blais says that these decisions “will increase the diversity of voices in the Montreal region.”)
My Gazette story on this news is here, including comments from the various players.
Here’s what’s next for them:
CTV Montreal making final push toward HD newscasts
One of the HD field cameras being used by CTV Montreal cameramen.
After what has seemed like eons since its competitors made the switch, CTV Montreal has announced that it’s making its final push toward launching a high-definition broadcast, which should begin in the spring or early summer. But it’s not all good news – technological change will mean a slight reduction in the number of technical staff at the station, management and its union have confirmed.
The station issued an update via its Facebook page last week, explaining that it had just put new HD studio cameras in place (viewers might notice a slight difference in colours or crispness in the studio shots during newscasts), and is building a new control room that will be HD-capable.
Other steps toward the conversion had already been taken earlier. New field cameras have been acquired, new editing suites installed, an upgrade to digital storage completed, and a new studio has been constructed that has the proper wiring and the level of detail necessary to work right in HD.
CBC and Global made the upgrade a long time ago. Both first moved to a 16:9 upconverted SD system, which masked the fact that they weren’t yet HD. CTV did not make a similar move due to a company policy that HD not be faked like that. CBC Montreal went through an upgrade that cost around $1 million that made it the first English CBC station in Canada to be fully in HD. Global’s conversion was a lot easier because it doesn’t have a control room – Global Montreal’s newscast is directed and controlled from Edmonton, leaving only the field cameras, studio cameras, edit suites and high-speed data connections to upgrade.
Caption CTV’s Stéphane Giroux
CRTC skeptical about CJNT, ICI applications
As with all ownership transactions it is the responsibility of the seller or its representative to prove that a transaction is in the public interest. The Commission has been abundantly clear about this recently. This means that the burden of proof lies with Rogers and Channel Zero. This is not simply a matter of promising to invest a certain amount of money in the Canadian broadcasting system, many other factors must also be taken into consideration, including the impact on the Montreal market and the Commission’s various policies.
This was the statement at the beginning of last month’s hearing by Jean-Pierre Blais, the chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. Combined with the grilling that the commission gave to the three parties involved in two applications related to the purchase of CJNT by Rogers, it’s clear that the commission’s hard line about acquisitions wasn’t just a one-off for Bell’s sake.
Global adding national morning show
Global announced on Wednesday that it is launching a new national morning show on Jan. 7. The half-hour show, hosted by Liza Fromer, would air live at 9am in Montreal and other Eastern Time markets, 8am 10am in the Maritimes, and on tape-delay at 9am in the rest of the country.
For most stations, this program would be led into by the local morning news show. This will include Montreal, though we’re still not closer to knowing when exactly a new morning show will launch here, except for the vague “early next year.”
The new show wouldn’t compete directly with CTV’s Canada AM, and might not stack up too well against other shows that air at 9am, but it has to do better than 100 Huntley Street.
Between this new show, the local morning shows (which are part of a promise to the CRTC when Shaw bought Canwest) and the planned March launch of Global’s B.C. One regional news channel, it’s clear that Shaw is putting lots of money into developing news at Global.
Not enough to put local control rooms back into smaller markets, but still quite a bit.
Caption Andrew Chang on location
Global Montreal hires Rob Ostiguy, Jim Connell to run morning show
Jim Connell has been hired as studio director for Global Montreal’s morning show
Global Montreal announced their first hires for their new morning show, which is expected to start … soonish? (They’re not yet ready to announce a launch date.)
Robert Ostiguy, a former promotions producer at CBC in the 1990s and freelance since then, has been named Senior Producer. Ostiguy has already been posting photos of his new workplace on his Facebook page, and is clearly enjoying having a new job.
Jim Connell, best known for his work throughout the lifetime of 940 News (but whose career also includes some time at CJAD and CKO) has been hired as the studio director. After 940 News disappeared, Connell resurfaced as part of the Tietolman-Tétrault-Pancholy radio station bid. It’s not clear how this new job will affect his involvement in that project (I’ll update this when I hear from him).
The more high-profile on-air positions haven’t been announced, but should be “in the coming month,” Global’s senior publicist Nick Poirier tells me.
Parc Avenue Tonight: Why isn’t this on TV?
Are Montreal anglos well served by local television? There are three stations with daily local newscasts, and a fourth could be coming within months. By this time next year Montreal could have two English-language TV morning shows. But what about the rest? What about the entertainment shows, the talk shows, the music shows, the cooking shows and everything else that we used to get on local television?
We get some of these things as part of the news (or, in the case of Global’s Focus Montreal, a weekly program set in the news studio). But their very nature limits them in terms of length and format.
It was this lack of non-news programming that led to Mitch Melnick starting up an online video talk show in 2009, which didn’t last long.
Now, someone’s trying something like this again. His name is Dimitrios Koussioulas, and the show is called Parc Avenue Tonight. It’s a very-low-budget (like, $2,000 a season) weekly talk show about Mile End, with videos so far between 10 and 17 minutes long.
The Gazette’s Bill Brownstein has details about the show, and Cult MTL also has a brief writeup.
The show looks promising from the three episodes posted so far. It has a nice intro theme, and seems to be well edited. Koussioulas is an engaging host. About the only thing that I don’t like about it is all the smoking, which seems almost as if it was put in there to seem cool, like this was the opposite of an after-school special.
But could this make it on regular television? The answer depends not only on whether the advertising it could generate would offset its costs, but whether the profit it generated would be higher than whatever programming CTV or Global would put on the air instead of it.
Canada has tried commercial entertainment talk shows in the past. Remember Mike Bullard? But nowadays all that’s left in Canada is fluffy daytime programs like Cityline and Marilyn Denis, and stuff imported from the U.S. Primetime talk shows are limited to the one subsidized by the CBC and the one subsidized by its host. And none of this is local.
Sadly, with most local television owned by big national vertically-integrated companies, there’s little incentive to change. Even putting a show like this in a low-rated spot like Friday nights at midnight would be asking too much of local commercial television stations.
Which is a shame, because given modest means, something like Parc Avenue Tonight could turn into quality programming that attracts a small but loyal audience.
Thankfully there’s the Internet, where anyone can do something like this on their own, and if it’s good enough it will attract enough eyeballs to make it financially viable.
We’ll see if Parc Avenue Tonight is good enough to make it past one season.
You can watch Parc Avenue Tonight with Dimitrios Koussioulas at ParcAvenueTonight.com.
Max Harrold to become CTV Quebec bureau chief
Max Harrold (Gazette photo)
Max Harrold, a news reporter for The Gazette since 2006, has been hired as the new Quebec City Bureau Chief for CTV News. The move was announced this morning with mixed feelings by Gazette city editor Michelle Richardson. He leaves the paper on Nov. 20.
Harrold, who tells me he’s 47 but has always seemed so much younger at heart, has been a general assignment reporter, specializing in breaking news. He’s also the guy behind the weekly Squeaky Wheels column, answering readers’ questions about issues involving transportation in Montreal. Before joining The Gazette he wrote for it as a freelancer, wrote for the Discovery Channel program How It’s Made, and worked in off-air roles at Global Television and CBC. He also worked for the short-lived Montreal Daily News, and was there when the paper shut down in 1989.
He’s a native Montrealer, but lived and worked in Los Angeles and New York for 13 years, and studied at Columbia Journalism School.
Harrold told me he had informal discussions with CTV Montreal News Director Jed Kahane before the latest round of buyouts at The Gazette, with the possibility of having to look for a new job at the back of his mind. In the end that would become unnecessary, since there were no layoffs of reporters, but discussions continued.
“I thought it would be for an off-camera job or a research job,” Harrold said when he called me from the office, where he’s getting congratulations from his colleagues. But Kahane needed someone with excellent reporting skills for the Quebec City job, and Harrold fit the bill.
“It’s an interesting time in Quebec City, and it’s a bureau where I want someone who overall has an understanding of quebec politics,” Kahane said. “Max is a veteran, he’s an experienced editorial guy (and) he was the kind of person I was looking for.”
Harrold doesn’t have any on-air experience in television, though he went through a screen test that was enough to convince Kahane the jump to television could work. Kahane points out that other print journalists have moved to television with great success. He mentioned people like David Akin at Sun Media. Nancy Wood, an anchor at CBC Montreal, is another former Gazette reporter and print specialist who made a very successful transition into broadcasting.
Kahane said that with strong editorial judgment, learning the technical part isn’t a big problem. The former is valued far more than the latter in a television reporter.
Nevertheless, Harrold admitted it will be a transition, and he’s already been practicing proper standups in front of a mirror.
Harrold begins at CTV in December, and will spend his first few weeks training, learning the ins and outs of TV reporting in general and CTV’s systems in particular. Kahane said he expects Harrold will do some on-air work in Montreal (he couldn’t say when we should expect to start seeing Harrold on air) and be ready to report from Quebec City by the time the National Assembly reconvenes for the new year in February.
CTV’s last Quebec City bureau chief, you might recall, had a fairly public resignation in July 2011. Kahane said he didn’t make any special requests of Harrold, though he did ask if Harrold had a television at home (Kai Nagata famously did not even though he was a TV reporter). Harrold said he has two. The embarrassment for CTV meant a lot of hesitation at choosing someone new for the position, particularly for going with someone young and inexperienced, so the position remained unfilled for more than a year.
Maya Johnson has been filling in, covering Quebec City and the National Assembly for the past few months. She’ll return to Montreal, where Kahane said she will continue her reporting, which he qualified as excellent, from here.
Harrold’s new job means moving to Quebec City (and finding a fluently bilingual anglophone willing to move to the provincial capital is also a big challenge in filling this position). Harrold will look for a place in Quebec City and expects to live there for a little while before his husband Greg joins him.
There’s no word yet on whether The Gazette will be looking to hire someone to replace Harrold, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Richardson is already getting unsolicited offers.
On a personal note, since Max is a friend, I’ll wish him well. But a warning: no mercy on the hilariously embarrassing gaffes that make live TV so much fun to watch.
UPDATE: Max’s first report aired on Dec. 12.
The press room at the Gémeaux
Half of the salle de presse at the 2012 Gémeaux at Place des Arts on Sept. 16
The request came from my editor on Monday, six days before: How would I feel about covering the Gémeaux for The Gazette? Their usual writer for these things, Brendan Kelly, was working a news reporting shift that day (weekend shifts are rotated among staff to share the burden), so he needed a backup. And since I know a bit more about French-language television than the usual Gazette writer, he thought of me. Despite the fact that I was also working a regular shift that day (but in the morning), I accepted. I was just too curious what it would be like. I’ve never covered an awards ceremony before. And I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve written stories on deadline like this. Fortunately for me, the people organizing this event are professionals, and they have it all down to a science. Continue reading
Caption Todd van der Heyden
