Category Archives: TV

| Opinion, TV

An open-minded review of Sun News Network

When the Sun News Network launched on April 18, 2011, the rapid-fire reviews were not kind at all. In response, host and seasoned journalist David Akin asked on Twitter that the network be cut some slack, at least until Day 2.

I decided to cut them a bit more slack. I’d give them a week, I’d watch the network throughout the day with an open mind, and reserve judgment until afterward (some sarcastic tweets excepted).

I put my new DVR into overdrive, recording the network for 16 hours a day, then watching it with the remote in hand to fast-forward through some of the repetitive parts and commercials.

After the first week, I realized that Week 2 would be a stronger test of Sun News than Week 1. The royal wedding was scheduled for the coming Friday, and Sun News had promised live coverage just like every other network in the world. And the end of Week 2 would feature the Canadian federal election, a huge test for any network, and an even tougher test for one that’s two weeks old and still trying to find its footing. So I recorded Week 2 as well, from 6am to 10pm (the overnight hours are repeats of prime-time programming).

As it turns out, there was a third major news event during that weekend: the death of Osama bin Laden. An unexpected breaking news event on a weekend evening would also give huge insight into how Sun News performed.

In the end, I recorded and watched (or zipped through) almost 200 hours of Sun News Network broadcasts, including the first two weeks in their entirety.

Afterward, I watched a half-day each of CBC News Network and CTV News Channel, in order to get a proper basis for comparison. (I was reminded, for example, how much 24-hour news networks in general will repeat stories.) I also checked back in with Sun News to see how they filled airtime after the election.

For the past year, I’ve checked in periodically, when there’s nothing better on TV. I won’t be so bold as to suggest that makes me an expert on the network, but I think I’m a bit more familiar with what they put on the air than many of the people who have written about it since it launched.

So for the benefit of those who want a more balanced perspective about the network, and hopefully to counteract the flood of (mostly negative) commentary that comes from people who clearly have never seen it, I’ll offer my review.

I haven’t interviewed anyone at the network, and other than brief Twitter exchanges and a single on-air appearance, I haven’t spoken to anyone there in any other context either. My opinions are based on what has actually been aired, combined with what personalities have said in other media. My research is based on what has aired combined with reputable sources I’ve found online.

(Note: This is really long. Feel free to skip to the conclusions and suggestions at the end if you’re pressed for time.)

Continue reading →

| Montreal, TV

CBC Montreal building new set

Debra Arbec doing the news from the newsroom set

UPDATE (April 18): The new set is done. See what it looks like here.

Much like CFCF did last year, CBMT is doing its daily newscasts from its newsroom set as its main set is being torn down and redone.

Andrew Chang gave viewers an idea of what’s going into the new set on Monday’s newscast. It will involve a new desk with a Plexiglas top. Behind the anchors will be five HD plasma screens, and a large 70-inch touchscreen will also be on the set, which is being designed in house in the Maison Radio-Canada.

Until then, the evening newscast will be hosted from the set that sits just outside the control room, which itself is just beside the newsroom. Reporters doing live in-studio segments, which were done from this set, have been moved to an adjacent room that is used for remote interviews for CBC News Network or The National. Frank Cavallaro’s weather set is a green screen just a few feet from the desk Arbec is sitting at above.

The 10:55pm newscast is done from this set as well, except with a green screen lowered behind it.

Because the camera for this set is standard definition, anchors won’t be appearing in HD until the camera is upgraded or they move into their new set. And, like with CFCF last year, the set only fits one, so Arbec and Chang will have to alternate behind the desk.

| TV

CRTC sides with Bell Media in dispute with cable companies

The title of the decision is “Request for dispute resolution by the Canadian Independent Distributors Group relating to the distribution of specialty television services controlled by Bell Media Inc.” – but its boringness hides how much of an effect it could have on your cable or satellite television bills.

The case involves a complaint to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission from a group of independent telecom groups about their attempts to come to a deal with Bell Media over its specialty services like TSN, Discovery Channel and Space.

The cable companies formed an alliance called the Canadian Independent Distributors Group. Its members are:

  • Bragg Communications (EastLink)
  • Cogeco Cable
  • Manitoba Telecom Services
  • Telus
  • The Canadian Cable Systems Alliance, which represents more than 100 independent distributors including dozens of small-town companies and cooperatives

Of note is that none of these companies are vertically integrated – they don’t have specialty channels of their own. They argue in their complaint that Bell is using its ownership of some of Canada’s most popular specialty channels as leverage to give its affiliated television services better deals than it gives to independent cable companies.

Giving undue preference to an affiliated company is not allowed by CRTC rules. What’s more, when it became clear that mega mergers would create giant corporations with significant holdings in both television services and the cable and satellite companies used to distribute them, the CRTC set up a framework to ensure they weren’t abusing their positions.

The framework set rules for these companies, which include:

  • forbidding them from setting “unreasonable” wholesale rates for specialty channels
  • forbidding them from requiring minimum subscription numbers that would force people to pay for services they didn’t want
  • requiring them to make services available on a stand-alone basis
  • forbidding them from establishing an “excessive” activation fee
  • in general, offering conditions to affiliated companies that are not offered to competing companies

This is all well and good in theory, but would it work in practice? Bell’s purchase of CTV and Shaw’s purchase of Canwest/Global certainly gives the impression that they believe they can gain an advantage through this vertical integration and that they believe there are benefits to controlling both sides of the equation.

The independent distributors group complained that Bell Media, in negotiating a new contract for its services, made unfair demands of them. Among them:

  • Making no changes to how they package Bell Media’s specialty channels without first gaining Bell Media’s consent
  • Setting minimum penetration levels so high, particularly for TSN and RDS, that the cable companies would be forced to force customers to carry those channels whether they wanted to or not
  • Requiring high fees and interest be paid when new contracts are agreed to after the previous one has expired
  • Refusing to include “non-linear rights” (i.e. video on demand and mobile) in the agreements

Bell Media responded by saying its services required a certain amount of revenue predictability, but offered an option called a penetration-based rate card, which adjusts wholesale rates based on the number of subscribers. The more subscribers, the lower the wholesale price per subscriber (the retail rate is at the discretion of the distributor). With that option, the cable companies would be free to offer services à la carte (but Bell would still require at least 50% of customers carry the most popular Category A channels like TSN and Discovery).

It also pointed out that more than 150 other distributors had signed an agreement with them.

Bell wouldn’t budge on “non-linear” rights, saying it isn’t regulated and has a high market value. Bell said it currently isn’t offering those rights to other distributors, but would be willing to provide the rights at commercially reasonable rates once they do.

The cable companies responded to Bell Media saying that while the penetration-based rate card makes sense in theory, if the price is much higher than the rates with minimum penetration guarantees, it wouldn’t solve the problem.

A win for Bell Media

The CRTC’s decision came down mostly on the side of Bell Media. While the commission has pronounced itself strongly in favour of consumer choice and à la carte subscription options, it said the older, bigger-budget specialty channels “will need time to adapt to an increasingly consumer-focussed environment.” It endorsed the variable rate system proposed by Bell, with the caveat that it would be unacceptable “if it had the effect of making flexible packaging options commercially unviable or resulted in a company that offers programming services using its market dominance so as to insulate it completely from the effect of consumers exercising choice.”

On the issue of what Bell called “incentives” to sign contracts on time, the CRTC agreed that such practices are commercially reasonable and did not order Bell to cease using them or to stop charging interest on retroactive balances.

And in the debate over “non-linear” programming rights, the CRTC also sided with Bell, saying it did not have to include those rights in negotiations with the cable companies and could negotiate them separately when it is prepared to do so.

The next stage, if the groups can’t come to an agreement before then, is arbitration. The arbitration process used here is called final offer arbitration, also referred to as “baseball arbitration” or “pendulum arbitration“. Both sides present final offers and the arbitrator chooses which one he or she thinks is more reasonable. The idea behind this form of arbitration is that it encourages both sides to be reasonable in their demands, and is likely to reward the side that is seen as being more conciliatory.

What does it all mean for me?

A lot still has to be determined at the arbitration stage. If the wholesale rate on the penetration-based rate card is too high, small cable companies won’t take advantage of it to offer consumers more choice. If it’s low enough that it makes sense to offer more packaging choice, we might see other cable and satellite providers try à la carte models. Currently choosing channels that way is available only in Quebec, and really only because of competitive pressure from Videotron that has forced Bell and Cogeco to do the same in Quebec but not elsewhere. Bell and Rogers both come out against more packaging flexibility for consumers, saying it’s either too complicated or consumers aren’t interested in it. (Bell Media even said at the hearing, when speaking of allowing Videotron to move to an à la carte model: “In hindsight, I wish that horse could be put back in the barn”)

But while the CRTC could have taken a strong stand in favour of consumer choice, it decided instead to stay on the side of some of the biggest money-makers in Canada. Channels like TSN, Space and Discovery are hardly in financial distress. Instead, they are the most profitable specialty channels and each make millions of dollars every year. Still, the CRTC has decided that it’s okay for big companies like Bell Media to impose minimum levels of subscribers for these channels, which means if not enough consumers choose them, cable and satellite companies can be forced to add them to basic packages and charge people for the channels whether they want them or not.

If there’s one bright spot, it’s that the CRTC believes that there’s an adjustment period here, and that eventually these specialty services will have to stand on their own two feet without this crutch of a minimum subscriber base. By the time of the next contract in a few years, all cable and satellite companies could be entirely free of contractual headaches that put limits on packaging flexibility, and consumer choice could reign.

Assuming we haven’t all moved to Netflix by then.

| Radio, TV

Local broadcasters win regional broadcasting awards

RTNDA Canada (Radio and Television News Directors Association) is putting out awards like a drunken award-giver. The latest batch is the central region awards, of which there are 35 recipients, including “honorary mention” awards. When the medium is restricted to broadcasting, the language is restricted to English and the geography is restricted to Quebec and Ontario, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that some Montreal media are winning these awards.

Nevertheless, journalists deserve praise for their work over the past year, as marginally prestigious as it may be.

The full list of winners is here. Among Quebec (and by that I mean Montreal) media:

CTV Montreal was the big winner, picking up three awards:

  • The special report Dirty Little Secret (Part 1, Part 2) by Caroline van Vlaardingen, about how easy it is to get sexual services at massage parlours, won the Dan McArthur Award for in-depth/investigative reporting
  • The special report Caught in a Trap by Catherine Sherriffs, about the dangers to animals of traps in wooded areas, won the Dave Rogers Award (large market) for long features
  • The station also won the Hugh Haugland Award (named after a CFCF cameraman who died on the job) for creative use of video
CJAD won the Peter Gzowski Award for news information program for its reporting on the one-year anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti. Host Ric Peterson gives his thank-yous on his blog. Clips from the report can be listened to on the show’s podcast page.

The Ron Laidlaw award for continuous coverage went to CBC Montreal for coverage of last year’s Richelieu flood. An honourable mention went to Global Montreal for its coverage of the same floods.

| Montreal, TV

Nancy Wood replaces Amanda Margison as late anchor on CBC Montreal

Nancy Wood anchors her first late newscast on Monday, April 23

Nancy Wood is coming back.

Two years after being removed from her job as host of Daybreak on CBC Radio, Wood has been given the job of late anchor on CBC television. She will replace Amanda Margison, who is leaving Montreal to move to London, Ont.

An exact start date is still to be determined, but the change is expected to happen by the end of the month. UPDATE: Wood’s first shift was Monday, April 23. You can see video of it here.

Wood has spent the past two years working in a special capacity at Radio-Canada’s investigative show Enquête, doing stories for them but also repurposing Enquête’s stories for English television (you know, all those “CBC/Radio-Canada investigations”). Wood told me yesterday that it was clear when the project was renewed for a second season last year that this would be its last, so she’s been preparing to return to the English side for some time.

With the opening of the late anchor position, Wood said it was a convenient way of bringing her back without causing any disruption to other positions or bumping anyone out of a job.

CBC’s union rules allow Wood to return to her old job of national television reporter based in Montreal if the anchor job doesn’t work out. It’s what kept her at the CBC after losing the Daybreak job and what she had planned to do before news of the late anchor vacancy came up.

I asked Wood whether being on a 10-minute late newscast was better for her professionally than being a regular reporter for national news. She pointed out the advantage of being a daily presence on local television versus a letter and more intermittent one nationally. She also said being a national reporter can often mean being told on a moment’s notice to run off to some distant corner of the province to report on a breaking story. Being an anchor is more predictable in terms of work hours and location.

But there are downsides to the new job, she admitted. With a shift ending at 11:15pm, it means not being able to spend weeknights at home with her two teenage kids, and only seeing them in the mornings, when they are much less verbal, as any parent can attest.

Wood said she’d also be a bit sad about not being able to work on long features like the stories she’s doing for Enquête. She just came back to Montreal from Louisiana, where she worked on her final story, expected to come out next week. After that, she’ll move to the English side. (UPDATE: Her final investigative story has come out, about the health risks of an anti-malaria drug given to Canadian soldiers)

Ratings

It was actually Wood who used the R word first in our conversation, pointing out that part of her job will be to try to boost the ratings of the late newscast, sandwiched between The National and George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight.

Wood’s departure from Daybreak reportedly had a lot to do with the show’s ratings with her at the helm.

When asked whether she’s worried about ratings, Wood said it would be nice to see a boost, but that will depend more on how much promotion of the show will be done using the usual means as well as during advertising breaks of The National.

I’m sure it’s a coincidence, but I can’t help noticing how the timing of Wood’s job change matches that of CBC Quebec boss Pia Marquard. Though it’s unclear what role Marquard played in removing Wood from Daybreak, the move happened as she took over the job, and many CBC listeners angry over Wood’s removal blamed Marquard directly. Wood’s move back to a more public role happens just as Marquard is leaving the post for health reasons.

CBC Montreal News Director Mary-Jo Barr couldn’t be reached for comment last Friday and has since left on a two-week vacation. I’ll try to talk to her when she comes back. UPDATE (April 18): CBC Montreal News Director Mary-Jo Barr had nothing but praise for Wood. She also noted when I talked to her that Marquard was instrumental in Wood being given the late anchor job.

As for Margison, she confirmed she’s “moving on” but didn’t offer much comment on the matter, beyond her surprise that the news came out via Twitter.

“There are no secrets any more,” she writes in an email.

Not when it comes to anchors, I’m afraid.

Thomas Daigle

Sabrina Marandola

Daigle, Marandola hired for weekend newscast

Meanwhile, the second of two jobs opened as a result of the impending expansion into weekends have been filled. Sabrina Marandola will be taking over the job of weekend weather presenter.

Marandola confirmed the news Thursday afternoon on Twitter.

The move is hardly a surprise. Marandola has often acted as a backup to Frank Cavallaro.

Marandola joins Thomas Daigle, who was named to the anchor position last week.

UPDATE (April 18): Barr heaped the praise on both Daigle and Marandola, saying how thrilled CBC is to have them in these roles. Barr said Daigle, who has no previous anchoring experience, is nevertheless “a really strong live reporter” who is “engaging on camera, a great communicator”. Marandola, who started backing up Cavallaro around Christmas, is “dynamic and engaging” and “really has a love and passion for weather,” Barr said.

I asked Barr, because of Wood’s history, whether ratings would factor in to how these anchors are evaluated. Barr said that of course ratings are important (“that’s why we’re here,” she said), but that there are no expectations on anchors when it comes to ratings numbers.

The newscasts – 6pm-6:30pm on Saturdays and 10:55pm-11:05pm on Sundays – start May 5.

| Radio, TV

CBC cuts will be felt on the airwaves

Nobody could seriously have suspected that the 10% cut to the CBC’s budget wouldn’t result in some significant service disruptions. Nevertheless, the Mother Corp has done its best to maintain things like local programming.

The CBC has a website explaining the cuts that are coming as a result of the federal budget.

Here, in point form, is what the CBC is doing:

  • Reduce its workforce by 650 full-time equivalent jobs
  • Apply to the CRTC to allow it to air advertising on Radio Two and Espace musique
  • Shut down remaining analog television transmitters by July 31
  • Radio Canada International will cease transmission on shortwave and satellite, cut Russian and Brazilian services, and shut down its news department, ending its newscasts
  • Cancel nighttime programming on Première chaîne
  • Produce fewer episodes (and air more repeats) of original television series
  • Reduce its real estate footprint, including reducing Maison Radio-Canada in Montreal by 400,000 square feet
  • Increase employee contributions to the employee pension plan
  • Abandon plans for an English-language children’s specialty channel and French-language sports channel
  • Sell Bold
  • Produce fewer in-house documentaries, relying more on independent producers

There’s a bunch of other things that are very vague, including reductions in news gathering and in radio programming, whose details will be known soon.

On the plus side, it doesn’t look like local programming will be significantly affected. CBC Montreal will continue, for example, with its plans to launch weekend TV and radio newscasts starting May 5. The network also seems to be doing as much as it can to keep journalism jobs (except at RCI).

On the minus side, some people will complain about ads and sponsorships on the music radio stations (and it seems an odd move particularly because Radio Two and Espace musique are usually at the very bottom of the ratings charts), and there can’t be the loss of so many jobs without affecting front-line services.

But what gets me most is those cuts to actual, physical broadcasting.

No-wave radio

The CBC’s CKCX shortwave transmission site near Sackville, New Brunswick, is a sight to behold with its giant transmission towers and seemingly chaotic spider web of long antenna wires. It’s the only station of its kind in Canada, and transmits at different times and on different frequencies toward the rest of the world on shortwave, as well as some CBC North programming toward the territories and some transmissions of foreign services as part of transmitter sharing/swap agreements.

The shortwave transmissions will be coming to an end, as will transmissions using satellite. This leaves Internet streaming as the only way for people to listen to RCI.

It’s hardly the first time RCI has felt under the knife. There’s a blog set up by those who want to protect this service from being slashed into oblivion. It points to cuts under the Mulroney government in 1990 in which RCI was almost shut down but instead lost just half its staff and half its language services.

I don’t have any numbers on how many people listen to RCI via shortwave. Maybe it’s not many. But I can’t help thinking this loss will be a blow to Canada’s reputation, and wonder why they’d bother keeping it if they’re going to make it online-only. This interview with RCI’s boss, Hélène Parent, makes it clear in its tone if not its content that this is as close to a fatal blow to RCI as one can make without killing it completely. More than 80% of its budget is being cut, going from $12.3 million to $2.3 million.

And as some have pointed out, part of the benefit of shortwave radio is to provide a western perspective to people inside third-world countries or dictatorships where their only other options are state-run television and radio stations. Many of these places restrict or block the Internet, and might do the same to RCI online. Though it is possible to jam shortwave radio transmissions, it’s a lot harder.

The analog era is over

Another big cost savings will come from shutting down more than 600 analog television transmitters across the country. In an effort to serve Canadians in even the most remote of communities, the CBC has retransmitters for its English and French television services all over the country. Many of them are low-power, transmitting just a few watts of power to cover a community of a few hundred people.

For example, here’s a list of the 40+ retransmitters just of CBC Montreal television, from Îles de la Madeleine to Blanc Sablon to
Salluit at the northern end of Quebec. All of them will be shut down, leaving only the digital transmitter on Mount Royal.

After July 31, only existing digital transmitters will remain in operation. There are 27 of them for the two networks, along with those run by privately-owned affiliates.

It’s not just tiny villages that will lose over-the-air television. Quebec City, Sherbrooke, Trois Rivières and other cities in Quebec will no longer have retransmitters of CBC Montreal, which will mean, for example, that audiences without cable or satellite television in those areas will no longer get to watch Canadiens games on Saturday nights. The CRTC gave a one-year extension on the mandatory digital transition for a bunch of transmitters in mandatory markets. Affected were transmitters for stations that did not produce any original local programming but were in markets large enough to require the transition.

When I spoke to the CBC, it said it would probably just ask for another extension once that one ran out, and that it didn’t see ever converting all or even most of its analog transmitters into digital.

With budget cuts, the hand is forced and these transmitters are going to be shut down. That will mean, for example, that APTN will be the only over-the-air television transmitters in northern Canada. It will mean that Quebec will have no over-the-air English television outside of Montreal, Gatineau and the two Global Montreal retransmitters in Quebec City and Sherbrooke. It will mean no Radio-Canada transmitter in Calgary and many other markets where you’d think they should have one.

One can hope that the CBC will mitigate the damage somewhat by providing second-language service as a subchannel in some markets where it has digital transmitters for one language but not the other. That would mean it could at least provide a standard-definition feed of CBC television in Quebec City to people with digital receivers.

Otherwise, this is really the beginning of the end of over-the-air television.

UPDATE (April 11): The Gazette has a story about the cuts to Radio Canada International.

Meanwhile, CBC has more details about the cuts to English services. They include shutting down South American and African news bureaus, eliminating drama programming from radio, and accelerating “integration” of newsrooms and other vague plans.

| Montreal, TV

Should CBC and Global move their local newscasts?

When I was working on my story about Global Montreal, my editor suggested I write a companion story about the ratings for local newscasts, since it had been a while since The Gazette looked into that. (The last time was a year ago, when CFCF celebrated its 50th anniversary.)

I asked for basic ratings information from the three broadcasters, wanting to know what their estimated total average audience was for each of their local programs. BBM Canada, which does ratings measurements, doesn’t like too much detail about demographics being released, so I limited myself to asking for the total 2+ audience.

In the case of Shaw Media, that limitation wasn’t enough, and they wouldn’t give me their exact ratings for CKMI’s Evening News, News Final and Focus Montreal, saying they couldn’t because of their deal with BBM. Fortunately, I was able to get some ballpark figures by looking at the detailed master planners that Shaw Media provides to advertisers, which breaks down by station, by time slot and by demographics. Shaw warned me that these are just “estimates”, but they’re the best I could get, and the numbers were similar to what was reported last year.

CFCF and CBMT had no trouble providing me with their audience numbers (though in the case of CBC Montreal there was apparently some confusion over whether it was numbers for the Montreal market or total, which led to a correction on the story.)

CFCF > everyone

The numbers for the weekday 6pm newscasts are unsurprising, and haven’t changed much. CFCF dominates with almost 200,000 viewers on average. CBMT is next with its newscast peaking at 34,000 during the 5:30pm block (which is ironically when it presents national and international news), and CKMI has numbers in the four digits, somewhere around 7,000 viewers.

It’s pretty well the same story as last year, and just about the same story as a decade ago, except that in 2000, when Global Montreal was still new and still making significant investments in local programming, the number of people watching its local news was about three times what it is now, and it was in second place ahead of the struggling CBC, which had only two years previously had an audience as high as 60,000, and was above 80,000 in the early 1990s.

We have decades of numbers showing that CBC isn’t going to beat CFCF at 6pm, and 15 years of numbers that show Global trying every trick in the book isn’t going to help it succeed at that goal either. CFCF’s newscasts have more resources, more staff, more experience, and much more loyal viewers.

Assuming that the other stations want to maximize viewership for their local newscasts (and there’s certainly an argument to be made that Global is doing the absolute bare minimum when it comes to CKMI – even their upcoming morning show is being done because of a CRTC commitment), what can they do?

Throwing money at the problem is one solution, though people who remember the best years of CBC’s NewsWatch would note that they still weren’t able to create serious competition for CFCF in the 1990s.

News at 5 … or 7

Another option is to move the newscasts out of the way and hand the 6pm hour over to CTV. In 2009, CBC made a big move expanding its local evening newscasts to 90 minutes and having them start at 5pm. CBMT is seeing strong ratings gains for that hour, and is seeing more viewers from 5-6pm than from 6-6:30pm.

On the French side, the reanimated corpse of TQS known as V based much of its programming schedule on counter-programming, putting entertainment programming in the 6pm and 10pm hours when Radio-Canada and TVA have newscasts. The idea has worked for one of V’s biggest successes, Un Souper presque parfait at 6:30pm.

Of course, this has been tried before. Global Montreal tried starting local news at 5:30 twice, the last time in 2000. That lasted two years until they went to the half-hour news at 6pm that they do now. CBMT also tried starting at 5:30pm in the 90s, but didn’t have much success.

But I think it’s time to try again. V’s successes and CBC’s stronger ratings in its 5pm hour show that counterprogramming is a strategy that can work for an underdog. And the number of people working 9-to-5 jobs that get home just before 6pm isn’t the same as it used to be. Many people are working earlier and later.

I’m not a big fan of CBMT’s repetitive 90-minute newscast, though I can understand the strategy of letting people tune in for one half-hour block of their choice. I think CBC should just get rid of the last half-hour, move to a one-hour newscast with less repetition and more original local news, and use that other half-hour daily to produce some other form of local programming. A current-affairs show or local culture show would be, I think, dearly welcome in this market, and something that would fit well with CBC’s mandate. Putting such a show at 7pm, when CTV and Global air vacuous celebrity gossip shows, would be brilliant counterprogramming and give people like me a reason to watch television at that hour.

Unfortunately for CBMT, decisions like this are made almost entirely at the national level. It was a national decision to have a 90-minute newscast that starts at 5pm, and a 10-minute late newscast after The National. For such a change to happen, it would either need to be made nationally (ignoring the variations in each market) or would require a decentralization of decision-making that we haven’t seen in a long while.

As for Global, when I met with station manager Karen Macdonald, I asked why they hadn’t considered moving the newscast out of CTV’s shadow. She pointed out that they have tried that in the past, but also said they didn’t try it for long. She said they might consider it again, but that if it would move it would probably go to 5:30.

I think 7pm is a better bet. The competition – CTV’s awful eTalk and the second half of Coronation Street on CBC – is weak, they wouldn’t be up against any other local news, and I think more and more Montrealers are working later shifts or having longer commutes and are more likely to miss the 6pm news at CFCF.

But Entertainment Tonight and ET Canada are big ratings draws for Global. And replacing ET Canada with local news at 7pm would be a sign of serious commitment to local programming that I don’t think Global is prepared to sacrifice ratings for.

The other newscasts

While a lot of attention is paid to 6pm weekdays, I was curious what the other newscasts during the week get in terms of audience. Those numbers are rarely reported.

CTV’s ratings show that the late-night newscast at 11:30pm gets 57,000 viewers on weekdays and 55,000 on weekends – so those tuning in to Tarah Schwartz on Saturday nights is about the same as those tuned in to Catherine Sherriffs on Monday nights.

It’s worth noting that these numbers are higher than CBMT’s at 5pm. So when Debra Arbec left her job as late-night anchor to jump to CBC, she saw her average viewership drop. But that’s compensated by being a bigger fish in the smaller pond, being one of the faces of her station, and having more airtime in a day (with SportsNight taking up much of CFCF’s late newscast, anchor screen time is very limited).

At noon, CFCF draws 50,000 viewers, which is pretty impressive for a time when most people are at work or doing important things.

And on the weekends, Tarah Schwartz gets 119,000 viewers on average at 6pm. (She’s supposed to be getting a co-anchor at some point, but one hasn’t been announced yet.)

The other late-night newscasts have pretty poor ratings. About 14,000 viewers for the 10-minute block of CBC sandwiched between The National and George Stroumboulopoulos. Global’s ratings at 11pm are in the low four-digits, around 2,000 viewers (though that’s a seven-day average, and also includes the 11:30 slot).

Compare that to more than 80,000 Montrealers tuning in to CTV National News, and there really isn’t much competition here either.

I always found CBC’s late local news a bit awkwardly-scheduled, more as a continuation of The National than a standalone program. That’s great if you want a lead-in from Peter Mansbridge, but CBMT isn’t going to attract viewers who tune in to American dramas at 10pm. By the time the credits start rolling on those shows, the CBC late newscast is almost half done.

What do you think?

I’m curious what my loyal readers think of newscast scheduling. Would moving weeknight local news be a good idea for CBC and Global? Would you be more likely to watch if they were on at some other time? What should the other guys do to set themselves apart from CFCF? And what other kinds of local programming would you like to see in English Montreal?

| Montreal, Radio, TV

Managing Director Pia Marquard leaving CBC

Pia Marquard, managing director at CBC Quebec, is leaving her job at the end of the month for health reasons.

In a message to staff, which includes English television and radio in Montreal and Quebec City, Marquard said she was “very proud and happy that I’ve been part of the Quebec team during the last two years” but that breathing problems after failed operations on her vocal cords have made it difficult for her to continue in her position, and “this is not a job that can be done part time.”

CBC News Editor in Chief Jennifer McGuire said she “accepted (Marquard’s) resignation with regret.” McGuire’s note to staff also said Marquard “intends to resume her consultant’s career in Montreal.”

Marquard became managing director at CBC Quebec in 2010, and is probably best known for a decision that was taken before she started. Marquard came into her new job amid a public backlash over the unceremonious removal of Nancy Wood from her job as host of CBC Daybreak. Marquard never commented publicly about the change, and to this day it remains unexplained.

Otherwise, her reign has been fairly uneventful, starting after the expansion of TV newscasts to an hour and a half and before the further expansion into weekends. There were two major on-air positions filled under her watch, with Mike Finnerty returning to Daybreak and Debra Arbec getting the co-anchor position with Andrew Chang on television. Also on her watch were technical upgrades, switching the transmitter to digital and upgrading the newscast to high definition.

Marquard’s replacement has not yet been named, but McGuire said one will be announced “within a few weeks.”

Marquard’s and McGuire’s messages to CBC staff are included below.

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| Montreal, TV

Notebook from Global Montreal

Jamie Orchard at her desk in the Global Montreal studio

Saturday in The Gazette, I profile Global Montreal (CKMI), the station with Montreal’s third most popular local English-language TV newscast. With that piece is another about ratings for the local newscasts. Despite the generous space devoted to the stories in the paper, there’s plenty of detail I gathered over the past few weeks that didn’t end up in the story. Most is probably only of interest to people who really care about such things anyway.

So as a bonus for my blog readers, some things from my notebook and some meta-discussion about the story:

Global bashing

I have, in the past, been accused of bashing the local Global station, particularly by people who follow me on Twitter.

It’s true. I often use Twitter in particular to point out the errors of others. Not so much out of maliciousness, but out of interest. … Okay, sometimes out of maliciousness. But only when it really deserves it.

But I don’t have any particular beef with Global. I’m an equal-opportunity critic (except maybe when it comes to my employer). I’ve been accused of having crushes on the people I profile and having hate-ons for those I criticize. But my goal is to make everyone better, by recognizing hard work and making sure mistakes don’t go by unnoticed.

I first visited Global Montreal in the summer of 2009, shortly after it moved in to its new offices on the seventh floor of the Dorchester Square building that also houses The Gazette. Global is on the seventh floor (which was once used by The Gazette), The Gazette is on the second and third. The two were under common ownership at the time, and they invited us to a special open house. I went with my camera and had a look around.

I thought I would be incognito, and I was. (My blog was less than half the age it is now.) But near the end Jamie Orchard spotted me and engaged me in conversation, explaining the hard work she and her team do to put together a daily newscast. The things I had said about the station previously on my blog, about its plan to outsource local news production and use fake sets inserted via chroma key, weren’t particularly flattering. Not that it’s easy to sugarcoat when an organization fires three quarters of its staff.

What struck me about our conversation was that they didn’t think I understood the work they do on the daily basis, or might have thought I was blaming them for the quality of their newscast.

I don’t think Global offers Montreal’s best newscast, as the ads say. But that’s not the fault of the staff. The reporters are of high quality, and Orchard is a good anchor. Even Bill Haugland and a staff of Brian Britts couldn’t make a top-notch newscast with such few resources. My criticisms are directed at Global and its owners, who want to spend the bare minimum (I would argue less than that) on local programming so it doesn’t cut too much into the lazy profit it makes from rebroadcasting House, Family Guy and other popular American shows.

Considering the blog post I wrote after my last visit, I wasn’t sure if they’d agree to another one, this one to do a formal profile for The Gazette. I wanted to write something about them because of all the attention paid to their competitors recently, with CFCF getting its new studio and anchor, and CBMT announcing the coming arrival of weekend newscasts.

Global Montreal station manager Karen Macdonald

But Karen Macdonald, CKMI’s station manager, eagerly agreed, and in February I sat down with her in her little corner office for an hour to talk about stuff. After that, I was invited into the tiny studio (it’s about the size of two apartment bedrooms) to witness the broadcast of the half-hour evening news program live, with Jamie Orchard in the anchor chair.

It was a while until I could get the story done, partly because I had to track down a few people to interview, and partly because I had my actual job to do quite a bit.

Reaction to the published story has been positive so far. Jamie Orchard and Anne Leclair seem to think it’s positive, but I was more flattered when the latter referred to it as “accurate”. My goal was to give people a picture of what goes on there, and both sides of the argument about outsourcing production jobs.

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| Radio, TV

Bell to buy Astral: But what about media concentration?

CORRECTION (July 14): Fixed list of stations to include an Astral one in Winnipeg that I had missed.

The HuffPost Québec and La Presse scoops ended up lasting only a few hours (most of which people spent asleep), but they were right: Bell has announced it will buy Montreal-based Astral Media in a deal worth $2.8 billion (or $3.38 billion, depending on how you count it).

The deal has serious implications in terms of diversity of voices in media, and has a pretty big regulatory hurdle before it can be approved. Astral owns 22 television services and 84 radio stations, many of which compete with Bell’s 30 specialty channels and 35 radio stations. In Montreal, notably, the deal would create a monopoly for English-language talk radio in Montreal, with CKGM (TSN 990) and CJAD both owned by the same company, and a near-monopoly for English-language commercial radio overall, with four of five stations owned by the same company.

Probably the most telling statement of the press release is this: “Astral products currently represent Bell’s largest single content cost.”

(Imagine that: Just going out and buying your biggest expense. If only I had a few billion dollars lying around, I could go out and buy Videotron and maybe Hydro-Quebec too.)

The competition bureau is obviously going to look into this. The CRTC must also approve the transaction, and could reject the deal or force Bell to sell off some assets if it believes they would harm competition. (The deal includes a $150-million payout from Bell to Astral if the CRTC rejects the purchase.)

Here’s a bit of a breakdown of how this might play out:

Television

Conventional (over-the-air) television: Astral has stayed out of the conventional television game so far, and owns only two stations in small markets in British Columbia, and both are CBC affiliates.

French-language specialty and pay television: Bell is selling this deal as a big push into the French-language Quebec market, and specialty channels will form a large part of that. Right now, Bell owns only a controlling stake in RDS and its related channels. Astral owns channels including Canal D, Canal Vie, MusiMax, MusiquePlus, VRAK.tv and Ztelé, but no sports-related channels. The CRTC shouldn’t have a problem here. Same for pay television, where Astral is the biggest (really, only) player with Super Écran. The deal would give the company a 26.8% viewing share among French-language specialty channels, but that would still be below Quebecor at 29.6%.

English-language specialty and pay television: Astral also has an interest in English-language specialty, with services including the Family channel and a 50% ownership of Teletoon (with Corus). But the big money is in pay television. Astral owns the Movie Network, Super Écran and related channels, and has a controlling stake in Viewers Choice Pay-Per-View. There isn’t much direct competition with Bell, though it does own channels like MuchMusic and MTV Canada (and related channels for both) which also target a younger audience. But the deal would give bell 41.4% viewing share among specialty channels in English Canada, twice its next-largest competitor (Shaw), which might concern the commission.

Radio

Bell is already the biggest player in commercial radio, with 31% of total listening hours among the big commercial radio players, according to the latest CRTC monitoring report. With Astral, that would go up to almost 45%, in both English and French-language radio. Revenue-wise, 31% of radio advertising revenue across the country would be going to Bell/Astral, which would be twice the next-largest player (Corus).

French radio: Astral has substantial radio holdings in Quebec, with the NRJ, Rouge FM and Boom FM radio networks that in many markets hit the limit of common ownership. But Bell has no French-language radio assets, which means there aren’t any big regulatory concerns here.

English radio: Here’s where the deal is going to run into some serious problems. Both Bell and Astral are major radio players, and the deal would put the combined company in violation of the CRTC’s ownership rules set in 1998 that state only two stations in one band/language/market can be owned by the same company in a market with eight or more stations, and a maximum of three total (and no more than two in one band) in markets with less than eight stations.

If we assume that the company would keep the highest-rated stations in each market/language/band and sell off the rest, that would put quite a few stations on the chopping block. Affected markets would include the following, with stations ranked according to BBM market share and stations in bold the ones the selling block (again, based on ratings alone – there could be any number of reasons for keeping a lower-rated station):

  • Montreal: Two FM and two AM (with only five commercial stations total, one would need to be sold)
    • #1 CJAD 800 AM (Astral)
    • #2 CJFM-FM Virgin Radio 95.9 (Astral)
    • #4 CHOM-FM 97.7 (Astral)
    • #6 CKGM TSN Radio 990 AM (Bell)
  • Calgary: Three FM and one AM.
    • #4: CIBK-FM Virgin Radio 98.5 (Astral)
    • #6: CJAY-FM 92.1 (Astral)
    • #14: CKCE-FM Kool 101.5 (Bell)
    • #16: CKMX Classic Country 1060 AM (Astral)
  • Ottawa: Four FM and two AM.
    • #2 CFRA 580 AM(Bell)
    • #4: CJMJ-FM Majic 100.3 (Bell)
    • #10: CKKL-FM BOB 93.9 (Bell)
    • #11: CKQB-FM The Bear 106.9 (Astral)
    • #13: CFGO Team 1200 (Bell)
    • #14: CJOT-FM EZ Rock 99.7 (Astral)
  • Toronto: Four FM and two AM. The AM situation, with a news-talk owned by Astral and a sports station owned by Bell, is similar to the situation in Montreal.
    • #3: CHUM-FM 104.5 (Bell)
    • #6: CKFM-FM Virgin 99.9 (Astral)
    • #7: CHBM-FM Boom 97.3 (Astral)
    • #8: CFRB NewsTalk 1010 AM (Astral)
    • #19: CFXJ-FM Flow 93.5 (Bell)
    • #21: CHUM TSN 1050 AM (Bell)
  • Vancouver: Four FM and three AM. Vancouver is the only market where the combined company might own more than two AM radio stations. Bell’s stations are in the unusual situation of being co-branded, with one as a secondary station to the other. It’s not clear whether that would be enough to bypass the CRTC’s ownership rules.
    • #1: CHQM-FM QM 103.5 (Bell)
    • #4: CFBT-FM The Beat 94.5 (Bell)
    • #5: CKZZ-FM Virgin 95.3 (Astral)
    • #10: CKST Team 1040 (Bell)
    • #14: CISL 650 (Astral)
    • #16: CHHR-FM Shore 104.3 (Astral)
    • #19: CFTE Team 1410 (Bell)
  • Winnipeg: Four FM and one AM

In Montreal, the CRTC would take note of the fact that the combined company would own both English AM talk radio stations here. Overall, Bellstral would own four of the five English-language commercial radio stations in Montreal, with only Cogeco’s CKBE-FM The Beat 92.5 as competition of any sort.

As you can see from the list, there aren’t many big national brands at play here. The company would probably keep its Virgin-branded stations from Astral, and its Team/TSN sports radio stations from Bell, and sell off stations that are weaker performers in their markets.

Telecom

Astral doesn’t own any cable or satellite companies, so there aren’t any issues directly here. But the fact that Bell sees this purchase as a benefit to its satellite and Fibe TV service by owning one of its biggest expenses will be looked at.

Other assets

Bell doesn’t have any newspaper holdings (aside from its interest in the Globe and Mail), which might also cause issues with regulators (the CRTC won’t allow a company to own a newspaper, TV and radio station in the same market). Astral doesn’t own any significant online assets that aren’t tied to other assets.

There’s also Astral’s huge outdoor advertising business, but I do my best to ignore that.

My take

I’m a bit surprised that Bell thinks it can get away with this. People are already worried about concentration of media ownership in Canada, and now one of our few big players is buying another. It’s not as significant as if, say, Bell decided to buy Shaw or Rogers, but it’s still very worrisome, especially in English radio and English specialty television. Even if the CRTC forces some assets to be sold off, they’d probably be sold to other major players.

In short, it’s a horrible day for diversity in voices in media.

I have a brief story in Saturday’s Gazette about what the deal means for Quebec, to go with the national story giving the overall picture.

Other coverage

| Montreal, Radio, TV

“Thank you for supporting local music”

Me, with local music

I went to a concert recently. Not a big one at the Bell Centre, but a small one at a bar. Maybe 100 people in attendance. It’s not something I do often, but I went that night for two reasons: I knew people in the band (Montreal’s The Jimmyriggers) and it was a rare Saturday night off from work and I felt I should take advantage of it.

As it happens, I enjoyed myself. I sat down at a table with Gazette music critic Bernie Perusse, who happened to be there that night with a friend, and the three of us nodded at each other repeatedly through both the opening act, folk-country musician Sarah Jane Scouten, and the set from the Jimmyriggers. Perusse later gave the show a good review on the Words and Music blog.

I’m not a music critic, so I can’t tell you in great detail why I liked what I did (and didn’t like what I didn’t). But I liked what I heard enough that I bought the latest albums from both artists.

After the show, I approached Scouten at the bar to tell her how much I enjoyed the show. We struck up a conversation in which she thanked me for buying her album. With the sincerity and encouragement normally reserved for large cash donations to struggling third-world charities, she said:

“Thank you for supporting local music.”

I felt kind of guilty. The number of music CDs I have purchased in my lifetime could be carried in one hand. I’m hardly an aficionado of local music, and my purchases that night were the exception rather than the rule.

But what stunned me most about that conversation was that a pretty girl was talking to me at a bar how unsupported local artists feel, particularly by media. In an age where it’s easier than ever to communicate and produce, why are so many still struggling to get noticed?

One thing we’ve lost in the reduction of local programming in broadcast media is a place where art can be showcased. Sure, you can have a 30-second interview in a two-minute TV news piece promoting an upcoming show, but CTV News isn’t going to invite a musical guest to come in and play a few songs. Really the only place where I’ve seen live performances on local English-language television is Global Montreal’s weekend Focus Montreal show, and those involve musicians coming into a cramped, all-green studio that’s not at all designed to facilitate the broadcast of music.

On radio, local bands are invited to perform live, but even then the exposure is limited. Major commercial stations relegate these types of shows to hours when the number of listeners is low. With the exception of Mitch Melnick at CKGM, there aren’t many big-time announcers in commercial radio that go out of their way to promote local music. And campus and community radio stations just don’t have the audience to give enough of a push to local artists.

There are people out there who are trying to compensate for this problem. There’s Said the Gramophone. There’s Midnight Poutine with its weekly podcast featuring artists who have upcoming shows in the city. They’re also planning their first concert for next Friday.

But it would be nice to combine the desire to promote local music with the desire for mainstream media to connect with a younger audience. Surely there’s a win-win situation here. If I can enjoy this music, surely others will as well, so long as they get a chance to hear it.

The Jimmyriggers perform Monday, March 26 at 9:30pm at Chez Baptiste sur Masson (3014 Masson). Tickets are $6.

Sarah Jane Scouten performs Wednesday, April 18 at Bar L’Esco (4467 St. Denis).

Midnight Poutine’s inaugural local concert, featuring Reversing Falls, Honheehonhee and CTZNSHP, is Friday, March 16 at 9pm at Jackie & Judy (6512 Ave. du Parc). Tickets are $10. See the Facebook event and join the Facebook group for info on future concerts.

| Montreal, Technology, TV

Colba.Net applies to expand IPTV to major cities in Quebec and Ontario

Colba.Net's proposed IPTV service area in greater Montreal - the green zone has already been approved by the CRTC

Colba.Net, the Montreal-based independent telecom provider, has applied to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for permission to expand its new IPTV service to greater Montreal, including the south shore, St. Jean sur Richelieu, Châteauguay, Île Perrot, Vaudreuil, Valleyfield, Laval, the north shore and St. Jérôme.

It’s also looking to setup service in Granby, Sherbrooke/Magog, Sorel/Tracy, Joliette, Trois-Rivières, and the greater Quebec City/Lévis area. You can see maps of those proposed service areas on its website.

In a separate application, Colba.Net is also looking to introduce IPTV to the National Capital Region (Ottawa/Gatineau) and cities in Ontario, including:

  • Barrie
  • Orilla
  • Peterborough
  • Benneville Belleville
  • Kingston
  • The Greater Toronto Area from Oshawa to Newmarket to Hamilton
  • London
  • Stratford
  • Brantford
  • Kitchener
  • Niagara Falls

Again, Colba.Net helpfully provides maps on its website.

Colba.Net launched its IPTV service in Montreal in December, after having received CRTC approval for a network covering the island in October 2010. But it’s still in its infancy. It’s only available downtown, on the Plateau and in Westmount, and it offers only 28 channels, four of which are in HD. Even popular cable channels like CBC News Network, LCN, Discovery Channel and Space are listed as “available soon”.

But the proposed programming grid for Quebec lists just about every cable channel any Canadian could have access to. It’s essentially the same as Bell’s Fibe TV service, including Bell’s community channel, Bell video on demand and Bell pay-per-view. The grid for Ontario is similar. Both would notably take their U.S. network stations from Detroit (and Rochester, N.Y., for Fox) instead of Montreal’s usual Burlington/Plattsburgh.

The technology used is similar to Bell’s Fibe service, and will use ADSL2+ and VDSL2 to squeeze voice, Internet and television data through twisted-pair phone line.

According to the CRTC application, the IPTV service would cost $24.95 per month for base service (which would include mandatory channels, U.S. networks and a few non-mandatory channels like MuchMusic, CMT, YTV and CTV News Channel), plus a $75 installation fee. The service currently costs $34.95 a month, but when bundled with voice and Internet that comes down to $19.95 a month. Service also requires a special router at $109.95 and a set-top box for $149.95.

The application doesn’t specify how many channels would be available in high definition.

Plenty of Montrealers like to use third-party resellers for Internet and phone service, but the lack of alternatives to Bell, Videotron and Shaw when it comes to TV service is a major deterrent to switching. If Colba.Net can offer a competitive television service with as many channels available (including high-definition channels) for a reasonable price, that might be enough to get many people upset with the big players’ prices or poor customer service to switch over.

UPDATE (April 15): Colba.Net has applied yet again to expand its IPTV service, to major cities in every province but Prince Edward Island. Applications can be consulted here: