Category Archives: TV

| Montreal, Opinion, TV

A new Sherriffs in town

Catherine Sherriffs will anchor CFCF's 11:30 newscast (CTV photo)

CTV Montreal announced on Thursday that reporter Catherine Sherriffs has gotten the job as 11:30pm newscast anchor, left vacant since the departure of Debra Arbec to CBC last month.

Sherriffs’s appointment is effective July 4, which, coincidentally or not, is the same day Arbec is scheduled to begin as the 5pm anchor at CBC.

“I’m really excited to still be reporting, it will be great to get out into the city,” Sherriffs says in the story CTV posted online. “But being an anchor is what I always dreamed about. Literally, always. I’ve never wanted to do anything else.”

Sherriffs, from Morin Heights, is a 2007 graduate of Concordia’s journalism program, and got her start on radio. She’s the niece of current CFQR newsman Murray Sherriffs.

The choice of Sherriffs is a bit (but not too much) out of left field. Either of weekend anchors Paul Karwatsky or Tarah Schwartz would have been an obvious choice. Or one of the veteran reporters. But not all of them were interested in a job that would see them lose their weeknights.

Sherriffs hasn’t been contributing to CTV long (in fact, she wasn’t even a permanent member of the staff), but her appointment reminds me of that of Andrew Chang at CBC, who was also a noticeably young (and tiny, and cute) pick but who has turned out to be a very good anchor.

Another pretty face

Of course, the first reaction from TV watchers, and the thing most of us are too polite to point out in public, is that Sherriffs is very pretty. The thought immediately enters one’s mind that she was picked for the job primarily for this reason.

Let’s be honest here: Looks do matter on TV. In a world where your boss will talk to you about your choice of tie, how you look is a big part of how you’re judged. I personally cringe at the thought of how random strangers would judge me if I ever got a regular job that saw my face (and fashion sense) on television.

Look around the dial and you see lots of pretty faces in TV news (not just on Sun News Network). There’s an element of self-selection in this – people (especially women) who are very pretty seem more likely to see themselves as television reporters, or have people suggest that to them. There’s a natural sociological force that brings pretty faces and on-camera TV jobs together. And there are decision-makers who, when presented with two candidates with equal skills and experience, will convince themselves that the prettier one actually has more skills or more experience.

We can say this is wrong, that people should be chosen for their mental qualifications and not their looks, but at the end of the day it’s ratings that matter, and ratings are driven by the viewers.

So, was Sherriffs chosen because she’s pretty? I can’t get into the head of the decision-makers at CTV, so there’s no way to know for sure what they thought consciously or unconsciously. My guess is that it was a minor factor in the decision. Sherriffs’s hosting experience comes from radio, where nobody really cares what you look like. And her work as a TV reporter gives no indication that she’s a dumb girl wandering the streets with a microphone. Pretty works, but it isn’t enough.

The real test will come next month, when she takes over the anchor chair and begins walking the fine line between being a serious news reader and being a warm, relatable human being that people are comfortable spending some time with before they go to bed.

It’ll probably be awkward at first, but give it a few months and she and their viewers will get used to each other.

I’ve never met Catherine Sherriffs, but from what I know about her through her colleagues and her work, I can tell you this: This is what she wants to do, and few people are as motivated as she is to succeed.

| Opinion, TV

CTV Two: The second-rate brand

BBC Two. ESPN2. CBC Radio 2. TSN2. And now Bell Media has added another broadcaster to the list of brands whose names literally scream out “second-rate stuff goes here”: A Channel/ATV will become CTV Two, they announced on Monday.

Of course, A Channel is a second-rate channel, carrying mostly American programming that CTV has the rights to but can’t fit into the main network’s schedule. And I wasn’t exactly crazy about the /A\ branding either, particularly because of how ungoogleable it was.

A poll apparently told Bell that CTV’s brand is the most trusted media brand in Canada, and so it has decided to use that brand to maximum effect. It can’t turn A Channel stations into CTV stations directly (most are too close to existing CTV stations), so it’ll impose its brand and add a number to it because they can’t think of anything better to name it.

Another change will be rebranding the newscasts as “CTV News” – so they’ll be indistinguishable from CTV newscasts in all the other markets. Whether viewers of the local stations want this is, of course, irrelevant. The decision comes from the top, using the same logic that killed the Pulse News brand in Montreal.

CTV seems to be implying that it will put more effort into the network than it has in the past, giving it higher-profile shows instead of third-rate crap. It promises “one monster acquisition to anchor the schedule” – which I guess means that they’re going to give the network a single hit show and otherwise keep the relationship between the two networks unchanged.

Using A as the sloppy-seconds network is the main reason it has never been profitable. And it will probably remain that way. But part of Bell’s deal with the CRTC when it purchased CTV’s assets was a commitment to keep the unprofitable A Channel stations running for another three years. So we’ll see this experiment continue whether or not it’s successful.

There may not be a lot of money for newscasts or original programming for the A stations, but apparently there’s plenty of money to keep rebranding this network every few years. Hopefully whoever came up with the stupid name and cheap logo didn’t get paid too much.

UPDATE (June 2): The announcement of CTV Two programming for this fall contains little of interest. Certainly no “monster acquisition” I can see.

| Montreal, TV

Debra Arbec leaves CTV to co-host CBC newscast

Debra Arbec waves goodbye to fans on her last trip on the CTV St. Patrick's Day float

News went out to CTV Montreal staffers early Wednesday morning that evening news anchor Debra Arbec has been poached by CBC Montreal to co-anchor its 5pm newscast, replacing the departing Jennifer Hall as Andrew Chang’s co-anchor.

Hall is leaving for personal reasons, returning with her family to southern Ontario.

“It’s been an amazing ride at CTV,” Arbec told me on the phone today, describing the job at CBC as “a great opportunity.” She says her contract there begins July 1 (though she suspects she’ll get that first day off).

Though this is hardly the first change of stations for a local TV newscaster (CTV recently picked Kai Nagata from CBC to fill its Quebec City bureau, weatherman Frank Cavallaro was hired by CBC after his contract at CTV expired, and Global’s evening news anchor Jamie Orchard worked for CTV before she got the bigger job at the smaller station many years ago). But it’s a bit odd to see someone of Arbec’s profile quitting the highest-rated station in the city to go to the No. 2.

For Arbec, who said she’s “not really a numbers person,” the issue was more her placement on the schedule than her placement on the dial. “It’s obvious that a supper-hour show wasn’t in the cards at CTV. Mutsumi (Takahashi) is very much loved in Montreal and will be for a very long time,” she said, with no apparent hard feelings for the city’s most veteran English-language TV news anchor.

Arbec has been hosting CFCF’s 11:30pm newscast since 2003. Though it’s 35 minutes long, only about 15 of that is news, which is a very small amount of daily airtime. CBMT’s supper-hour newscast, meanwhile, is 90 minutes from 5pm to 6:30pm (even if it is a bit repetitive).

Still, ratings are an issue, and Arbec said she knows “a challenge will be to continue to grow CBC’s numbers,” which have just about doubled since the expanded newscast started but are still not even in the same ballpark as CFCF.

“I didn’t make the decision lightly,” Arbec said. She’s been working there for 13 years, and “I love the people there.”

That would obviously include Brian Wilde, who she met at CTV and has been married to for five years. She said it would be different not working together at the same station (they worked the late newscast together last week, which she said was fun), but she doesn’t expect any major changes in their personal lives, except for the fact that she can now spend her late evenings at home.

Continue reading →

| TV

Ethics don’t matter on TV

A couple of disturbing stories have come to light recently about Quebec television broadcasters’ attempts to censor things that might affect their bottom line.

The first was the revelation from La Presse’s Hugo Dumas that producers of dramatic programming for TVA were being asked to not show characters using iPhones. This, apparently, because Quebecor owns both TVA and Videotron and Videotron doesn’t offer the iPhone to wireless customers.

That prompted a reply from Quebecor VP Serge Sasseville that actually admitted Dumas’s story was true, but said that this was simply a case of a sponsor (Videotron) wanting its products depicted in the programming it sponsors. He offers the example of Ford sponsoring Radio-Canada’s series 19-2, and seeing Ford vehicles being driven in the show.

Dumas in turn replied to the reply, saying the argument seemed to suggest that Videotron sponsors all of TVA’s programming, and calling that reasoning preposterous.

Interference from a broadcaster into dramatic programming for business reasons is bad enough. But as Sasseville’s comparison points out, we’re well past that point already.

The second story is the decision of RDS to refuse to show a commercial from comedian Mike Ward that makes fun of the Canadiens. To be precise, they refused to show the ad during Canadiens games.

Their argument, and it’s a really stupid one, is that RDS is the official broadcaster of the Canadiens, and it’s unacceptable that an ad that runs during Canadiens games makes fun of them.

Some have noted that RDS is now owned by Bell, which is a stakeholder in the Canadiens and owns the naming rights to the Bell Centre, among many commercial deals between the telecom giant and the hockey team.

Both of these moves are ridiculous, and both reek of giant media empires abusing their ownership powers to mold programming in one area so it matches the business interests of another.

It’s not that many steps from this to each media giant having its own imaginary universe, each with its own set of maybe-true facts.

| TV

CTV mascot Jellybean enters rehab

CTV's Jellybean, confronted by a close friend, finally admits in front of the cameras that he has a problem

Jellybean, the lovable mascot of CTV Montreal (named after Johnny Jellybean, a former star of CFCF-12), came out publicly on Thursday and admitted his long-standing substance-abuse problem, agreeing to enter a rehabilitation facility to help him wean himself off of his dangerous addiction.

It started about three years ago, Jellybean confesses in a special report that will be aired next week during the CTV local news. After a breakup with a long-term partner, and as other aspects of his life began to unravel, he tumbled into depression. “It was a dark period of my life,” Jellybean said. “I was looking for anything to help me escape it.”

At first, Jellybean used it occasionally, as a pick-me-up after a really bad day. “But occasionally became once a day, then a couple of times a day. I even started doing it at work,” he said.

As a mascot, Jellybean is in high demand at public events. Those ramped up with CTV’s Save Local TV campaign and the station’s 50th anniversary. Unfortunately, so did Jellybean’s substance abuse.

He thought he could hide it, but “it was obvious to everyone but him,” said news director Jed Kahane. “I pretended not to notice at first, since it wasn’t affecting his job. But I was naive, I think, to assume that it wouldn’t eventually.”

Before long, the station had to start covering for him. Events were rescheduled at the last minute for mysterious reasons. “We made up all kinds of excuses,” said anchor Todd van der Heyden. “Deaths in the family, illnesses, breaking news, you name it.”

At one point, the station even had a fake Jellybean hired, just a guy in an oversized Jellybean suit, to attend events.

Though they admitted they were tired of compensating for Jellybean’s problems, staff at the station say their primary motivation in staging an intervention was to get Jellybean some help.

“I was really worried that if he continued down this path he would be dead in six months,” said reporter/anchor Paul Karwatsky.

The turning point came a week ago, when police raided Jellybean’s dealer.

Police display cash and drugs seized as part of a raid last week

“They came this close to arresting him,” said sports anchor and long-time friend Randy Tieman. “I think it finally woke him up that this had to stop.”

A flurry of meetings later, police agreed not to press charges if Jellybean entered a substance abuse program. But at first he refused, saying he didn’t have a problem.

“I was just in complete denial,” Jellybean said. “I don’t know …”

Tieman, Kahane and others staged an intervention, confronting Jellybean about his problem and begging him to take the offer from police. With cameras rolling, he finally broke down.

It may have seemed cruel to capture this moment on tape, but even Jellybean admitted it had to be done this way. “It wouldn’t have been real without the cameras,” he said. “It wouldn’t have worked without them.”

With the blessing of Jellybean and his family, the story is being chronicled for a special report that will air next week. “I want to tell my story,” Jellybean said. “If I can help someone else with this problem, I’ll feel better about myself.”

Jellybean has been at an undisclosed rehab facility for three days, and says it’s working. “But they told me this would take a long time. I won’t be done in a weekend.”

CTV’s special report and interview with Jellybean will air next Thursday at noon and 6 p.m.

| Montreal, TV

CFCF sets up HD transmitter to close Super Bowl ad loophole

For the latest on Super Bowl ads on Canadian cable and satellite, click here.

For the past few years, a loophole in the CRTC’s simultaneous substitution rules has allowed Videotron HD subscribers to watch the Super Bowl and other programming with the U.S. commercials.

This year, CTV is determined to close that loophole, and has setup a digital HD transmitter on Mount Royal to do so.

Though he called the timing “coincidental” (it only just got approval from Industry Canada to start transmitting), CFCF station manager Don Bastien confirmed Friday the rumours that have been spreading online. He says the transmitter has been setup and is expected to begin testing within hours (UPDATE: The transmitter is running, with signal reports coming in from all over). He also says the station informed Videotron and other television distributors weeks ago that it intends to enforce the rule on simultaneous substitution and replace the Super Bowl feed on WFFF (Fox 44) with its own on Feb. 6.

The loophole explained

Simultaneous substitution is a CRTC policy that requires cable companies to replace a U.S. channel with a feed from a local Canadian TV station when the two are running identical programming. The idea is that advertising revenue would remain in Canada, because the advertising is sold by the local station.

Most of the year, this isn’t an issue (assuming it’s done correctly – often there are glitches, particularly when live shows run past their scheduled time). But Super Bowl Sunday has a reputation as much for its million-dollar commercials as its championship football and rocking half-time show. And those while those commercials air nationally in the United States, not all of them will air on Canadian television as well.

Canadian viewers have been seeking out the U.S. broadcast to get the full Super Bowl experience, so much so that in the past Videotron has even advertised the fact that it has an unsubstituted Super Bowl feed, and bars and restaurants have advertised the “American broadcast” of the game. (The CRTC even has a frequently-asked-questions page about it)

Under the rules of simultaneous substitution, the Canadian signal must be a local, broadcasting television signal, which is of equal or greater quality than the American one. Since CFCF was not broadcasting in high definition, Videotron was not obligated to substitute the U.S. HD feed with the special HD feed that CFCF provided the cable company off-air. Nor could they replace the U.S. HD feed with a standard-definition feed from CFCF.

Now, with a digital transmitter running and expected to remain that way during the Super Bowl, the only way to get the game with U.S. commercials (legally) is to setup an antenna and pick up WFFF over the air from across the border. (We’ll see how many bars want to go through that much trouble.)

Temporary transmitter

Because the analog transmitters are still running on Mount Royal, broadcasters have setup temporary digital transmitters across the city in less prime locations. CFCF’s is just next to the Mount Royal transmitter, on Channel 51 (the PSIP system has it show on TVs as “12.1”), with an effective radiated power of about 6,000 Watts. Though it’s nowhere near the 325 kilowatts being put out by its analog transmitter, it’s probably good enough that people who can see the mountain can pick it up over the air.

In August, when analog transmission is required to cease in major markets like Montreal, CFCF and others should have a stronger signal. CFCF is licensed for 10,600km ERP transmitter on Mount Royal that will operate on Channel 12.

“Getting what we paid for”

When asked about preventing Montreal cable viewers from getting U.S. commercials, Bastien wasn’t sympathetic. “We have paid the Canadian rights to the Super Bowl,” he said. “The broadcast should be a Canadian broadcast. It’s not a matter of taking away something from Canadian viewers, but rather us getting what we paid for.”

I suspect that will be cold comfort to some of those viewers.

Just watch them online

Many of my suggestions from last year on how to watch the U.S. commercials no longer apply, except for two:

  1. Watch WFFF over the air with an antenna, assuming you get good enough reception. (Your TV must have an ATSC digital tuner)
  2. Watch the commercials online after the fact, on sites like YouTube. It’s not like the advertisers want to put roadblocks between their works of art and your eyeballs.

UPDATE (Jan. 31): CTV has issued a press release announcing the station being on the air, which I guess means it’s out of testing now. Like most press releases by media companies, it’s intentionally misleading for the sake of pretending to be better than the competition. It says “CTV becomes Canada’s only broadcaster to have HD transmitters in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and Montréal,” but it obviously chooses those cities selectively, leaving out that even with CFCF, it trails Citytv and Global in the number of cities with digital transmitters (and it matches CBC at four). It also talks quite a bit about CFCF’s newscast, which might give people the impression that the newscast will be in high definition, but that’s months, probably years away.

UPDATE (Feb. 4): Brendan Kelly writes about this issue in The Gazette. It includes the statement from Bastien that an HD upgrade of the newscast would cost between $8 million and $10 million.

UPDATE (Feb. 6): For the record, Videotron subscribers outside of the following areas get the Super Bowl feed (and other U.S. programming) unsubstituted:

  • Montreal and on-island suburbs
  • Laval
  • The north shore
  • The south shore
  • Joliette
  • St. Jérôme
  • Montérégie
  • St. Jean sur Richelieu
  • Vaudreuil-Dorion
| TV, Video

Ups and downs at CFCF-12

I watched the special 50th anniversary broadcast of CFCF-12 last night. It was nice to watch for a local TV buff like me.

The anniversary special was preceded by a very short newscast. And since I made fun of a Global error the night before, I can’t ignore the fancy camerawork on display during a broadcast that I’m sure many other people also had on their digital video recorders.

Wonky, indeed.

CFCF’s own 50th anniversary blooper reel is here.

| Montreal, Opinion, TV

Ratings: CFCF dominates, but CBMT’s happy

Fall 2010 ratings for Montreal anglophone evening newscasts

It’s the kind of statistic that can only be visualized in pie chart form: CFCF (CTV Montreal) continues to dominate the ratings of the three local evening newscasts, according to figures Bill Brownstein put out in Saturday’s story about the station’s anniversary (which, incidentally, is today – happy anniversary). It has more than six times as many viewers as its nearest competitor, and more than four out of every five people watching an anglophone newscast at 6pm is tuned to channel 12.

It’s nothing new. CFCF has been dominating the ratings like this for years, ever since massive budget cuts at the CBC caused people to tune away from NewsWatch.

But the public broadcaster is slowly fighting its way back up. Almost a year and a half since introducing a 90-minute evening newscast (that relied primarily on repeating the same stories), CBMT is seeing a ratings spike in the 5-6pm hour.

“Our audience has almost doubled at 5 and 5:30 since last fall,” news director Mary-Jo Barr explains in an email. “Our share at 5pm is 9% (up from 5% in fall 2009) and our 5:30 share is 10% (up from 6% in Fall 2009).  This is the largest audience the CBC has held in the 5-6 timeslot in recent memory.  We couldn’t be more pleased.”

This is a sign that Montrealers are realizing there’s a newscast at 5pm on CBC, and if for whatever reason that timeslot is more convenient for them, they can get their news from CBC instead of CTV. It’s nowhere near the kind of ratings CFCF gets for its 6pm newscast, but it should still serve as a lesson to CBMT, Global’s CKMI and other stations who trail badly in the ratings department: Unless you have a truckload of money to waste, don’t try to take beat the leader with a bad copy of what it does.

Barr also credits some content changes for the increased ratings. “We’ve been working hard to make the show as relevant as possible to English Montrealers,” she says. “We’ve more clearly defined each half hour.  We’ve increased our investigative reporting by dedicating our Shawn Apel to the beat and by embedding Nancy Wood in Radio-Canada’s investigative unit.  We’ve also added a weekly segment, Jennifer Hall’s “Montrealer of the Week”, which features the achievements of everyday Montrealers.  We also continue to place special emphasis on breaking news, live reporting, and local news and weather.  Seems like the winning formula is starting to pay off.”

(With respect to Apel, who is a solid reporter, an investigative team of one isn’t going to make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. But I appreciate the effort.)

So where do we go from here? I think CBC should just scrap the last half-hour of its newscast and run a straight hour from 5 to 6, where they have no competition (unfortunately, because too many big decisions are still made in Toronto, that’s not likely to happen here unless it happens everywhere else too). Find places or beats that CFCF either isn’t interested in covering or isn’t doing a good job with, and make those their own.

And what about Global?

Mike Le Couteur hosting what is apparently the Global Maritimes newscast

I hesitate to use the word “laughingstock”, mostly out of respect to the small crew of journalists who are trying their best there. But I tuned in to last night’s News Final (it’s the only local anglo newscast between 11:05 and 11:30) to see that it had a “Global Maritimes” bug in the corner. That lasted about 10 minutes until I mentioned it on Twitter and someone fixed it.

Yes, “it’s just a bug“, but it’s a symptom of the larger problem of what happens when you try to run a newscast on the cheap by producing and directing it in another city. I’ve watched the show many times waiting for the weatherman to accidentally give the Toronto forecast (CKMI’s weather is done by the weather presenter at Global’s Toronto station), and to his credit I haven’t seen Anthony Farnell slip up yet.

There’s some hope on the horizon. With Shaw’s acquisition of Global from Canwest, they’ve promised (as part of a government-mandated compensation package) to invest significantly in the stations, among them a new local morning show set to debut in 2012 (four years after This Morning Live went off the air). It’s unclear at this point how much of that would actually be produced and directed in Montreal, but it fills a gaping hole in local news, where the only thing between midnight and noon is a local news ticker at the bottom of the screen during CTV’s Canada AM.

I think CKMI should consider moving its evening newscast, perhaps to 7pm, and either move those stupid celebrity gossip shows elsewhere or kill them entirely. But they won’t, of course. Global, unfortunately, gave up on local news in this market long ago.

| Montreal, Opinion, TV

CFCF-50

Don McGowan (left) and Bill Haugland with their archival selves

CFCF-12, or CTV Montreal as it prefers to call itself now, will be turning 50 years old on Jan. 20. It was on Jan. 20, 1961 – the same day as John F. Kennedy’s inauguration – that the station first went on the air (they even have the video of the first broadcast), and though it has changed owners, studios, programming and staff since then, it has the same call letters, the same channel (at least until the digital transition later this year) and the same position as Montreal’s top English-language television station.

As part of the anniversary, the station is devoting most of its 6pm newscast on Jan. 20 to an anniversary look back, with invites like long-time personalities Don McGowan, Bill Haugland and Dick Irvin. Jed Kahane, the station’s news and public affairs director, also tells me a special song from comedy duo Bowser and Blue will be presented (those who remember the Terry DiMonte-hosted consumer affairs show Fighting Back know that it gave the duo a lot of exposure during the 90s).

The anniversary show will repeat at noon on Jan. 21.

Those who can’t wait until then can see some stuff they’ve already put online, including minute-long vignettes they’ve been putting together for each day leading up to the anniversary.

Among the things online:

“Starting the 17th, we’ll also have extra content and interviews at noon and 6 relating to the anniversary, Montreal history, how our industry has changed, etc.”, Kahane wrote me in an email shortly before heading for the ski slopes.

Mutsumi Takahashi and the fashions of the day in a 1990 episode of Park Avenue Metro

Take a step back in time

I was going to devote the second half of this post to a suggestion that CFCF take advantage of those vast archives and bring back more than just 10-second clips. I was going to say that they should put full episodes of these beloved (and, by today’s youth, unknown) shows online so we can watch them.

Turns out they’ve done exactly that. From the “Flashback” section, you can watch one full episode from a dozen entertainment and current affairs shows. You can see:

This is great stuff (well, mostly great, some of it is kind of dull by today’s standards). I hope it doesn’t stop here, and they can wrestle more stuff out of the archives to be enjoyed again.

UPDATE (Jan. 19): They have added more stuff, including:

It would be fun, I think, to air some of this stuff again too. Perhaps overnight, or during the weekend, when there isn’t much to watch anyway but people who have nothing better to watch can see the shows or record them using their VCRs and DVRs.

Why can’t we write new history?

Watching some of these past shows, the prevailing thought in my head is: Why aren’t shows like this being produced anymore? Why are we seeing American programming in prime-time, NFL football games on Sundays and celebrity gossip shows from 7 to 8 pm weekdays on CTV?

I realize that, in a 500-channel universe, local television isn’t the destination it used to be. But all that tells me is that CFCF should be striving to increase its local programming, rather than airing reruns we can find online or see on those cable channels.

I realize that local television stations don’t have the kind of budgets they did back then and can’t hire the same staff they had in the 60s and 70s. But with new technology, it’s cheaper than ever to produce good-quality video. If YouTube has shown us anything, people can produce shows all by themselves (though realistically it would take at least one or two more people to produce something of any quality).

I’m not eager to see a return of Mr. Chips or poorly-lit local wrestling shows. And I don’t think it’s realistic to expect local programming that rivals what’s being produced by major U.S. networks or nationally out of Toronto.

But surely there’s something between the big-budget national shows and no-budget cable access.

At some point next year, Global Montreal will be bringing back its local morning show, thanks to a promise Shaw had to make in order to buy the TV network. And though it looks cheap as hell, Global does have a half-hour local interview program.

CFCF-12, the leader among anglo Montreal stations, has only its newscasts, as great as they are. Its morning programming consists entirely of a news ticker that runs at the bottom of the screen during Canada AM. Current affairs, arts and entertainment, sports, interviews and everything else has to fit into those newscast hours.

Of the shows the station has put online, there are three I’d like to see as inspiration for new ones. Park Avenue Metro, though a silly name, was a show that allowed reporters to spend more than three minutes looking at an issue. Occasionally longer reports will air during newscasts (those are the ones that are heavily advertised beforehand). But it doesn’t happen with enough regularity.

It’s Your Move was a silly little game show with pretty cheap prizes, but I found it fun to watch, and it’s nice to see people from our community on television.

And the show with Pierre Lalonde showed something that local television could really use: live musical performances. I can’t remember the last time I saw a musical artist or band perform a complete song live on CFCF. If local college radio stations can setup a studio and bring in bands to perform live, why can’t our highest-rated local TV station do the same?

Accuse me of being a dreamer of things impractical, but I think that, in the long run, the future of local television can only be local television.

Happy anniversary, CFCF-12. Here’s hoping for 50 more years, and that the second half-century will bring memories as rich as the first.

CFCF-12’s 50th anniversary show airs Jan. 20 at 6pm and Jan. 21 at noon.

UPDATE (Jan. 15): Bill Brownstein has a long feature in Saturday’s Gazette about the station and its anniversary. In addition to quotes from old-timers Haugland, McGowan and Irvin, it includes this bit about the newscast’s ratings:

In fall 2010, BBM ratings indicate that 202,300 viewers took in CTV Montreal’s 6 to 7 p.m. weekday newscast, as opposed to 32,300 who caught the local CBC-TV package from 5 to 6:30 p.m. and 6,900 who tuned into Global here from 6 to 6:30 p.m.

For the math-challenged, that’s 84% of this share to one station.

Richard Therrien, the TV columnist for Quebec City’s Le Soleil, also notes CFCF’s anniversary. As does The Suburban’s Mike Cohen and Team 990 host Mitch Melnick.

From a comment below, a link to Google’s newspaper archive of a special section of The Gazette devoted to CFCF’s launch on Jan. 20, 1961. Similarly, here’s an article from Mike Boone on the station’s 25th anniversary in 1986.

UPDATE (Jan. 19): The blooper reel is, sadly, only about three minutes long. But there’s also a report from Annie DeMelt on the “lighter side” of news.

| Opinion, TV

Made Marilyn

I’m not the kind of person who’s going to say much about the physical appearance of people I see on TV. I honestly don’t (seriously) care whether you’re a blond or a brunette, or what colour jacket you’re wearing, nor do I care if you had a face lift or gastric bypass surgery or anything else done to yourself. It’s the stuff that comes out of your mouth that makes you look like an idiot.

So on the subject of Marilyn Denis*, whose daytime talk show premiered on Monday on CTV, I’ll only say this: Be careful about Photoshopping TV personalities, especially now in the age of high definition.

I wish I had more to say about this new national Canadian daytime TV talk show – that airs at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. (and then a third time at 5 p.m. on CTV-owned A channel) – but a show that has about five men in a studio audience of 75 is clearly not something I’m meant to relate to.

So I might criticize its cramped-basement-looking set (despite the effort put into it), its fluffy content devoid of interest, or its cliché “fashion trends” segment that showcases mute, unrealistically-thin models wearing clothing few non-hipsters will actually be seen in over the next year, but it would be pointless because people like me don’t watch the show anyway.

And besides, sarcastic criticisms have already been taken care of by Marc Weiscrack.

*The name might not be familiar to Montreal anglo TV viewers, but Denis was a long-time CityTV personality, host of CityLine for almost 20 years.

You can watch the first episode of the Marilyn Denis show online.

| On the Net, Opinion, Technology, TV

The ho-hum Bye-Bye

This parody of Céline Dion and Julie Snyder: Funniest segment of the night, or mean-spirited attack on Quebecor? In this case, funny is in the eye of your employer

It’s tradition in Quebec media to review each year’s end-of-year special from Radio-Canada, the Bye-Bye. It went a bit crazy two years ago when Véronique Cloutier and Louis Morissette decided to take their first crack at it. So much so that there wasn’t one to end 2009.

So you can imagine how much everyone was anxious to see what would happen when Cloutier and Morissette decided they would throw themselves into the gauntlet again and host the Bye-Bye 2010.

I watched it, along with my family, on New Year’s Eve, and followed the reaction live on Twitter. My first thoughts were that it was pretty impressive, that they weren’t overcompensating by pulling their punches compared to 2008, and that it wasn’t likely to offend anyone … or at least, no one not working for Quebecor.

The consensus was that the production values were good (particularly makeup and prosthetics, which in some cases made the actors barely recognizable as themselves and instantly recognizable as their targets), the parodies were well done, and the music videos were great, but the jokes fell flat, which is kind of the most important part.

The first professional reviews came quickly afterward (Richard Therrien’s was up in less than an hour). But many others waited because they were to go in newspapers, and many of them published neither on New Year’s Day nor on Sundays. It would be more than 48 hours before some people would read anything about it.

Continue reading →

| Montreal, TV, Video

CFCF looks at itself

I didn’t catch this on Christmas Day (because, sadly, I was working), but CFCF aired a half-hour year-in-review special in place of its regular newscast. It featured some discussions with CTV staff, and little packaged bits from reporters about their favourite stories of the year.

Artist's conception of the new studio planned for CFCF's newscast

You can watch the whole thing on its website, but the highlight for local TV buffs is the final segment, which takes a look at their plans for a new studio (hinting that the newscast will be in HD in 2012), and finishes off with bloopers (the funniest ones involving Paul Karwatsky).

| Opinion, Slow News Day, TV

Dear Véro and Louis

Hi, how are you doing? You look a bit stressed. Here, have some tea and sit down.

OK… so, you probably know why I asked you here. That whole Bye-Bye thing. You know, you boycotting Quebecor and all. I don’t know if it was your intention to create such a firestorm, but you should have expected it.

Two full pages in the Journal de Montréal on Tuesday devoted to your decision to settle the scores, as they say. Two articles from the Journal’s Michelle Coudé-Lord condemning your decision and Radio-Canada for supporting you. That, of course, in turn has generated all sorts of press over at Gesca (a piece by Richard Therrien, a column by Hugo Dumas, a blog post by Patrick Lagacé) which has turned your Bye-Bye sequel into a media controversy 10 days before anyone actually sees it.

I know, I know, you’re mad. You’re both on Quebecor’s enemies list and you’re probably never going to come off. They used that giant media empire thing against you after the 2008 Bye-Bye and you felt like crap for months trying to deal with the fallout.

Here’s the thing: The backlash wasn’t some Quebecor empire fabrication. A lot of people took offence to some of the jokes in that television special. Even the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council had issues with it. Sure, Quebecor went crazy with it, mostly because it was funded with taxpayer money through Radio-Canada. But if you were going to boycott everyone who said mean things about the show, you’d be boycotting a lot of media.

Wait, hold on, can I finish? Please. Let me finish.

OK, so Quebecor doesn’t like you. It’s not like this is news. It’s been the case for so long even I don’t know why it started. I’d think you’d be used to it by now.

But this isn’t the way to handle it. You’re just playing their game, coming down to their level. It’s childish, and I expect better from you. As Lagacé points out, you’ve just created a controversy when your goal, ostensibly, is to avoid exactly that.

It would be one thing if you were taking a stand because of the Journal de Montréal lockout, or because Quebecor had done something particularly evil, or to protest Quebecor pulling out of the Quebec Press Council. But your main reason for refusing to accommodate Quebecor news outlets at your press conference is the coverage that was given to the last Bye-Bye … two years ago, before the Journal was even locked out.

Yeah, I know you haven’t talked to them since, and this boycott isn’t new, but nobody noticed before because the Journal doesn’t talk about you unless you do something bad.

And surely you understand the bad precedent that’s set when people refuse to speak to journalists whose coverage they don’t like.

Plus, now you’re bringing the people you’re working with into the fray. Joël Legendre’s relationship with the Journal is starting to look bipolar. He likes them, he hates them, he loves them, he won’t speak to them… A bit silly, don’t you think?

And come on, you’re not new at this media thing. You’ve been in show business for years now. Véro, you’re on Montreal’s most listened to radio station every day, and you host one of Quebec’s hottest new television shows. Louis … I understand you also have a career. I think I saw your face on a DVD of something at Future Shop.

Louis, don’t leave, I was just kidding. I know you work hard too. Come back.

OK, I realize Quebecor is this giant media behemoth, but you’ve shown that you don’t need their cooperation to succeed. Heck, you should consider it a compliment that they focus so much attention toward you.

Like it or not, you signed up for this. Nobody forced you into becoming stars. You can’t have your faces put up on billboards all over the place and then complain when a photographer takes a picture of you at the airport. You have the right to privacy, and you have the right to keep your children outside the spotlight, but you can’t just disappear when the news about you is unflattering and not expect people to go looking for you.

I’m gonna talk to Michelle Coudé-Lord, try to talk some sense into her. But … you’re letting them play the victim here (letting the peanut gallery take their side). And if your goal is peace in this media war, this isn’t the way you’re going to get it.

Please bury the hatchet. Swallow your pride, or you’re going to have a bad taste in your mouth for a long time.

Oh, and Véro, please, stop undressing me with your eyes. I mean, Louis is sitting right there. And he’s … wait, is he also undressing me with his eyes?

Dear Michelle Coudé-Lord,

Here, have a seat. I promise there aren’t any Cloutier cooties on it.

How are you doing? Boy, you must be ready for a vacation. Almost two years now you’ve been without a reporting staff, having to fill the Arts & Spectacles section with wire pieces, stuff from other Quebecor publications and whatever original content you and your fellow managers can come up with. I’m not exactly shedding tears for your paper, but I understand if this period has caused some stress among its middle managers.

Anyway, so those articles you had in the paper. Two of them. Was it really necessary to devote a full page (plus a full section cover page) to the fact that the Bye-Bye crew wouldn’t talk to you? And is it really surprising after what you did to them two years ago? You say that coverage after the 2008 Bye-Bye was fair and balanced, but you can’t possibly say with a straight face that it wasn’t excessive.

And really, “vengeance”? You make them sound like a dictator who destroyed an entire village because some woman in a bar wouldn’t accept his propositions. They had a hissy fit, and now you’re having a hissy fit over their hissy fit, forcing everyone else to have a hissy fit over your hissy fit over their hissy fit.

I explained to Véro and Louis that what they did wasn’t a good idea. They were letting themselves be guided by emotion rather than wisdom.

But surely you understand that it’s hypocritical for you to play the victim on behalf of Quebecor here. Your paper is no longer a member of the Quebec Press Council, arguing against regulation (even though it’s not government-run and has no power to impose penalties) and in favour of the free market. You have to accept that freedom also means the freedom not to talk to you, even if this is the government-funded Radio-Canada.

You appeal to the size of your audience as if somehow without talking to you they could never hope to reach those people. As if that alone meant that anyone on the government payroll (or even who receives money from the government) must give you an interview. I see how you think answering your questions about a show during a press conference is like a government agency answering an access-to-information request about its expenses, but it’s not. You want to interview a celebrity, and you’re whining because you’re being turned down.

And, come on Michelle. Certainly you realize the irony of complaining about how people aren’t giving you interviews, and then refusing to speak to reporters from La Presse and Le Soleil about this very same issue.

I also found it funny that the page next to the one complaining about Véro and Louis is a full page puff piece devoted to how Quebecor creation Marie-Élaine Thibert has an album that went gold.

Looking at these pages, can you really blame people for getting the impression that Quebecor rewards its celebrities and attacks those who don’t play by its rules?

Aren’t you tired of being seen as a pawn of the Quebecor media narrative machine, whether or not you think it’s true?

Think about it. Get some sleep. Maybe when you’re rested you can see this with a clear head and realize all the damage this media war has done, and maybe you’ll be the bigger person and decide to do something about it.

Please.

| Montreal, Opinion, TV

The Alouettes parade and the two solitudes

A TV camera setup for live coverage of the Grey Cup parade and party in 2009.

Last year, when the Alouettes won the Grey Cup with a spectacular last-second field goal against the Saskatchewan Roughriders (though TSN’s placement of it as the #1 wacky CFL moment of all-time was a bit over-the-top), I went down to Ste. Catherine St. and the new Place des Festivals and joined in the party, taking a few photos of the assembled media. It was fun being in such a large crowd celebrating a pro sports championship.

This year, the Grey Cup wasn’t as exciting. (I barely noticed it was over, looking up from my copy editing station.) And with the same parade-and-party planned, and the weather not looking too hot, I reluctantly stayed home to watch the coverage on TV.

Thankfully, there wasn’t a lack of live parade coverage on television, but where it was covered and where it wasn’t made it clear to me how geographically biased Canada’s English and French-language networks are.

On the English side, both CFCF (CTV) and CKMI (Global) aired live parade specials, as they had last year. Some kudos are due to Global here, which has awfully few resources and doesn’t even produce its own newscast. I’ve criticized the station for barely meeting CRTC minimums on local programming (and even then by airing repeats of their newscasts at 6am and 6:30am), for outsourcing their production and using a fake, misleading green-screen set, and even having a weatherman who’s based in Toronto (but pretends he’s in Montreal). So to be able to put together a two-hour live special, with Mike Le Couteur in studio, Richard Dagenais at the Place des Festivals and Domenic Fazioli along the parade route, must have been quite the feat for this tiny group. CFCF’s special may have been technically better, but was half an hour shorter and replaced their noon newscast.

CBMT (CBC Montreal) didn’t air a parade special. I can’t remember the last time this once-great station aired a live local special event. A CBC camera was on site with local sports reporter Sonali Karnick, but it was only used to give some live hits for CBC News Network. Online, they had a webcast of the parade and party without any commentary or interviews.

I went over to the all-news and all-sports networks: CBC News Network, CTV News Channel, TSN and Rogers Sportsnet. I figured they all had good reason to cover this parade. It’s not like anything else breaking was going on at noon on a Wednesday.

You know what I found? Nothing.

CBC and CTV’s news channels were going through the motions, recapping the latest headlines. TSN was recapping the previous night’s Maple Leafs game, followed by a broadcast of competitive darts.

Darts!

TSN, which two days earlier had been crowing about how it had 4.94 million viewers for the Grey Cup game (a further 1.1 million was watching on RDS), just short of the previous year’s record, apparently thought that showing SportsCentre and darts was more interesting than a Grey Cup victory parade.

What annoys me most was how little effort would have been required to give this a national audience. Nothing important would have to have been pre-empted. And because CTV owns CFCF, CTVNC and TSN, they could have simply had the national news and sports channels take the CFCF feed for an hour and a half and shown the parade nationally as Montreal viewers were watching it. There are anglophone Montreal expats across the country, not to mention simple fans of the Canadian Football League (surely that 4.94 million wasn’t all Roughriders fans, considering Saskatchewan’s total population is just over 1 million).

CBC would have needed more effort, but even then it already had plenty of resources in place. RDI was covering the parade live, and Sonali Karnick was in place with a CBC camera and live feed. Would it have really been that much more difficult to just air the common parade feed and provide some colour commentary?

Montréal = français, Toronto = English

On the French side, it was the opposite problem: The cable channels had parade specials, but the local channels didn’t air them. LCN, RDI and RDS all had specials lasting more than two hours. Radio-Canada and TVA stuck with regular programming, which at noon means newscasts. Brief stories about the parade, but no live special. V and Télé-Québec, well, they don’t have news departments so I didn’t exactly expect much from them.

Part of me wants to see the Toronto Argonauts win the next Grey Cup so I can contrast the coverage plans. Does anyone seriously believe that CTVNC, CBCNN, TSN, CP24, Sportsnet and the rest wouldn’t give this wall-to-wall coverage if it was in Toronto? And, conversely, that LCN, RDI and RDS would all ignore it completely if it was anywhere other than Montreal (or maybe Quebec City)?

LCN, RDS and CTV are privately-owned networks, so they can do whatever they want. If they want to be homers for the cities their broadcast studios are located in, if they have little interest in covering any event that’s not happening within 50 kilometres of their offices, if they want to be de facto regional news networks, that’s up to them.

But CBC is publicly-financed, and their geographical bias really annoys me, particularly with RDI, which can often be mistaken for an all-Montreal-news channel. I realize that a large part of its market lives within the greater Montreal area, but as a national French-language news channel it has a mandate to cover the entire country, not just wherever they can get to on a tank of gas from the Maison Radio-Canada.

CBC should have been there. And if the Roughriders had won, RDI should have been in Regina.

You might think this is a silly discussion to have over something as trivial as a Grey Cup victory parade, but it’s a symptom of a larger problem. We see the same decisions being made during municipal and provincial elections, or provincial budgets, or just about any other prescheduled major local news events. During the last municipal election in 2009, the local anglo stations couldn’t be bothered to cut into their American programming, so updates were limited to their websites, the 11pm newscasts and the occasional news break during commercials. The last provincial election was better, but there was more national interest in that vote. That press conference of Alouettes president Larry Smith announcing his resignation? Live on RDI and LCN, but all but ignored by CTV News Channel and CBC News Network.

As local stations get gutted of their resources and national networks continue to figure out ways of centralizing the basic functions of broadcasting, the ability to do special event programming is severely reduced. And as those same network bigwigs continue to put competitive interests above their duties to serve national populations, these geographical biases from our national news and sports networks will only get worse.

You can re-watch the parade specials (or parts thereof) online from CFCF, CKMI, RDS (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10) and RDI