Category Archives: TV

| Montreal, Opinion, TV

Sorry kids, no telethon

The Telethon of Stars last year (left to right): CFCF reporter Tania Krywiak, weather presenter Lori Graham, news director Jed Kahane, foundation chair Michel Lanteigne, TVA's Claudia Marques, CFCF reporter/anchor Paul Karwatsky and CFCF sports anchor Randy Tieman

For the first time since 1977, CFCF-12 won’t be airing a fundraising telethon this year.

The Foundation of Stars (formerly the Foundation for Research into Children’s Diseases) has decided this year to forgo the telethon, particularly because it doesn’t have a francophone broadcaster (TQS had been the francophone broadcaster for many years, but V stopped that tradition last year). Instead, it will hold an eight-hour webcast from 11am to 7pm Sunday (warning: video auto-play), and partner with Astral Radio stations like Rock Détente and CJAD in addition to a diminished role for CTV.

“Although disappointed that the annual telethon will not air this year, we are very pleased to continue to work closely with the Foundation in their various fund raising initiatives,” said Don Bastien, CTV Montreal’s general manager. The station won’t air the “webathon”, but will provide hosts including Lori Graham for the event, and will promote the telethon with “short TV clips”, according to a foundation release (PDF). It’s also featuring ads for the foundation on its website.

Maryse Beaudry, spokesperson for the foundation, didn’t respond to a request for comment about why the foundation has pulled the telethon. An email to the foundation sent almost two weeks ago hasn’t been responded to.

My guess is that the decision is mainly a financial one. A look at the foundation’s latest annual report (PDF) shows that the 4.5-hour telethon cost $562,654 in expenses last year (half what it was a year earlier, when it lasted more than 24 hours). And while that number in the photo above looks much higher, it includes a lot of high-profile, giant-cheque, high-money corporate donations that would have come with or without a telethon. The amount of money that actually came in from television viewers calling in could easily have been below what the telethon cost.

And so it’s understandable that the foundation would have wanted to go with a low-cost option this year.

But at the same time it’s sad that Montreal television viewers can’t even fork over enough money over a weekend to pay for the expenses of a fundraising telethon.

Much as I appreciate the effort of a “webathon” to take its place, it kind of misses the point. You don’t stumble on it when you turn on your TV. You don’t catch it and decide to sit through the scrolling telephone numbers while you watch an 80s action movie until you finally feel guilty enough to phone in a donation. Anyone who is going to experience this webcast already knows about it.

It’s also, I think, sad for CFCF itself. The station used to be a powerhouse of television production, with special productions throughout the year. But while its newscast still reigns the Montreal anglophone ratings, there’s little else produced there now. The telethon was an exception, one it highlights on its “About Us” page online as one of two “long-term community projects.” Aside from things like provincial elections and today’s Alouettes Grey Cup parade (which CTV is airing live in place of its noon newscast), special event programming is an endangered species on Quebec anglophone television.

If only they had telethons for telethons.

The Day of Stars webcast runs from 11am to 7pm on Sunday, Dec. 5, at telethon.qc.ca. You can donate to the Foundation of Stars here, because whatever your opinion of CFCF and the telethon, the kids still need help.

Further commentary from Montreal Radio Blog

UPDATE (Dec. 5): The Day of Stars raised $3,540,903 this year, less than the $3,916,620 raised in 2009 and well short of their $4 million goal. More than $2 million of that money came in the form of giant cheques featured in this Flickr gallery (and of that, more than $1 million was from the foundation’s fundraising ball).

| Montreal, TV

CFCF, RDS to get studio upgrades

CFCF's studio, from left: sports, news, interviews and weather

Studios for CFCF-12 and RDS at 1205 Papineau Ave. are going to change over the next year.

Staff of both networks in the building were informed Monday of a capital spending plan approved by CTVglobemedia. That plan will see CFCF’s news studio move to what is now office space in the southwest corner of the building, after which RDS will setup two new studios where CFCF’s newscast and RDS’s Antichambre is shot now.

The move will be a welcome change for both networks. Outside of Canadiens games and Antichambre, RDS’s studios look dull and cramped (even in my tiny TV set). CFCF, meanwhile, consists of an anchor desk, a smaller sports anchor desk, a table and two chairs for interviews, and a green screen wall for weather. It’s also beginning to show its age.

Aside from a new look, CFCF’s new studio will have “storefront” exposure, which means people walking by on the street should get a chance to peek inside and see it in action. It will also be “HD-ready.”

But those looking forward to a high-definition newscast shouldn’t hold your breath. The station’s equipment will still need to be upgraded, and that’s not in the cards yet.

“Our new facilities will be ‘HD-ready’, so when the time comes to convert the rest of the shop (cameras, editing, etc), the studio will already be wired and ready,” said news director Jed Kahane. “But we don’t have a date yet for the HD conversion of our news.”

When I visited CFCF in September and asked him about a move to HD, Kahane said there wasn’t anything in the near future, since frankly there isn’t any serious competitive pressure from either CBC or Global to force the station to make such an expensive superficial change. (Kahane has since clarified that the station does want to move to HD as soon as it can, but that “other markets in the country, who don’t enjoy our success, may come first because they need it even more than we do.”)

The full memo to staff is below:

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| Montreal, TV

Kai Nagata takes over CTV’s Quebec bureau

Kai Nagata reporting live from outside in the cold last January

More than three months after posting an opening for a Quebec City reporter to replace the retiring John Grant, CFCF reached out and stole an up-and-comer from its direct competitor, hiring CBC Montreal reporter Kai Nagata for the job.

The station didn’t get much demand for the job internally, with much of its staff consisting of veterans who aren’t eager to move to a city that’s more than a two-hour drive away and doesn’t have much of an English scene.

“I think our current staff of reporters are pretty happy with what they’re doing now, and simply chose to stay put,” CTV Montreal news director Jed Kahane told me. “Most of them have deep roots in Montreal, with families and other personal commitments here, so I wasn’t expecting any internal applicants.”

So instead, he reached out to Nagata and offered him the job, which Nagata formally accepted last Friday.

“I’ve been watching Kai since he started at CBC and was always very impressed with his work,” Kahane said in a totally not-press-release-y way. “He’s a serious journalist with a lot of insight and commitment. He’s also a great storyteller who is at ease in front of the camera. I think what matters most in this profession is curiosity, a critical eye and a strong desire to inform the public responsibly. Kai has all of that; the rest he’ll learn.

“I saw him cover the opening day of Marc Bellemare’s testimony the other day for CBC’s The National, and he did a great job. I’m really excited he’s joining our team, and like his predecessor John Grant who is retiring at the end of the month, I’m confident Kai will earn the respect of our viewers.”

Nagata, 23, has only been working at the CBC since the spring of 2008. He moved to Montreal from Vancouver a year earlier to take Concordia’s graduate journalism diploma program. I’ve known him since then – we play the occasional soccer or board game. (So feel free to compensate for any bias this post may have in his favour.)

“A chance to step up my game”

Asked about his move, Nagata said he was both excited about this new adventure and sad that “I’m leaving behind the only journalistic family I’ve ever known. These are people I respect professionally but I also shared a lot of laughs and frustrations and cold cafeteria meals with. It’s not an easy thing to walk away from.”

Still, Nagata said he has felt “a sense of restlessness” that this new opportunity can help alleviate. “They’re giving me the chance to cover the biggest stories in the province for the biggest anglophone audience in the province and to immerse myself in francophone culture in a beautiful city and find out what I’m made of.”

“CBC went out of their way from the very beginning to challenge me and to present me with opportunities to cover these interesting stories and to go places and talk to people and to file nationally for radio and TV, but when it came down to it I just felt like the job that CTV is offering me is a chance to step up my game as a journalist.”

Nagata said he’s particularly glad that he’ll have something few television reporters have the luxury of these days: a beat. “Politics is about people,” he said. “There’s a lot of beats that I admire, but politics has always attracted me.”

What about CBC?

The CBC was gracious about Nagata’s career advancement, while putting a positive spin on it.

“Kai is very talented and we’ll miss him around here, but we’re happy for him and wish him all the best,” said News Director Mary-Jo Barr. “I’m proud to know our journalists at CBC Montreal are second to none, and are sought after by other organizations.”

Barr can hardly fault Nagata’s move. She herself used to work at CTV, and plenty of people have jumped from one station to the other.

Nagata gave his two weeks’ notice and plans to keep working until next Friday. He’s currently passing on specialized videojournalist training he received (“videojournalist” being CBC-ese for “working without a cameraman to save us money”) to one of the station’s other up-and-coming young journalists (and a former classmate of mine), Catherine Cullen.

Mind you, this hasn’t stopped him from already becoming friends with CTV staff through Twitter.

Nagata will join the CTV family starting Sept. 27, and spend a few days training with Grant. He takes over the beat on Oct. 1.

| Opinion, TV

Some truth about Sun TV News

Sun TV News, the new specialty channel being proposed by Quebecor, is in the news again because their second attempt at CRTC approval has been released to the public.

After the previous application for a Category 1 specialty channel was outright rejected by the CRTC, Quebecor has decided to put forward an application for a Category 2 channel, just like almost every new specialty channel in the past few years.

Both categories are digital channels, meaning they won’t be on analog cable and aren’t part of the basic package. The difference is that Category 1 channels must have a minimum of 50% Canadian content, and in return all digital cable and satellite providers must make the channel available on a discretionary basis. For Category 2 channels, the dealings with television providers are mostly unregulated. They negotiate carriage fees with each other, and the providers can choose whether or not to make the channel available.

But while the Sun TV News application is technically a Category 2 channel, Quebecor is asking for an exception that grants it the biggest advantage of Category 1: mandatory availability, at least for the first three years.

In both the previous and current applications, media coverage and left-wing reaction has confused the nature of what Quebecor is asking for. That’s partially understandable. CRTC’s regulations can be overly complicated sometimes, particularly when it comes to what channels providers have to carry.

This Canadian Press article, for example, states three times that the new channel would be “funded with money from cable TV fees”, even though that’s not what the application is requesting. The statements are attributed to activists, but aren’t challenged in the article, leaving readers to assume they are true. This report uses the term “must-carry”, which has a special meaning at the CRTC that doesn’t apply in this case. Quebecor isn’t asking for must-carry status. This Globe and Mail story also uses the term “must carry”, as does this National Post report.

“Must carry” vs. “must offer”

In an effort to reduce the confusion, let me explain a bit how this works.

There is a list of channels that all cable and satellite providers must provide as part of their basic packages. In addition to the local television channels, this also includes things like CPAC and APTN. Other channels like CBC News Network and the Weather Network are also included in basic packages. Fees, set by the CRTC, are charged to all subscribers to pay for these channels.

Beyond that, there are levels of discretionary tiers that have different statuses at the CRTC. Some are allowed on analog cable on a discretionary basis or can be part of the basic package. Some, like Category 1 channels, are offered only on a digital basis unless an exception is warranted.

Category 2 channels are the least regulated type, and the one preferred by both the CRTC and new channel applicants because of how easy it is and how low the minimum requirements are.

Though it might seem like your cable or satellite company has every channel in existence, it doesn’t. Bell TV, for example, doesn’t carry MuchMoreRetro. Videotron doesn’t carry Fox News Channel (somewhat ironically, if you think Quebecor is an evil right-wing empire). Shaw Direct doesn’t carry Court TV (now Investigation Discovery) or TFO. There is no regulation requiring these companies to make these channels available. They decide what their users might be interested in, based on what the channels offer and what they want to charge the TV provider. The channels, meanwhile, ask people to “call your cable or satellite provider” to pressure them into adding the channel to their lineup.

What Quebecor wants with Sun TV News is to bypass this process, and require that all digital TV providers have the channel in their lineups. The wholesale price would still be negotiated between the provider and the network, and the provider could package the channel and charge for it however it feels.

Kory Teneycke, the former Harper aide who is behind this application, calls it “must offer” to distinguish it from “must carry”. I’ll use that expression for lack of a better one.

In short, Quebecor is asking that this channel be available on all digital cable and satellite providers, but the choice to take it would be entirely up to the consumer. Nobody would be forced to pay for the channel if they didn’t want it.

The package exception

One scenario that might see people paying for Sun TV News without wanting to would be if they got it as part of a package. It would make sense for a news channel theme pack to include Sun TV News with CTV News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, BNN, CNBC, Al Jazeera English and BBC World News. Someone might select that wanting all the news channels but having moral objections to Sun TV (and, presumably, Fox News).

But this packaging is entirely up to the TV provider. It’s not regulated by the CRTC and isn’t negotiated with the channels.

The CRTC only regulates packaging to ensure that porn channels and single-view religious channels aren’t forced on consumers as part of packages. Theoretically, the CRTC could require the same thing for Sun TV News that it requires for Playboy TV, but that seems a bit excessive.

Of course, if cable and satellite providers did away with such packages, or offered people à la carte options, this wouldn’t be an issue. But so far, only one major TV provider offers that kind of à la carte service: Quebecor-owned Videotron.

Ignorance breeds fear

What gets me most about the reaction to this application is how much people are willing to oppose it without knowing what it is. There has been no proposed program grid, not even any confirmed hosts. All we know about Sun TV News is that it wants to be a mix of news and opinion, that its creators consider the other news channels “boring”, and that those creators are Conservatives who want to create a channel based partially on Fox News.

A group of activists has already started a petition that has 68,000 signatures on it (we’re not sure how many of those are real people). It repeats the non-truth about forcing people to pay for the channel, and throws in some drama that makes it seem as if Stephen Harper is trying to force his ideological agenda into our brains through the CRTC.

Sun Media had a field day with this, saying that the petition is based out of New York and that author Margaret Atwood and her cronies are trying to suppress free speech. Even Teneycke himself weighed in.

Fox News Cheap

It’s hard to judge something like this until you’ve seen it. Sun TV News could become a quality all-news network that bring much-needed competition to the industry. It could become a Fox News North, as critics have called it, providing news coverage to make people think it’s objective, but loading primetime hours with fearmongering blowhards who care more about expressing their opinions than seeking the truth.

The arguments from Quebecor that this isn’t Fox News North are contradicted by statements in the CRTC appliction, particularly this one:

The most comparable channel to STN is located in the USA, Fox News. Both channels’ strategy is to focus hard news and commentary that raise public debates and reactions on different topics. Fox News has been USA’s most watched All News channel for years and still is. In 2008-2009, Fox News’s audience was as high as CNN’s and MSNBC’s combined. Fox News does not have extensive distribution in Canada. Therefore, this represents a true opportunity for STN.

But while their goal is to replicate Fox News, I think the more likely scenario is that Sun TV News will be an experiment in cheap newsgathering that will quickly become a laughing stock because of its horribly small budget. According to the CRTC application, the channel plans to have a budget of about $25 million, of which $15 million would go to programming and technical costs. Though it’s hard to directly compare this to CBC and CTV, since they take advantage of their local stations and national newscasts (I’m trying hard not to use the word “synergies” here), it’s still very little money. We’re looking at a staff of maybe 100 people, including journalists, anchors, producers and technicians, advertising salespeople, marketers, etc. Anyone who thinks he can run a national news network on that kind of budget is probably kidding himself.

The feared scenario, that they’ll spend little money on news budget and focus all their efforts on opinion, makes more sense considering how little they have to spend. But even then, the big-name blowhards come at a high price, and a $25 million total budget isn’t enough to get a Canadian Glenn Beck on the air if you want anything more than a webcam and laptop in front of him.

How Sun TV News describes itself

Though it’s obviously self-serving, we really can’t judge Sun TV News based on anything other than the statements of the people behind it.

Here, verbatim from the CRTC application, is how Sun TV News describes its “hard news” and “straight talk”:

“Hard News” will almost exclusively rely on live reporting and real-time conversations with journalists covering breaking news – as opposed to the more traditional news wheel format that features a revolving set of news stories. But these headlines will be analysed, commented upon and discussed at length. The host will question the reporter and will have an intelligent exchange that will often open to further debate.

News will not be read like in a news bulletin. Daytime “hard news” will be covering a broad range of political, economic and lifestyle stories that matter to Canadians both rural and urban. So even its “hard news” portion will not be “all news” like it has traditionally been done in Canada. Short traditional news bulletin may be programmed but not more than once an hour.

“Straight Talk” will be programs featuring hosts and guests that deliver strong opinions and analysis of stories that are important to Canadians that day. “Straight talk” opinion journalism at night will be clear, intelligent and engaging – featuring a broader array of television personalities and signature hosts who will challenge viewers to think – and decide – for themselves. The challenging of ideas in itself may feed the news but at least will attempt to have Canadians make their own mind on the events occurring every day in Canada.

That could easily describe either Fox News Channel or MSNBC. Or a bunch of other networks. But it gives a bit of an idea what they’re going for.

What the CRTC should do

The CRTC doesn’t have the luxury of watching this network and judging whether it’s good for Canadian TV watchers. It has to go on the application itself.

Based on that application, I would argue the CRTC should accept the network, maybe even with the exception they’re requesting (particularly since it’s only temporary).

The reason is simple: The channel proposes to create all its content. It says it will have zero foreign content. That alone should put it on a level higher than those Category 2 channels that air little but Family Guy reruns, 80s music videos, Star Trek movie marathons and ancient sitcoms.

The fact that Sun TV News wants to add to both news coverage and political debate in this country should certainly count for something as well, even though we may not agree with it.

The potential for abuse is there, but the CRTC already requires broadcasters to adhere to a code of ethics through the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. Sun TV News has already accepted that it would be subject to those rules. The CRTC can’t prohibit someone from starting up a channel because fearmongers disagree with the political leanings of its creator.

Sun TV News made sure to suggest in its application that without mandatory availability for at least the first three years on air, its business case would fall apart:

If mandatory access for a maximum period of three years is not granted to Sun TV News, one or more major cable or satellite providers might decide to not offer this service. This would be fatal to our business case as shown in Appendix 1, and would likely result in the cancellation of the Sun TV News project.

The CRTC shouldn’t let itself get bullied. But it should set policy encouraging new channels to include as much original, Canadian content as possible. Sun TV News, which seems to put this figure at 100%, should be rewarded for that, just like any other channel should.

Sun TV News’s suggestion that it get a break from closed-captioning requirements, though, should be ignored. Broadcasters routinely request exemptions from obligations to CC programming, like a high school student who wants an extension on a term paper.

Though it doesn’t specifically request relief from CC requirements, it gives this quote: “However commendable this obligation is, the sums that need to be invested in such an amount of closed captioning means a lower amount is left for Canadian programs.”

I’m pretty sure everyone else could make a similar argument.

By the numbers

Looking through Sun TV News’s CRTC application, I found some interesting financial projections I thought would be worth sharing.

  • Though the wholesale fee would be negotiated between the broadcaster and TV provider, Sun TV News uses a base fee of $0.25 per subscriber per month in its analysis, and seems to suggest that they would aim for this. (That doesn’t mean the channel would cost $0.25 to consumers though – providers charge consumers far above the wholesale rate.)
  • If the mandatory availability or “must offer” requirement is given, Sun TV News expects 17% penetration in the first year and up to 50% penetration by the end of the seven-year license at $0.25 per month. (“Penetration” defined as the number of cable/satellite subscribers who pay for the channel.)
  • Based on this analysis, the channel would get $15 million a year in subscriber revenue, which would be combined with $10 million a year in advertising to reach the $25 million budget.

Quebecor survey shows Sun TV News wouldn’t be popular

The CRTC application includes some survey data from polling they conducted. Though they do a good job of spinning it, the survey shows only 41% of Canadian TV watchers would be somewhat (36%) or very (5%) likely to subscribe to the channel. This makes its 50% penetration rate seem a bit far-fetched.

Similarly, a survey showed “Canadians do not find reporters to have an inherent bias in the news they report” (52% vs 7%), contradicting claims by Quebecor that Canadians are tired of the “lamestream” media’s biases.

When asked about their satisfaction with current news choices, 67% in Quebecor’s survey rate it six or higher on a scale of 1-10. Quebecor spins this as saying Canadians are “not extremely satisfied”, but when almost half are rating seven or eight on a scale of 1-10, I would argue that’s pretty satisfied. Postmedia’s Andrew Mayeda agrees.

Finally, even though Teneycke and company are pushing this as a competitor to CBC and CTV news channels, the application softens the stance and even argues that those networks won’t be seriously affected by the appearance of Sun TV News. Instead, it argues that it will bring Canadians back from CNN (which it simultaneously argues is winning Canadian viewers from CBC and CTV because it has more opinionative programming in primetime, and is losing American viewers to Fox News because its primetime programming isn’t opinionative enough).

“In the long run, we believe the impact on the existing Canadian all-news services will be negligible,” it says.

I’m sure that comes as a relief to them.

| Opinion, TV

Kevin Newman’s 10-year career

Kevin Newman says goodbye in his last Global National

In my few years as a professional in the news business, I’ve been witness on a few occasions to retirement speeches. A gathering of staff over slices of cake, presentation of some parting gift, and a speech – sometimes emotional – by the retiree.

In most cases, it’s because the person has taken a buyout and retired early. They might have spent 20 years there, or 30, or even 40 or more. They’ve been present through so much change, developed so many memories, and their lives become so connected with their jobs that letting it all go becomes a watershed moment. The emotion is entirely understandable.

Hell, I’ve been through the process myself. As recently as January I sent a goodbye email to my fellow employees, letting them know that my contract had ended and I would no longer be a colleague. A goodbye party followed soon after. (Little did I know at the time that my departure would be for exactly one month instead of the forever I had imagined.)

But even keeping that in mind, I find it just a bit silly that Global National spent more than half its newscast on Friday (12 out of 22 minutes) on the subject of anchor Kevin Newman leaving the show after a whopping 10 years.

The videos are online in case you want to see them. There’s three minutes worth of tributes from politicians, fellow journalists, Lloyd Robertson, Peter Mansbridge and Charlie Gibson (all with Newman’s reactions in the bottom corner). There’s five minutes worth of memories from his days at Global National, reporting on the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan. And there’s the three-minute farewell at the end of the show, in which he almost starts crying as he thanks his family (the text of that statement is also online). Or you can just watch the whole newscast, which also includes some actual news.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s nice when these things are acknowledged. I enjoyed when CFCF gave veteran reporter Herb Luft a proper sendoff this summer, and when it brought back memories of Bill Haugland during his last newscast. But those seemed more heartfelt, more natural, and less scripted than Newman’s speech. And we were talking about people who spent all or almost all of their careers in one job (and who were actually retiring), unlike Newman. It just seems like Newman’s sendoff was more about his ego than anything else.

Maybe it’s because Newman anchors his newscast alone, and so in effect he had to say goodbye to himself. Kind of an awkward position to be in. Maybe it’s because to be a national anchor you have to have a giant ego.

I can’t blame him too much, because I also have a massive ego, and I’d take every chance to give a long goodbye speech on national television.

Still, if they spent 12 minutes on Newman, I can just imagine the show they’ll put on when Lloyd Robertson says his goodbye.

Global sucks: Newman

There was, of course, a news story to accompany Newman’s departure from the news service that split off from his employer’s company. It includes this telling quote from Newman about what it’s like at Global:

But the transition from seven years in a well-financed American newsroom wasn’t easy, he recalls: “I was accustomed to things working all the time because they were well-resourced. This show (Global National) has always been one step from the abyss every night, because it’s so early (it airs at 5:30 p.m., versus CBC and CTV’s 9 and 10 p.m. newscasts), it has relatively few resources, and the only thing that prevents our viewers from seeing it is the quality of the people behind the camera to rescue it every day. Over time, that’s stressful for the people who work on it, and probably helps contribute to the fatigue that I feel.”

It was meant, I’m sure, to highlight the hard work of his colleagues, but reads to me like Newman thinks Global didn’t invest enough in its television newsgathering.

Looking at our local Global station, whose newscast has always seemed like that forgotten stepchild that’s kept in the basement and fed just enough table scraps to stay alive and be a source of welfare money, I can just imagine what it’s like at other Global stations and Global National (even though they have much more funding).

The Global Television Network is now in the hands of Shaw Communication (pending regulatory approval). They have the power and the money to turn that around.

But I won’t hold my breath.

| Montreal, TV

TV gets shut down for maintenance

CBC antenna atop Mount Royal, and the giant crane working on it

A lot of people who rely on old-fashioned antennas to get their television service have noticed this summer that all the TV stations in Montreal disappear after midnight.

The reason is simple: The transmitters are being shut off for maintenance work.

For the past couple of months, workers have been busy replacing antennas and doing other work on the 50-year-old CBC transmission tower atop Mount Royal (just northwest of the Belvedere, at the mountain summit, in case you’ve never seen it before).

Old antennas laying on the path of Olmstead Rd.

One of the main purposes of the maintenance is to replace antennas as television broadcasters make the switch to digital. An antenna that CFCF-12 has been using since it launched in 1961 has been replaced with a new one that will be used for digital transmission. The station even did a news piece on it (skip to the 8:40 mark). Though the station got approval today to operate a 10,600-Watt digital transmitter, it looks like it won’t be put into service until after the transition deadline of Aug. 31, 2011.

For safety reasons (we’re talking about transmission power in the hundreds of thousands of watts), all the transmitters have to be shut down while the maintenance takes place. To minimize disruption, this work is taking place overnight, when Mount Royal Park is closed and when TV viewing is at its lowest.

Continue reading →

| Montreal, TV

Herb Luft has left the building

Herb Luft says goodbye, surrounded by family and friends, from CFCF on Wednesday

Herb Luft, who has been working at CFCF since – we have it on good authority here – the dawn of time itself, gave a final signoff to viewers on Wednesday’s show. Once his remaining vacation time is burned off, he’ll be officially retired.

Classy station that it is, it devoted a substantial segment of both the noon and 6pm newscasts to Luft and his career (and a brief segment on the 11:30 newscast), showing the highlight reel, chatting about his 39 years there and even doing a streeter asking random people on the street to wish him good luck (one lady complimented him on always being clear and never stuttering). His family was invited to join him behind the anchor desk for the 6pm newscast’s final minutes.

You can see videos from both the noon newscast and 6pm newscast online. I’ve included a few stills below from his highlight reel, so you can see the progression of his hair reporting through four decades.

Luft’s last news report, for the record, is this two-minute piece on illegal taxis, from the previous day’s newscast.

Continue reading →

| TV, Video

Pascal Robidas: Caught in the headlights

UPDATE: After videos were pulled off YouTube twice, I’ve posted a version that censors both the NSFW element and the World Cup B-roll. Hopefully this one sticks.

One of my spies within the CBC sent along this clip of an interview Pascal Robidas conducted live on air with an Italian soccer fan after Italy was humiliatingly bounced from the World Cup this morning.

There’s no audio with it, but as you’ll see that’s not important. Thanks to Clique du Plateau, which managed to locate a version with audio that RDI itself uploaded (WMV). I’ve added blur as appropriate to make it more safe for work.

| TV

Bye-Bye 2010: Redemption

If you haven’t seen this video yet, the rest of this post probably won’t interest you.

So a year and a half after a rather disastrous end-of-year Bye-Bye special that got a bit of media coverage and resulted in complaints to the CRTC, Radio-Canada has decided that, what they hey, they’ll bring back the team that produced it to try again. Véronique Cloutier and Louis Morissette will be at the helm of Bye-Bye 2010. They announced the move with a parody of their well-publicized apology from January 2009.

The media, after receiving assurances that this wasn’t some strange joke and getting their web geeks to setup the YouTube embed codes, reacted much as you might expect: “kamikazes de l’humour“, “perplexing“, or, simply, “pourquoi?”

While I was one of those people who didn’t think highly of Bye-Bye 2008, Cloutier and Morissette deserve a chance to make amends. They screwed up, and while it took them forever to realize that, I think they’ll do a better job for 2010.

Radio-Canada is making sure the same mistakes don’t repeat. This year’s special will have no live component, which means lawyers and political-correctness censors will be all over the entire show before it goes to air.

Expect an overreaction to the problems of 2008, and perhaps a bit too much sensitivity to visible and cultural minorities. And don’t expect any mention of Nathalie Simard, unless she’s on it as a guest.

And really, who else could do this? The insane media coverage, and the cancellation of Bye-Bye 2009, ensured that any future show would have no choice but to reference – and be compared to – the one from 2008.

If this video is any indication, Cloutier and Morissette will put targets on their own backs for the sake of comedy. That alone makes me want to give them a second chance.

| Opinion, TV

I don’t like Sun News, but I welcome it

(Updated with more talking out of my ass)

Canadian media are buzzing today (and have been for about a week or so) about Sun News, the new all-news specialty TV network being setup by Quebecor Media.

Before its name was made public, people were calling it “Fox News North”, partly because the guy behind it, Kory Teneycke, used to shill for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The reputation that Quebecor and its head honcho Pierre-Karl Péladeau have built certainly helped fuel the rumours that a strong conservative bias would be more important to this network than a commitment to accuracy in reporting.

Though the announcement doesn’t make reference to Fox (directly) or use the word “conservative”, and Teneycke dismisses the comparison, the hints are all there. The video talks about being “strong and proud”, and Canada being “the greatest place on Earth” (I assume that’s part of their “factual” “straight talk” and they have lots of research to back that assertion up). And, of course, nobody involved with the project has denied outright that it would take a conservative, or at least strongly opinionative, stance.

The application

Quebecor says it has applied for a Category 1 specialty channel license from the CRTC. This means that satellite and digital cable providers would be required to put the channel on a discretionary tier so anyone who wanted to have it as part of their package could get it. Analog cable companies are not even allowed to carry them, except by special exception.

This is interesting because virtually all new specialty channels apply for a Category 2 license. This is entirely discretionary – cable and satellite companies would not be required to even make it available, and can freely negotiate with broadcasters to determine fees.

It makes sense for Quebecor to apply for a Category 1 license because the two biggest regulatory hurdles don’t apply to the concept. First, Category 1 channels have genre protection (and must respect other channels’ exclusivity), so people can’t launch a new weather channel or business network or cartoon network – unless it has a very specific focus that doesn’t compete directly with the Weather Network, BNN or Teletoon, respectively. But the CRTC decided recently that it would remove such protections from news and sports networks, because it judged that they had matured to the point where they were no longer needed.

Second, Category 1 channels must have at least 50% Canadian content. Since presumably all the content on Sun News would be provided by its journalists and those of Quebecor Media, that wouldn’t be a problem.

The biggest problem will be convincing the CRTC that it should grant a license in what it originally planned to be a very limited category of digital specialty channels like Book TV, Bold, Discovery Health and G4.

Think Sun Media, LCN … and yes, Fox News

I don’t doubt that Sun News Channel will have a conservative slant to it, or at least a Fox News-style sensationalist slant. They’ve already said that they want to have opinion, and the kinds of talking heads you don’t find on the other networks (CBC, CTV). But while I have no evidence to back this up, I’m thinking the model they’ll want to use for the channel isn’t so much Fox News as it is LCN.

For the Toronto-ites out there, LCN is kind of Quebec’s equivalent to CP24, a regionally-focused news network that’s the first to send a helicopter out when something happens in Montreal. Fires, car accidents, minor natural disasters, dead children, all the usual local news stuff. It’s the channel that’s usually on in the newsroom, for the simple reason that it’s the TV network closes to an all-Montreal-news channel. (LCN pretends it’s Quebec-wide, and it does have journalists elsewhere, but the vast majority of its news is based in the Montreal area, or occasionally Quebec City).

LCN also has opinion. Richard Martineau, Jean-Luc Mongrain, Claude Poirier, and anyone else who can talk loud even if they don’t really say much of substance (Actually, now that I think about it, that does sound a lot like Fox News), and can be easily pre-empted if breaking news happens during the day. After LCN changed its format to have more of these kinds of hosts, ratings apparently shot up 300 per cent.

But while I think there will be a definite fiscal-conservative slant (expect investigative stories every day based on access to information requests for CBC expenses), I don’t think we’ll be seeing the same kind of socially conservative biases you see in the United States. I don’t see Sun News praising Sarah Palin or talking about the evils of abortion or trotting out conspiracy theories that Michael Ignatieff is a secret terrorist.

Then again, I could be wrong. Sun News could turn into the press release arm of the Conservative Party. It could start simulcasting Fox News Channel. It could start running free ads for the Christian Heritage Party. Nobody knows yet. We’ll just have to wait and see.

It’s interesting to note here that although Fox News Channel is approved for carriage in Canada, Quebecor-owned Videotron doesn’t make it available on its digital service. I suspect many Quebecers criticizing Quebecor may be basing their opinions of Fox News on what they see on the Daily Show.

Conservative is better than nothing

I welcome Sun News for the same reason I welcome the National Post: It’s a different voice, and it employs journalists. If that means stories get out into the public that would have remained secret before, I’d say that’s worth hearing more of Ezra Levant. I would hope they take their role seriously and concentrate more on being honest and open than countering perceived biases in their competitors. And I think Canadians should keep them on their toes and put immense pressure on them to keep their biases in check.

But either way, adding a new voice to the equation can only make the Canadian news industry more diverse.

My biggest worry

Although a news network that seeks to impose an opinion more than inform the population sounds pretty scary, my biggest worry about Sun News isn’t that it will be conservative, it’s that it will be cheap.

During the press conference announcing the network, after Teneycke blasted so-called “elites”, he talked about, and I’m quoting directly here: “value-added content convergence with Sun Media properties across Canada”. Besides being filled with meaningless industry buzzwords, it seemed apparent that Sun Media and Quebecor believe they can use existing journalists to supply the network. They think that Sun Media print reporters can do TV spots, as part of some convergent utopia.

(Speaking of which, it’s interesting that Péladeau claims the media is in crisis – forcing him to lock out journalists at the Journal de Québec, Le Réveil and the Journal de Montréal – and then appears at a press conference to announce he’s spending millions on a new TV news network. Péladeau said during the press conference when asked directly about this that the two are unrelated. But the irony was certainly not lost on locked-out Journal de Montréal workers.)

Even CTV and CBC, which have local television stations across the country to supply a national news network, need “national” reporters in various cities to supply the national network and national evening news. Anyone who’s seen videos on Sun Media websites can’t be optimistic about the prospects of a news network relying on them for content.

I’m sure Sun News will hire anchors (the prettiest they can find), technicians and all sorts of other people to run the channel. But without that network of videojournalists, I wouldn’t expect their news operation to be able to match what the main networks can provide, outside of Toronto and (if they share resources with LCN and TVA) Quebec.

The opinion-news mix has two advantages over straight news. One is that it provides higher ratings, as the choir flock to their preachers. The other is that it’s cheap. Spend good money on a well-known host, add maybe a researcher or two, and you’re done. The big mouth blabbers about whatever, provided it’s controversial and excites or angers the audience enough that they pay attention. And if Glenn Beck demonstrated anything, it’s that those talking heads don’t have to make sense, be consistent, have any connection to reality or have any journalistic integrity to succeed.

As much as sending out hundreds of access to information requests to the CBC, then trolling through management expense claims to drum up even the most minor irregularity may seem petty and biased, it’s still journalism.

My fear with Sun News isn’t that it’s going to have those kinds of stories, it’s that it’ll have those kinds of stories and then have blowhards yelling about them for three hours, showing some clips from YouTube and then calling it a day.

Kind of like Fox News. Or CNN. Or MSNBC.

Let’s hope I’ve vastly underestimated what Quebecor has planned.

Sun News Channel is slated for launch Jan. 1, 2011, pending CRTC approval.

UPDATE: Bill Brioux is also highly skeptical of this network, particularly because of the failures at CKXT, the local Toronto station they’re trying to “convert” into Sun News.

UPDATE (June 24): Steve Proulx has some thoughts (mainly negative) about Quebecor’s convergence and conservativeness and how it’s affecting media.

| Media, Montreal, TV

Herb Luft retiring from CFCF after 39 years

Herb Luft in one of his estimated 10,000 reports for CFCF

I was going to start this post off by saying “when it rains, it pours,” but CFCF news director Jed Kahane beat me to it in his announcement to staff Thursday afternoon. Shortly after the news of the impending retirement of Quebec City bureau chief John Grant, veteran reporter Herb Luft is also calling it quits and turning in his microphone for good.

Luft is among the most recognizable faces (and voices) at CFCF, and has been there so long even your grandparents probably recognize the name.

According to his bio, Luft moved to Montreal to work for CFOX radio in 1969, and in 1971 moved to CFCF radio, and by 1977 was working for the television side full-time. He’s worked as a general assignment reporter just about that entire time, though he’s probably better known among Montreal’s early risers as the anchor of the morning newscast from 2000 until it was cancelled in 2009. Sources tell me he took that pretty hard, though it didn’t show in the solid reporting he continued to do in the months afterward.

“Herb has been one of the great contributors to building this station into the respected landmark it is today,” Kahane told staff in his announcement. “Day after day he produces solid journalism that our viewers respect. And by my quick count, give or take a few thousand, he’s cranked out around 10,000 stories in his time at CF, and done it without losing his passion for telling a good story, and telling it right. He’s a fixture in the present, and an on-air link to a very storied past.”

Luft himself was brief and to the point about the news. “Let’s call it nervous excitement,” he wrote in an email, no doubt sifting through many from colleagues who only heard about the news today.

The retirement is official on Aug. 4, but by then he’ll be at his cottage on vacation. He’s filing his last report for CTV News on June 30. It goes without saying that this will be noted on air. Hopefully that will include video of him getting tased in a police demonstration in 2001, which unfortunately I can’t find online.

Luft’s daughter, Amy, works behind the scenes at the station as well as at The Gazette. She’s building a journalism career of her own, though not on the coattails of her locally famous dad.

Herb Luft, who grew up in southwestern Ontario, turned 62 in January. That’s about two thirds of his life spent at CFCF, of which I can only find this short clip from 1984 on YouTube. Let’s hope the archivists at CTV Montreal can find better ones.

UPDATE: The Gazette’s Basem Boshra writes about Luft’s retirement (and Grant’s), with quotes from both and Kahane.

UPDATE (June 30): CFCF has posted videos of Luft’s goodbye from both the noon and 6pm newscasts (yes, the taser video is in there), along with a short story.

| Media, Montreal, TV

CTV’s John Grant to retire

John Grant in Quebec City

John Grant, the CTV reporter who has been CFCF’s Quebec Bureau Chief since 1996, is retiring at the end of August (UPDATE: Pushed back to Sept. 30), according to news director Jed Kahane.

Kahane said Grant would get a “proper goodbye when he wraps up, but nothing specific planned yet.”

The search for his replacement at the National Assembly has already begun. The job was posted Wednesday and was spotted by a keen observer. It calls for 10 years of experience in journalism, so this probably isn’t the kind of job you’re going to get straight out of J-school. (UPDATE: Well, almost – it went to CBC’s Kai Nagata)

Born and raised in Saskatoon, Grant was actually a CBC man for many years, hosting Radio Noon in the 70s, becoming CBMT’s weatherman and then its National Assembly reporter, where he spent five years in the 80s filing reports. It was during that time that he fought against the government to broadcast footage of Denis Lortie, who stormed the National Assembly in 1984 and killed three people before being negotiated into surrender by Sergant-at-Arms René Jalbert. The footage was eventually released in 1987.

Grant left CBMT in 1988 to become a CBC morning radio host in Edmonton, but eventually returned to Quebec City working for CBMT’s competitor CFCF. His 14 years as National Assembly reporter for CTV is about the same as his predecessor Ralph Noseworthy, though his departure is much more amicable (Noseworthy was reassigned to Montreal and then given a buyout after he got into a legal battle with his own station over a piano.) Added to the five years with CBC, that’s 19 years of reporting for Montreal television from inside the National Assembly.

Grant filed a brief look back at the National Assembly and CTV’s Quebec City bureau as part of CTV’s 50th anniversary.

UPDATE: The Gazette’s Basem Boshra writes about Grant’s retirement, along with that of Herb Luft.

UPDATE (Sept. 30): A clip of Grant’s last day and goodbye messages from Jean Charest and Pauline Marois.

| TV

Butterfingers

It was really hot today, but that’s nothing compared to the forecast for next week, apparently:

CBC's Kenny Bodanis realizes he's made a typo in his weather forecast

One thing about putting your newscasts online is that the errors of live TV remain accessible long after they’ve aired. This is Kenny Bodanis (sitting, err, standing in for Frank Cavallaro), who accidentally added an extra digit to next Tuesday’s high during Tuesday’s weather segment on CBMT (fun starts about the 15-minute mark). He assures us it won’t actually be 234 degrees next Tuesday, though it might feel like it.

Then again, I have it on pretty good authority that the weather people just pull numbers out of nowhere for forecasts six and seven days ahead, so he could very well be right!

(via Alex Leduc on Facebook)

| Opinion, TV

Happy Birthday, CBWFT

Today marks the 50th anniversary of CBWFT, Radio-Canada’s station in Winnipeg and the only francophone television station serving Manitoba.

The local station has gone all out with the anniversary, producing special programs looking back at the station’s history. Radio-Canada even sent Céline Galipeau to St. Boniface on Thursday to host the national Téléjournal there in honour of the occasion, the most attention Radio-Canada has paid to something outside Quebec in quite some time.

CBWFT is also launching a weekend local newscast starting this evening. Aside from a regional lifestyle show covering the prairies, there’s not much local programming produced out of there outside of the newscasts. Still, despite the dwindling francophone population (and hence the difficulty in getting good French-speaking journalists to work there), they produce quite a bit of local news – and as of this weekend there will be more local news for franco-Manitobans than English-speaking Quebecers.

As you’d see looking at some of the retrospectives, the history of Radio-Canada in Manitoba is fundamentally tied to the history of the francophone community there. Debates over official bilingualism, the Société franco-manitobaine, and the rift between anglo and franco Manitobans all have direct impact over CBWFT.

Not that you’d hear about any of that stuff from watching Radio-Canada and RDI outside of those local newscasts. Even as a Montrealer, it’s patently obvious how the importance of news on that network is directly proportional to its proximity to 1400 René-Lévesque East. Montreal mayoral debates air nationally, the national Téléjournal leads with what Jean Charest had for breakfast, La Petite séduction – a show about small francophone communities – has visited Manitoba only once in more than 65 episodes (it’s been outside Quebec only nine times, by my count), and Infoman treats going to Vancouver like he needs a visa to get there. The occasional new story or interview with Régis Labeaume is about as regional as it gets most of the time.

Maybe that’s the way it should be. Maybe Radio-Canada should concentrate on where its viewers are, and the vast majority are in Quebec, going to work in Montreal or Quebec City.

But as CBWFT has shown for the past 50 years, the French language doesn’t stop at the Outaouais, and there are francophones in Canada who have kept their culture going in areas where their language is truly in danger of extinction.

Here’s hoping it will keep the struggle going for another 50.