Category Archives: Navel-gazing

| Navel-gazing

Proud to be human

Here’s me holding my keys. Among them is my Bixi key. It’s scuffed up, and is now completely useless. And I couldn’t be happier.

As the CRTC was in the middle of an odd three-hour break on Monday, I headed out to grab some food and head to CBC for a radio interview. I took a Bixi to a Belle Province on Ste-Catherine Street, and had a quick bite. When I got out, I went back to the Bixi stand, but I couldn’t find my keys. Not in the usual pocket, not in the other pocket. Nowhere. They weren’t back at the resto. But I had to have had them when I got the Bixi at the Place d’Armes metro station.

My conclusion: I must have left the keys in the Bixi stand at Place d’Armes.

The Bixi key isn’t a problem to replace. Call them, they deactivate the old one and charge you $5 to send a new one by mail. The other keys are more annoying to replace. One of them I’m not even sure there’s a double for, plus I would need someone to let me into my apartment.

A hurried cab ride (I never take cabs) back to Place d’Armes confirmed the keys were no longer there. I went to the interview, walked back to the Palais des congrès and continued my day, stressing about how I would get into my home that night and how I would replace all those keys.

I got a phone call, which I ignored because I was in the middle of a hearing. Then I saw a tweet a minute later: Someone had found my keys, called Bixi and left their number.

The young man, who lives in the Plateau, was happy to return my precious bits of metal, and gave me his address to pick them up. He hesitated when I offered a small reward, to the point where I literally had to shove it in his face. I asked him to do something enjoyable with it, and after trying again to refuse he said he’d put it toward his trip to Quebec City.

Unlike a wallet or a cellphone, those keys are pretty useless to anyone who’s not me. It’s not like it’s easy to figure out what they open.

Nevertheless, my faith in humanity is heightened today. And I’m left with one less thing to stress about. (Which is okay, because there are plenty more things.)

Big thanks to the man who found my keys, and to Bixi, which not only processed my request to have the key deactivated in a matter of seconds, but went above and beyond in reuniting me with my keys later.

| Media, My articles, Radio, TV

Bell/Astral CRTC hearings: Day 1

This is it, folks. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission begins hearings at 9am into Bell’s proposed $3.38-billion purchase of Astral Media, and a related application to convert CKGM (TSN Radio 690) from English to French.

The hearings will be broadcast live at CPAC.ca and even covered live on the television channel as well. The CRTC also has its own audio feed of the hearings. Each is offered in both languages.

And, of course, I’ll be covering them as well. Stay tuned here for updates as they happen. Follow me on Twitter. That’s easier.

In the meantime, you can read my piece in Saturday’s Gazette about the war over specialty channel carriage contracts, and my other piece setting up the hearings.

| Media, Navel-gazing

My first quote in an ad

Journal de Montréal, Aug. 25, 2012, page 30

I was in the papers over the weekend. Well, some of them anyway.

As opposition grows over the planned Bell purchase of Astral Media (a new campaign was just launched today), Bell and its opponents are multiplying their use of full-page newspaper advertisements to fight the public relations war.

Continue reading →

| Montreal, My articles, TV

The beginning of the end for analog cable at Videotron

Remote controls for Videotron illico boxes will be needed soon in all homes with television service.

Do you have analog cable with Videotron? According to the statistics, probably not. The cable provider has managed to move more than three-quarters of its TV subscribers to the illico digital service, and the number of residential analog cable subscribers is quite low. A lot of 80-year-old West Island grandmothers who still think they’re getting service from CF Cable TV.

Anyway, last week Videotron took the first step toward dismantling its analog service by issuing a stop-sell order on new analog cable television subscriptions. Existing customers will continue to have service, but should expect to be forced into digital cable some time over the next few years.

How long exactly isn’t clear. Videotron vice-president Isabelle Dessureault wouldn’t put an exact date on it. But a timeframe of, say, 18 months is realistic, giving the company all of 2013 to make the transition.

You can read more about Videotron’s plans in an article I wrote for Wednesday’s Gazette, and another I wrote for the website Cartt.ca (subscription required).

This transition particularly affects the West Island, because it’s an area with a lot of analog television subscribers, and the western region of Montreal that Videotron inherited from CF Cable is the one that still has the most analog channels (55, according to a website that tracks Videotron’s network in detail, though that includes TVA’s Télé-Achats, which has just been shut down.) Some services have already been pulled off analog cable, like YTV and CMT.

Videotron has already started making this transition in Gatineau, where it killed the analog Telemax service and reduced its analog cable offering to a bare-minimum 30 channels (mostly local stations and must-carry channels). There, it offered free set-top boxes for existing analog customers (and free 36-month rentals for those who have a digital subscription with additional sets on analog cable). Dessureault wouldn’t say whether similar offers would be made in Montreal, but expect something along those lines. Dessureault explained that most set-top boxes are subsidized by Videotron – even the ones people buy – so the lower the price the higher the amount of the subsidy. It would probably be worth it to free up all that space and charge people more for more channels (not to mention prevent people from moving to Bell), but we’re talking about a serious outlay of cash to get thousands of homes set up with these boxes.

Don’t worry too much about losing your service right away. Videotron will walk people through the transition when it eventually happens.

6 MHz is a lot of space

It’s hard to understate what the disappearance of analog cable would do for Videotron’s ability to pump out more service. Each of those 55 channels is 6 MHz wide (the same bandwidth as an over-the-air television channel). In the space of each of those analog signals, Videotron could, through its QAM digital encoding, put through seven standard-definition channels or two high-definition channels, Dessureault tells me. An analysis of Videotron’s encoding system shows those numbers are actually higher, with some of those 6 MHz channels carrying three HD channels and as much as a dozen standard-definition ones. (The difference is compression – the more compressed the signal, the more channels you can fit in that block, but the lower the quality.)

Analysis of a 6 MHz Videotron QAM block at illicotech.com shows 12 SD channels and six audio streams in a space that would have been used for a single analog television channel

Doing the math, those 55 analog channels could become 165 new HD channels in addition to the 71 Videotron already has. In other words, tripling its current offering. Or it could become more than 600 new standard-definition channels, which I’m pretty sure is far more than the number of local TV stations and specialty channels that exist in this country.

Most likely Videotron will use the new frequencies to boost the number of SD channels and the number of HD channels, as well as the amount of bandwidth related to video-on-demand service and cable Internet (Videotron wants to particularly improve upload speeds, making the network more symmetrical in upload vs. download). All of this must share the same cable and so must be separated out on different frequencies.

The pressure is definitely being felt most in HD channels. Videotron is adding a handful every year, but space is at a premium. Videotron’s French HD selection is quite good. Well, it has to be, since no French-language commercial television service is going to be successful in Canada if it’s not on Videotron. But in English HD channels, Videotron lags behind Bell TV, which is aggressively trying to woo potential customers in the Montreal area with its fibre-optic Fibe service. Videotron only recently added such popular channels as Space and Discovery in high definition, and it’s still missing Showcase, Food Network and HGTV (though Videotron will add those three by the end of the month). MuchMusic, OLN, Comedy Network, CTV News Channel and YTV are other channels that should be high on the list of HD channels to be added to the grid.

And, of course, there’s still the continuing cry from customers to add AMC. Sorry, wish I had good news about that one. Videotron is aware of demands for it, but it seems discussions between Videotron and AMC haven’t borne fruit yet.

An unnecessary money grab?

After the Gazette piece was published, I got an email from someone who was thinking this move was more about Videotron wanting to push people off analog cable than it wanting more space for HD channels. A Cult MTL piece discussing this issue also frames it as a screw-the-poor move by Videotron.

While I don’t doubt for a second that Videotron’s main goal is profit, I have no reason to doubt its explanation. It has a bit of room left for new HD channels, but by 2014 it will be extremely limited, and the number of new channels and number of existing ones upgrading to HD will only grow.

Before saying they’re screwing customers, let’s see if they actually do it first. If Videotron offers set-top boxes for free (or as a free rental), as well as a digital channel package that gives the same channels for the same price, the net cost difference to the customer will be zero, combined with a hefty equipment subsidy on the part of Videotron.

This news was also discussed on DSL Reports and Reddit.

| Media, Montreal, Navel-gazing

The new, slightly thinner, somewhat more streamlined Gazette

The transformation of The Gazette that has been made necessary by cuts from parent company Postmedia Network began this week in a way that readers will notice.

As of Tuesday, the weekday paper has been reduced from three to two sections (with the exception of Mondays, which still has a separate Driving section). The Tuesday paper has a note from Editor-in-Chief Alan Allnutt explaining the changes. In it, Allnutt talks about how the focus of the paper will transition from covering the 24-hour news cycle to being more of a daily newsmagazine. If that sounds like something you’ve heard a few times before, you’re not imagining it. But such fundamental change to how a newspaper works takes quite a few big steps before it really sinks in.

The two-section format works as follows:

The A section will contain the same as it did before, with local, national and international news, followed by a two-page opinion section with editorials, Aislin’s cartoon, letters to the editor and opinion pieces. After that will be business news, sports news and arts and entertainment stories that used to be in the other two sections.

The B section will be a theme section that’s different by the day. Mondays and Thursdays it will be sports (Hockey Inside/Out on Thursdays during the hockey season). Tuesdays will be business, comprising the features that used to be in the Monday Your Business section. Wednesdays will be food, with the same features that were on the weekly food pages. And Friday will be movie reviews. Regardless of the topic of the day, the B section will include classified, obituaries, puzzles and comics, the TV grid, the weather map and Doug Camilli’s column (on days when that column runs).

There’s a reduction in the number of pages, though it’s not as dramatic as you might think. This Tuesday’s paper had 36 pages, down from 44 the week before. Wednesday’s paper had 44 pages (not including the West Island section), down from 52. When you discount the five special Olympics pages added to the Sports section each day last week, it’s a small reduction (the Wednesday paper has the same number of pages as one the week before the Olympics). It’s hard to make it an exact science because of the variance in the amount of display advertising.

The main reduction of content is wire stories that filled the back pages of the business, sports and arts sections. More of those stories will be replaced by briefs, with focus being left on local original content.

The Saturday paper remains in its multi-section format and is not affected in any significant way by these changes.

Some original content will be disappearing too, the result of difficult decisions to save costs. Dating Girl columnist Josey Vogels (whose column is actually syndicated, but who got her start at The Gazette and the now-defunct Hour) and bird columnist David Bird wrote goodbyes this week. The weekly This Week’s Child brief and Next Chapter boomer/seniors column are also being cut. Listings of events, shows and activities are moving online.

There are also some more minor changes in the way the paper looks. Section banners have become smaller and simpler, the look of the briefs column changes (it’s been renamed from “In the News” to “In Brief”), columnist logos have become smaller, and Web pointers have disappeared from a standard position on Page A2.

Buyouts and a few layoffs, most of which take effect on Sept. 1, will reduce by about 20% the number of people in the editorial department. Most of those leaving work behind-the-scenes, many as copy editors, photo editors or administrative staff whose names don’t get in the paper. The Globe and Mail explains a bit how things are going to work after the newsroom becomes smaller.

Thankfully, there were no forced layoffs on the copy desk, which means I will remain with The Gazette after the cuts.

The changes are obviously not going to please everyone (few changes do). Allnutt invites people to make their views known by email: changes@montrealgazette.com

| Montreal, My articles, Radio, TV

A big autumn for Montreal broadcasting

Man, there are a lot of radio stations in and around Montreal.

That’s what came to mind as I compiled a list of them for a story that appears in Saturday’s Gazette. “Story” might be an exaggeration there. It’s more like a charticle spread over two and a half pages, detailing the things that are changing at radio and television stations in the city.

And there’s a lot of stuff going on. A CRTC hearing this fall will decide on whether to approve a new station and whether to accept major amendments to the licenses of two others. Two other stations approved by the CRTC last November are gearing up to launch in the coming months. One frequency that currently sit vacant could be home to Hudson’s first local radio station if the CRTC gives it the okay. CBC Radio 2 and Espace Musique could see ads for the first time. And then there are all the staff movements, office changes and other things that don’t require CRTC approval.

To get it all straightened out (and include a few new pieces of information), I’ve compiled a list of radio and TV stations that can be tuned in from Montreal and talk about what’s happened there recently and what’s coming soon, on a station-by-station basis.

What’s going on in AM radio is probably the most interesting, because it involves the most fundamental change – two new radio stations, with a possible third to join them, and another station whose fate is in limbo.

In FM radio, I notice a lot of the updates involve staff changes. That’s part of life in radio, and I don’t know if it’s unusually high – I suspect not – but when all compiled together there’s enough change to write home about. The departure of Planète Jazz in favour of Radio X is also a big change.

For television, I focused only on local programming, and, for the most part, on the anglophone stations. One (CJNT) has been bought out by Rogers pending CRTC approval (an application hasn’t been published yet). Global is getting ready to launch a morning show at some point in the late fall. CBC is getting ready to expand its late newscast from 10 minutes to half an hour, which will start Sept. 17 (the same day George Stroumboulopoulos moves to 7pm). And CTV is still making baby steps toward converting its local newscast into high definition.

I’m sure there’s stuff that I missed for whatever reason (it’s been pointed out that I don’t talk about adjacent-market AM stations, mostly due to lack of space). If you know of one, feel free to add it in the comments below.

| Media, Navel-gazing

Blue Monday at The Gazette

It’s annoying when big news happens on your day off.

There was an email to all staff shortly before 3pm calling for a meeting about something “important”. I was at home, enjoying my first day off in a while,  so I couldn’t come in to attend.

I got most of the news first on Twitter, particularly Steve Ladurantaye of the Globe and Mail. Postmedia is engaging in another round of deep job cuts, which include “more than 20” at The Gazette.

Eventually, we got the memos from the president of Postmedia and the publisher of The Gazette, the contents of which are being widely reported (see links below). But a lot is still unclear.

The job cuts are being described as “layoffs”, though it’s too early to say that. Voluntary buyouts will be offered, and if enough people take them, layoffs won’t be necessary. Despite all the rounds of job cuts at the paper in the seven years I’ve been there, no permanent union jobs in the newsroom have been forcibly cut.

People have asked me if I’m on the “list” of people being laid off, and the truth is no such list exists yet, and whether this ends up with me eventually losing my job is something I just don’t know. If it comes to layoffs, I’m No. 105 on a newsroom union seniority list of 107 (which also includes photographers, columnists, reporters, designers, clerks and other newsroom employees), so my chances of being bumped out of a job is high higher. Looking at that list, 63 of the 107 have more than 20 years of seniority (which is adjusted for part-time workers and those who take leaves of absence). Only seven (including myself) have an adjusted seniority of less than five years. It’s a simple reality of work in a union environment where hiring has been rare recently because of the industry’s struggles.

More details will come out as the decisions from higher up trickle down to the department level, and later when we know who is taking buyouts. But whether it results in layoffs or not, the result will be a blow to the paper. National and world news stories, which are no longer being edited in Montreal, may not even be selected by local editors, though that’s still unclear. The amount of space devoted to editorial content (stories and pictures in all sections) will be reduced 35% (though I’m told this is just during weekdays). Virtually all More editing for print will be done by editors at Postmedia Editorial Services in Hamilton, Ont.

I’m not in a position to criticize the decisions of upper management at Postmedia, who have to deal with a substantial debt load and declining revenues. There are plenty of pundits not employed by this company who can do that. But whether or not it’s the right decision, it’s still sad. It’s a blow to seasoned workers who may feel more pressure to retire early or face a newsroom with declining morale. It’s a blow to young workers like myself. And it’s a blow to people looking for jobs (people like Adam Kovac), who have just seen their slim prospects here get even slimmer.

Coverage

UPDATE: I’ve clarified a few items above where I made statements about things that will happen that I’m told are still not clear. Don’t put too much emphasis on the details, which still have to be worked out. We know there will be more centralization and fewer local jobs, but how that will play out exactly still has to be determined.

| Montreal, My articles, Radio

Ted Bird leaves K103

Updated May 11 with audio from his last show.

Ted Bird announced Monday morning that this is his last week at CKRK (K103) in Kahnawake.

Bird told listeners the decision to leave was a mutual one between him and station management: “It was mutually agreed that it’s time to move on.”

That’s true. But it might be more accurate to say that Bird is leaving because K103 simply can’t afford to keep him any longer.

Bird joined K103 as its new morning show host in April 2010, a few months after his sudden departure from CHOM. It was for a year, then renewed for a second. Throughout that time, radio watchers have been wondering how long the perennially cash-strapped 250-watt station could keep paying a commercial radio veteran to be part of its morning show.

He hinted at that on air. “My first choice would be to stay, but the realities are it’s not going to happen,” he said.

Since Terry DiMonte announced he was returning to CHOM from Calgary, people have been wondering about the possibility of a Terry and Ted reunion. Bird put inevitable rumours to rest right away by saying this move was not a precursor to a Terry and Ted reunion. He said only that he has “a couple of possibilities over in the city” as far as his next move.

You can listen to Bird’s announcement here (MP3, 5:08)

Despite making it clear he wasn’t going back to CHOM, some fans (Tom Messner!) are fantasizing about a Terry and Ted reunion. While Bird doesn’t reject that as a possibility in the future, the truth is that CHOM or Astral simply hasn’t contacted him since he left. There’s been no attempt to rebuild the bridge that was so thoroughly scorched by Bird when he left, even though the station is under new management, which says there’s no personal animosity.

Bird made it very clear on air and when I talked to him later that he enjoyed his time at K103. “This has by far been the most fun I’ve ever had in radio,” he said. “It’s two years I wouldn’t trade for anything.”

And it showed. With cohosts Java Jacobs, Paul Graif and more recently Matty Pots, the chemistry was very strong. Bird and Jacobs especially worked well with each other, and you could tell that when they burst out laughing in studio it wasn’t because they were forcing themselves to.

Similarly, the station’s management seemed to be pleased with what he has done. Joe Delaronde, who was the chair of its board of directors and is now one of its programming consultants, said Bird “has done everything he was supposed to do and more” for the station, was a team player, made appearances at community events and helped bring up the level of professionalism at the station, providing good training for young Kahnawake community members who worked there.

Bird’s arrival was supposed to help bring in new audiences and hence new advertising. Delaronde said it succeeded on both counts. He said they did a survey of 250 people by stopping them in the street (CKRK doesn’t subscribe to BBM monitoring so it can’t really calculate its reach outside Kahnawake), and found only 0.9% of respondents said they never listened to the station. On the advertising front, Delaronde said revenues went up 1000%.

“The vast majority of people were very happy,” Delaronde said. Happy enough, apparently, that a Facebook group quickly started with comments from people demanding that the mutual decision be reconsidered and that Bird stay at K103.

Not everyone in Kahnawake was happy when Bird came around. Some complained that the station was seeking someone from outside to run things, spending money on a commercial radio guy when it could have been better spent on training and employing Mohawk talent. Many of those opinions were posted on a Facebook group along with others that supported Bird. Bird acknowledged those negative opinions about his arrival in a column for KahnawakeNews.com. Those voices, though, seemed to be in the minority compared to those who thought Bird was a way of increasing the profile of the station and, by extension, the community.

Delaronde downplayed opposition to Bird, blaming it on people who will complain about anything. He said the station has never lost its identity as a community station.

Graif, who you might recognize because he used to work at Global and occasionally fills in on the sports desk at CFCF, said Bird’s departure was “a big loss” to the station. “I’ve never had this kind of chemistry before. It made getting up at these ungodly hours easy.”

So what’s next?

For Bird, the next move is in motion, but nothing is set in stone yet. There are strong rumours about a deal to join CKGM’s morning show, but Bird would not comment on them and CKGM station manager Wayne Bews didn’t return a phone message seeking comment. The move would make sense, since the morning show has been down to two hosts since Denis Casavant left to devote more time to his work at RDS.

For K103, the show goes on with Jacobs, Graif and Pots. Delaronde mused about maybe adding a female voice to the morning show, but there have been no decisions made yet.

You can read more about Bird’s departure in this story in The Gazette, written by yours truly. There’s also a story at KahnawakeNews.com.

Bird says goodbye

UPDATE (May 11): Bird did his last show Friday morning. You can listen to Bird’s farewell message here (MP3, 1.1MB, 4:59)

Meanwhile, Delaronde writes a post for Radio in Montreal giving some context to the decision to part ways. He explains that Bird’s salary was paid at least in part by “private sponsors” who, it seems, were not willing to keep their funding going past the end of the second year.

| My articles, TV

Nancy Wood back in the saddle

Nancy Wood has a lot to be happy about these days

There’s a saying in radio that it’s not if you get fired, but when. People are pulled off the air all the time without notice, told their station is going in another direction, or has decided to make a change, or some other vague euphemism for the fact that they want a change behind the microphone. As someone who covers local media – and particularly broadcasting – I’ve seen quite a few of these. When I ask about it, both parties usually repeat the vague euphemism and offer some boilerplate about how they wish each other well in their future endeavours.

For those let go, it’s rarely good news. Even if they do end up finding a job quickly elsewhere, even if the reason for their departure isn’t their fault, it’s crushing to be pulled out of a public job like this, because you know they wouldn’t have done it if you were wildly successful.

I don’t particularly enjoy reporting on these things. It’s uncomfortable. I don’t take joy in seeing people lose their jobs. But a hiring is just as much of a change as a firing, and only the former tends to involve press releases. So I search them out (sometimes a difficult thing to do because they can’t be reached at work) and ask them for comment. Trying to manage the blow to their reputation, and protect future job prospects, they stay timid, keep a happy face and repeat management’s vague reasoning.

Nancy Wood is not one of those people.

Continue reading →

| Navel-gazing

Five years of Fagstein

So meta.

It was just after midnight, five years ago today, that during a period of extended unemployment I published my first post on a website I had just set up to share random thoughts with the world.

Looking back at some old posts, I realize how little idea I had of what it would turn into down the road. Many of the posts are short, sarcastic comments about news stories, about all sorts of topics I knew little about. There’s no effort to really think too hard about what I’m writing, and the idea of actually calling up someone for comment would have seemed ridiculous at the time. Often I’ll go back to stuff written around that time and cringe a little bit, either because I was far too fast on the trigger or because my opinions were sorely lacking in nuance.

There are more subtle changes that have happened since then. The headlines at first made no attempt at search-engine optimization, and didn’t use tags. (This isn’t just a question of getting Google traffic, but making it easier to find old posts about a topic as well, which I do often to add context.) There were also far few pictures used back then. (It’s a lot easier now, in part because of the thousands of photos in my database I can use as file art.)

As the months and years went on, I started to focus on things that really interested me, that I could write more than a paragraph or two about. That turned out to mainly be media, but to a lesser extent Montreal urban life, public transit and other issues as well.

As a result, I’ve been branded some sort of expert on local media. I’ve slowly started developing contacts, actually going out and reporting on things, and even breaking stories (and learning hard lessons about how to separate rumour from fact). Whereas five years ago I would have easily passed incognito in an open house at a local TV or radio station, I’m now on a first-name basis with many of the players in local English media and am the go-to person for TV and radio coverage in The Gazette that Bill Brownstein and Brendan Kelly aren’t interested in writing.

Probably the biggest change to this blog came about when I started posting on Twitter. Those short one-sentence posts got replaced by tweets. The result was that the average post got longer, and the frequency of blog posts dropped from about three a day to about three a week. (Going back to work for The Gazette also cut down on the amount of time I could spend on blogging.)

And, of course, there are a lot more comments on posts now, and despite the trolls, the xenophobes, the stubborn radicals who are closed off to reason, the personal attacks, the off-topic comments and the hundreds of spam comments I have to flush out every day, discussion in comments is among my favourite parts of this blog.

I really don’t have any big plans for the future. I’ve had a few people inquire about advertising, but I’ve stupidly turned them down so far, being more than happy with the money I’m making from my job at The Gazette. As it stands, I’m planning to just continue, using this forum as an outlet for things I feel need to be said out loud, and for news that’s of interest to people who have the same interests as me.

Thanks for reading, commenting, linking, supporting, contributing ideas and everything else you’ve done to make this the one-time second-most-popular local English-language blog in the city. I appreciate it.

| Montreal, My articles, Radio, TV

CBC Montreal adding weekend newscasts

CBC Montreal's TV news studio won't go dark for 65 hours on the weekends anymore

In case you didn’t see the article in Wednesday’s Gazette, CBC Montreal announced this week that it is adding newscasts on weekends as part of the Mother Corp.’s “Everyone, Every Way” strategy that has brought similar announcements of increased local services across the country.

To be specific (because the press release is anything but), starting in May (the exact date is still to be confirmed):

  • CBMT will get a half-hour local newscast at 6pm Saturdays, replacing the national newscast at that same time. It leads into Hockey Night in Canada.
  • CBMT also gets a late newscast at 10:55pm Sundays, after The National.
  • CBME-FM (88.5) gets local hourly newscasts on weekend afternoons, extending local news hours from noon to 5pm on Saturdays and 4pm on Sundays

A couple of questions remain unanswered.

  • Anchor: For the TV newscasts, an anchor hasn’t been chosen yet. The position is to be posted in the coming weeks. Top candidates would probably be Kristin Falcao, Sabrina Marandola, Catherine Cullen and Peter Akman, who have had experience filling in for vacationing anchors.
  • Jobs: It’s not clear at this point how many people will be hired to fill these new newscasts. CBC Quebec managing director Pia Marquard told me there would be “a couple of people at least”. Certainly an anchor will be needed on the TV side and a second news reader on the radio side. Plus one would imagine more reporters being needed on the weekend to file fresh stories for these newscasts. But Marquard seemed to suggest a lot of this would be done by shuffling around existing staff.

I asked Marquard about programming for Quebec communities outside of Montreal. No news there, even though one would think supporting anglophone minority communities in Quebec is part of the public broadcaster’s mandate. Outside of the Quebec AM and Breakaway radio shows out of Quebec City and programs of CBC North out of northern Quebec, the only radio and TV programming produced in the province comes out of Maison Radio-Canada.

I also asked her about the possibility of more non-news local programming. Things along the lines of the Secrets of Montreal special that ran last fall. She pointed to the CBC Montreal Summer Series, which are one-off one-hour specials that air Saturday nights during the summer, when nobody’s watching. Last year’s crop wasn’t particularly impressive. Of the six one-hour specials, two were English versions of Radio-Canada’s Studio 12 music performance show (which won’t return after this season, by the way, so they’re going to have to find another way to produce cheap one-hour shows). It’s not that I don’t like Studio 12, but it’s like those “CBC/Radio-Canada investigations” in which CBC Montreal repackages the work of Radio-Canada and takes credit for it.

Marquard did point out that CBC News Network will be airing the best of these summer series shows on Saturday afternoons this summer (when even fewer people will be watching, I imagine).

I don’t want to be too negative here. CBC television in Montreal has made a lot of progress in the past few years. It wasn’t long ago that all it had was a half-hour newscast on weekdays, producing 2.5 hours a week of programming. With these changes, it’ll go up to nine hours of local news a week, which is still way behind CFCF.

It would be nice if more of an effort was made to produce more local and regional programming for Quebec’s anglophone community from CBC, especially since there are no private English-language TV stations and few English-language radio stations outside of Montreal. And it would be nice if we had some programming that’s not confined to two-minute news reports or six-minute studio interviews, that could reflect the unique culture that is anglophone Quebec.

But for now I guess we’ll have to be satisfied that news that breaks on Saturday morning doesn’t have to wait until Monday at 5pm to be reported on local public television.

UPDATE (Feb. 17): Jobs have been posted for weekend news anchor and weekend meteorologist. The former is strangely listed as “full-time” even though it’s only two days a week.

| My articles, Radio

Tales from Cogeco

Cogeco President Louis Audet

On Thursday, I got up early (meaning: before noon) and went to the annual shareholders’ meeting of Cogeco, the cable company that is also a big player in the Quebec radio industry.

I covered the meeting for Cartt.ca, the online publication about the broadcasting and telecom industry run by Greg O’Brien. If you’re a subscriber, you can read my report here. If not, it’s not the end of the world. Much of it is industry stuff you probably don’t care about that much.

The stuff you might care about is repeated below:

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| Media, Navel-gazing

Six years later, security

WARNING: This post is about me. If you don’t care about me, stop reading. Here, you can watch this YouTube video of a cute cat thing and browse from there.

It was so long ago that it’s hard to remember what it was like back then.

It was seven years ago this month that, while attending a national student journalism conference in Edmonton (thankfully that year there were no debilitating illnesses), I got a call on my cellphone from the city editor at the Gazette offering me a paid internship that summer.

My reaction was subdued. The man who offered me the job even remarked on that point. It’s not that I wasn’t happy – I was over the moon – but for some reason the only thing that I could think of was how much this conversation was going to cost me in roaming charges.

Though it occurs to me now that I’m not the kind of person who pulls out the theatrics when someone gives him really good news.

After a short, unpaid internship at the West Island Chronicle that I actually enjoyed even though it wasn’t exactly hard-hitting journalism, and another at CBC Montreal that resulted in a few paid shifts at CBC Radio over the previous holidays (which in turn convinced me that being a guest booker wasn’t quite my cup of tea at the time), I was really excited at the idea of working at a major newspaper in my home town.

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| Humour, Navel-gazing

You failed my subscription challenge

I'm very disappointed in all of you

So a week ago, I asked you to participate in a fundraising event in which I spared you from the guilt trip of asking you for money. Instead, I promised to give away my own money in proportion to how much you helped to inflate my ego by subscribing to my RSS feed or following my Twitter account.

Kind of like those emails that say Bill Gates will donate money if you forward them. Only this one was real.

I gave you a week, so that news of my good deed would spread far and wide and everyone would have a chance to let themselves be counted.

One week later, here are the results: The number of Twitter followers has gone from 3,816 to 3,854, an increase of 38. Subscribers to my RSS feed haven’t changed, and could possibly have even declined.

So my grand total to be given to charity, under the generous formula I set, would have been $38. Enough for a family of four to … have dinner at a McDonald’s.

Seriously? I can’t get you lazy bums to do something as effortless as hit “follow” or “subscribe” even if I’m paying for you to do it? At that rate, I’d wonder if you’d even remember to breathe if there wasn’t an unconscious brain function that forces your lungs to expand and contract. What do I have to do, deliver a pizza? Show you porn?

Look, I know, lots of people already follow me, and not everyone has more than 3,000 Twitter followers. Well, I’m not everyone. My extended family (which includes a lot of those aunts whose sole purpose in life is to initiate awkward converstaion) thinks I’m some sort of Internet superstar, and my attempts to dissuade them of that notion are interpreted as false modesty, which only makes it worse. Put simply: I have a reputation to build, and such a piss-poor participation rate in a yearly charity exercise is embarrassing. Like a reader poll that only gets two responses.

And if those great aunts stop believing in the legend of Fagstein, they’ll move on to even more uncomfortable questions, like wondering why I’m not married and don’t have kids yet.

So you know what? Screw it. Screw the whole formula. Screw the “subscription challenge” and counting Twitter followers like some narcissistic douche.

The Gazette Christmas Fund is getting a cool $1,000 from me this holiday season, which will be used to write eight cheques for $125 each to families in need. And I’m not going to put something like “on behalf of Fagstein readers” as the name that goes on that list of donors, because you had nothing to do with it. If you couldn’t care enough about these families to even get off your ass and setup a few hundred fake Twitter accounts to follow me with, then you don’t deserve to be associated with this donation in any way.

You want to make Christmas brighter for someone, you’re going to have to do it with your own money this time.

That is, except for the 38 new Twitter subscribers. To you, I thank you from the bottom of my ever-expanding credit card balance.

To the rest of you, you can all go to hell.

Merry Christmas.

| Navel-gazing

Fagstein’s Fourth Annual Subscription Challenge

I'm giving away some of these (the money, not the condoms)

To celebrate yet another year of employment, I’m giving away some of my money again.

And as in previous years, your participation does not involve you spending any money, just helping to inflate my ego a little bit.

In the past I’ve given to Dans la Rue, the Welcome Hall Mission and the Old Brewery Mission. Now all of them are annoying me regularly with letters in the mail, which I find annoying not because they’re charities asking for money but because they’re wasting so much on printing and postage. It just seems weird that there’s someone who has gone through the calculation and determined that this money needs to be spent to get people to donate.

This year, I was told by my boss that I’ve reached the five-year rate of pay at work. Under the current collective agreement, that’s the maximum rate, even though I’m still a part-time temporary employee whose future there isn’t at all set in stone.

While I could use some more job security  … and my own weekly column too, while you’re at it, imagination … my bank account can attest to how much I’ve benefitted from these people paying me to do something I enjoy so much, so I’m giving back by sending my big donation to the Gazette Christmas Fund. Or The Gazette Christmas Fund. I’m still debating whether the “T” should be capitalized.

Anyway, here’s how it works: I’m going to give $1 of my own money for every new (legitimate) follower to my Twitter feed between now and one week from today (Dec. 21), and $2 for every new subscriber to my RSS feed. The former is currently 3,816 and the latter is 1,196 (though I don’t know how reliable that Feedburner count is). And to save myself going bankrupt in case this goes super-viral, there’s a combined limit of $2,000, which I can totally waive if I feel like it, because I set the rules, man.

So go forth and sing my praises, and together we can give away a bunch of my money and make me cool at the same time.

And if you insist on donating your own money, go ahead. I’m not going to stop you.