Category Archives: Opinion

Note: This post has been corrected. I originally confused the two rulings for satellite companies as being the same. In fact, the Commission ruled in different ways for the two. Thanks to Patrick for pointing out the error.

Catching up on some CRTC broadcasting news over the holidays:

A complaint filed by CTV against Bell and Shaw, which run our two national satellite TV providers, has resulted in an order from the broadcast regulator forcing the two providers to close loopholes allowing Canadian viewers to see U.S. commercials during the Super Bowl.

Last year, both Bell TV (formerly Bell ExpressVu) and Shaw’s StarChoice concocted a scheme whose logic was something like this:

The CRTC requires broadcast distributors (i.e. cable and satellite companies) to use “simultaneous substitution” to replace U.S. channels with Canadian ones when both are airing the same show. This is so that Canadian networks get all the advertising money. Normally nobody cares that they’re seeing Canadian commercials instead of American ones, but the Super Bowl is the one time of the year when people want to watch the commercials. Canadian Super Bowl commercials just don’t measure up.
The CRTC rules have some loopholes. The substitution is only done when requested by the Canadian network, it’s only done when the Canadian signal is of equal or better quality than the U.S. one (which caused some issues in the early days of HD), and it’s only done in markets that have a Canadian over-the-air broadcaster.
CTV had high-definition broadcasters only in Toronto and Vancouver, so simultaneous substitution of the Fox HD signal is only necessary in those two markets
Bell and StarChoice developed a way to substitute the signal only for Toronto and Vancouver markets, and kept the Fox HD signals unsubstituted outside those markets for the benefit of Canadians wanting to watch the U.S. Super Bowl commercials. Viewers outside those markets would be given a choice of watching a substituted signal or an unsubstituted one.

CTV complained, and the CRTC agreed, that Bell TV is required to substitute those channels nationally, even for customers in markets where there is no Canadian broadcaster carrying the HD signal, because that is the method of substitution they currently use. The company, it said, can’t decide to use one method or the other depending on which is more convenient.

It dismissed Bell’s suggestion that the Super Bowl is an exception because it’s a “pop culture phenomenon”. CTV’s response to that:

CTV added that those viewers who really want to see the U.S. commercials can download them from the Internet within minutes after their being broadcast during the game.

The result is that Bell has to assure CTV in advance that simultaneous substitution will in fact take place for SD and HD signals nationally, and that Canadian subscribers not be given access to the U.S. commercials. Period.

In the case of StarChoice, the CRTC took a different tact. Unlike Bell TV, StarChoice substitutes channels locally through the receiver. They receive the U.S. signals, but are programmed to substitute them based on local requirements. This is the CRTC’s preferred method of substitution, as it protects local broadcasters. Since StarChoice didn’t deviate from their normal practice when they allowed subscribers outside of Toronto to view the U.S. Super Bowl feed, the CRTC ruled they are in compliance.

The CRTC did slap Shaw on the wrist about its cable TV service, which it said did not properly substitute the HD signal in 2008, but accepted the explanation that there were “technical difficulties” because Shaw had only started substitution for HD signals a month before the broadcast. They’re on a form of probation for the 2009 Super Bowl, with orders to take special steps to ensure substitution takes place as required.

The Super Bowl, which I think is a game of rugby or something, airs on Feb. 1 on NBC and CTV.

More commercial substitution

An unrelated issue, which the CRTC will debate next month, concerns “local availabilities of non-Canadian services”

If you’ve ever watched CNN and noticed commercials for Viewer’s Choice Pay-per-view or some other Canadian channel, this is what they’re talking about. Canadian broadcast distributors are allowed to override commercials on U.S. networks, but only to put in programming ads. They can’t put in their own commercial advertisements. At least, not yet. They’re arguing to get that privilege.

Personally, so long as the advertising substitution is negotiated with the U.S. network, and it doesn’t disrupt service, I don’t see a problem letting this happen.

Franchement

LCN has received approval to increase the amount of opinion and analysis programming during its broadcast day from 12% to 19%. CBC argued against the change, saying it would reduce the amount of news programming, which would hurt francophones outside of Quebec.

(As an aside, has anyone watched RDI and LCN and noticed how much local Montreal news and how little local news from outside Quebec are on those channels? It makes sense – that’s where their audience is – but neither is really a national news channel)

LCN argued it needs to adapt to a quickly changing media environment, which I’m sure you know favours opinionated blowhards shouting their mouths off in prime time over any sort of actual news gathering.

SitcomPix

Astral Media has received approval to add sitcom and drama programming to its MPix service, which used to be about movies. It’s limited to 15% of its content coming from those categories, and they have to be at least five years old, but I still find it kind of silly that they want to add sitcoms to a movie channel.

They’ve also gotten a reduction in the lead time between a movie’s release and the time they can start airing it, from five years to three years.

Super

SuperChannel, a pay TV network which wants to compete with The Movie Network and Movie Central, is still trying to get carried on some cable providers, including Videotron, despite an order from the CRTC that gives it “must carry” status.

Videotron has refused, citing some minority language rule that I don’t quite understand and probably doesn’t make any sense.

SuperChannel notes that Quebecor applied for a similar service and was turned down in favour of SuperChannel, and this might be payback for that rejection.

De-CanConing The Movie Network

The Movie Network has gotten approval to reduce its Canadian content requirements by getting extra credit for priority programming. This extra credit system came after the CRTC and media watchdogs noticed that Canadian broadcasters preferred certain cheap kinds of programming (like reality shows) over more expensive dramas. So the CRTC decided it would let broadcasters claim 150% credit for dramas and other expensive programming, to encourage them to create more of it.

Digital Home calls this a “weakening of Canadian content regulations“, though it’s entirely consistent with CRTC policy, as flawed as that may be.

January 16, 2009 | In the news, Montreal, Opinion

Montreal wants to remove your right to bundle up

Two guys at an anti-FTAA protest in 2003: Should they be arrested for covering their mouths?

In one of those stories that sound like they should be on The Onion, Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay is asking City Council to approve a rule that would make it illegal for protesters to wear masks.

Don’t get me wrong. The vast majority of protesters who wear ski masks to protect their faces do so because they know they will do something illegal and they don’t want to be identified.

But that doesn’t make this any less of a gross attack on freedom of expression.

The press release makes mention of an exception for “valid reasons”, which I would imagine includes “it’s freezing outside” and “I’m a Muslim woman” but not “I’m shy” or “I just don’t want people taking pictures of me”.

But the validity of those reasons would be up to police officers to judge (and maybe, if you have enough money, a court to overturn later). It gives them more power to harass or detain people who haven’t done anything wrong.

If I were more confident in our legal system, I would just laugh this off as something that would immediately get overturned by a court. But I’m not that confident anymore.

Arrest people who do things that are illegal, and charge them for doing those illegal things. Don’t start systematically removing people’s rights because statistics show it will help keep the peace better.

UPDATE (Jan. 28): No surprise, there was a protest to protest against the protest law.

January 16, 2009 | Media, Opinion, Technology

Hudson plane crash proved nothing about Twitter

Mere hours after a U.S. Airways jet crash-landed in the Hudson River next to New York City, stories about the influence of Twitter were being ejaculated left and right. They were all fawning over how news of the crash hit Twitter minutes before the big media outlets, and one person even posted a picture of the downed plane which got heavily circulated. This was described as a “scoop” for “citizen journalism”.

Don’t get me wrong, Twitter is a powerful tool, despite its really stupid self-imposed limitations. They will break these kinds of stories first and traditional news outlets should mine it for information (which they can then use for free!). But all it was were some eye-witness reports, in a city that has no lack for actual journalists. All we learned from Twitter was that a plane had landed on the Hudson River and that people were standing on its wing.

(Mind you, listening to CNN’s mindless filler yesterday afternoon, it was clear they didn’t know much more than that either).

But the rest of the story didn’t break on on Twitter. It broke through CNN or the New York Times or other outlets that could assign a journalist to chase the story.

Phil Carpenter, a Gazette photographer who recently started his own blog, points out that journalists who just repeat something they’ve heard (say, by rewriting a press release) don’t earn bylines because what they’re doing isn’t really journalism.

Perhaps we should consider that when we compare an eyewitness account to the work of a professional journalist.

UPDATE: J.F. Codère and I are happy to have found someone else who feels the same way.

January 14, 2009 | Media, Opinion

It’s a failure; let’s double it!

The Chicago Tribune, apparently keenly aware of the current newspaper economic crisis, has decided to print two versions of its paper: a broadsheet version for home delivery and a tabloid version for newsstands. Both will have the same content, just formatted differently.

Does this sound excessively stupid to anyone else? They’re going to have to use valuable resources to edit and layout two newspapers (and unless they’ve outsourced it to India, this is an expensive proposition), with editors doing two sets of layouts with different headlines, photos, captions and story lengths.

The Tribune says it has no plans to force home subscribers to switch to tabloid, but I can’t imagine one of the two not being forced to close and replaced with the other down the road to save costs.

January 13, 2009 | Business, Opinion

What do you do with a B.A. in communications?

I’m on a mailing list for job postings related to editing, you know, for when that six-figure executive position comes up with the corporate jet. I just haven’t bothered unsubscribing.

Even though I’m not looking for a job, I read the emails out of curiosity.

One I’ve seen a few times is from a trade magazine publisher. Trade magazines are usually high-budget affairs because they’re sent to highly-paid professionals and a lot of money is spent on advertising and otherwise communicating things between people in this industry.

The position is a “junior editor”, who is responsible for editing and proofreading, assigning material to freelancers, deciding on editorial coverage, “managing multiple projects simultaneously” and working on the design.

Doesn’t sound particularly “junior” to me, but maybe some of those things are exaggerated.

The position requires a B.A. in communications (or equivalent) and professional editing skills. Knowledge of Quark Xpress and bilingualism are listed as “assets”

It’s entry-level, but professional.

The starting salary? $13/hour

And yet for some reason I keep seeing this position posted every month or two. It’s almost as if the salary is so insultingly low that the people who apply are all horrendously unqualified.

Sadder still, I’m sure you can come up with even worse examples.

January 12, 2009 | Montreal, Opinion, Radio

R.I.P. Mix 96

Virgin 96

In case you haven’t heard, Mix 96 ends today. In what is no doubt a bid to save some money, CJFM 95.9 is rebranding itself a Virgin Radio station (on orders from owner Astral Media). The change will take place at a time that for some stupid reason has been kept secret until later this morning, but will definitely be “during the day” today. (UPDATE: 4pm, you can watch the countdown in case you’ve forgotten how to count to 4pm)

Because the entire identity of the station is changing, anything with the word “mix” in it has to be replaced. They’ll have a new logo, new station IDs, new vans, a new website and even a new call-in number.

The format is saying the same (“Today’s best music”, or top 40 lowest-common-denominator pop songs), but there are programming changes that see some good local talent go out the window.

In case you haven’t heard the endless plugging on the air, the station is being hyped everywhere (and that will only increase now that it’s actually been launched). Program Director Bob Harris has started a blog to get everyone hyped up.

One of the first obvious questions is: Why change a brand everyone knows and replace it with the equivalent of a giant McDonald’s sign?

Harris explains on his blog:

Astral Media (our parent company) has the rights to use the Virgin Radio name in Canada.

The Virgin Brand brings some amazing power. It represents an edge of cool, it’s irreverent, it’s sexy, its fun, it’s world class and constantly surprising.

Are you sold yet? They bought a brand and it has a good marketing team behind it. How could they not abandon their brand for this?

MIX 96 is one of Astral’s Montreal English radio stations (CHOM and CJAD the other two) and as we roll the Virgin radio name out across the country to other stations, we need to be part of it here too. Just because head office made the decision don’t think for a second that we had to do it.

Translation: If I pretend to like this horrendous gutting of a local station’s identity, I might get a promotion some day from a corporate executive who wants yes men working for him. Or at least I won’t be fired.

Bob shot the Sherriff

Murray Sherriffs: Gone.

The main face that has left the station is Murray Sherriffs, of Cat, Lisa and the Sherriff. He left last month in what is being described as “a programming decision.” Now it’s Cat, Lisa and classified third morning person to be announced in February.

Harris describes Sherriffs as a stand-up fellow despite the station’s apparent falling out with him, which also involved scrubbing any reference to him from their site and deleting all his past blog entries (you can get a taste in Google’s cache).

Sherriffs also took the high road when asked by Fagstein about his departure:

As you’ve heard, the radio station is being rebranded and sometimes hard business decisions have to be made.

But with the closing of this door comes other opportunities and I’ll be meeting this challenge as I have met others.

As I said on my MIX blog, the sentiments of one of my favorite songs by ”Chumbawamba”, ring especially true these days;

”I get knocked down
But I get up again
You’re never going to keep me down
We’ll be singing
When we’re winning”.

No word on Sherriffs’s next move, but we’ll let you know when it happens.

Seacrest in

Ryan Seacrest: Cheap filler

The new faces coming? The biggest one appears to be Ryan Seacrest. Yes, that Ryan Seacrest. He does this radio show which will air during weekday evenings at 7 p.m. It replaces the RJ Daniels show, though Daniels will stay on to cut in with local information (like the Habs score and weather) and follow with his own show until midnight.

Harris for some reason needs to confess that Seacrest won’t do his show from Montreal (no, really?), and instead does it from L.A. where it’s beamed to hundreds of stations. Now 95.9FM in Montreal will be one of those faceless stations rebroadcasting Ryan Seacrest. Doesn’t that sound awesome?

Feel for the Rhythm

The other programming change is the disappearance of Rhythms International. The Sunday night program, which had been on the station for more than 20 years, aired its final show Dec. 21, and is being replaced by UK Hit 40, another syndicated show replacing a local production. Like the ousting of Sherriffs, this is described as a “tough programming decision,” but essentially comes down to ratings.

Other programming, such as Nat Lauzon and the 80s/90s Nooner, will stay (though the latter will undergo a name change).

A sad day for local DJs

What particularly sucks about all this is that, unlike local television production, local radio production doesn’t require all that much work. A host and a producer. That’s pretty much it. When all you’re doing is playing music singles and doing small-talk between them, it should make sense to just have someone do it in-house.

But instead Astral is spending money to act as a rebroadcaster of foreign content. And not even good stuff. We’re talking about Ryan Seacrest here. The fact that Astral thinks Montrealers would prefer that (with the occasional local guy giving a 30-second weather report and local sports score) to spending an evening with a local DJ is sad.

Sadder still is that Astral might be right. Despite a few comments on my blog and a few emails to CJFM management, there isn’t much outrage over this. A Facebook group started up to fight it has less than 50 members. There’s been nothing in the other media about it.

It seems either Montrealers don’t know about what’s going on, or they don’t care.

Well, I do. Long live Mix 96.

UPDATE (Jan. 13): In case you missed the moment of launch, the station has posted a video of it on Facebook, which is apparently serving as their primary communications tool as their website is beyond simplistic.

Media coverage of the launch is light, but there are brief articles about it at Voir, Radio-Canada and the Journal de Montréal. Julien Brault also mentions it.

Infopresse has the two 15-second TV spots that are running on CTV.

UPDATE (Jan. 17): Clear Channel is planning massive job cuts in the U.S. in a move to nationalize radio production and gut local programming, according to the New York Post.

January 9, 2009 | Humour, Opinion, Technology, Video

Young Girl Talking About Herself

Guillaume sent me this video, from the maker of Hampster On a Piano (Eating Popcorn)

To most of us, YouTube is a giant library of random videos, some of which were even posted by the copyright owners.

But to many others, YouTube is a community of video bloggers, and people who talk to each other by staring into a low-quality webcam and posting their unedited thoughts to their channel in an effort to get friends and seem cool … or something.

Personally, I’ve always wondered: Who, other than pedophiles, wants to watch a 16-year-old girl spend five minutes saying nothing of consequence about herself?

Heck, even pedophiles have to be pretty bored to watch some of this stuff.

January 9, 2009 | Opinion, TV

Analog TV shutdown is a mistake

We’re about a month away from the end of broadcast television. … Maybe.

The United States, eager to auction off valuable spectrum space, has set Feb. 17 as a mandatory cut-off date, when all televisions must stop analog transmission and switch to digital.

The problem is that millions of television sets are not capable of receiving digital television signals and won’t be able to receive anything after this date.

No problem, the government says. They’ll institute a rebate program on converter boxes that receive the digital signal and spit out an analog one that the TV can read. Every household can get a $40 coupon, and the program will cost about $1.3 billion. Yeah, sure, that’s throwing an insane amount of money at the problem, but it’s much less than they would gain in auctions of the spectrum to various wireless interests.

But there’s a problem. The budget has run out, the coupons are on a waiting list and millions of people don’t have their converter boxes a month before the turnoff and switchover is supposed to take place. It’s gotten so bad President-elect Barack Obama is already suggesting there be a delay in the switchover.

In Canada, the switch happens on Aug. 31, 2011, for the entire country except the North. We’re facing the same issues two years down the road.

Continue reading →

January 7, 2009 | Media, Opinion, Slow News Day

Bye-Bye won’t go away

Quebec has two New Year’s traditions: one is watching Radio-Canada’s Bye-Bye variety show. The other is spending an entire fucking week MONTH talking about it in the press.

It’s gotten so bad the anglo media is starting to take notice, with belated articles in the National Post and Globe and Mail. Naturally, the Journal has an article talking about how there’s articles in the anglo media about this now.

Now that this is officially a thing, the media is putting together stories about the stories:

This doesn’t even include all the stuff that was written about it before it aired.

And this is just the beginning folks. Some actual news better break to push this off the front page or Jean Charest is going to have to create a commission on this.

UPDATE (Jan. 9): Véro and Louis’s mea-culpa-but-not-really has ensured at least a few more days of this.

January 7, 2009 | Media, Opinion

Star runs You Be The Editor quiz

The Toronto Star, still looking for some holiday filler, has produced a journalism ethics quiz which it invites readers to answer on its website. (via J-Source)

The Gazette did something similar a while back.

Editors deal on a regular basis with tough ethical decisions, and must choose between publishing something or holding it back. The Star gives some examples, at least some of which were based on actual events which were published in the paper and got complaints.

Most are unfortunately a bit too easy to answer for me.

As holiday filler for this blog a public service, here are my answers to the quiz and the explanations for them:

Continue reading →

January 6, 2009 | Opinion, TV

Yeah, we get it, Being Erica is set in Toronto

Being Erica

I just watched the premiere of CBC’s Being Erica, a show I was hopeful about a few weeks ago because of stuff it produced that it turns out has nothing to do with the show.

I was worried that this would turn into another amateur-produced series with cliché-crammed scripts that scream “this is a Canadian-produced show that wouldn’t survive 10 seconds south of the border”.

After the first episode, it’s too early to tell either way whether the show is worth watching. There’s plenty of cliché in it (rain starts pouring instantaneously when her date totally disses her). But there’s just enough nudity insanity later on to make up for it… I think.

I’ll let you know when I form an opinion. Until then you can watch it and form your own.

One thing that does annoy me (and, I imagine, most of the country) is the constant unnecessary references to Toronto. The high-school setting is set in 1992 (and makes a joke about a home computer that is at least a decade older than that), and references to the Blue Jays winning the World Series are inserted everywhere. The actual printed word “Toronto” appears at least four times in the 45-minute episode by my count. Even Sex and the City doesn’t reference its home city as often.

I’m starting to wonder if the city doesn’t have some product placement contract with the series somewhere, or if the Torontonians behind CBC television programming are really that obsessed with name-dropping their home town.

UPDATE: The premiere’s ratings were good or awful, depending on who you ask, but it’s hard to judge because the World Junior Hockey Championship on TSN sucked away most Canadian viewers. Nevertheless, critics seem to like it.

Inside the CBC has a post about Being Erica’s social media strategy (which will no doubt be analyzed to death on every Canadian social media blog). It includes the blog and YouTube videos I raved about earlier, as well as a fake Facebook profile (isn’t that a no-no on Facebook?).

UPDATE (Jan. 16): I just watched Episode 2, which apparently tried to make up for all the Torontoing of the pilot by mentioning Montreal seven too many times, and name-dropping some other towns too (Etobicoke?). Is the CanCon Committee paying them for every mention of Canadiana?

January 3, 2009 | Canadiens, Media, Opinion

Kovalev is better than Ovechkin

At least that’s what NHL all-star ballot stuffers think. Because of rampant stuffing from Canadiens fans, and then counter-stuffing from Pittsburgh Penguins fans, the Eastern Conference starting lineup has four Canadiens players (Alex Kovalev, Andrei Markov, Carey Price and Mike Komisarek) and two Penguins players (Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin).

Though Habs and Penguins fans should be embarrassed by this, the fault lies in the National Hockey League, which setup a system of unverified voting for its all-star lineup and even encouraged people to vote as many times as they wanted.

Maybe it’s time to realize that online voting isn’t a proper way to poll the public on anything.

January 3, 2009 | Media, Opinion

Media predictions: how did we do?

Looking back a year for my media year in review, I stumbled on some forward-looking posts about 2008. Let’s see how things turned out.

My 2008 online media wishlist

What I wanted: Clean up your online layouts

What happened: Layouts got more complex.

Even though mobile use is growing, media outlets respond not by simplifying their websites but by creating separate iPhone sites. Pages are optimized for 1024×768, and each redesign copies the previous one, so they all look the same. All are cluttered with far too many links on the homepage and far too little structure to their layouts.

What I wanted: Use video right

What happened: More junk videos

Experimentation is painful, I know. A lot of talking-head videos were tried and failed, but far too many are still doing this and assuming someone wants to watch it.

Forcing your reporters to shoot video isn’t going to help you unless that reporter knows how to do a good job. But reporters aren’t given the time, training or equipment to do so. Their videos are about the quality of cellphone videos, and are about as useful.

What I wanted: Stop trying to get random people to replace journalists

What happened: User-generated content doesn’t go far beyond comments and pictures of cats

Fortunately, nobody has seriously tried to replace journalists with free Internet labour, though I’m sure they’d jump at the chance if they could. News outlets have learned that you can get the public involved in sharing information and news tips, offering comments on news stories and providing pictures of snow, pets or other uninteresting things. But journalists are the ones you actually assign to produce news.

What I wanted: Setup RSS feeds by category and tag

What happened: Some movement, but not enough

Le Devoir introduced more specific RSS feeds this year, but there wasn’t much other movement in this regard. People who want feeds on specific topics from various media outlets are more likely to decide to rely on Google Alerts instead.

What I wanted: Add more tags to stories

What happened: Tagging introduced, but not exploited

Website redesigns, including the one at The Gazette, allow some form of keyword tagging. But we haven’t seen this truly exploited yet. Most systems are still automated, so getting related stories to link to each other is still hit-and-miss in a lot of plaes.

What I wanted: Larger photos

What happened: Slightly larger photos

Website redesigns understood that with faster Internet connections and larger screens, people can accept photos that are larger than 200 pixels wide. But we’re still far from where we could be. Many still max out around 500 pixels, even though their websites are designed for screens 1024-pixels wide.

What I wanted: Fixed search engines

What happened: Better search engines, but still frustratingly inadequate

The Gazette’s redesign brought in a search engine that works properly, though it’s still pretty basic. Cyberpresse brought in what it thought was a more full-featured search software. If you search for Patrick Lagacé, for example, you get his picture, his bio and a link to email him. Unfortunately, you don’t get a link to his blog, which is what people searching for him might be looking for.

What I wanted: Deportalization

What happened: Uberportalization

You’d think media ubercompanies would learn from successful websites like Google, whose homepage is very simple. Instead, their redesigns shove even more content on their homepages, making them almost infinitely long (five, six, seven screens’ worth). I have no idea who’s going to scan all the way down there for what they want.

Individual section pages help a bit, but they’re still part of a massive system that’s difficult to navigate due to its sheer size.

What I wanted: Give local outlets more control

What happened: Some get more, some get less

Canwest finally gave its daily newspapers their own websites with proper URLs. The Gazette’s website became montrealgazette.com instead of canada.com/montrealgazette. La Presse and the Journal de Montréal still don’t have their own websites, instead being hidden inside the Cyberpresse and Canoe portals.

What I wanted: Less reliance on wire services

What happened: More focus on locally-produced content

Fortunately, local media is more likely to promote its own productions over stuff it syndicates from other sources. Sections like health and technology, however, and especially sports tend to be filled with automatically-generated wire content.

What I wanted: Setup internal blogs to communicate with readers

What happened: Blogs started, forgotten

La Presse and The Gazette started blogs about themselves, but neither is updated very often now. No major news organizations communicate with readers on a regular basis about themselves through blogs, which is a shame because they need all the help they can get in these times.

What I wanted: Niche blogs

What happened: Columnist blogs

Lots of columnists started blogs about their beats, though many holes are still evident and not enough effort is being made keeping those blogs updated and publicizing them.

Worse, when the columnist goes on vacation (or just doesn’t feel like updating), the blog goes dead. No effort is made to bring in guest bloggers for those times. These niche blogs are about the people, not the subject, and most people don’t care where they get their soccer/TV/food/environment news from.

What I wanted: Static content

What happened: Disappearing content

I pointed to CBC’s “In Depth” section as an example of stuff that news agencies should look at doing. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen much of it. Feature stories go up and disappear within days as new content is uploaded. Archives have to be searched for instead of being browsed.

We still have an article-based mentality, where journalists summarize past events of a story instead of linking to a static article with all the information so far.

So when bloggers, for example, want to point to a page that explains a person, place or issue, they point to Wikipedia, even if the Wikipedia page is about three sentences long.

What I wanted: Solving article duplication

What happened: More article duplication

This is a problem a lot of newspapers experience: A story is written for the paper, uploaded to the web the night before, and then uploaded again automatically with all of the newspaper’s content. The result is two copies of the same article, though often with different headlines, photos or formatting.

No significant moves have been made to solve this problem that I can see.

What I wanted: Stop splitting stories across multiple pages

What happened: Users given “all on one page” option

With the speeds our computers operate at and all the Flash ads, videos and other junk that need to be downloaded on every page, it seems ridiculous that newspaper websites split text articles up on different pages. It’s obviously not to reduce page load times, it’s to increase ad impressions by forcing people to load multiple pages.

Increasingly, “all on one page” is being offered as an option, but this isn’t the default. I have no idea why anyone would want only part of a story to load when they click on it.

Le Devoir’s big media issues for 2008

In January, Le Devoir pondered what the media’s going to have to deal with this year.

What do we do with TQS? Well, we gave it to Remstar and they promptly fired everyone. Their ratings are crap, but they don’t have many expenses.
How do we finance television? The CRTC said no to cable providers handing money to conventional TV broadcasters, so it looks like advertising is still the way to go.
How long will the Journal de Québec situation go on? Just when some people thought it would last forever, a deal was reached in June and the employees were back to work in August. Now we wonder if the same will happen at the Journal de Montréal.
How do we handle journalist multitasking? La Presse dealt with job classification in a way that its union was happy with. The Journal de Québec did it in a way the union could live with. Others are still trying to figure it out. But besides dealing with union roadblocks, the media needs to figure out whether it’s worth it for reporters to take crappy videos and photos instead of relying on professional photographers.
How will online distribution royalties be handled? The U.S. writers strike ended in a way that still hasn’t resolved that issue. Royalties won’t really be resolved until someone starts making money online.
Will we have Internet CanCon? The CRTC decided it would not regulate the Internet, and media companies were happy with that. Net neutrality is still a problem we have to deal with though.

January 2, 2009 | Montreal, Opinion, Slow News Day

Snow

This is what it’s come to folks: Snow is the No. 1 story in this city in 2008.

Now, it would be easy to blame the media for over-hyping this issue, pushing snow as news during a season when very little other news happens.

Instead, I blame you.

You who talk about nothing but the weather, who whine incessantly about how there has been snow on your street for a whole five minutes and the city hasn’t done anything about it yet. You who want your street cleared ASAP but are too lazy to move your car out of the way first. You who made the Weather Network one of the few networks not to face a significant downturn this year. You who are so disconnected from society that the weather is the only conversation material you have available in half your conversations.

It’s snow. Get over it.

December 27, 2008 | Media, Montreal, Navel-gazing, Opinion, Slow News Day

Fagstein’s 2009 suggestions

The fine folks at Hour asked me to provide some “suggestions” for The Man various powers-that-be for 2009, which would then be used as free holiday filler quoted in an article to come out on Christmas Day.

The piece, which puts me the bottom with the rif-raff and interest group leaders, includes pretty well verbatim what I sent them.

Specifically, that:

Gérald Tremblay and Benoît Labonté think for a few more seconds before their next project to blatantly pander to voters before next December’s election
STM provide real-time updates online about metro service disruptions
Montreal police and other emergency services post their breaking news about car accidents, fires and murders online so that curious Montrealers can check for themselves what’s going on instead of having to wait for one of the media outlets to take dictation from the PR guy
more Montrealers start up niche blogs about their communities and their areas of expertise
TQS and Global TV, who are third in the franco and anglo TV ratings for their local newscasts, realize that slashing budgets isn’t the only answer and start experimenting by covering the news in some unique way
940 Hits die a slow, painful death for having replaced 940 News with crap
Montreal music radio stations stop desperately clinging to the lowest common denominator and take a chance by allowing their DJs some freedom in choosing what goes on the air
Montreal newspapers, radio and TV stations stop giving lip service to the Internet and put some real focus online – the Journal [de Montréal] could start by dealing with its union issues that are preventing it from launching a real website
local TV stations start creating local programming that goes beyond the evening newscast that gives us the weather, fatal car accidents and fluff every day
Montrealers stop complaining about the snow and take public transit if they’re so annoyed at having to shovel out and move their cars all the time
Amir Khadir brings hard work and new ideas to the National Assembly instead of spending his time as an MNA whining about how the government isn’t helping poor people enough
the next major public transit expansion project take fewer than 20 years to plan and execute.

Any you’d like to add?