Category Archives: Opinion

| Montreal, Opinion, Public transit

STM’s service improvements are actually service reductions

18 Beaubien at Beaubien metro
You’ll actually be waiting more, not less, for the 18 bus outside of rush hour.

The STM is trumpeting huge, noticeable improvements to bus and metro service that finally came into effect on Monday. The additions come in two parts:

More metro trains, less wait time

The STM is adding 145 new departures every week to all but the yellow line. The goal is to reduce waiting times and get more people using the metro.

The change is most visible outside of rush hour. That means the very early morning, during the day, late evenings, at night and on the weekend. On weekdays outside of rush hour, the waiting times will all be reduced by at least a minute and a half – a rather noticeable change.

Going out today, I decided to time the intervals between metro trains. Sure enough, for orange line trains going through downtown at 6:45pm, the trains were just under six minutes apart on average, which the STM says is an improvement on the previous eight minutes.

Though the wait times during rush hour (when almost all trains are already in service) won’t come down much, this move might serve to eventually lighten that load a bit. An extended rush hour means that fewer travellers will organize their schedules around rush hour to take advantage of the short waits.

I can’t be the only one who prefers to travel during peak hours because of how much faster it is. Extending rush hour will spread this tendency out a bit and hopefully make it spike a bit less as the whistle blows at 5pm.

More bus service means less bus service?

The other part to this service improvement is the more interesting one: the STM has announced additional buses being added to three popular lines: 18 Beaubien, 24 Sherbrooke and 121 Sauvé/Côte-Vertu. It’s also making the 54 Charland/Chabanel a rush-hour-plus-between-rush-hours service, which is becoming more and more popular (but to me only seems frustrating because the service stops by 7pm).

Today I went to the Beaubien metro bus stop for the 18 bus and observed as buses passed to pick up passengers headed east for the evening rush hour. Most of the buses had their seats filled, but none were so packed that nobody else could get on. They were running on intervals of about 3-4 minutes during rush hour’s peak (5:30pm), and 6-7 minutes just after rush hour (6:30pm).

This, despite complaints from the employees’ union that there’s a bus shortage affecting service.

Here’s the problem: The schedule itself hasn’t improved. If anything, service is being reduced on these three lines.

Continue reading →

| Opinion, TV

Discovery Channel wants game shows

CTVglobemedia, which owns Discovery Channel Canada, has applied to the CRTC for a change in its license to allow for game shows as part of its lineup, up to 15% (or 25 hours a week).

CTV argues that allowing for “a trivia-based show intended to enrich viewers’ base of knowledge” would make it “more attractive to its target audience” while still keeping with its mandate of programming that focuses on “the exploration of science and technology, nature and the environment and adventure.”

This is all code for the fact that Discovery wants to import Cash Cab, a highly successful game show launched in the U.S. last year that has unsuspecting cab riders being offered money if they correctly answer trivia questions. It has versions all around the world, including on the U.S. Discovery Channel.
But does the fact that it’s trivia automatically make it part of Discovery’s mandate? Mythbusters (which is currently aired ad nauseam) answers interesting pseudo-scientific questions. But Cash Cab asks people to name the seven dwarfs or the characters from Clue. How are these things either science, technology, nature, the environment or adventure?

In principle I think game shows should be allowed on Discovery (as they point out, other specialty channels like the History Channel already allow such programming), but Cash Cab sounds like it’s more about a cheap ratings grab than a desire to educate young viewers in an innovative way.

Deadline for comments is January 25. 

| Business, In the news, Montreal, Opinion

GST, PST, MST?

Montreal is pressuring Quebec to approve a 1% municipal sales tax so that cities can get a piece of the lucrative extra charges tacked onto our purchases, just days after the federal GST got reduced from 6% to 5%.

I hope this isn’t a selective thing, in which some cities will charge different tax rates from others. That would be a recipe for disaster and rampant loophole-exploitation.

Instead, perhaps the provincial government should increase the provincial sales tax by one point, and put that money into something important like health care.

UPDATE (Jan. 8): No dice, Quebec says.

| Opinion, Radio

CRTC looking at eliminating top-40 radio restrictions

In one of those “we have a law for that?” moments, the CRTC has decided to (again) take a look at a rather archaic regulation they have that limits FM radio stations on the use of “top 40 hits.”

The regulation was created to protect AM Top 40 stations from the FM Radio Menace that sought to kill them off with their better sound. Sure enough, now AM stations are disappearing, being replaced with talk radio, all-news stations, all-sports stations and some community and student radio stations. Portable music players are being built with FM-only tuners (where radio tuners are built-in at all), which will lead to further erosion of the AM listening base.

What does this law say about our radio broadcasting industry? Sadly, radio stations are failing to realize that having a 1,000-song playlist and virtually no indie content or DJ autonomy means that nobody wants to listen to your stations. Now they’re really starting to feel it as people tune to podcasts, Internet radio and songs they’ve ripped from their own CD collection.

I certainly hope their solution to that problem isn’t “more top 40 hits.”

Deadline for comments is March 4.

| In the news, Media, Montreal, On the Net, Opinion

Your guide to media coverage of the 1998 ice storm anniversary

The floodgates opened this morning on ice storm anniversary stories. Every major local media outlet has something, and many have a lot.

Part of that is because there isn’t much news on the 5th of January. Part is because they’ve had 10 years (with constant electricity) to prepare. And part is because it had such a profound impact on everyone’s lives for two weeks to a month.

This is perhaps the first big project among local media relying on reader-generated content. It’s easy to see why: Everyone remembers the ice storm. The supply of stories is practically infinite.

The problem is that everyone’s story sounds about the same. We were without power. The roads were hard to drive. We had to leave our home and move in with a family member who had power. We communicated with our neighbours for the first time ever. We helped people in need. We were happy to see electricians from the U.S. who came to help. There was a lot of snow and ice.

That’s the problem with user-generated content. It can produce some stunning gems, but most of it is boring filler not worth our time to read.

The archives are fun to look at (particularly the audio/video from the CBC and the PDF pages from The Gazette), to see how different the media and the world was just 10 years ago (67 cents/litre for gas was considered gouging).

Here’s what I’ve found so far (some links via mtlweblog), recommended reading highlighted in bold:

Continue reading →

| Humour, Media, Opinion, Slow News Day, TV

Rock et tous les oreilles

RBO

I guess RBO’s Bye-Bye show was a success, considering the sheer number of articles written about the subject, on everything from its ratings (2.4 million people watched it) and the price of its ads to its use of makeup to Hérouxville’s reaction to being made fun of.

Even the Oscars don’t get this kind of coverage.

Maybe they should schedule them during the holidays.

UPDATE (Jan. 17): My God, they’re still talking about it. Three million viewers, plus another million and a half the next day on the repeat. CBC would kill for those numbers.

| Media, Opinion

2007: A bad year for Quebec journalism

This blog is less than a year old, so I don’t have much raw data to evaluate long-term trends. But the past few months seem to have hit all of Quebec’s mainstream media simultaneously, with most of them announcing cuts in the number of journalists they have on staff.

Individually, none (except maybe troubles at TQS) is a major turning point for an organization, but taken together a trend appears to be emerging.

February:

  • CBC brings back a one-hour evening TV newscast to Montreal after budget cuts forced it to hand victory to CFCF. Though it’s good news, the new one-hour newscast doesn’t come close to regaining the ground the station lost when it cut the 6pm newscast down to 30 minutes.

April:

  • Editorial employees at the Journal de Québec are locked out by management who want to impose a new contract. Press workers immediately strike in solidarity, and both work together to produce an alternative free daily newspaper that is still publishing. The Journal is still going, put together by management, but the content is coming from the Journal de Montréal (reluctantly) and wire services (including one apparently setup solely to exploit this situation).

September:

October:

November:

December:

| Opinion, Slow News Day, Technology

Wikipedia flame wars make good news filler

Janice Tibbetts of CanWest News Service has discovered the Wikipedia war between inclusionists and deletionists.

My favourite quote:

“…I started to see a sharp, sharp turn in what people considered newsworthy or inclusion-worthy…”

No kidding.

Even though I can’t find anything actually new about this story (no doubt it’s another banked holiday feature), and I haven’t been active on Wikipedia for a while, I’ll add a brief comment:

I’m not sure what camp I’m in. I think it’s funny that there are things like lists of Stephen Colbert’s Words and other pop culture minutiae. But when every article about some aspect of pop culture has a section that denotes what Simpsons or Family Guy episode references it, things are getting out of hand.

A limit has to be set, and sadly we’re still debating where to put that line.

| Media, On the Net, Opinion, Slow News Day

Another eBay story too good to be true

Hey, remember that guy who sold a snowbank on eBay, getting $3,550 to donate to charity?

Yeah, it was a junk bid.

I appreciate that journalists did their due diligence and contacted the guy who was selling the snowbank, to determine that 1. He’s really selling a snowbank and 2. He’s really donating the proceeds to charity.

But once again, they seem to take an unconfirmed winning bid as if it’s a completed transaction. And when the bid is ridiculously high after lots of media coverage, there frankly should be an assumption that the bidder isn’t going to pay.

Same deal with the Guitar Hero auction, which sold at 100 times its suggested retail price just because it came with some story of a guy whose son smoked pot. Though the winning bidder in that auction is a long-time account with good feedback, the deal hasn’t been concluded yet so we shouldn’t assume it’s good.

Is a little bit of healthy skepticism (and patience) too much to ask?

| In the news, Media, Opinion

Bhutto assassination: Why is it big news?

Major newspapers around the world and in Montreal gave huge play to the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Montreal front pages - Dec. 28, 2007

Which of these reasons best describes the near-unanimous decision to put this on front pages?

  1. The news media is starting to seriously pay attention to international news, giving it the importance it deserves.
  2. The news media hasn’t changed. The assassination of a top political figure is an unusual and important story.
  3. The news media is desperate for a real news story in the otherwise dead year-in-review banked-feature time around Christmas and New Years.
  4. She’s hot.
| Business, In the news, Opinion, Technology

Bell Canada, our Do Not Call overlords

Bell Canada has been awarded the contract to manage Canada’s anti-telemarketing Do Not Call list.

Because when you think “customer service” and “convenience,” the name “Bell Canada” inevitably comes to mind.

No doubt the Bell Canada-run Do Not Call list will be fast, efficient, error-free and in no way a nightmare for thousands of Canadians stuck in customer service hell.

Oh, and the reason Bell won the contract? It was the only bidder.

Can you feel the irony biting you in the ass?

| Business, Media, Opinion, Slow News Day

VISA reports from the future

The news outlets were buzzing today about the fact that spending on Boxing Day went down this year compared to previous years.

I find that funny because, you know, Boxing Day hasn’t happened yet.

The news, naturally, comes out of a VISA press release, which they based on a survey that asked people what they planned to do. This, I guess, is somehow infinitely better than waiting two days and just finding out what they did.

But VISA knows a slow news day when it sees one, and the news fell for it.

| Business, Montreal, Opinion, Technology

15 reasons I’m not crazy about Capazoo

Roberto Rocha has an interesting article in today’s Gazette about Capazoo, a Montreal-based social networking website that wants to take on Facebook and MySpace.

What’s interesting about this project, unlike the thousands of other social networking sites, is that it’s starting big. Millions of dollars big. Before it even has 100,000 users, it’s going to flood the Web with advertising, spend millions on servers, and get as many famous people involved as possible to lure the young’uns on board. In other words, it’s going to use traditional marketing methods instead of the word-of-mouth methods that created Google, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and everything else.

Their gimmick is a social currency (“zoops”) that people can exchange by “tipping” each other. Voluntary contributions toward people whose content you approve of.

I’ll reproduce here some of the concerns I expressed (and some new ones I’ve added) about the project on his blog:

Here’s my issues with Capazoo:

  1. The name. It’s a random nonsense word like every other forgettable Web 2.0 startup. And it tells me nothing about what the site does.
  2. Yet Another Social Networking Site. People assume they put up a website and they’ll get Facebook/MySpace-like success within months. That’s just not going to happen unless their site is much better or they have a distinct advantage with newcomers. Microsoft took advantage of the latter (leveraging its Hotmail and MSN services) to outseat ICQ in instant messaging. Google used the former to build its search engine and Gmail. I see neither as the case for Capazoo.
  3. It’s bad enough for startups that social networks require a large critical mass before they can take off. Nobody wants to join a social network that none of their friends are in. But their virtual currency system requires an even larger critical mass before any content producer sees real money.
  4. I got the same weird feeling as TechCrunch about tying virtual currency to referrals. It sounds like a pyramid scheme. And the value of a Zoop is about equivalent to the value of a Zimbabwean dollar.
  5. Content creators getting money is great and all, but the entire payment process is based on tips. And those tips might be worth a penny or two. I don’t see even moderately popular people making a lot of money this way. And even if they did, wouldn’t they feel obligated to zoop all of their supporters?
  6. What’s to stop someone from stealing a popular video off YouTube, putting it on their Capazoo page and profiting off it? How will they ensure originality of content? Any system that involves money will attract people who will try to game that system.
  7. You have to pay them money in order to get money. Which means you have to make more money. Thousands of these “zoops” just to break even.
  8. Deals with major content producers is a red herring that sadly a lot of people use. MySpace is good for listening to unsigned bands. Facebook doesn’t have any of these content deals (that I know of). Reprinting articles from wire services and major magazines is a gimmick, and isn’t going to overcome problems with the concept.
  9. I don’t like the layout. Facebook took away MySpace people (including myself) because it has a simple uncomplicated layout. Capazoo goes back to a giant mess with no apparent structure.
  10. The walled garden. I know Facebook uses this approach (requiring people to login to see anything), but that only works when the desire to see what’s behind the wall overpowers your frustration at having to register yet another account.
  11. Their terms of use. They have the right to terminate your account and take all your zoops for any reason at their sole discretion. Capazoo claims non-exclusive, unlimited royalty-free rights to your content for anything they want. They’re not even required to inform you of changes or ask for your consent.
  12. They don’t allow people under 16 to use the site. (At least not officially.) That’s going to cause problems if the site gets popular. They also allow only people 18 years or older to earn money. So the site seems to be completely pointless to a key demographic for these kinds of sites.
  13. Even if it’s successful, what’s to stop Facebook and MySpace from stealing the currency idea? Revver was started up as a competitor to YouTube in much the same fashion. So YouTube began compensating its top contributors. YouTube is still king.
  14. The entire premise is based on what I think is a faulty idea: That most users of social networking sites feel they should be compensated for the time they spend there and the content they provide. While there are some people who put up videos and blog posts and other stuff because they’re creative and want the world to see them, most people use social networking sites to comment on friends’ photos, see who’s broken up with whom, or communicate with old high school buddies they lost touch with. Nobody expects to get compensated for this.
  15. And finally, like the others, I think it’s silly to start with such a huge organization before the product is off the ground. Computing gives companies the ability to start small even when they’re starting big. It’s foolish to squander such an opportunity.
| Humour, Media, Opinion, Video

Big media won’t touch girls, cup

WARNING: Don’t read the following post if you’re eating, you’re under 18 or you’ve ever cringed at anything in your life.

Name a YouTube sensation or Internet meme and there are mainstream media articles about it. TV news, desperate for attention-grabbing video, will run whatever people are watching online and try to explain why it’s so popular. Newspaper lifestyle writers, desperate for some new sociological situation to discuss, look behind the meme to find something about our lives that’s changed in recent years. The rest just want to convince readers, viewers and listeners that they’re hip to the Internet and aren’t being left behind in the mad rush to the Web.

But there’s one Internet meme that mainstream media hasn’t touched yet, and for very good reason: They just can’t show the video on television.

For the few of you who don’t already know what I’m talking about, I’m going to choose my words carefully. Because despite the warning at the beginning of this post, there are people with a sense of decency who read this blog regularly (e.g. my mother, her mother).

The video in question is called “2 girls 1 cup”. It’s a pornographic fetish video created by a Brazillian pornographer, and billed as the most disgusting set of moving images ever produced. Basically it’s two women eating their own feces and vomit out of a cup.

The Internet meme isn’t so much the video itself, which even YouTube won’t allow posted to its website. Rather, it’s the reaction videos, videos of people watching it for the first time and the horrified, disgusted looks on their faces when the tame lesbian porn turns into … gross.

It’s gotten to the point where those reaction videos themselves are being spoofed (see the Kermit version — and again remember the warning above), and others who are trying to leverage the video’s infamy to gain some fame of their own are going so far as to create music referencing it:

But still, mainstream media is silent. A gay magazine here, a college newspaper there. Maybe a spoof article.

Have we finally crossed that line that big media won’t follow? Have they finally drawn a line in the sand and said this is so offensive that they won’t dignify it with even a passing reference?

If so, perhaps that’s a good thing. Perhaps it will cause some people in the news business to rethink their approach to coverage that picks up on Internet memes at the expense of wars, politics, science and all those other boring topics that don’t drive up ratings numbers they can sell to advertisers.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps they’ll just show the reaction videos and hope they can tell the story without showing the original or even mentioning its name.

Anyone want to take any bets on how low the media is going to go on this?

| In the news, Opinion

Quebec to censor fast-car ads?

It’s pretty well agreed among most reasonable people that speed is bad. Unless you’re speeding just a bit above the speed limit, then it’s ok because everyone else does it and you’re not hurting anyone. But anyone who drives faster than you is a maniac, and everyone who drives slower than you is an idiot.

So, some wonder, why do cars have speedometers that go up to 180kph? Why not just technologically limit how fast they can go and make it simpler for everyone?

Well nobody is doing that quite yet, but Quebec is taking a step in the direction of making automakers responsible for speeding. They’re considering banning all advertising that glorifies excessive speeding. Basically all that “professional driver on closed course” stuff, as well as shots of ski-doos flying through the air.

It’s clear that self-regulation isn’t effective here. Half of car ads feature unsafe driving, possibly in violation of the industry’s own rules about advertising. New Zealand started cracking down on these kinds of ads years ago, and Australia is running interference suggesting speeders have small penises.

To see an example of how bad it is, take a look at this Volkswagen commercial, which features speeding, unsafe driving, near-collisions and apparently drunk driving, with the moral of the story that the car’s safety systems will leave you without a scratch no matter how far you push the envelope.

That’s just irresponsible. It’s time to shut down the closed course.

UPDATE (Dec. 22): Of course, to say that such a law is a ridiculous overstepping of legislative authority, a gross attack on free speech and an outrageous violation of our rights by a nanny-state too concerned with wasting our money pretending we’re idiots would also be true.