May 26, 2019 | Media

Media News Digest: The journalism panel, Journal de Mourréal loses in court, V kills MusiquePlus brand

News about news

The Canadian government has selected eight organizations to choose a panel that will decide the criteria for news organizations to meet to be eligible for part of its $595-million subsidy: News Media Canada (the newspaper association/lobbying group), the Association de la presse francophone (representing francophone media outside Quebec), the Quebec Community Newspaper Association (representing anglophone media inside Quebec), the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada, the Canadian Association of Journalists, the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, Unifor and the Fédération nationale des communications (the last two being unions representing journalists). Links are to their statements on the matter. Some of those statements are telling: The FPJQ said it was only told Tuesday that it was part of this group. The CAJ says it’s not sure if it will participate. QCNA says it already wants to expand eligibility criteria beyond what the government announced. Unions, naturally, are focused mainly on jobs.
The Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments in a case of a former Quebec cabinet minister trying to get Radio-Canada journalist Marie-Maude Denis to reveal her sources. The decision will set precedent for the limits of journalistic protections.
The Journal de Mourréal, a fake news, parody or satire website depending on your interpretation, lost its court battle against its near-namesake, who convinced a judge it was using the Journal de Montréal’s brand and was profiting off being confusingly similar. The website must change its name and pay $23,500 to Quebecor.
A lawsuit launched by Quebecor columnist Richard Martineau against news website Ricochet has been settled out of court. Ricochet claims total victory, in that they paid nothing and did not apologize or pull the satirical obituary they wrote about him. Martineau said he wanted to avoid a circus and compared himself to a sexual assault victim.
Postmedia has reached a deal in principle with journalism startup The Logic that will see some of The Logic’s stories in Postmedia publications and the two groups partner on “content licensing, marketing projects and events.” Postmedia will take an unspecified minority stake in The Logic, which was started last year by David Skok, formerly of the Toronto Star. The Logic, which covers the “innovation economy,” explains the deal to its subscribers here.
Postmedia (my employer) has registered a lobbyist in Alberta to try to get the company involved in some way with the new Alberta government’s “energy war room”.
An anti-Muslim “pundit” named Kevin J. Johnston was ordered to pay $2.5 million in damages in a libel case brought on by Mohamad Fakih of Paramount Fine Foods. Johnston didn’t hire a lawyer, his defence was poor and his statements so egregious that it warranted one of the largest defamation judgments in Canadian history.
The Canadian Press newsroom in Toronto held a retirement party for a reporter’s guide dog.
The U.S. government is charging Julian Assange of Wikileaks with revealing government secrets under the Espionage Act. This is chilling for journalists, who could in theory face similar charges for publishing leaked classified information.
A CNN Greece journalist’s car was destroyed by a homemade fire bomb. The Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned the attack.

May 23, 2019 | TV

CRTC renews OMNI for three years, rejects 6½ other proposals to replace it

The CRTC has reached a decision on what will replace OMNI. And it’s OMNI.

In a decision released Thursday, accompanied by a press release, the commission found that “Rogers’ proposed service, along with its associated commitments, best meets the needs and interests of Canada’s diverse population and the criteria established by the Commission, and is the most likely to ensure an exceptional contribution to the fulfillment of the objectives of the (Broadcasting) Act.”

The commission will therefore renew OMNI’s licence, but with “no expectation of renewal” beyond that, and only for three years, until 2023, when the mandatory distribution status of OMNI and other services with that status like CPAC, APTN and AMI, will be reviewed at the same time.

In its application, Rogers proposed that the new OMNI would have half-hour daily national newscasts in six languages: Spanish, Tagalog, Arabic, Punjabi, Mandarin and Cantonese, and local newscasts (for Toronto, Alberta and Vancouver) in Punjabi and Mandarin. Rogers told me it also planned to replace the current national Italian newscast, produced out of Montreal, with regional ones in Montreal and Toronto. The licence doesn’t specify the languages of programming, leaving that decision up to Rogers.

OMNI, which has TV stations in Toronto (two), Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, is broken up into four regions: B.C., Prairies, East (Ontario and Atlantic Canada) and Quebec. The Quebec feed is administered by ICI (CFHD-DT), an independent ethnic TV station in Montreal that was born out of Rogers’ conversion of CJNT into City Montreal. Though Rogers doesn’t directly control ICI, the two are closely connected.

Most of the other applicants didn’t propose regional feeds, over-the-air transmitters or local programming.

The commission has set the mandatory wholesale fee for the new OMNI, which begins Sept. 1, 2020, at $0.19 per month, up from its current $0.12 per month (but still less than some other applicants had proposed.) Rogers had requested a rate that started at $0.19 but ramped up to $0.21, but the CRTC found that $0.19 was sufficient. The decision states that the choice of OMNI was in part because of the proposed wholesale rate and the “balance” of that versus the programming commitments made.

OMNI’s commitments will be higher than they currently are, and higher than originally proposed as well:

Canadian programming expenditures: 60% of gross revenues (up from 50% originally proposed and 40% currently)
Canadian content on the schedule: 70% of the broadcast day (6am to midnight) and 70% from 6pm to midnight (up from 55% currently)
Programs of National Interest (scripted drama/comedy, documentary, award shows): 5% of revenues (up from 2.5% currently), all of which must go to independent production companies
Independent productions: 12 hours a week on each of the B.C., Prairies and Eastern feeds (including 2 hours produced from each of Manitoba/Saskatchewan and Atlantic Canada), and 14 hours a week of local original independent productions on ICI.
100% ethnic programming (up from 80% proposed and currently) on the Rogers-controlled feeds, and 90% on ICI.
80% third-language programming (up from 50% proposed and currently) on the Rogers feeds, and 60% on ICI.
Programming for 20 different ethnic groups and 20 different languages a month (same as currently; 18 and 15 respectively on ICI), with a limit of 16% for any one foreign language.
Six hours a week of original local newscasts in Vancouver, Calgary/Edmonton and Toronto (an improvement off local current affairs show obligations).
Six daily first-run national half-hour newscasts, seven days a week, in six different languages (up from four languages currently).
At least 40% of gross revenues spent on news.
Provide for ICI: 3 hours of original, local, ethnic programming in French each week and 1.5 hours of original, local, French-language programming and 30 minutes of local original English-language programming each week.

The licence also requires Rogers to:

Limit U.S. programming to 10% of the schedule each month
Maintain advisory councils for each regional feed, and require they approve the programming schedules and independent producers
Spend $60,000 a year on “scholarship initiatives that support ethnic and third-language post-secondary students majoring in journalism,” as chosen by the advisory councils
Maintain operation of the five over-the-air OMNI stations throughout the licence period
Solicit local advertising only in markets where OMNI over-the-air stations operate
Derive no profit from OMNI, and reinvest any surplus back into OMNI

Rogers will have until Sept. 1, 2020, to put those increased commitments into place. Until then, the existing licence still applies.

Shockingly, the CRTC’s decision includes absolutely zero analysis of the seven other applications to replace OMNI with a different service. It merely states that it had to choose one and OMNI was the best one. Did the commission feel the Ethnic Channels Group’s idea of multiple audio feeds in different languages was feasible? Was it impressed by the ambitious goals set by Amber Broadcasting? Did it think the application from Montreal-based non-profit ICTV was realistic? We have no idea. The other applicants are only mentioned once, in a listing of the applications at the beginning of the decision.

With the increase in the wholesale rate, here’s how much of your monthly TV bill will go to mandatory services, starting in September 2020:

English-language markets:

APTN: $0.35
AMI-audio: $0.04
AMI-tv: $0.20
CPAC: $0.13
OMNI Regional: $0.19
RDI: $0.10
TV5/Unis: $0.24
The Weather Network/MétéoMédia: $0.22
Vues et Voix (formerly Canal M): $0.04
TOTAL: $1.51

French-language markets:

APTN: $0.35
AMI-audio: $0.04
AMI-télé: $0.28
CPAC: $0.13
CBC News Network: $0.15
OMNI Regional: $0.19
TV5/Unis: $0.28
The Weather Network/MétéoMédia: $0.22
Vues et Voix (formerly Canal M): $0.04
TOTAL: $1.68

Meanwhile, the CRTC has administratively renewed the licence for ICI until 2020, which will simplify things as far as new conditions of licence related to its agreement with OMNI.

UPDATE: Rogers has issued a statement saying it is happy with the decision and will announce more specific plans “in the coming months.”

May 13, 2019 | Media

Media News Digest: Reuters journalists freed, Leslie Roberts to CTV, and so. many. awards.

News about news

Two Reuters journalists have been released after being detained for more than a year in Myanmar.
La Presse has updated its public donations website with some statistics from the first three months of the program: they’ve raised $1.7 million, which works out to an average of $40.47 for 42,000 contributors. Presumably the enthusiasm for donations was stronger right off the bat, and many of those are either one-time donations or larger than they will be in the future, but if that pace holds, it would put them well ahead of their goal of raising $5 million a year through voluntary donations.
Former CTV Montreal reporter turned Concordia professor Aphrodite Salas took a group of students to Gull Bay First Nation in Northern Ontario to do a short documentary about a solar power project being set up there, and the history of the community that led to Ontario’s government setting up the project as a sort of apology. The documentary was posted to a special section on CTV Montreal’s website. Bill Brownstein writes about the project in a Gazette story and Salas appeared on CTV News to discuss it as well.
Cult MTL has released the results of its annual readers’ poll. Here are the results in the media category.
The Toronto Star is offering free digital subscriptions until Oct. 31 to post-secondary students and faculty. They only need a school email account to register. Meanwhile the paper says digital subscriptions are up 50%, but that’s not enough to counteract the plummeting print ad sales revenue.
The Toronto Star is also “enhancing” the labels on its online articles to better explain to readers the different types of journalism.
The owners of the New Orleans Times-Picayune put on a master class on how not to fire an entire newspaper. It’s being shut down in favour of its younger rival, also owned by the same company.

Continue reading →

May 9, 2019 | TV

CTV News tells reporters they will have to do their own camera and editing work

Updated with comment from Bell Media and Unifor.

Staff at CTV News departments across the country were called into mandatory meetings on Thursday, and told that they’ll have to tighten their belts a bit more.

I don’t have specifics or numbers (see below), but the headline is that journalists will be transformed into “videojournalists” who do not only their own reporting but also their own camerawork, editing and even writing for the web.

As a result, editors and cameramen will be offered buyout packages or laid off. Layoff notices have been issued in Montreal and Toronto, I’m told, but not everywhere. In Montreal, 15 jobs are being cut and an unspecified number of online jobs added.

CTV bills this as them “innovating” because they’re “expanding our digital news presence” and points out that they are also adding new jobs.

This is a significant project that will require enhanced training as well as job reclassifications for some members of the news team. While we will be creating a substantial number of new digital news positions, some traditional roles may be impacted by the changes. We cannot yet offer a specific number of how many, if any, departures may result.

There is some confusion about changes in our Montreal team. As part of the digital news expansion, we were required to notify Unifor that 15 existing union job classifications in Montreal would be eliminated. However, a similar number of new positions will be filled to support the enhanced digital focus of the newsroom.

CTV News already employs some videojournalists (there are four at CTV Montreal), and they’re used at other networks as well, notably Citytv, which relies almost exclusively on them. Reporters shooting their own stories is more feasible with today’s equipment (some newsrooms are experimenting with reporting using iPhones), and obviously saves on human resources. But more time spent on the technical elements of producing stories means less time on the journalism behind it.

Plus, while younger journalists who are trained on shooting and editing out of school will easily adapt to the new reality, training more veteran journalists will be more difficult, and some might choose to simply retire early or find new jobs.

Because of various union rules, these layoff notices may spark a process of bumping, where less senior workers in jobs not affected by the layoffs get replaced by those being laid off (if those workers prove they can do the job they’re bumping into). So younger workers in these newsrooms will be feeling very nervous over the coming weeks.

And while CTV’s statement suggests it will save jobs, the reality is that the people affected will have to apply for them and be accepted for them. That’s not a given.

Unifor, which represents unionized workers at CTV, issued a statement:

“Today’s announcement from CTV of its shift to ‘digital-first’ airing of local news stories on the Internet was inevitable,” said Unifor National President Jerry Dias. “Retooling local news for digital is necessary and, hopefully, a successful business plan because local TV is being starved for advertising revenues and anything that brings in a bigger audience and more ad revenue is welcome.”

The stations affected by restructuring include the CTV1 stations in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. Bell has told journalists and field technicians to expect a mix of retraining, layoffs, and new “digital” jobs, with a net reduction of staffing.

Dias cautioned Bell Media of its responsibility to guide news staff through the technological changes in job responsibilities, as it is expected that some journalists and field staff will need to acquire new digital skills.

“We are going to ensure no media worker is left behind,” said Dias. “Bell knows us pretty well and they know we mean it.”

Dias is also urging the federal government to accelerate its four-year long review of Canadian broadcasting in the Internet environment, scheduled to continue into 2020. “There are obvious actions the CRTC and the federal government can take to strengthen Canadian programming,” said Dias, referring to the CRTC’s own “Harnessing Change” report on Internet-broadcasting issued in June 2018.

May 2, 2019 | Media

Media News Digest: Pony hoax, TVA Sports lawsuits, magazine awards

News about news

It’s the Semaine de la presse et des médias in Quebec this week. Various local news outlets are opening their doors to tours or holding open houses on May 3. The latter includes Les Affaires and Urbania in Montreal, but many others too.
The FPJQ isn’t impressed by small-town governments in Quebec barring journalists from public information meetings about flooding.
Montreal news reporters and authorities were scrambling to find a pink-maned pony after a photo circulated on social media. The image turned out to be a hoax by Vlog, the TVA viral video show.
The South China Morning Post has a story about Karen Lin Woods, who has been expressing opinions about Canadian politics without fully disclosing her employer’s connections with the Chinese government. Lobbyists for foreign governments are considered diplomats and don’t have to register with the lobbyist registry.
The Walrus has a story about how the cuts to local news affects political reporting in Canada, which is bad news going into a federal election.
La Presse is launching a new mobile app.
The Montreal Gazette and other Postmedia publications have switched from Facebook commenting to a new system run by Viafoura, which hopes to cut down on spam and abusive comments below news articles. So far it seems to have put an end to automated get-rich-quick-by-working-from-home spam comments.
The editor of Your Ward News, convicted of hate speech, is trying to stay out of jail, arguing he was giving a voice to angry people.
The New York Times is “deeply sorry” for a cartoon about the U.S. and Israel that appeared in its international edition and was condemned by critics as anti-semitic. The cartoonist tells the Jerusalem Post he didn’t feel the cartoon was anti-semitic.

At the CRTC

Approved: New English and Indigenous-language radio station in Afton Station, N.S.: Indigenous non-profit, 104.5 FM, 50W. Afton Station is about halfway between Antigonish and the start of Cape Breton.
Approved: New English commercial radio station in Listowel (North Perth), Ont.: Owned by Five Amigos Broadcasting, 100.1 FM, 8,000W. Listowel is about 50 km northwest of Kitchener and is not served by other radio stations. It plans an adult contemporary format.
Licences for 23 Indigenous radio stations, including CKHQ-FM in Kanesatake, have been extended to 2022 as the CRTC prepares a review of its Indigenous radio policy.

Ethical reviews

National Newsmedia Council: A Globe and Mail opinion piece did not include a significant factual error in citing how much money Bombardier received from the federal government, even though it lacked some context and qualifiers (such as the money being adjusted for inflation).
Globe and Mail readers say they want more fact-checking and analysis in election coverage.

At the CBC

The corporation is being less than forthcoming about documents concerning the construction of its new Maison Radio-Canada in Montreal. But Radio-Canada decided to remind people that the new building comes with no additional cost to taxpayers, because they’re paying the same rent as before.

TV

Pierre-Luc Dubois est fin prêt pour le match avec un cri de ralliement très particulier! ? pic.twitter.com/awtXSYSQMq

— RDS (@RDSca) April 30, 2019

Some colourful language got onto the Sportsnet/CBC NHL playoffs broadcast.
Rogers has picked up the rights to the Eurovision song contest, and will be broadcasting the two semifinals and the grand final this month on OMNI and streaming it on OMNITV.ca. (ICI, the Montreal ethnic station that partners with OMNI and carries some of its programming, won’t be airing the shows because of scheduling conflicts, president Sam Norouzi tells me.) Canada isn’t participating (and so Canadians can’t vote), but Greece’s entry is sung by Katerine Duska, who was born in Montreal.
Corus Entertainment has joined a group that’s developing a video measurement standard that hopes to finally solve the problem of how you properly measure the TV, online streaming and social media audience for a broadcast.
Amazon is bringing its Amazon Channels service to Canada, according to The Logic. Amazon Channels is sort of a cross between TV and streaming, offering subscriptions to services like HBO on an individual basis at different prices.
YouTube has scored the exclusive rights to 13 MLB regular-season games this season in the U.S. and Canada. The exact games haven’t been announced, but those games won’t be available on TV.
APTN workers voted 39-1 in favour of a new labour contract.
APTN is still feeling the energy of its NHL broadcast in Plains Cree, though there are no specific plans for future sports broadcasts on the network. They do want to do more sports in Indigenous languages though.
APTN has started airing a French dubbed version of Mohawk Girls, called Belles, fières et Mohawks.
CBC has revived Battle of the Blades, six years after its last season aired. The show will air this fall, and contestants are to be announced.
Bell Media has greenlit a new sci-fi mystery drama series called Albedo starring Evangeline Lilly. It will be broadcast by streaming service Vudu in the U.S. Bell doesn’t say where it will broadcast the eight-episode series.
Bell Media has commissioned a new six-part documentary series for Crave, called We’re All Gonna Die, about the various ways humanity could go extinct.
Séries+ has announced its first original series since it stopped making them during a failed sale to Bell: Winnebago, a six-episode miniseries starring Guylaine Tremblay and Josée Deschênes, to air in 2020.
Radio-Canada is working on a new comedy series that takes place in a universe where the Yes side won the 1995 Quebec referendum.
Netflix’s first original Quebec production, a film called Jusqu’au déclin, has finished filming.
Netflix and other foreign streaming services paid the Quebec government almost double what it was expected to in sales taxes, according to La Presse.
You know that lawsuit that was obviously inevitable from Bell after the TVA Sports debacle? Yeah, it’s happening. Bell wants $150 million, for being forced to offer Sportsnet for free, the additional work for customer service, the misleading ad campaign that tried to blame Bell for cutting the signal, and Pierre Karl Péladeau breaking a confidentiality agreement by revealing the wholesale rate that Bell TV paid for TVA Sports. There’s also a separate class action lawsuit in the works by Bell subscribers.
J-Source has a story about TV newsroom automation, and CBC’s efforts to implement it. It’s using a similar system that Global put in place a decade ago, though it’s not going as far as Global did in terms of centralizing on-camera functions.
RDS’s 85 or so newsroom employees have been accredited as a union.
Jimmy Kimmel is bringing back All in the Family and The Jeffersons for a primetime special.

Radio

A strange story about a Labrador City francophone community radio station called Rafale FM that was collecting ad money for ads that it never aired because it was off the air. And it wasn’t just an honest mistake, either. The general manager confirmed in writing that the ads had aired.
Rogers Media has acquired the podcast company Pacific Content, which mainly creates branded podcasts for companies.
Matt Cundill’s Soundoff Podcast interviewed two people in the radio industry with Montreal connections: Ian Howarth is a freelance writer who wrote a book about Montreal’s top 40 radio heydays of the 60s and 70s. And Steve Anthony worked at CKGM and CHOM, along with stations in Toronto.
The National Post has launched a new business podcast.

Print

The National Magazine Awards nominations are out. Nominees include Toronto Life (19), The Walrus (14), L’actualité (9), Nouveau Projet (9), Maclean’s (9), Hazlitt (8), the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business (7) Maisonneuve (6), Fashion Magazine (5), Canadian Geographic (5), Cottage Life (5) Dînette magazine (5), The New Quarterly (5) and The Site Magazine (5).
La Presse and Groupe Capitales Médias are seeking more bailout money from the Quebec government. The latter, which owns Le Soleil, Le Droit, Le Nouvelliste, Le Quotidien, La Tribune and La Voix de l’Est, says it could run out of money by the end of summer.
Métro Média, the company that owns Métro in Montreal and the former Transcontinental community weeklies on the island, is launching a new free magazine aimed at people over 50, called Nouvelle Liberté.
ESPN The Magazine is shutting down its print edition.
The Guardian in the U.K. has finally stopped losing money. It gets more revenue from online than print, and getting money directly from readers has helped a lot in getting to this point.

Online

Facebook broke several privacy laws, the Canadian and B.C. privacy commissioners find in a new report. It’s enough that the Canadian privacy commissioner has deleted its Facebook page and no longer wants to be associated with Facebook. But Facebook promises it will take privacy more seriously now.
HuffPost Canada is shutting down its unpaid blog section and will be paying writers for opinion pieces. HuffPost Québec us doing the same.
Websites owned by Microsoft and Google will not be taking Canadian political ads this year, and others are still considering their options, according to a CBC News survey. The new registry requirement for political ads is the main reason why, although some websites don’t allow any political ads in any country.
Blackberry is shutting down its BBM messaging platform for consumers on May 31. People are sad.
Twitter deleted tweets with links to stories about copyright infringement after a company hired by Starz to deal with copyright infringement went a bit overboard.
The group behind the Ontario Proud Facebook page has started a federal version aimed at making sure Andrew Scheer defeats Justin Trudeau this fall.
The Globe and Mail on Hollywood studio Voltage Pictures’ attempts to sue thousands of internet users in a reverse class action for movie piracy.

Other

Tony Award nominations are out.

News about people

https://twitter.com/chrishallcbc/status/1121416290961436675

CBC freedom-of-information specialist Dean Beeby has retired from the Ottawa bureau.
Pierre Karl Péladeau, CEO of Quebecor, is buying the remnants of the bankrupt Téo Taxi, including the Montreal taxi companies it bought, Taxi Diamond and Taxi Hochelaga. They are being bought by him personally, and not by Quebecor.
Péladeau was interviewed by Esther Bégin for her CPAC show. It focuses mainly on Péladeau’s career path and the intersection of his personal and professional life. Part 1, Part 2.
Marc-Olivier Brouillette is the new play-by-play analyst for Alouettes games on TSN 690. He gave an interview to the station when the hiring was announced. He replaces Bryan Chiu, who left during the season last year because of family issues and has since gone back to coaching.
Anne-Élisabeth Bossé is Véronique Cloutier’s summer replacement on Rouge FM’s afternoon show in Montreal.
Jeff Douglas, formerly of As It Happens, is the new host of Mainstreet, the afternoon show on Radio One in Nova Scotia.
Nabil Karim, formerly of TSN, has joined ESPN.
Simon Coutu is leaving Vice Quebec.
Political reporter Elise von Scheel is now permanently at CBC’s parliamentary bureau.
Amir Nasrabadi, former president of Pixar Canada, has been hired to head up animation at DHX Media, which owns Family Channel.
Stephanie Myles, a former Montreal Gazette sports reporter who has been writing about tennis since leaving it, was the target of Genie Bouchard’s fans after the tennis player tweeted “fake news” at Myles’s report that she was taking time off the court to get healthy. Two weeks later, Bouchard confirmed the news herself, saying she was rehabbing her “ab”. Réjean Tremblay writes about how unfair that was to Myles.
Gazette Alouettes reporter Herb Zurkowsky, on leave to be treated for bladder cancer, is in the middle of six weeks of immunotherapy treatment.
Quebecor columnist Richard Martineau got blocked from Facebook for three days after comments that were deemed transphobic.
Radio broadcasters Boyd Kozak of Winnipeg and Bob Ridley of Medicine Hat are being inducted into the Western Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame.
Krzysztof Pelc of Montreal has won the CBC Short Story Prize. Jacques Lemaire is the winner of the Radio-Canada French equivalent.
More RTDNA award announcements:

Obituaries

Jobs

News editor, Ottawa Citizen/Sun (deadline: May 3)
Provincial affairs reporter, Radio-Canada in Toronto (deadline: May 9)
Summer journalist, Iorì:wase in Kahnawake (deadline: May 10)
Digital broadcast journalist, Global News in Toronto (deadline: May 10)
Extended-Term Appointment in Digital Journalism Futures, Concordia University (deadline: May 10)
Report On Business Magazine editor
Calgary reporter, Globe and Mail

April 30, 2019 | Radio

Leclerc abandons purchase of Radio X and 91,9 Sports after CRTC sets condition on transaction

The CRTC has said no to Leclerc Communication’s request to own three French-language FM radio stations in Quebec City, but approved the $19-million deal for it to acquire CHOI-FM (Radio X) in the provincial capital as well as CKLX-FM (91,9 Sports) in Montreal, for which it also acquired a licence amendment to convert from a sports format into a music one based off its WKND brand.

Though the overall deal has been approved, under the CRTC’s conditions, Leclerc would need to sell one of its other stations — WKND 91,9 or Blvd 102,1 — in order to buy CHOI and still comply with the ownership rules in Quebec City. The ownership rules limit an owner to two stations in one market in one language on one band.

And Leclerc has said it won’t sell its stations. So its own media are reporting that the entire deal is off, and its owner confirmed to La Presse that it won’t proceed with the transaction.

Continue reading →

April 21, 2019 | Media

CBC Quebec holding biennual consultation May 2

It’s an odd-numbered year, which means CBC is preparing its next public consultation with Quebec’s official language minority community, as required under its CRTC licence. (It also has a similar requirement for French-language communities in “Atlantic Canada, Ontario, Western Canada, and the North.”)

Like it did two years ago, the CBC is inviting people interested in expressing their views on its programming and services to a roundtable discussion on Thursday, May 2 from 10am to noon at Maison Radio-Canada.

For those who can’t make it in person, the event will be broadcast on CBC Montreal’s Facebook page and comments will be taken through online discussion as well.

Attendance is free, but registration is required. You can register here.

The way it worked last time is that people are broken up into small groups, each one led by a CBC employee (generally a journalist, on-air personality, producer or manager), and asked to discuss and come up with ideas.

You can see the Facebook video from the 2017 event here.

In addition to Debra Arbec, who will serve as host, this year’s participants will include:

Sally Catto, General Manager, Programming, CBC Television
Meredith Dellandrea, Managing Director, CBC Quebec
Fred Mattocks, General Manager, Local Services
Susan Marjetti, Executive Director, Radio & Audio
Jennifer McGuire, General Manager and Editor in Chief, CBC News

As public consultations go, CBC’s isn’t bad. It engages with the audience and seems to take their views seriously.

The report filed with the CRTC after the 2017 event glosses over the feedback a bit, but goes into detail about the various events that the CBC has organized to get it more in touch with the anglophone communities across the province and have Quebec anglophones reflected on TV, radio and online.

April 18, 2019 | TV

CRTC issues court order to force TVA Sports to keep signal on Bell TV, suspends licence if it cuts off again

Pursuant to Wednesday’s emergency hearing on Quebecor’s decision to pull TVA Sports of Bell TV, on Thursday the CRTC issued a mandatory order requiring TVA Sports to comply with regulations about dispute resolution and keep its signal on Bell TV. It also suspended TVA Sports’s licence, though that suspension only applies if it cuts Bell TV off again, and only for the period during which the signal is cut off.

The mandatory order is being registered with the federal court, which means if TVA defies it, it will be subject to contempt of court proceedings, and faces large fines.

The commission rejected TVA’s main legal argument, that the regulations imposing arbitrated settlements of carriage disputes are not allowed under the Broadcasting Act (emphasis in the original):

TVA’s position that the Commission does not have the jurisdiction to set terms and conditions of affiliation agreements is inconsistent with the broad power given to the Commission by Parliament to make regulations to resolve any dispute by way of mediation or otherwise. Given that terms and conditions, including rates, are fundamental to the resolution of carriage disputes, the interpretation urged on the Commission by TVA Group would render the regulation-making power set out in section 10(1)(h) empty of meaning, an absurd result that cannot have been Parliament’s intention.

Pierre Karl Péladeau’s arguments about how TVA isn’t getting enough carriage fees, or how Bell has been unfair, or how TVA Sports’s future is threatened, are not addressed in the CRTC decision, because they are outside the scope of the proceeding. They will be dealt with in the undue preference complaint and mediation or arbitration proceedings between the two groups.

(For more on the arguments for and against TVA, see this post.)

The commission stopped short of its more serious threats, to suspend or even revoke TVA Sports’s licence. Even a temporary suspension during the NHL playoffs would have been devastating to TVA Sports, and probably led to its shutting down.

But it did reprimand TVA for its behaviour in this case:

the Commission is gravely concerned with TVA Group’s disregard for the Commission’s authority. Given the inflexible behaviour displayed by the licensee in respect of its regulatory obligations and the lack of a firm commitment to correct the situation, the Commission cannot be assured that TVA Group will respect its regulatory obligations going forward.

Quebecor issued a statement saying it will respect the decision, but the problem remains and it will seek other legal avenues, including a legal challenge to the CRTC’s authority.

Bell issued a statement saying it was happy with the decision.

If you want to get the full content of Wednesday’s hearing, the transcript is here and CPAC’s video is archived here.

Meanwhile, a request for a class action lawsuit has been filed, seeking $100 million, or $250 for each subscriber of TVA Sports on Bell TV who was left without the service for 47 hours last week.

April 14, 2019 | Media

Media News Digest: Awards, DAZN gets Premier League, Bergman leaves Virgin 95.9

News about news

The FPJQ, Quebec’s journalist federation, is organizing a weeklong festival of news media, with various talks and exhibitions related to journalism, April 29 to May 5.
A Conservative Party fundraising campaign asked supporters to rate major media outlets based on how biased they are against conservatives.
The town of Outlook, Saskatchewan says the local newspaper cannot ask it questions on behalf of citizens.
A Newfoundland and Labrador appeals court dismissed a contempt of court charge against Justin Brake*, who acted as a journalist following a protest at Muskrat Falls that violated an injunction.
The Quebecor case against parody website Journal de Mourréal went to court, and a surprise witness was RDI anchor Anne-Marie Dussault, who testified that a false story about her having a relationship with former minister Gaétan Barrette led to a lot of awkwardness from people who thought it was true. As Craig Silverman notes, the man behind this website also runs fake news site World News Daily Report. Its owner is arguing freedom of expression and freedom to parody, and says the website doesn’t make much money.
Journalism awards announcements:
- Canadian Association of Journalists award finalists.
- RTDNA Central Region award winners: CBC Montreal takes home 10 awards, and Global Montreal one. They also join nominees for national awards, along with winners from the East, West and Prairie regions.
- RTDNA Network award finalists
- Finalists for the FPJQ’s Judith Jasmin awards. La Presse, Radio-Canada, le Journal de Montréal, Le Devoir and the Gazette have multiple nominations.
- Finalists for the FPJQ’s Antoine Desilets photojournalism awards.

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April 10, 2019 | TV

Bell vs. TVA Sports: Breaking down the arguments

Quebecor’s decision to pull TVA Sports from Bell TV sparked a war of words, with both sides making claims (TVA’s more publicly), some of them contradictory. Who’s right and who’s wrong in this battle? I’ll do my best to break down some of those arguments below, and update this as more come to light:

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April 7, 2019 | My articles, TV

TVA Sports defies CRTC, cuts off Bell TV customers as part of carriage dispute

Updated April 12 with court ruling and TVA Sports returning to Bell TV

Ce n'était pas du bluff. Tva Sports non disponible sur Bell. pic.twitter.com/ivPJbid5R8

— Antoine Deshaies (@antoinedeshaies) April 10, 2019

Four days after it threatened Bell subscribers with on-air messages, TVA pulled TVA Sports from Bell TV on Wednesday at 7pm, as scheduled, the start time for the NHL playoffs.

Bell immediately announced that it would make Sportsnet, Sportsnet One and Sportsnet 360, which with CBC and City comprise all the channels carrying NHL playoff games, free for subscribers “temporarily.”

Québecor refuse l’accès à sa chaîne TVA Sports aux clients Bell Télé. C’est une mesure illégale. Bell veut s’assurer que les fans de hockey puissent regarder les séries et offre temporairement les chaînes Sportsnet, Sportsnet One et Sportsnet 360 sans frais supplémentaires.

— Bell (@Bell_FR) April 10, 2019

Quebecor, meanwhile, issued a statement saying it was disappointed it couldn’t reach a deal.

On Thursday, the CRTC announced that it was calling Groupe TVA to a hearing in Gatineau on April 17 to explain itself, and threatened to either issue a mandatory order (which would be enforceable in federal court) or even suspend TVA Sports’s broadcasting licence in light of the decision to ignore its warnings about pulling service during a dispute.

In court, as Bell tried to get a court injunction for TVA to stop what it’s doing, Quebecor lawyers offered a truce, to bring back the channel at 6pm and maintain it until April 23 as the two sides negotiate with the help of the CRTC. Bell accepted on condition that TVA Sports accept a court order requiring the re-establishing of the signal, but Quebecor refused that condition.

On Friday, the court granted Bell’s request for an injunction, ordering TVA Sports re-established on Bell TV by 6pm, but did not order Quebecor to cease its “Fair Value” campaign, which Bell says is false and defamatory. TVA complied with the request, and TVA Sports returned to Bell TV by 6pm.

In addition to ensuring Bell TV subscribers could get access to NHL playoff games, Bell Media acquired the rights to two additional Montreal Impact MLS games, another TVA Sports exclusivity, so they can be broadcast on TSN. That pushed the date of the next Impact game only broadcast on TVA Sports to April 28. Bell TV had said it would make TSN also available for free for Montreal Impact fans.

History

Bell customers got a pretty scary-looking message during the Canadiens-Maple Leafs game Saturday night on TVA Sports: The sports channel, which has the French-language rights to all NHL playoff games, will be removed from Bell TV as a way for Bell to “punish” those subscribers.

TVA also aired the graphic during La Voix, Quebec’s most popular TV show, on Sunday.

TVA airs a message attacking Bell during La Voix on Sunday, April 7, 2019.

Bell said not only is this message not true, it would be against CRTC regulations. The CRTC wrote to both parties twice to say that during their dispute, TVA is required to keep offering its channels to Bell and Bell is required to keep distributing them.

TVA said it doesn’t care, it’s pulling its signal anyway. Which means this dispute will quickly escalate in the legal and regulatory sphere.

Except it’s already escalated there, because this is a battle being fought on multiple fronts:

An existing CRTC process in which TVA complains of unfair treatment (currently in the reply phase)
A TVA lawsuit against Bell demanding compensation for its unfair packaging
A Bell request for injunction against TVA demanding the signal be returned
An emergency CRTC hearing called for next week in which TVA has been ordered to explain itself
Direct negotiations between Bell and TVA to reach a deal on carriage
TVA’s media campaign and Bell’s press releases in response, fighting in the public arena
Pierre Karl Péladeau’s lobbying of federal politicians to make changes to the CRTC’s dispute resolution process
Programming changes at Bell Media and packaging changes at Bell TV to mitigate the loss of TVA Sports for Bell customers

How long Bell customers will actually be without TVA Sports is anyone’s guess. But TVA says it’s prepared to do whatever it takes.

(You can read more about my interview with TVA chief operating officer Martin Picard in this story at Cartt.ca, but I have lots of details below about the conflict.)

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April 1, 2019 | Uncategorized

Andrew Scheer opens shelters for millions of Canadians left homeless by job-killing carbon tax

Saying he’s doing his duty as a patriot, Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer opened up a series of shelters across the country to care for the millions of Canadians who have lost their jobs as a result of Justin Trudeau’s job-killing carbon tax.

The federal tax, which took effect on Monday, only applies to Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, and most of the shelters are in those four provinces, but Scheer said other provinces also have job-killing pricing on hydrocarbons, and people in Alberta and Quebec will also be able to make use of his party’s shelters when they inevitably get laid off from their jobs.

Life is expensive enough already. Today, Justin Trudeau made it worse. pic.twitter.com/SVNNKA02u2

— Andrew Scheer (@AndrewScheer) April 1, 2019

Scheer couldn’t say how much the shelters cost or how many people have taken advantage of them so far, but he noted the costs should be minimal because they’re only needed until October, when his removal of GST on home heating bills will turn the economy round. Enough food, mainly in the form of white bread and baloney, has been stockpiled to last that long.

Besides, he said, if the Liberal government could use taxpayer money to bring in cots for a late night marathon voting session at the House of Commons, surely that money could be better used on Canadian families.

“Be sure to use the words ‘Canadian families’ a bunch of times in your story,” Scheer said.

April 1, 2019 | Uncategorized

STM admits new underground construction at Côte-Vertu métro is just a giant Bitcoin farm

STM photo shows excavation of large tunnel near Côte-Vertu metro.

Though it was sold as a necessary infrastructure upgrade to allow more trains to be put into service on the Orange Line, the half-billion-dollar garage near the Côte-Vertu métro station is actually mainly a state-of-the-art Bitcoin mining operation, documents obtained through access to information reveal.Trains will still be circulating through the tunnels, but the main purpose isn’t to increase service as much as to provide air circulation to cool the thousands of Bitcoin mining machines lining the tunnel walls, explained STM chairperson Philippe Schnobb.

“At the current exchange rate of about $5,500 per Bitcoin, we expect this mining operation to pay for itself within eight years,” Schnobb said. “If Bitcoin goes even higher, which it obviously will when you look at its historical levels, we expect that number to go much lower. By 2025 we could be making a profit and by 2030 we could be getting most of our revenue through Bitcoin mining. By 2035 we should be able to drop fares to zero and actually pay dividends to the Quebec and municipal governments.”

This isn’t the first time the STM has gone into the blockchain game. It’s a common myth that the metro doesn’t need heating because enough heat is generated by braking and acceleration of the trains, but in fact it’s Bitcoin servers installed in the undercarriage of metro cars that generate most of the heat in the system these days. It’s the same on new hybrid buses. “We know what we’re doing,” Schobb said. “This is guaranteed to pay off.”

The new Côte-Vertu Bitcoin farm is set to begin mining in 2021.

April 1, 2019 | Uncategorized

Super fan of CBC’s 2017 series 21 Thunder anxious to find out when second season starts

Corey Kabongo has some unanswered questions. “Did Declan survive the stabbing? What happened with Junior’s long-lost brother? Are they going to come after Nolan? What’s going on with Lara and that match-fixing ring? Will the team find out what Davey tried to do?”

Kabongo says he’s been waiting since September 18, 2017, to get answers, after watching the first season finale of 21 Thunder, the sexy CBC Television drama about a Montreal under-21 soccer team filled with personal intrigues and tough moral choices.

CBC hasn’t announced a premiere date or even a start of production for the second season of the series, but Kabongo said he is keeping an eye out. “Since it went on Netflix last year, and Refinery29 called it ‘Canada’s answer to Gossip Girl‘, its popularity has only soared. Wikipedia says its reviews were ‘generally positive,’ which is high praise. I just can’t wait to be chanting ‘THUNDER!’ again with fans all over the world.”

Kabongo, who insists he’s not related to series star Emmanuel Kabongo and it doesn’t matter if he is because Manu is a great actor and even better guy, says he’s been in touch with some of the actors in the series and while they’re all busy on other projects, he’s hopeful production of the second season can be flexible enough to work around all their schedules.

The series says it’s working on getting a second season off the ground despite being cancelled by CBC a year ago.

April 1, 2019 | Uncategorized

Richard Martineau asks François Legault to reconsider his plan to solve reasonable accommodation debate forever

“I’m worried,” Richard Martineau said today. “This could have a major impact on my career.”

Martineau, the LCN host, QUB Radio host, Journal de Montréal columnist, Francs-Tireurs host and next season’s newest judge on La Voix, was referring to how Quebec premier François Legault is finally solving the reasonable accommodation debate after 12 years of it dominating Quebec politics.

Legault’s plan, which he laid out in a video published on Sunday, involves taking a hard line but also improvised compromises calculated to be the most grudgingly acceptable to the maximum number of uninformed people.

But while this new law is guaranteed to end public discussion about the impact of religious and cultural diversity on our society forever, ushering in a period of racial harmony and religious acceptance the likes of which this province has never seen, it will be devastating to the media angrytariat, of which Martineau is a major figure.

“Do you know how hard it is to write a column every day where I’m angry about something? And on top of that host daily TV and radio shows? I don’t have time to find other issues to gripe about,” Martineau yelled, in a voice that sounded sarcastic even though he wasn’t saying anything sarcastic.

“I’m not saying that I don’t have other things to talk about, I do. I can always whine about Radio-Canada or Québec solidaire or celebrities, but nothing brings in the audience like me putting on a burka. This issue is to me what classified ads were to newspapers in the 90s: a moneymaker.”

Martineau said he understands there’s a higher purpose, but he hopes Legault understands the need for us to continue to sarcastically mock each other’s opinions on this issue, and maybe insert a few loopholes into the bill that will cause the debate to flare up again in a few months.

“Not everything needs to be perfect,” Martineau said. “Please, just let me have this.”