Jean-Luc Mongrain, the only person left at TQS who we can name off the tops of our heads, is calling it quits. Journal de Montréal’s EXCLUSIVE interview generated so much reaction, a whopping four comments, that it’s clear to see how much Mongrain’s work has touched Quebec.
As some consider potential replacements, Patrick Lagacé offers his favourite Mongrain memory, which certainly beats mine.
TQS Vedette Chantal Lacroix is suing her former employer’s soon-to-be-ex-owner Cogeco for $1,458,078.75, a value that La Presse rounds up to $1.5 million and the Journal rounds down to $1.4 million, but is really neither.
The reason? That’s the money they still owe her according to her contract, she says.
Stars can be so demanding, what with the demanding you pay them what you agreed to pay them. Where will this tyrannical wave of greed stop?
(P.S. Chantal, if you need comfort in your hour few months of need…)
It’s over. TQS has been bought by Remstar Corporation, or as Steve Proulx puts it, a bunch of garbage collectors. The union seems happy with the news.
I know this will shock and amaze you, but TQS has gotten another extension. Like that kid in college who could never get an assignment done on time, they went to the teacher’s office, cried their eyes out and explained how complicated the situation is and how they were working really hard getting it done.
Good thing TQS doesn’t owe me any money.
Meanwhile, the Only Reason For TQS’s Financial Problems is back in the news, with CTV and Canwest (full disclosure: Canwest is the Gazette’s — and therefore my — corporate overlord) deciding they, too, want cable and satellite TV providers to give them money for their over-the-air channels.
I don’t buy Rogers’s argument that Canadians will leave cable TV if they have to pay a few bucks more a month for it.
But that’s not the point, is it? Why should I have to pay for channels I can pick up with an antenna? Those broadcasters have already decided to broadcast those channels free to everyone. They can’t change their minds now and say it’s pay TV (but only for some).
Don’t expect the companies fighting over this to bring that minor but up, though. Principle doesn’t bring them money.
La Presse has a rumour (and CBC/CP rewrites that rumour) that Rogers is going to be buying the Montreal and Quebec City TQS stations, while Radio Nord (which already owns TQS stations in Outaouais and Abitibi) would buy stations in outlying regions.
Rogers won’t comment and Radio Nord denies they’re buying the stations.
I suppose it makes sense. Rogers owns what’s left of Citytv, a network without a station in Canada’s second-largest city. (I can just imagine the kind of outcry we’d have if they tried to convert TQS into an anglophone City station.) And if they are buying TQS out, chances are it would be for a significant discount.
TQS’s creditor protection lasts until Thursday.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, at Le Devoir, Paul Cochon looks at the blame game, and wonders why Quebecor (which owns TVA) isn’t being blamed in the same way Radio-Canada and the CRTC are.
UPDATE (Jan. 16): TQS gets its extension, and now has until Feb. 29 to decide what to do with itself. Meanwhile, Steve Proulx doesn’t think La Presse’s “scoop” is any more than idle speculation, and he thinks the CRTC is more to blame for TQS’s troubles than Radio-Canada.
Gerard Deltel Radio Canada Hors Mandat Nuit aTQS
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Not that we mean to imply that people at TQS are raving lunatics or anything, but it’s clear they’re a bit frustrated at constantly losing money.
I don’t think even the Tories hate Radio-Canada that much.
Le Devoir looks at six big issues the media will have to tackle in 2008:
Do you have any answers?
TQS, which you’ll remember is in serious financial trouble, blaming it on a lack of revenue from cable operators to which they’re not entitled, asked CIBC World Markets to conduct a business review and tell them what they should do with themselves to avoid going under.
The answer, apparently, is bankruptcy protection and a major overhaul. Ouch.
TQS is owned 60/40 by Cogeco and CTVglobemedia.
UPDATE: Le Devoir goes into detail about the network’s troubles and owner Cogeco’s financial situation. It even adds an editorial cartoon.
UPDATE (Dec. 19): More stories about the network’s troubles:
UPDATE (Dec. 20): Patrick Lagacé writes eloquently about how Quebec media, and not just Radio-Canada, have special treatment from the CRTC that forces people to subscribe to their channels whether they want to or not.
The idea of blaming Radio-Canada for being government-funded is kinda funny. People blame the Mother Corp when they waste government money on unpopular programming. Then they blame RadCan for popular programming.
Considering TVA, an entirely private company, is killing TQS in the ratings, the blame seems a bit misguided. Perhaps if they just stopped producing crap…
UPDATE (Dec. 21): The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business has an article about Radio-Canada and how it’s a ratings success compared to CBC’s ratings failure. I’m sure the fact that CTVglobemedia owns the Globe and 40% of TQS has nothing to do with the article’s negative stance toward RadCan.
The article also misses one very important point in comparing CBC and Radio-Canada: French TV receives 22% of the CBC’s budget, and English TV 36%. That’s a pretty significant advantage for RadCan considering the number of francophones in Canada’s population.
UPDATE (Dec. 22): La Presse’s Nathalie Petrowski asks what Quebec would lose if TQS just disappeared.
A memo to Jean-Luc Mongrain:
Acting like Bill O’Reilly doesn’t make you a better interviewer. When you invite a leader of the student protest movement on your show and yell at him like a madman, it doesn’t make people agree with your position more. In fact, people already agree with your position that protesters provoke police and that the tuition hikes are modest and don’t necessitate this kind of response.
So why are you yelling like a baby who thinks nobody is listening to him? You invited the guy on your show to speak his mind. At least let him speak.
Mongrain Clenche Porte Parole Etudiant 50 Dollar
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UPDATE (Nov. 19): Mongrain’s contract expires next spring, and he doesn’t seem worried about his future.
UPDATE (Nov. 20): via Patrick Lagacé comes this example of classic Mongrain:
The Globe and Mail has an interesting article today about the state of TQS. The network is in pretty bad shape, sitting a far third behind RadCan and TVA, cutting jobs and desperately looking for a buyer.
One idea being thrown around is to have TQS be bought by Power Corporation’s Gesca, which owns La Presse/Cyberpresse/Le Soleil. Apparently some would find it funny if Gesca was running the station behind Bleu Nuit.
UPDATE (Nov. 10): Le Devoir looks at Radio Nord, which owns two TQS affiliates in Gatineau and Abitibi.
TQS, the least-favourite of Quebec’s three french-language TV networks, is cutting 40 jobs across the province to get costs under control. With about 600 employees, that represents about 7% of their workforce.
It’s the same old story: Mainstream media, stocked up on vice-presidents and lots of overhead for journalistic operations, respond to their escalating costs by cutting journalists. The quality drops significantly, people tune out, and the spiral continues.
In TQS’s case, the network was losing quite a bit of money (CP says $1.5 million loss on media operations, which also include Rhythme FM radio stations), and now its owner Cogeco (which is swimming in profits from cable operations, by the way) is trying to figure out what to do with the network by getting CIBC to do a “strategic review”
CTV News (CTVglobemedia owns 40% of TQS, Cogeco owns the other 60%) has speculated that “a decision could be made to sell TQS”.
Anyone want to buy?
I just tried to subscribe to the one blog on TQS’s website, that of Jean-Michel Vanasse. Unfortunately, I can’t, because the RSS feed for his blog is malformed.
It looks like the problem is with their advertising system. They’re adding ads as items within the feed (bound to annoy some people, but something we could live with). Unfortunately, they’re not escaping the ampersands (&), which is causing problems for any feed reader expecting valid XML.
Odd that they would not have noticed this. Anyone want to take bets on how long it’ll take them to fix it?
UPDATE: If you guessed “four days”, give yourself a cookie.