Tag Archives: Astral-Media

| Business, In the news, Media

Yes We Got Canned!

As expected, various media outlets used the insane hype of the Obama inauguration to take out the trash and announce layoffs, hopeful that the news will be buried in a corner at the back of the business section with all the Obamamania coverage going on.

But the big cuts are south of the border, with Clear Channel cutting 1,850 jobs (9%), Warner Brothers cutting 800 (10%) and the Los Angeles Times planning to cut an unspecified number.

| TV

HBO Canada coming, but it won’t be any cheaper

Corus and Astral have put the word out that they’re creating HBO Canada, a channel that will be part of the Movie Network/Movie Central premium packages that will offer all-HBO programming (when it’s not fulfilling its CanCon requirements). This will mean simulcasting of HBO shows and, for the first time, the legal airing of Real Time with Bill Maher in Canada.

Reports from the Globe and Sun Media.

UPDATE: Digital Home has a good history of satellite TV in Canada and why HBO is illegal.

| TV

For sale: TATV channel

The channel grid is going to change a bit in the near future. Astral Media announced on Tuesday that its Tout acheter tout vendre specialty TV channel is suspending operations effective immediately (via Steph). Le Soleil rewrites the press release, which notes that 18 full-timers and 10 part-timers are now out of a job.

Needless to say, it’s the Internet that led to the network’s downfall. Putting ad on Craigslist is much cheaper than the $20 it’ll cost to put your old dresser or used car on TV where nobody will see it.

The immediate question is what’s going to happen to that spot on the dial. The station is at channel 12 on Videotron basic cable (despite its low number, the channel is actually among the worst to be assigned to because of interference from the very powerful CFCF transmitter) and channel 27 on Videotron’s Illico.

The network is still running its existing advertisements for clients who have already paid, though it isn’t taking any more listings (even if it’s putting its phone number out over the air and asking people to buy ads).

It’s unclear at this point whether the channel will be released back to cable companies to do reassign as they please or whether Astral will try to do something else with it.

This leaves all-infomercial network Shopping TVA as the last of its kind on the cable dial. Any bets on how long it’ll survive?

| Uncategorized

Worst. Kerning. Ever.

Seen at the Berri-UQAM metro:

Horrible kerning

Horrible kerning (2)

Looking at the website of the Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, I admit it’s possible this comically awful kerning job was done on purpose. But if so, it looks silly.

And the fact they misspelled “québécois” inconsistently (note a missing accent on the second version), I’m thinking maybe Astral Media was just incompetent designing these ads.

| Montreal, Radio

Respect? Pleasure? On Montreal radio?

In an effort to fool reassure the public that their purchase of Standard Radio to create an even huger media megalopoly isn’t a bad thing, Astral Media ran full-page newspaper ads this weekend:

Astral ad

The ad, which implies that Mix 96, CHOM FM and CJAD won’t … uhh … change the logos they put on their baseball caps, I guess… includes this bit of hilarity:

… Please be assured of our commitment to continue providing the same great listening pleasure you have come to enjoy. Respect for our broadcast audience and the public in general is a core value of Astral Media…

I can only guess from this that Astral Media haven’t actually listened to CHOM or Mix 96 for more than a few minutes.

(The fact that CHOM and Mix 96, two radio stations that should be competing directly, are controlled by the same owner, is an entirely different issue.)

| Media

Big media mergers remind us of past mistakes

The CRTC has approved two big media ownership changes:

Astral Media, owners of The Movie Network, Teletoon, Astral Photo, and lots of radio stations in Quebec and Atlantic Canada including the Énergie (CKMF 94.3) and Rock Détente (CITE 107.3) networks, will take over Standard Broadcasting, which owns stations in Western Canada, but also three English Montreal stations — CHOM 97.7, CJAD-800 and CJFM Mix 96. Montreal is the only market where there’s any overlap, and even then they work in two different languages.

Rogers (telecom, Maclean’s, Rogers Sportsnet, OMNI and 51 radio stations) will buy Citytv (5 stations in Toronto and Western Canada) after CTVglobemedia (Globe and Mail, CTV, TSN/RDS, Discovery Channel Canada, Comedy Network, MuchMusic, Bravo! Canada, A-Channel, your first-born child) was ordered to divest itself of the competing TV network in its acquisition of CHUM Ltd.

More details in this Wikipedia article.

Neither decision is particularly bad for competition in Canada. The radio deal involves two companies that weren’t really competing, and the TV deal gives Rogers a foot in the door to network television.

Of course, it’s the deals that preceded these that are cause for concern. The fact that CHOM and Mix 96, which should be highly-competitive stations, are owned by the same company is troublesome. And CTV’s takeover of CHUM was ushered through without any apparent concern that their mega cable channel powerhouse has only gotten bigger. It now includes, for example, two all-news stations: CTV NewsNet and City’s CP24, which for some insane reason they were not required to sell off as part of Citytv.