Tag Archives: CBC

| Media, On the Net, Opinion, Sports

Time to vote for something important

There are now just a few hours left to vote for one of the five semifinalists in the CBC Hockey Anthem Challenge. Sadly, Hockey Scores is not one of them.

In order to help you visualize them, CBC has set the songs to video of the HNIC opening (even including the “Hello Canada and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland” voice intro). In all of them, the absence of the old theme is jarring, especially next to familiar video.

Here are some thoughts of mine off the top of my head for the five semifinalists. I’m not a music expert (but I know a few who will no doubt chip in), so don’t take these as gospel because I have no clue what I’m talking about.

(Warning: CBC forces you to watch the same stupid Bell ad before each video. Sorry.)

1. Ice Warriors (by Gerry Mosby): A complicated melody, but without any climax. It sounds like a good part of a song, but it’s missing the rest. Even as a fan of rock music, the guitar really threw me off. It belongs in a 70s album, not on the Hockey Night theme.

2. Sticks to the Ice (by Robert Fraser Burke): This one builds energy, and the professional arrangement is a huge improvement over a 13-year-old on a piano. But it’s still lacking. Just when you think it’s going to hit you hard, it sulks back into a melody that doesn’t seem to go anywhere.

3. Eleventh Hour (by Graham McRae): McRae is a skilled composer, and this one doesn’t lack for energy. He seems to really get the point. CBC’s orchestral recording of it seems a bit muted though, especially compared to McRae’s original. The melody in this one is my favourite, but that doesn’t necessarily seal the deal.

4. Let the Game Begin (by Christian St. Roch & Jimmy Tanaka): This contribution from two Montrealers echoes the original in a non-copyright-infringing way. Similar use of instruments. It is very successful at building energy and anticipation, and best of all it doesn’t waste any time getting there (this is, after all, a minute-long intro, not a three-minute song). It has punch, but the theme gets a bit repetitive. Still, if your goal is to find as close to the original as possible, this is probably the one for you.

5. Canadian Gold (by Colin Oberst): I like this one, not so much because I think it’s better than the rest but mainly because it’s so different. It’s the only one I think that comes out swinging after it gets going, and has that feeling of raising an army to defeat the enemy. It doesn’t sound like it’s holding anything back, and it’s not as repetitive as the others. It’s also more upbeat, almost to the point of cliché, which I think will appeal to less hard-edged hockey fans. But I could do without the bagpipes.

All five are works worthy of praise, and the CBC chose well. I don’t think any of them nail it 100%, but they surprise me with their quality (I had earlier suggested the contest might not be worth it). The fact that there were close to 15,000 entries is kind of astonishing.

Voting closes at 11:59pm Tuesday. Two finalists will be announced Thursday, and then the winner will be on the Hockey Night in Canada premiere on Saturday.

| Media, Video

Party leaders, only with more hair

CBC’s Archives, which has good stuff but unfortunately encodes it using Windows Media, which I have to play using my choppy, buggy Quicktime plugin instead of a universal Flash player, has found archival footage of the five party leaders. As you can see, they have wacky hairstyles (Duceppe’s mullet being the most awesome) and big glasses and stuff.

Dion, Harper and Duceppe are all from the same turbulent early 90s era. Dion a political scientist commenting on the Charlottetown Accord pre-referendum. Harper from when he was a Reform Party wonk and before he was elected an MP, and Duceppe after he was elected in a by-election as the first Bloc Québécois MP (and the whole he-swore-an-oath-to-the-Queen controversy).

Layton is from a decade earlier, when he was elected in a surprise upset to Toronto City Council.

But the most interesting clip is of Elizabeth May, 30 years ago in 1978. It’s actually a feature piece for The Fifth Estate, about a debate in Nova Scotia on whether to spray the forest with insecticide to fight the spruce budworm which was devastating forests. Forestry executives were for it, wanting to protect their trees and fearing an epidemic. May was against it, saying the spray had health risks associated with it.

Curious, I looked up the Wikipedia article to see what happened with the whole debate. It seems the infestation died out on its own, as May predicted, and an environmentally-friendly insecticide was created to deal with the problem as well.

(via Tea Makers)

| Opinion, Sports

Top 10 worst moments of the Beijing Olympics

CBC’s calling it “a great Olympics” and everyone seems to have forgotten the smog and other hyped-up problems with the Beijing Games now that they went on without a major hitch. As news outlets produce their top 10 Olympic moments, I feel it’s time to counter that with some lowlights (if you’re just interested in athlete failures, CBC has some more national embarassments)

10. CBC commentators

It wasn’t deliberate, but a comment by a CBC commentator during an Olympic synchronized diving competition that the two Chinese divers “even look the same” when they clearly don’t didn’t impress one viewer. CBC’s habit of taking Olympic loser has-beens former athletes and bringing them in as commentators was good-intentioned, but ultimately led to awkward play-by-play as they didn’t have adequate training in broadcasting.

9. Adam van Koeverden, men’s K-1 1,000-metre kayak race

Van Koeverden, a world champion, our opening ceremony flag-bearer and presumed medal shoo-in, spent the first half of the final in a close second, then watched as almost the entire field rowed past him. He ended up eighth out of nine, two seconds slower than his previous heat time, and an embarrassment so great he immediately had to apologize. Of course, he redeemed himself the next day, taking silver in the K-1 500, taking Canada’s final medal of the Games.

8. Marie-Hélène Prémont, women’s mountain biking

Another medal favourite and multiple world champion, Prémont starts hyperventilating inexplicably on her second lap and is forced to withdraw from the race.

7. Janos Baranyai, Hungarian weightlifter (77kg)

Providing the answer to the question “can’t lifting twice your weight over your head hurt you?”, Baranyai’s arm can’t hold up his 148 kg attempt and the weight dislocates his elbow, bending his arm backwards. That was it for show-stopping injuries in weightlifting, which is pretty impressive considering all the men’s and women’s weight classes all trying to break world records in obscene weightlifts. Baranyai is probably out the rest of the year (and that will hurt him financially because of Hungary’s lacking athlete insurance policies), but otherwise he’s expected to recover.

6. U.S. 4×100 relay teams

Expected medal favourites (second perhaps only to Jamaica), the U.S. men’s 4×100-metre relay team fumbles, literally, in a preliminary heat as Darvis Patton and Tyson Gay can’t complete a handoff and the baton is dropped. The team is disqualified and doesn’t make it to the final. That would be bad enough, but mere hours later, Torri Edwards and Lauryn Williams fail to connect on their final pass in a women’s 4×100 relay heat, and both teams leave Beijing humiliated.

5. Liu Xiang, Chinese 110-metre hurdler

A national hero with endorsement deals up the Xiang-Xiang, Liu pulls up with a leg injury in heats and fails to qualify for the final. Not only is the country disappointed, but so are insurance companies and advertisers. The BBC compounds the awfulness with some misleading editing.

4. NBC

The U.S. national broadcaster disappointed many when they decided to embargo Olympic coverage, including the opening and closing ceremonies, until Eastern prime time up to 12 hours later. But it got worse when the network had “LIVE” on broadcasts that were clearly hours old. NBC tried to weasel its way out of it, as if there’s some loophole that allows someone to lie about these things.

3. Opening ceremony

Although it looked great, the opening ceremony took some heat when word got out that the little 9-year-old girl singing, Lin Miaoke, was actually lip-syncing a song by less cute 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, a decision that apparently made its way all the way up the political chain of command. Combined with computer-generated animation of fireworks, it prompted the obvious question: What kind of example are we setting for athletes when we’re cheating in the opening ceremonies?

2. Angel Valodia Matos, Cuban taekwondoer

Some have criticized taekwondo as being a sport that looks like fighting but isn’t. Matos might have helped its tough-guy image, but disgraced himself and his country when he kicked a referee in the face after a match filled with controversial calls. After he failed to apologize, Matos and his coach were banned for life from the Olympics.

1. Ara Abrahamian, Swedish wrestler (84kg greco-roman)

Upset over a semifinal match he thought was badly judged and cost him the gold medal, Abrahamian receives his bronze medal during the ceremony and then promptly walks off, throwing his medal to the ground. The IOC took his medal, disqualified him, and handed it to the next guy in line.

UPDATE (Sept. 11): As just about everyone in the world predicted, he’s asking for his medal back.

| TV

National humility in contrast

Two articles from two countries’ most prestigious newspapers compare two television networks’ coverage of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies.

The Globe and Mail says NBC’s coverage “outshone the work of the CBC, mainly because co-hosts Bob Costas and Matt Lauer brought more information and enthusiasm to the show than did the stolid, rather dull presentation of the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge, who handled most of the commentary during the first 80 minutes.”

The New York Times: “how extraordinarily pleasant it was to be able to view that spectacle in Beijing without the annoyance of constant exclamation and endless recitations of trivia — just great swaths of wonderful silence from our narrators MacLean and Mansbridge between 8am and 9am or so, just letting the show at the stadium tell its own story with the least obtrusive economy of helpful footnotes, no urgency whatsoever to riddle the air with inane nattering and relentless fill.”

I guess it’s all a matter of interpretation.

| Humour, On the Net, Opinion, TV

CBC’s awful hockey theme contest

40 years ago, when composer Dolores Claman was given the task of coming up with a theme to a hockey broadcast, she envisioned the music you’d associate with Roman gladiators wearing skates (assuming you could imagine such a thing in the first place). The theme she came up with became synonymous with CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada for 40 years, and has become this country’s unofficial second national anthem.

Then, in June, all that changed when CTV announced it had acquired the rights to the theme from its original composer, who was still involved in contractual disputes with CBC over the terms of its license.

The CBC, left with its pants around its ankles, dusted off Plan B: Run a contest to find its replacement.

A contest to replace the most epic song in Canadian history. No problem.

The CBC’s Anthem Challenge, which has been promoted endlessly in order to drive up interest, has been surprisingly successful at doing so. Thousands of submissions each take a legitimate shot at being the theme’s successor, mostly by trying to copy it with slightly different notes.

Some come close to what you’d expect the winner to sound like, but are still missing that punch that truly gets you ready for a hockey game. They might sound more appropriate for a Megaman level than a hockey show.

Others miss the beat entirely, spanning the range of genres from cheesy ’80s sitcom themes, elevator music, electronic music, pop songs, even cheesier pop songs with lame lyrics, Randy Bachman, and other types of music entirely inappropriate for a hockey show theme.

Some include annoying personal introductions, others repeat the same chords over and over, or include sounds of people cheering.

Considering all these people got paid exactly $0 for the submissions, they’re not bad.

But these were the most popular ones. Imagine the ones that sucked.

The big question I have here is: Is this the kind of thing that should be trusted to Joe Schmo next door? Claman was a professional, not some person they picked off the street. Why should we think that amateurs would do a better job this time, clinging to the faint hope that maybe they might be the one lucky one out of thousands to win the $100,000 grand prize and get all the fame and glory that comes from not having the right to play your own song because you’ve signed away the copyright?

It’s perhaps partly to prove this point that a member of Something Awful posted “Hockey Scores,” a collection of random annoying sounds designed to sound as bad as possible, and encouraged others to vote for it. Because Something Awful is so powerful, the song rocketed to the top, where it sits as the most popular, most viewed and most commented entry.

That has garnered the attention of mainstream media, its blogs and even the CBC itself, which points out that the number of votes is not the only factor it must use according to the rules in determining the semifinalists that will be presented to the nation in October (though it will likely be the determining factor in choosing finalists from those semifinalists, and then the winner from the finalists).

But little of that coverage is mentioning the larger issue: When rich media organizations “crowdsource”  something that’s going to make them a lot of money, expecting people to work for free, they’re just begging to get a bunch of crap.

Something Awful just helped the process along a bit.

The contest continues to accept entries until Aug. 31. Semifinalists will be aired and voted on by the public in the beginning of October.

UPDATE (Aug. 9): The Globe has a piece on the contest, which of course includes not a single link to all the entries it talks about, nor the contest itself.

| Media, On the Net, Opinion, Sports

Olympics blogs ahoy!

La Presse unveiled its Beijing Olympics blog, noting that it’s sending a team of reporters, including columnist Pierre Foglia, to China next month. (Ten years ago, a newspaper sending reporters to the Olympics wouldn’t be news, but with the industry suffocating and cutting back, every plane ticket and hotel room has to be justified as a Newspaper Reporting Event.)

The Star, meanwhile, is putting links to its Olympics website on every page, including a logo next to its flag. Sadly, the website from Canada’s largest newspaper has about the same design finesse you’d expect from a YMCA bulletin board.

The Gazette’s Dave Stubbs, meanwhile, is still milking the Chinese news sources for weird stories relating to the Games on his Five-Ring Circus blog, which contrasts with Canwest’s matter-of-fact topic page.

The Globe and Mail hilariously has its Olympics coverage in a section called “Others“. Their Olympics blog is better, at least, though I’m not sure what “Wb” stands for in the URL.

The best Canadian Olympics news website unsurprisingly goes to the CBC, which not only has a general Olympics website, but has separate related sites for each major sport at the Games, each filled with stories. These will be the last Olympics the CBC has broadcast rights for.

And for completeness sake, Quebecor’s Canoe portal has yawnable websites in French and English for the Games with stories from its newspapers and wire services.

But even that’s better than CTV’s Olympics website, which doesn’t exist. (CTV has rights to 2010 and beyond, so you’d think they’d take advantage of the opportunity to get some practice online)

| Opinion, TV

CRTC roundup: CTV wants everything in HD

Some interesting developments at the CRTC concerning TV specialty channels:

The CRTC held a hearing yesterday on applications for new specialty channels, though no questions were asked and the meeting lasted 10 minutes. The following are being considered:

  • CBC SportsPlus, an “amateur sports” network. This one has proved controversial since rumours first started about it in January, since amateur sports would comprise only 25% of programming. The rest would seem to be for overflow from Olympic and other sports coverage where CBC television and the Bold channel would be insufficient. CTV and Rogers have already complained about competition with their sports networks, while the Canadian Olympic Committee argues its 100% amateur sports channel proposal should be approved instead. (The Globe argues both channels should be approved) (UPDATE: The Tea Makers has some analysis of this proposed channel)
  • AfroGlobal Television, a general interest network about Africa and African culture
  • Diversion HD, an HD movie network for the post-PPV sloppy seconds
  • Diversion SD, the same thing in standard definition
  • Canada HD Network, a general interest HD channel which seems to want to compete with U.S. based HDNet (to the point where it actually refused to have 15% limitations on music, movies and other categories that would compete with existing services). Its suggested programming grid includes an unusually large amount of Fresh Prince of Bel Air and McMillan & Wife reruns, especially for an HD channel
  • EqualiTV, a disability issues network which sounds a lot like the Accessible Channel
  • YTV OneWorld, a youth network with emphasis on foreign programming (let’s hope “foreign” doesn’t mean “American”). The channel had already been approved in 2000, but never made it off the ground.
  • YTV POW!, a comic book/action youth network with foreign programming, which was also initially approved in 2000
  • Sportsnet 2, a soccer/cricket/rugby sports channel that has been approved in principle but had not met certain legal requirements for a license

Expect Diversion and Canada HD to get denied unless they become more specific about their programming, and EqualiTV to explain how it differs from the Accessible Chanel.

Meanwhile, CTV has applied to the CRTC for HD versions of the following cable channels:

  • RIS Info Sports (RDS’s sister station)
  • The Discovery Channel*
  • CTV Newsnet
  • Business News Network
  • MTV Canada
  • The Comedy Network
  • travel+escape
  • Outdoor Life Network

*The Discovery Channel already has an HD version, which was approved on a temporary basis before the CRTC had a proper framework for such channels. This application is to have an HD channel under the new framework, which would require 95% of all programming to be the same between the SD and HD versions of the same channel (and the remaining 5% to be all-HD on the HD network).

CTV also wants to expand the programming of two of its channels, ESPN Classic Canada and Book Television, to include “general entertainment and human interest”. They cite as examples profiles of Hall of Fame athletes and Giller Prize awards coverage, respectively. The paranoid part of me thinks the likelihood of anyone complaining of these types of shows is extremely small, and that adding this category may be more about other kinds of shows they’d like to air that have less to do with the channels’ core mission.

| In the news, Opinion, Technology, Video

Jim Prentice doesn’t understand his own copyright bill

I’ve been following the brouhaha over the Conservative government’s new copyright bill, C-61, and specifically how the government has been responding to geeks who are finding holes in it and driving public opinion against the bill.

The more I follow it, the more I come to a rather stunning conclusion: Industry Minister Jim Prentice doesn’t understand his own copyright bill.

The big controversy, as the Globe’s Ivor Tossell explains, is over a provision about so-called digital locks (those software hacks they call Digital Rights Management, or DRM, that try to control how you access digital media). It says that users cannot bypass these locks, no matter how flimsy they are, even if what they’re trying to do with it is entirely legal.

The consequence of this is that companies just put digital locks on everything, and through a loophole in the law can claim rights they shouldn’t have in the first place.

In the above video, Prentice and Heritage Minister Josée Verner are asked about this, and you can see them struggle to regurgitate the talking points they’ve been handed about the bill. (In Verner’s case, you might argue that language difficulties combined with an inability to hear the question might be an excuse.)

It’s also apparent in Prentice’s 10-minute interview with CBC’s Search Engine (its most popular podcast, which incidentally has been cancelled). Prentice calls common-sense hypotheticals about the law “arcane,” seems unclear about what would happen in certain cases, and hangs up on the interviewer to escape his questions.

But to me this isn’t just about a minister and a bill. It’s something that’s always bothered me about parliamentary politics: the idea that being an MP is all the expertise needed to run a federal department. You don’t need to be a doctor to manage doctors. You don’t need to have a PhD to manage universities. You don’t need to have a driver’s license to manage the transportation department. And you don’t need to understand computers to be in charge of a new copyright bill.

Of course, in many cases ministers are put in areas they would be more comfortable with. Ken Dryden being minister for sport makes sense. But cabinet shuffles being as routine as they are makes it seem as if running the military isn’t so different from foreign affairs or finance.

Maybe it’s true. Maybe being a minister is more about managing, appointing directors, making budgets, drafting legislation and shaking hands at ceremonial functions than it is about getting into the nitty-gritty.

But Prentice and the copyright bill show a clear problem with that premise.

| Sports, TV

The theme that wouldn’t die

After being dead, then maybe-not-dead, then absolutely positively dead (as I tried to explain previously), the Hockey Night in Canada theme is once again maybe-there’s-hope, as the CBC brings in a lawyer to maybe hammer out a new deal.

It shows, I think, that the CBC vastly underestimated people’s connection with the song, and wants to do everything it can to save it.

UPDATE: Looks like it’s closer to dead again. CBC negotiators aren’t very optimistic.

UPDATE: CTV has just announced it secured rights to the song and plans to use it on TSN (and RDS). Wow.

UPDATE (June 12): Thank you Stephen Colbert. (CTV owns the Canadian rights to the Colbert Report through the CTV and Comedy networks, so he’s actually being half-serious about licensing the song.)

| Opinion, TV

End of an anthem

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Sad. (UPDATE: Or not?)

(Need an emergency fix?)

The fact that politicians are getting involved in this (if only by commenting out loud) really gets me. Yeah, we’re emotionally attached to it, but it’s not as if the Parliamentary Library is burning down here.

UPDATE (June 6): It’s over. Negotiations have fallen through and CBC is launching a $100,000 contest to find a replacement. Good luck with that.

Some suggestions for replacement songs. Or, if you haven’t given up yet, the inevitable Facebook group. Or two. Or three. Or four. Or five. Or six. Or seven. Or eight. Or nine. Or ten. Or … holy crap! There are 204 other groups for this! Plus the HNIC fan page, and the petition to bring in that Stompin’ Tom song instead.

UPDATE (June 7): Really? CBC ices Hockey Night theme? The puck’s stopped here? These are the best headlines you could come up with?

| Sports, TV

Nosiree Bob

Just as the St. John’s Telegram sings his praises (the article is reprinted in today’s Gazette), comes the unconfirmed-but-they’re-really-sure-about-it news from the Globe that the CBC is phasing out veteran play-by-play announcer Bob Cole. This will be his final Stanley Cup broadcast, though he’ll stay on for regular-season games next year.

Listening to tonight’s game, it’s hard to challenge the decision.