Tag Archives: CBC

| TV

Star Choice is too good for RDI

The CBC is complaining to the CRTC because Canadian satellite TV provider Star Choice does not include francophone all-news channel RDI as part of its basic lineup.

The problem is that the CRTC mandates that RDI be included in all cable and satellite basic lineups, as it does for channels like CPAC, Newsworld and The Weather Network. So unless I (and the CBC) are missing something, Star Choice is violating CRTC regulations. (Then again, it’s not the only company that thinks CRTC rules are just a suggestion — *cough* *cough*)

Meanwhile, Global Quebec is still not available even as an option for Star Choice and ExpressVu customers in Quebec, more than 10 years after the regional network launched. Ditto CBC Saskatchewan.

But hey, God forbid anyone should miss the World Fishing Network for some local news.

UPDATE: Star Choice responds to the CBC Saskatchewan issue with the usual “technical limitations” excuses, and adds that it’s somehow the CBC’s responsibility to provide local TV service to satellite customers. (via Inside the CBC)

| TV

CBC launches two boring digital TV channels

Digital TV subscribers across Canada are noticing two new channels that weren’t there before. The CBC has arranged free previews on all the major systems, including Videotron (digital), Bell ExpressVu and Star Choice.

Bold

Bold is, near as I can tell, CBC’s answer to Showcase or Bravo. Its programming includes a bunch of second-run drama and comedy shows from CBC’s library, including MVP, The Tudors, Da Vinci’s City Hall, The Border, Intelligence, Dr. Who and a bunch of other shows I’ve never heard of.

It replaces CBC Country Canada, that other cable channel that nobody watches.

Bold can be found on Videotron Illico channel 106 and Bell ExpressVu channel 641.

Documentary

Documentary is self-explanatory, taking a bunch of stuff from CBC Newsworld and the NFB. It’s basically just a rebranding of The Documentary Channel, which the CBC bought a controlling interest in.

Documentary can be found on Videotron Illico channel 151 and ExpressVu channel 336.

The free preview lasts until April 29.

Elsewhere:

| Media, Opinion, Technology

Industry is at fault for HDTV confusion

CBC.ca has a story* about an industry-commissioned survey that shows Canadians don’t quite understand everything about HDTV. Sharp, which commissioned the survey, pulls right out of its ass the theory that “jargon-laden tech reports” are to blame for the problem, especially among women. It’s the media which is not doing a good job explaining HDTV’s technical intricacies to consumers.

While technology articles in newspapers and tech segments on TV news are, indeed, either confusingly jargon-laden or condescendingly over-simplifying, I don’t think they’re the reason for all the misinformation about HDTV.

Instead, I blame the industry itself:

  • An industry that defines “HDTV” as anything above NTSC standard, which could mean a bunch of different formats because the industry couldn’t set a proper standard.
  • An industry that compresses video signals over digital distribution systems to cram more channels in, making some digital signals better than others.
  • An industry that combined HDTV with a change in aspect ratio that served to confuse people into thinking the two were the same.
  • An industry that can’t agree on an optical media format for HDTV.
  • An industry that uses terms like “1080p” which means nothing to people like me, and then tries to develop brand names like “Full HD” which makes even less sense. (Is there a “Partial HD?”)
  • An industry that has developed five different types of cable connectors for video
  • An industry that uses closed, proprietary protocols so that consumers are forcibly tied to cable boxes forced on them by their cable or satellite companies instead of being able to buy televisions with digital tuners built-in.
  • An industry that converts HD to SD to HD, or SD to HD to SD, resulting in black bars all around images once they’re actually shown on TV screens.

But I don’t expect Sharp to bring that up when they’re busy masturbating over how great they are.

Another example of investigative journalism

*Dear CBC: If you’re going to rewrite a press release, maybe you should make it slightly less obvious that you’re doing so. For example, you could change the headline. Or you could find another source to quote. Or you could not copy and paste half the press release into your article.

For example:

The knowledge gap persists despite a truly healthy market for flat panel TVs. Overall, the market grew by 72 percent last year, with sales of LCD TVs growing by 84.4 percent. For 2008, projected sales figures from the Consumer Electronics Marketers of Canada (CEMC) indicate a market demand of 2.75 million units.
The poll reports Canadians have a basic understanding of the differences between flat screen technologies – 53 percent prefer LCD to plasma screens – yet few Canadians feel themselves to be truly knowledgeable about the technology.
Women are especially unaware of HDTV features; almost 60 percent said they were not at all knowledgeable about the latest advancements, compared to less than 40 percent of men polled across the country. The jargon-laden language of tech reports may be an issue, with 29 percent of Canadians getting their information about new models from TV ads and programs, compared to only 20 percent from print media and 16 percent from weblogs and product websites.

That was from the press release.

This is from the CBC story:

The knowledge gap persists despite a truly robust market for flat–panel TVs, according to the findings from Nanos Research, commissioned to do the survey by Sharp Electronics of Canada.

Overall, the market grew by 72 per cent last year, with sales of LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) TVs growing by 84.4 per cent, Sharp said. For 2008, projected sales figures from the Consumer Electronics Marketers of Canada (CEMC) indicate a market demand of 2.75 million units.

The poll reports Canadians have a basic understanding of the differences between flat-screen technologies — 53 per cent prefer LCD to plasma screens — yet few Canadians feel themselves to be truly knowledgeable about the technology.

Women are especially unaware of HDTV features, the survey suggested. Almost 60 per cent said they were not at all knowledgeable about the latest advancements, compared to less than 40 per cent of men polled across the country.

The jargon-laden language of tech reports may be an issue, with 29 per cent of Canadians getting their information about new models from TV ads and programs, compared to only 20 per cent from print media and 16 per cent from weblogs and product websites.

Notice some similarity? (I’ve bolded all the changes the CBC made.) I’m just going to go ahead and assume the CBC did not, in fact, check to make sure these statements were true.

(And another thing: “weblogs”? If people don’t understand what a blog is, what makes you think they’ll understand “weblogs”?)

| Media, Opinion, Technology, TV

CBC report is a no-brainer

This week the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage came out with a report on the CBC (PDF link). In it, the group of MPs make important recommendations about the future of Canada’s national public broadcaster.And by “important,” I mean “mind-numbingly obvious.”

Reading the recommendations spread over 200 pages, it seems clear MPs were phoning this one in, wasting paper to convince the boss that they were working hard, but in essence just regurgitating what they were told without any new insight whatsoever.

After meeting with dozens of high-profile witnesses, here are some of the recommendations they’ve come up with:

  • More regional programming
  • More drama
  • More diversity
  • More Canadian content

Wow. Really? Way to go out on a limb there.
The best, though, was their recommendation about the Internet, an area that the CBC has been pioneering, not just compared to other broadcasters but most newspapers as well:

The Committee recommends that CBC/Radio-Canada continue to develop its Internet presence and to make its content accessible online for Canadians.

Scandalous, isn’t it?

There are some few nuggets of thought buried here, although they’re all vague on the detailos:

  • Encourage net neutrality, because of the “serious consequences” it might have on the CBC. (Read Geist’s take on this)
  • Force an analog TV shutoff date, like the U.S. will have next year. Their reasons: everyone else is doing it, and not having HD here has left us behind. To deal with the number of people who like to receive over-the-air analog TV (like people in Kamloops), they propose someone else come up with the solution, which might involve having the government pay for free converter boxes for everyone.
  • Develop partnerships with the National Film Board, and get the CBC involved in making feature films (a recommendation the Conservatives call “unacceptable” because it is outside the CBC’s mandate)
  • Decrease reliance on television advertising. Here, even the Conservatives agree that more government funding to make up for less advertising is the answer here.
  • More transparency in funding, including an annual report that allows people to make comparisons between the successful Radio-Canada and the sucky CBC.

What gets me most about this report is how much they drop the ball. Instead of being leaders and making tough calls or bringing forth new ideas for the CBC, this committee takes almost every major issue and asks the CBC to come up with its own solution.

I realize Members of Parliament aren’t experts in broadcasting. But if they’re too useless to come up with anything good, especially after talking to so many real experts, why are we wasting all this time and money on this report?

I don’t read many Commons committee reports. Maybe they’re all like this. If so, colour me jaded.

The least they could do is hire some copy editors. Its formatting is horrible, there are plenty of typos, and it even gets Radio-Canada’s website wrong.

I’d like to think the government is better than this.

(Strangely, the Conservative Party’s minority report makes a lot more sense to me, showing that the real policy wonks are wearing blue, not red. They argue that the report was supposed to be about public broadcasting in general, not the CBC in particular, and that making recommendations about the CRTC is outside the report’s mandate. It also points out not-so-subtly that many of the recommendations are obvious no-brainers.)

If you want more sleep-inducing word-filler, read the CBC’s brief response that says nothing.

| Media, Opinion, Web design

Media != celebrity, CBC

Dear CBC,

I subscribe to your “media news” feed, because I have a keen interest in journalism and the media.

I do not, however, have any interest in Britney Spears or Michael Jackson. What do celebrity gossip stories have to do with the media, other than showing us that non-paparazzi outlets will stoop to this level too?

Please separate your celebrity gossip from your media-related stories.

Thank you.

| Sports, TV, Video

Don Wittman’s greatest hits

Don Wittman

CBC sportscaster Don Wittman died last week, ironically on the same day as the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Canadian Football League, for which he was a regular play-by-play commentator (at least until the CBC decided they needed someone younger).

CBC.ca has a feature section on Wittman, including some clips of his more memorable moments (which I think understate how recognizable a voice he was on CBC Sports).

But while the news focuses on his calling Ben Johnson’s track-and-field win, then Donovan Bailey’s world-record-setting 100-metre run at the 1996 Olympics, and his unexpected foray into news reporting at the 1972 Munich games, but my favourite is this bench-clearing brawl during the 1987 world junior hockey championship, which was so out of control that the officials turned the lights out to get everyone to calm down:

Some other videos worth watching:

| Canadiens, TV

Habs bring ratings boost to HNIC

The Globe and Mail, at the end of a longer article on a possible new TV channel for CBC Sports, reports that the audience for Hockey Night in Canada actually went up last weekend when they telecasted the Habs game nationally instead of the Leafs, in every region except British Columbia. The increase is modest, and it doesn’t include Ontario (because they still got the Leafs game), where almost half the audience resides.

Still, a ratings increase speaks to CBC’s bottom line, so expect more nationally-telecast Habs games in the future.

The other part of the Globe article says the CBC is in the initial thinking phase of a new amateur sport TV specialty channel. They aren’t even close to going to the CRTC yet, so this is still a long ways off. It might also conflict with the Canadian Olympic Committee, which is also thinking of an amateur sport channel. (UPDATE: The Globe discusses some of the hurdles such a channel might face in getting regulatory approval)

Meanwhile, the CBC has applied to the CRTC for a license amendment allowing CBC Newsworld to setup an HD channel. It’s unlikely to face any opposition, so we could see CBC Newsworld HD within the next few months.

| Media, Opinion

News should learn from Krista Erickson

CBCgate

CBC announced today that reporter Krista Erickson has been punished for breaking journalistic ethics in the most horrible way possible: They’re sending her to Toronto.

In what Jonathan Kay calls Pablogate, and Mario Asselin calls CBCgate, and is really not a gate at all, Erickson fed questions to Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez about Brian Mulroney’s connection to the current Conservative Party, which Rodriguez asked Mulroney during the Mulroney/Schreiber inquiry over the Airbus affair.

Through this story there’s been a lot of outrage but not much analysis of what exactly went wrong here. The CBC says there was no partisan or unethical intent, and I believe them. It was an unconventional method of getting answers to tricky political questions.

What this story is more indicative of, however, is the amount of informality in beat reporting. It’s nothing new. Reporters and the people they report on have been chummy for decades. That’s how they get the scoops, how they know what’s going on, how they get access to important people.

But the downside is that there can be a perception of partiality when there’s the slightest hint of cooperation between the two. It’s a real problem, and it needs to be tackled in a realistic way by news organizations rather than arbitrarily decided on a case-by-case basis when someone complains.

News organizations should learn from this incident, and update their codes of ethics to cover the problems inherent in beat reporting. The paragraphs the CBC quoted in their statement are far too vague. At the very least, add this situation as an example of what not to do.

UPDATE (Jan. 23): The CBC News Editors Blog discusses the subject without mentioning Erickson’s name (what are we, idiots?). Though it talks briefly about the problems of becoming part of the story and the need to be “inside” while still staying objective, it fails to go into depth about the familiarity problem other than to deny it exists.

Meanwhile (via the Tea Makers) Facebook groups supporting and against Erickson have popped up. Do I even have to point out that the pro-Erickson group was started by a Liberal Party activist and the anti-Erickson group by a Mike Huckabee-supporting Tory?

| Blogosphere, TV

Local bloggers on Test the Nation

Test the Nation

Bored? CBC’s latest rendition of Test The Nation just finished on TV (though you can take the test online). Among the six teams fighting it out in studio were “bloggers” (Here are their mugshots). The team includes some well-known Montrealers:

Nulman has guaranteed that the blogger group will be victorious over celebrity look-alikes, cab drivers, backpackers, chefs and flight crews. Can they pull it off? Considering how skewed the questions are toward technology trivia (there’s even an entire section on it), I wouldn’t be surprised…

UPDATE: 26 questions in, and the bloggers are leading.

UPDATE: Nulman breathes a sigh of relief, as the bloggers easily take the competition with an average score of 50/60. Highest is Rick Spence at 57. I scored a still-respectable 47.

UPDATE: The CBC actually does a pretty darn decent job rounding up the post-test blogger reaction. They also put up some fun statistical stuff (StatsCan they are not), which shows that meateaters scored better than vegetarians, heavy Internet users scored more than light Internet users, and that Quebec outscored every other province (HA! Suck it Alberta!). The best: Nunavut. The worst: PEI.

| Canadiens, Opinion, TV

Hockey Night in Kanata, anyone?

Hockey Night in Toronto

The Globe and Mail (or at least columnist William Houston) seems to have joined the expanding chorus of people who think that Hockey Night in Canada should drop the Toronto Maple Leafs as its default team, since it’s second-last in the Eastern conference and playoff prospects look weak.

It’s sort of a chicken-and-egg situation with the CBC and Toronto. They show the Leafs nationwide because the Leafs have the stronger fan base. But the Leafs’ fan base is largely a result of national telecasts.

I’m not in a position to say what team fans in Winnipeg, Halifax or other non-NHL towns should be watching, but I think the CBC should at least concentrate first on making sure NHL cities can watch their home teams — particularly Ottawa and Montreal. Sometimes the CBC splits its network up so that happens, but it should be for every Saturday where two Canadian teams are playing.

It’s not like cost is such a huge issue — HNIC is a huge money-maker for the CBC. And even then, I don’t care too much about the quality of the broadcast. Hell, they could simulcast RDS unedited and I’m sure cable-less Montreal fans would be perfectly fine with that.

Houston’s right: Ottawa is the dominant Canadian team at the moment, and it’s going to go much further toward a Stanley Cup this year than Toronto could ever hope to go. At some point CBC is going to have to make the switch.

UPDATE: Wow, it actually worked this time. That was fast.

| In the news, Media, Public transit, Technology, Video

If only bus drivers had writers like these

Via Martine, the WGA, the American writers union which is currently holding us hostage by denying us House-isms on strike for the rights to more than mere pennies from DVD sales and all of nothing from online publishing of TV shows and movies, isn’t lying down or holding useless marches with picket signs. They’re creating media to rally support for their cause.

In essence, it’s a tactic we’ve seen before but on a much larger scale. When CBC employees were locked out in 2005, they started producing blogs and podcasts to keep communication going. After it was over, the blogger for CBC Unlocked, Tod Maffin, was given the job of running Inside the CBC, a decidedly uncorporate, uncensored blog about the inner life of the Mother Corp., with its blessing.

Locked-out journalists at the Journal de Québec are still, since April, putting out a competing daily newspaper as part of their pressure tactics. The move has rallied support among other unions (who have helped them financially) politicians and newsmakers (who refuse to deal with Canoe reporters, a fly-by-night “wire services” and other scabs) and readers (who have cancelled subscriptions and are picking up the competing paper).

With Hollywood, the tactic that’s getting the most play is online video (ironic since the dispute is over how little they get paid for online video). Writers for popular shows like The Office, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report have been cracking jokes on YouTube, and the actors are coming out to support them. Some like McDreamy and co. talk calmly about the issues, others like Sarah Silverman make the funny, and then there’s Sandra Oh.

The latest campaign, called “Speechless“, involves short black-and-white clips of actors in a world without scriptwriters. Most of them are of the actor-stands-blank-faced-and-says-nothing variety. Others are pretty funny. There’s a new one every day.

Some of my favourites below:

Continue reading →

| Humour, TV

Air Farce Live: A gimmick won’t magically increase ratings

I just finished watching the premiere of Air Farce Live on CBC. The umpteen-year-old show, which has been sagging in the ratings these past few years because it’s a Friday-night show and it’s not funny, came up with the idea of doing it live as a gimmick. It worked for me, at least this first night.

The first episode had a bit too much “hey look at us we’re live now!” moments, which should hopefully disappear by next week. There were also three pre-packaged segments, which is a lot for a supposedly live half-hour show. And it became clear through the first few sketches that actors wouldn’t appear in consecutive segments, which will mean fewer actors in each.

I used to be a big fan of the Royal Canadian Air Farce as a kid. I had fond memories of the Chicken Cannon, which now seems to have been retired. But the jokes were too obvious, too immature, compared to the more nuanced ones of shows like This Hour Has 22 Minutes. By the time I got a high-school diploma, I stopped watching.

After a few years away, not much has changed. There’s new faces, and the old faces are a bit greyer (and in the case of Don Ferguson, balder), but the jokes are still the same. I laughed only a couple of times, mostly during a strange, Weekend-Updateish rapid-fire news segment with some guy in front of a laptop. (The joke, after one about Brian Mulroney’s massive book of memoirs: “Kim Campbell is planning to release her memoirs in a pamphlet later this year.”)

The Air Farce will always have its audience. And even if it doesn’t, the CBC’s commitment to Canadian content will probably keep it on life support for many years. But the idea of making it “live” seems like little more than a gimmick shark-jump to try and jump-start sagging ratings. Unless it’s matched by better writing (or some unpredictability that you can only get when live) it’s just not going to work.

| In the news, Radio

CBC needs lesson in Parliament 101

I’m listening to CBC Radio (I oblige myself to do so at least once a year — besides, it’s “So Montreal” according to the marketing bureaucrats in Toronto).

I’m listening to the news, which is mostly about the three by-elections going on today in Quebec, and the possibility that the NDP might win a seat in Outremont. At the end of the report came this line:

“The two other seats are currently held by the Bloc Québécois.”

While I’m sure everyone knows what that means (that they were previously held by BQ members), it’s still technically wrong. The seats are vacant after the resignations of Yvan Loubier (Feb. 21) and Michel Gauthier (July 29).