Starting Aug. 1, CTV is “rebranding” its Razer specialty channel (which had the occasional Buffy episode, but little else of interest to anyone over 12) to MTV2, which I can only imagine will make it suck more.
The move completes the transition of the specialty network from a youth-oriented TV network to a youth-oriented music TV channel in the same family as MuchMusic, MuchMoreMusic etc.
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)
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:
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:
*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.
CTV has launched a new website to collect sucker-generated content, err, I mean “citizen journalism” called my.ctvnews.ca. Because their professional journalists are doing their jobs with the insight of a 15-year-old recounting gossip, it’s expected that this new citizen-generated content will provide free material for CTV to make advertising money off of.
People are encouraged to submit their own content to the website, and some have (there’s even a video from that helicopter crash last month).
But beware, doing so means you agree to their terms of service, which include:
And though the site advises people to “stay safe” and “don’t endanger yourself,” of the five videos listed on the page, three were of fires and two were of tornadoes. The implication clearly is that the closer you get to a disaster in progress, the more likely your video is going to be accepted and you’ll be famous.
But hey, all this is a small price to pay in exchange for … uhh … nothing.
At TQS, the image is much clearer. They’re literally replacing professional journalists with suckers willing to work for free. This hasn’t escaped the eye of some local Web 2.0 enthusiasts like Michel Dumais and Mario Asselin, who point out that this isn’t a magic bullet and citizens cannot replace professionals.
The big problem is that big media is putting up a giant, blank canvas with their Web 2.0 projects. There’s no guidance (beyond tip sheets for how to shoot acceptable video), no communication or feedback, and terms of use policies that are downright insulting, if not outright illegal. Everyone is doing this (including the people I work for), because they don’t have to spend any money on it, and they look at Web 2.0 and think they can do that too.
I looked at the issue in March, where Evan Prodromou made the point that successful Web 2.0 sites are about communities, and provide services that help them. They don’t see users as things to exploit.
But exploitation will continue so long as some people are motivated solely by that “look, I’m on the news!” and skip over terms of service that demand everything short of a first-born child with nothing in return.
I don’t want that motivation to disappear entirely (if it did, professional journalists wouldn’t be able to do their jobs anymore), but there should be some happy medium where news organizations don’t rely exclusively on amateurs willing to produce crap for free.
At what point will users rise up and demand rights in exchange for their free content?
After three months and dozens of articles theorizing how the U.S. networks would start importing Canadian programming to make up for the writers strike, the first case of that actually happening has finally showed up.
CBS has agreed to pick up a new CTV series called Flashpoint, about an elite group of supercops who will do all the cool dangerous stuff that regular beer-bellied cops can’t do.
Like Due South, the last Canadian program to be picked up by a U.S. network (also CBS in that case), Flashpoint will actually be a co-production between the two networks, produced and filmed in Canada. This means CBS won’t be paying as much for it, and they’ll have more say in its content. That also means it will have American-style production values, according to Variety.
(I’ve never considered Canadian production values particularly deficient. Lighting and sound is usually good enough for my tastes. The problem is that Canadian actors overact and Canadian writers think in clichés.)
UPDATE (Jan. 31): The Writers’ Guild of Canada has to justify the deal and defend itself from charges of being scabs.
UPDATE (Feb. 2): And just like that, CTV sells a second series to NBC.
News outlets all over the country are rewriting a CTV press release into news. It’s announcing that the network has secured Canadian rights to the show So You Think You Can Dance, and like Canadian Idol, our version of the show will be in the same format but with different hosts.
Am I the only one getting tired of Canadian networks creating Canadian versions of shows developed in other countries and selling it to the CRTC as original Canadian content? Think of what we’ve done so far:
And that’s the only ones I can find on a quick search.
I’m not the only one who thinks this is a problem. Canadian actors, writers, and other artists are objecting to the trend, demanding the networks invest in Canadian ideas instead of American ones, and stop sending hundreds of millions of dollars down south to license their shows.
What’s wrong? Is it because we don’t have as much money as they do? Is it because our ideas suck? Is it because Canadian viewers are so allergic to home-grown content that we have to be weaned onto it using comfortable American shows?
Or is there nothing wrong? I enjoy Canada’s Worst Driver/Handyman, and I watch American TV a lot during prime time. Is the problem me?
Thomas J. Mulcair, elected today in a by-election to represent the federal riding of Outremont for the New Democratic Party, only the second person to do so in the NDP’s history (Phil Edmonston was the first in a 1990 by-election). He replaces Liberal Jean Lapierre, who resigned from the House of Commons on January 28 to escape the shame return to broadcasting as a political analyst.
Local NDP supporters are naturally taking the news with mature, thoughtful self-congratulation.
Interesting media meta-side-story: CTV Newsnet is covering a speech by Liberal leader Stéphane Dion (in French), while RDI is covering a speech by NDP leader Jack Layton (in English), introducing the winner Thomas Mulcair. Considering Mulcair won the election, doesn’t that give him priority in TV time?
(In real elections, you wait for the losing candidate to finish his concession speech before starting your victory speech. But the NDP isn’t used to winning elections here, so we’ll give them a break.)
Now that CTV is getting Mike Duffy analyzing, I’m wondering if maybe the network doesn’t have a camera crew at Mulcair HQ. TVA/LCN isn’t any better, covering post-game analysis of a Canadiens pre-season exhibition game. Because that’s more important than a potentially historic by-election.
And while we’re on the topic of analysis, everyone seems to be saying that Outremont is a “Liberal stronghold” to underscore the significance of this victory. While it certainly used to be that way, and the riding has been won by the Liberals all but one time in its history, the most recent election was a slim victory, with Jean Lapierre only taking 35% of the vote. How is that considered a stronghold?
Meanwhile, the Tories have taken Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean from the Bloc Québécois, adding to their growing Quebec caucus.
The third riding up for grabs, in Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot, is a BQ hold.