Tag Archives: Radio-Canada

| Technology, TV

Tou.tv, not quite tout

3600 secondes d'extase is all over Tou.tv. Marc Labrèche will show his face anywhere.

In case you hadn’t noticed from coverage by La Presse, Canoe, Rue Frontenac, Branchez-Vous, MSN, Radio-Canada and, like, every other news media in Quebec, Radio-Canada last week launched tou.tv, a video portal with content from Radio-Canada but also some other television networks like Télé-Québec, TV5, ARTV, TFO and others, including some European francophone channels. (The inevitable comparisons to Hulu followed quickly, even though Canadians can’t use Hulu and therefore don’t have much basis for comparison).

Notably absent from that list are V, the former TQS network that already puts all its content online on its own website, and anything owned by Quebecor, including TVA. Quebecor’s strategy is to leverage its video content to improve the bottom line for its Videotron cable service. So the only way to get TVA shows on demand is to use Videotron’s Illico video-on-demand service (which has most TVA content for free).

Still, even if it was just Radio-Canada stuff, it would be pretty cool. I’d finally get a chance to see two of my favourite shows – Tout le monde en parle and Infoman – on demand (I usually miss the initial airings of both).

Oh but wait, neither show is part of Tou.tv’s vast repertoire.

How can that be? They’re both Radio-Canada series. And because they’re both about the news, you’d think they’d have a short shelf life. Wouldn’t you want them to get maximum exposure in a short period of time? Are people going to buy DVDs of these shows in three years? (Well, maybe…)

Despite being on Facebook and Twitter, Tou.tv hasn’t been communicating very well with users. Its first response on Twitter came a week after it launched, in which it reassured me (don’t I feel special) that it’s just getting started. I can understand that, though there’s still a lot of viewer inquiries and stuff that’s not being responded to, making it seem like it’s being ignored.

There’s also technical problems, like videos freezing halfway through, or (as I experienced) not being able to resume after a long pause. But I can understand that too, assuming they eventually fix it.

So what’s up with TLMEP and Infoman? I sought out to inquire. I sent messages to Radio-Canada (for both shows), and to the production houses behind those shows: Avanti Ciné Video and Les productions Jacques K Primeau (TLMEP) and Zone 3 (Infoman). The only response I got was from Radio-Canada’s Marie Tetreault, who said that they couldn’t include these programs because of rights issues. (One of those annoying problems that even forced them to temporarily pull their own launch video).

“Il n’est pas prévu d’offrir la version intégrale en différé de Tout le monde en parle” was the final word.

So those hoping that these shows would soon be added to Tou.tv, don’t hold your breath. They’ll have the entire series of Et Dieu créa … Laflaque!, Virginie, Tout sur moi, and the RBO Bye-Byes, but two of its biggest shows won’t be added because Radio-Canada doesn’t want to go through whatever trouble is necessary to secure the appropriate rights.

I could understand if this was a 20-year-old TV show, conceived long before the Internet existed, and which has some rights holders who can’t be reached or something, but surely RadCan can come to some arrangement with its own shows to clear online on-demand rights for new episodes.

Right?

UPDATE (Feb. 16): La Presse explores producers’ worries about Tou.tv eating into their revenue.

| Humour, Montreal, TV, Video

Set phasers to “nosebleed”

You know what, I have to admit the Olympic Stadium actually makes kind of a cool futuristic-looking spaceship.

This is the starship Entrecrise of Stade Trek, part of the end-of-year special of Et dieu créa … Laflaque. It and the other new year’s eve special programming of Radio-Canada (Infoman, Tout le monde en parle) is available for online streaming until the end of January.

| Montreal, Sports, TV

Alouettes parade to get live coverage on TV

Championships in Montreal are more rare than we’d like them to be, yet this year we’ve had two – the Impact and the Alouettes. (And with the Habs being shut out at home to the Leafs, a trifecta seems unlikely.)

Wednesday sees the players and fans meet to celebrate for the victory parade down Ste. Catherine St., from Crescent to Jeanne-Mance starting at 11:40am.

Surprisingly, despite it being a local event (and one coming with little advance notice), there’s going to be actual live coverage of it by local television.

Here’s what’s been announced:

  • Global (CKMI) will have live coverage from 11:30am to 1:30pm (Mike LeCouteur with The Gazette’s Herb Zurkowsky and the Q’s Ken Connors). It will also be streaming the parade live at globalmontreal.com
  • CTV (CFCF) will have live coverage from noon to 1:30pm, preempting its entire noon newscast. Sports reporters will be in the crowd, Mutsumi Takahashi and Randy Tieman at the end of the route. Lori Graham and Todd van der Heyden will be in the parade itself. It will livestream the entire parade at montreal.ctv.ca
  • CBC (CBMT) has no announced live coverage
  • Radio-Canada will not have live TV coverage on the main network, but will be livestreaming the parade at radio-canada.ca/sports
  • TVA and V have nothing announced as far as live coverage
  • RDI will have a live special from 11:30am to 1:30pm. Simon Durivage hosts with Marc André Masson, Jean St-Onge, Jacinthe Taillon, Antoine Deshaies and former Als player Bruno Heppell
  • LCN has not announced anything, but expect it to give good coverage to the parade
  • RDS will have live parade coverage from 11:30am to 2pm (it’s the only network to actually change its electronic and online schedule to reflect the coverage) with David Arsenault, Marc Labrecque, Pierre Vercheval and Denis Casavant.
  • TSN has not announced anything, but considering their current plan for noon is World Championship Darts…

So that’s four channels carrying live TV specials (CFCF, CKMI, RDI and RDS), and three sources for live online streaming, at least.

Maybe what’s surprising is that, in this local TV death spiral, I find this surprising.

(Of course, you won’t be watching the parade on TV because you’ll be on Ste. Catherine St. celebrating, right?)

UPDATE: CTV Montreal and RDS have archived footage of the parade and party afterward. The Gazette and Rue Frontenac have put together artisty videos.

| Media

Battle of the MS Paint

According to La Presse, Radio-Canada is considering a French version of Battle of the Blades. That’s interesting news.

Blades

But I’m not sure about the picture they used to illustrate it.

I realize cutouts like this are used often in printed newspapers without an indication that the photo has been manipulated, but it’s clearly called for here, no?

I mean, some people notice these things.

UPDATE (Nov. 13): After being alerted to the error, Cyberpresse has fixed the image. Apparently an online editor took the cutout (used for a section front) and didn’t think to replace it with the original photo.

| TV

The end of the Bye-Bye saga?

Remember Bye-Bye 2008, the Radio-Canada New Year’s Eve special?

You must remember it. There were dozens of articles written in January about it.

Anyway, the special was criticized for crossing the lines a few times, particularly with jokes about Barack Obama, Jonathan Roy, Nathalie Simard and anglophones. Hundreds of complaints were registered with the CRTC, whom we learned is responsible for regulating such things with the CBC.

Because of the nature of these complaints, the CRTC decided to do something a bit unusual and referred the case to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. The CBSC is an independent body setup by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters that judges just these sorts of things. But the CAB is an association of private broadcasters, and the CBC/Radio-Canada isn’t part of it. Instead, the CRTC itself must judge violations of ethics codes and anti-discrimination laws by the public broadcaster.

The CBSC met in March and in May it released a decision that judged Radio-Canada to be in violation on three points:

  • Jokes against blacks, particularly the sketch involving Denis Lévesque and Barack Obama as well as comments from Jean-François Mercier about Obama being easier to shoot in front of the White House.
  • The portrayal of violence against women in a sketch involving the family of Patrick Roy.
  • The rebroadcast of the show the next evening without viewer advisories.

But it dismissed a bunch of other complaints, including:

  • Jokes about Nathalie Simard
  • Jokes about anglophones
  • Jokes about the poor
  • Jokes about immigrants, dépanneur owners and Indian call centres
  • Jokes about Julie Couillard
  • Jokes about Céline Dion
  • Jokes about politicians
  • Jokes about General Motors

The CSBC didn’t call for any pennance for these misdeeds. Instead, the report went to the CRTC for it to judge.

On Monday, the CRTC issued its decision (with accompanying press release) that upheld most of what the CBSC judged, with one notable exception: no fault was found with the Patrick Roy/Jonathan Roy sketch, which the CRTC judged did not glorify violence and did not show it in a positive light that might suggest it was promoting it.

The CRTC has called for Radio-Canada to issue a full, unequivocal apology (RadCan and the show’s creators have made a lot of “I’m sorry but” statements) and put procedures in place so that this doesn’t happen again, but no fines or other punishments have been levied for these violations.

That apology will no doubt generate another news cycle for this story (RadCan’s immediate response was to say they’re studying the decision), and then we’ll be finally done with it.

At least, until the next Bye-Bye appears on the horizon. New Year’s Eve is only four months away.

More coverage:

| Radio, TV

CRTC Roundup: Videotron must closed-caption porn

We made fun of this a bit when it came out, but there was a serious policy question being asked by Videotron: Should cable companies be required to spend money closed-captioning on-demand pornography and programming aimed at preschool children who can’t read?

The month, the CRTC ruled that, well, yes, they should.

While you might think it common sense that such programs should be excluded from closed-captioning requirements, the CRTC said that children should have access to captioning so they can learn to read, and parents should have access to what their children watch. There wasn’t much discussion about the porn angle, namely that nobody cares what people are saying in pornographic movies.

In any case, the CRTC said Videotron hadn’t made a case that it’s so financially strapped that it can’t afford captioning costs, so the application was denied.

Konrad’s oopsie

The CRTC chairman said sorry for saying that conventional broadcasters like CTV and Global wouldn’t commit to taking carriage fees from cable and satellite providers and putting all that money into local programming. It turns out they were ready to make just such a commitment.

That certainly makes the TV people look better. But what guarantee would we have that they wouldn’t take back their existing funding to local stations now that this new source of revenue is available to them?

Bye Bye was wrong

You hate to still be talking about this, but the judgment is in about Radio-Canada’s Bye-Bye: It really was racist. The CRTC passed on complaints to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council and asked them to judge the show. The CBSC normally rules only on private broadcasting, but the CRTC asked them for their advice (if anything, this shows that there’s no reason the CBSC shouldn’t also deal with complaints about public broadcasting).

The CBSC’s ruling dismissed most of the complaints (though some only barely), including those about jokes on anglos, the poor, immigrants, dépanneur owners, Indian call centre operators, Julie Couillard, Céline Dion, politicians, and a single complaint saying they were unfair to GM. It also said that the show did not go over the line in its treatment of Nathalie Simard, and didn’t even hint at the abuse she suffered at the hands of Guy Cloutier, father of Bye Bye hotst Véronique Cloutier.

The council did rule that three things crossed the line:

  • Jokes against blacks, particularly the sketch involving Denis Lévesque and Barack Obama as well as comments from Jean-François Mercier about Obama being easier to shoot in front of the White House.
  • The portrayal of violence against women in a sketch involving the family of Patrick Roy.
  • The rebroadcast of the show the next evening without viewer advisories.

The racist jokes, the council said, were gratuitous and abusive. Though Radio-Canada, the show’s producers, its writers and its performers did not intend to foster racism and intended for the comments to be ironic, the council ruled that the context didn’t make this sufficiently clear, and the comments could easily have been taken at face value. It brought up a number of previous cases to support its view that comedic irony isn’t a blank cheque to make racist comments.

It’s hard not to agree with the council’s well-thought-out decision. Bye Bye didn’t intend to be racist, but it did intend to shock. And when you’re spouting racist comments just to shock people, how is that different from just being racist?

This decision is worth reading if only for the words “a rather cartoonish rabbit-like act of intercourse.”

Technically, this is just a recommendation to the CRTC. It is up to the commission to decide if it agrees, and if so what kind of sanction it will impose. Normally, private broadcasters are required to air a notice of the decision to viewers. We’ll see if the CRTC orders Radio-Canada to do the same.

More power for radio

It’s going to be a bit easier to listen to some out-of-town radio stations thanks to some CRTC approvals of power increases:

  • CKOY 104.5 FM in Sherbrooke, the sister station to Montreal’s CKOI, gets a huge power boost to up to 50,000 Watts. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy to hear, especially with CBC Radio One’s second 100W transmitter at 104.7 FM in the west end. But if you’re in the Eastern townships and had trouble hearing the station, you should have much less of that now.
  • CJLM 103.5 FM in Joliette gets a modest boost from 3,000 to 4,500 Watts, which will help people on the north side of the island and on the north shore.
  • For those on the south side, they’ll be hearing FM 103.3 in Longueuil, which in the same decision saw its allowed power output grow more than five-fold. It’s still a low-power community radio station, but maybe now it won’t disappear off the dial when I hit the Plateau.

Haitian station wants change of frequency

CJWI, a Haitian AM station currently on 1610 AM, wants to change its frequency to 1410, which is where CFMB used to be. The move would put CJWI in the regular, non-extended AM band, allowing people with older radios to hear it. It also wants to increase its output power from 1kW to 10kW, and relocate its transmitter.

Rogers, small cable companies get nannied

The Canadian Cable Systems Alliance asked the CRTC to intervene in stalled negotiations it was having on behalf of small cable companies across the country with Rogers over its SportsNet service. The CRTC has the power to intervene in these cases, but it prefers not to. However, since regulations require some cable companies to carry SportsNet (and will until new regulations take effect in 2011 that deregulate the cable sports channels), it decided it must step in here. Details are kept in confidence to protect both businesses, so that’s about all we know.

Slice wants less CanCon

Canwest-owned Slice channel has noticed that its Canadian content requirements are much higher than what other specialty channels require, so it wants to get the same deal. It’s asking that its CanCon minimum programming requirement be dropped from 82.5% to 60%, and that it be forced to spend only 45% instead of 71% of revenues on Canadian programming.

City wants less CanCon movies

Citytv has asked the CRTC for a change in license that would eliminate a requirement to air 100 hours of Canadian movies each year – which works out to about a movie a week. Rogers (which owns City now) argues that it is the only conventional broadcaster that has this requirement and it shouldn’t be singled out. Canadian movie-makers say Rogers has pulled a bait and switch, praising Canadian movies when it bought the network and now quietly wanting to get rid of them.

Want Al-Jazeera?

The CRTC is opening up the can of worms about allowing Al-Jazeera English into the country. The commission had previously approved the Arabic-language version of the network, with unique requirements that distributors monitor and censor its content, something that requires far too much work for the cable and satellite companies.

The commission is considering adding the English channel to eligible foreign networks that cable and satellite can add to their lineups, but it wants comments from Canadians who might be opposed to it. They specifically want evidence of abusive comments, with tapes if possible.

More specialty channels

Conventional TV may be dying, but specialty channels are exploding like nobody’s business. The CRTC is holding a hearing on July 21 where it will listen to proposals for new networks:

  • Black Entertainment Television Canada (English and French) – self-explanatory, I would imagine.
  • Reality TV – A Canwest proposal for reality shows, DIY programs and scripted reality shows. This network was originally approved by the CRTC in 2005, but expired before Canwest could launch it, forcing them to start over from scratch.
  • AMET-TV, an African and Afro-Caribbean-themed channel that carries programming in English (70%), French (20%) and African languages (10%)
  • New Tang Dynasty Television Canada HD, a generalist network mainly in Mandarin but also other Chinese languages.

CPAC wants to be patriotic

CPAC, the politics channel that carries House of Commons proceedings among other things, is asking for permission to expand its boundaries on July 1 of each year. It wants to add three programming categories which would allow it to carry musical performance, variety, entertainment and related programming from Canada Day celebrations on Parliament Hill and elsewhere. A reasonable request if I’ve ever heard one, though I don’t think there are similarly specific exceptions to such rules on other channels.

A bold move

The CBC was in the process of getting slapped by the CRTC because it was violating its license with respect to Bold, a specialty channel. Formerly Country Canada, its license says it should air programming directed toward rural Canadians. But since then it’s basically been a dumping ground for whatever content the network wants to put there.

After the CRTC called a hearing, the CBC waved the white flag. It has proposed a license amendment, though one that would keep the rural focus.

Good news, bad news for Olympics

Following a request from the CRTC chairman, CTV and the CBC have been in talks about using CBC stations to broadcast French-language Olympics coverage for the tiny, tiny portion of Canadians who:

  • are unilingual francophones
  • don’t live in Quebec or within range of a TQS station
  • don’t have cable or satellite TV service
  • don’t have broadband Internet access
  • AND want to watch the Olympics in French on TV

You’d think this number would be so small as to be negligible (about 10,000 apparently fit the first three criteria), but in the spirit of political correctness, CTV (which owns the broadcast rights and is part of a giant consortium that’s covering the games) is looking at using some CBC stations to retransmit its TQS/RDS Olympics coverage over the air.

The problem is that the CBC isn’t crazy about donating the stations and getting nothing in return. Specifically, the debate is over ad revenue: CTV wants to keep it all (minus some compensation for what they would have had with their regular programming), and CBC thinks that’s crazy.

On the plus side, Corus has joined the giant consortium, which currently includes CTV (with TSN and RDS), TQS, Rogers and APTN. Corus will have Olympics coverage (though it doesn’t sound like much) on CKAC Sports as well as updates on CKOI, Info 690 and 98.5FM in Montreal.

In other news

And finally, not that anyone doubted it would happen, but the CRTC has allowed CBC Television and Télévision Radio-Canada to continue to operate for another year.

| Sports, TV

RadCan to air Quebec university football games

For those who think Radio-Canada hasn’t been doing enough to fulfill its mandate as a broadcaster of sports since the last Soirée du Hockey, the Queen’s network has announced that it will air live telecasts of Quebec University Football League games, including the annual Shaughnessy Cup matchup between the McGill Redmen and Concordia Stingers, and playoff games including the national Vanier Cup championship game.

Last year, these games aired on RDS.

The schedule includes two other games involving Concordia University, but no others involving McGill.

Which is as it should be because the Redmen suck.

Go Stingers!

| Montreal, Radio, Sports, TV

Impact broadcast schedule same as last year

Impact scarf

The broadcast schedule for this year’s Impact games has come out, and it’s exactly the same as last year:

  • Radio-Canada will broadcast nine home games and one away game, as well as all playoff games
  • CKAC and the Team 990 will broadcast all 15 home games, two Canadian Championship games at Saputo Stadium (against the Vancouver Whitecaps and Toronto FC) as well as all playoff games

Both press releases talk about how the Impact has become more mainstream in Montreal and has attracted a lot of fans, especially thanks to its CONCACAF Champions League run this year.

But the news is still disappointing to me. None of the broadcasters has increased its commitment, and none of them will be broadcasting regular-season away games (besides the one on RadCan). Choosing only to broadcast home games during the regular season no doubt saves a lot of money, but it sounds pretty half-assed.

So for another season, Impact fans who want to catch away games will be forced to fork over money watch it online for free at USLLive.com

| Media, Radio, TV

CBC cuts 800 jobs

560 at Canwest

600 at Sun Media

100 at Rogers

105 at CTV, plus another 118 at A-Channel

In an environment where about one journalist in six in Canada has lost their job, that number just got a lot worse. CBC/Radio-Canada announced 800 job cuts today (about half split between the two sides to maintain political correctness) as part of an effort to balance a $171-million budget deficit. Even then, most of the money will come not from job cuts but from sales of assets (CBC owns quite a bit of land, for example, including the Maison Radio-Canada downtown, which it is hoping to convert into condos) and other vaguely-described programming cuts. Senior executives’ salaries are also being reduced by 20%.

Some statistics:

  • 393 cuts in English services, 336 cuts in French services, 70 cuts at the corporate level
  • 80% of cuts will come at the network level, 20% at regions. The CBC says it won’t shut down any regional stations
  • 17% of cuts are in radio, 83% in television. No plans to introduce advertising on CBC Radio, and the television schedule is to remain “largely intact” with no additional U.S. programming

Perhaps most telling, the CBC’s Hubert Lacroix said the network wants to transition “from being a TV provider to a provider of video content” (and similarly for radio). Not quite sure what that means exactly, but it sounds nice, doesn’t it?

| Blogosphere, TV, Video

Radio-Canada.ca launches Mère Indigne web series

Chroniques d'une Mère Indigne

Caroline Allard has been busy. The blogueuse-vedette known as the Mère Indigne who turned her blog about parenting into a book was on Tout le monde en parle Sunday night and Christianne Charette Monday morning talking about the sequel to the book and a new online video series on radio-canada.ca that launched Monday night starring Marie-Hélène Thibault. (The fact that these are all part of the Radio-Canada family is a coincidence, I’m sure.)

You can also see a video interview with Allard on the series website, as well as a short piece explaining the series.

Unfortunately, Radio-Canada is using Microsoft Silverlight for its video, which meant I had to install that software and then switch from Firefox to Safari in order to see it. Is Flash-based video still too difficult? Or Quicktime? Or YouTube?