Showing posts with label CTV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CTV. Show all posts

Thursday, September 10, 2009

823...American Idol Update

Since CTV canned Canadian Idol all we have is FOX TV's American Idol and American Idol has added a new judge.

Replacing Paula Abdul is Ellen DeGeneres the semi funny host of her own daytime talk show, Ellen.

Go back to fretting about the election.

WFDS

Monday, August 10, 2009

653...Mike Bullard Is Back

Yeah, I know, wow.

And in one of the weirdest ways ever.

Talk820, Hamilton's last place radio station, announced earlier today that Mike Bullard, he of the eponymous late night CTV talk show that was on the tube during the latter part of the previous millennium and the early days of this one, has been signed to their roster of talent. Mr. Bullard is one of the finest stand ups in history, totally off the cuff, a brilliant talent and he will be great on radio.

But here is where it gets weird: the station's programmer, Drew Keith said "Mike is a great addition to our team. We look forward to his unique approach on topics, while Mike's comedy will make for a lot of fun and laughter on the drive home."

Wait, that is not where it gets weird.

Here is where it gets weird.

From reading the above effusive quote I assumed [I know, never assume] that Mr. Bullard was going to be the afternoon drive guy on Talk820. To quote John Pinette: "Nay, nay." He is going to be doing one measly hour of drive time, 5 to 6 pm, one day a week, Vendredi. As I am fond of saying, oy vey. Sixty minutes a week, less news, sports, spots, weather and traffic.

Weird.

WFDS “Mike is a great addition to our team. We look forward to his unique approach on topics, while Mike’s comedy will make for a lot of fun and laughter on the drive home.” “Mike is a great addition to our team. We look forward to his unique approach on topics, while Mike’s comedy will make for a lot of fun and laughter on the drive home.”

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

624...Larry Finds Out Now, Part Two, Local TV

When you read and hear and see how vital local TV is to your town think about this.

It is 10 04 am on Wednesday August 5, 2009 and Mayor O'Brien will be facing the music in a few minutes in the biggest court case in the history of Ottawa.

We have 15 or more over the air stations in Ottawa.

Your airwaves by the way.

None of them are reporting live from the courthouse.

None.

Ottawa's NewsLeader, CJOH, thinks that Twice In A Lifetime, a bad 10 year old Canadian show, Al Waxman's last kick at the can, is more important than reporting on the Mayor of Ottawa's verdict.

CTV's other station in town, the A Channel, thinks that the light weight American talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, is more relevant to the community than reporting on the Mayor of Ottawa's verdict.

CBC English is showing Wilbur; CBC French is showing Des Kiwis; Global is running an informercial; TVA a poorly dubbed version of the 1970's show Columbo and; TQS has another dubbed US show, which must have cost them tens of dollars coz I don't even know what show it is and trust me, if I don't know it, well, you get the idea.

When you read and hear and see how vital local TV is to your town think about this.

WFDS

Friday, July 31, 2009

604...To Have An Election Or Not Have An Election

That, Bill Shakespeare, is the question.

In the Montreal Gazette this morning there are a couple of stories that indicate Stephen Harper, the current Prime Minister, does not want to go, wants to wait until the economy gets rosier, the Olympics give him and his people lots of photo opportunities, the war thing gets straightened out.

The next PM, Michael Ignatieff, told CTV that "...it is getting tougher and tougher..." to work with the government. His hawkishness is a clear departure from his actions of a couple of months ago when he choose not to topple the Tory government.

See you in September.

WFDS

Thursday, July 9, 2009

478...Another Tory Minister Bites The Dust

Sort of anyhow.

In the much-ado-about-nothing category, Beverly Thompson on CTV's Canada AM this morning reported that "Minister of Tourism Diane Ablonczy has been stripped of her responsibilities for a key federal tourism program. And at least one Conservative MP says it's because of her decision to grant $400,000 to Toronto's Gay Pride Parade. The program in question has now been handed to Industry Minister Tony Clement."

Geez, Louise.

WFDS

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

458...Bad News

As published in today's paper, a national poll conducted by The Strategic Counsel for The Globe and Mail and CTV, sadly shows Stephen Harper's Conservative Party has the support of 34 per cent of respondents, a one-point edge over the Liberals who are, ah, let me check my online calculator. 33.

The Dips are at 15.

Pollster Peter Donolo says that the numbers show that Michael Ignatieff's honeymoon as new leader of the Liberals is over, c'est toute, done like dinner.

In reaction to that Mr. Ignatieff will go on vacation shortly after giving the Isaiah Berlin lecture Wednesday in London, England, at the Liberal International, the world organization of liberal and progressive democratic political parties.

Our beloved Prime Minister will be off to Italy for a G8 meeting and then to The Vatican to chill out with Pope Benedict XVI.

WFDS

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

318...MP's Are Going To Make The CRTC Decide

What to do to save local TV.

I mean "save" local TV.

Jennifer Ditchburn writes that "The Canadian Press has learned that a majority report by the House of Commons heritage committee, to be tabled Friday, makes no recommendation about whether broadcasters should be able to charge cable companies for carrying their signals, referred to as 'fee for carriage.'''

My stand is that the CRTC should take a close look at the American model which only allows local channels on the cable systems in the community that they serve. As it stands now I get, and I like this, don't get me wrong, network affiliates from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back. What CTV, CBC, E! et. al. are doing is cannibalizing the industry. In my town, Ottawa, we have 16 over the air channels but virtually all of them are repeaters of Toronto signals. If CITY, TVO, Global and on and on want to have a presence in the Ottawa-Gatineau market that is great but they should have a local operation running local news, programming and so on. It gets worse in markets like London, Kitchener, Sudbury, North Bay, Thunder Bay and and and and.

TV tells stories. Watch local American stations and you will get a feel for the community that the station is intended to serve through its programming and the fact that it offers local business advertising at reasonable rates. When watching Canadian TV note that most of the advertising, even on local stations, is for national or regional stores and product lines.

It is time to save and enhance local TV, create jobs and although it is difficult for us to admit that the damn Yankees do stuff right, the Americans do do local media, including TV, better than we do, in small and big markets.

WFDS

Thursday, June 4, 2009

206...Minister Raitt, CTV and Binder Number 8

As you may have heard, read, seen, Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt's office finally picked up binder number eight after it sat in CTV's Ottawa bureau for nearly a week.

Nearly a week.

Oh my God.

But, here is my question, and, perhaps it has been answered already, if so, inform me, but, why did it take almost a week to break the story?

How long was it before the crack CTV news team realized they had a prize in their midst?

These are merely questions I pose, merely questions.

WFDS

Thursday, May 28, 2009

158...Thought Police Strike Again; Poor Stephane

The Canadian Standards Broadcast Council, your Thought Police in action, see Post 150 for more on these National Socialists' work, have sanctimoniously decided, Juliet O'Neill reports in this mornings' National Post, that "CTV was unfair and unethical when it broadcast outtakes of an interview with then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion, who repeatedly did not understand a question, during the election campaign last fall..."

Uh, and I am wearing a Stephane Dion hat as I write this, may be CTV was being unfair and may be their ethics were questionable but, so what? To remind you, Steve Murphy, anchor at ATV Halifax, asked-the-man-who-would-have-been-so-much-better-as-Prime-Minister-than-the-guy-we-have-now "If you were prime minister now, what would you have done about the economy and this crisis that Mr. Harper has not done?"

Mr. Dion had a brain pause and then another and then another and it was all on tape and the tape made it to the broadcast waves. End of story.

One would think. But it only takes one complaint to get the CSBC Anti Free Speech Squad to go into action.

Again the CSBC has decided that they are going to decide what is funny, what is satire, what is right in this country.

They are a cancer and anti free speech. You have to decide, do you want to live in a country, and we are perilously close to living there, where all speech is carefully constructed as so not to offend? Or do you want to live in a country with freedom? Free speech is there, or should be there, to defend those that colour outside the lines. And certainly someone who asks a question as benign as the one Mr. Murphy asked should not be chastised. One would think.

Imagine how much broader the discourse in this country would be with more voices, especially on the local levels, like they have in that country below us. Left, right and center. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Drew Lane, Jay Severin, Sean Hannity, John Stewart, Steven Colbert, Allan Colmes, Mancow Muller and on and on and on. In this country, because of self righteous groups like the CSBC, freedom of expression on air is virtually non existent and none of the above would be able to work the way they do, which is often in an outrageous manner.

Voltaire said "Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write".

The CSBC takes a different tact.

Bullies.

WFDS

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

131...Shouldn't They Be Paying Rogers/Shaw Etc?

The TV stations that is.

If you have been watching the box, CTV/AChannel have a concerted effort to make cable companies pay to carry them. Which, of course will mean you and I will have to pick up the tab coz, dead or not, Uncle Ted Rogers is going to pass the cost on to me. Ditto Mr. Shaw and Mr. Cogeco.

But, but, buttttttttttttttttttttt, here is what the World Famous Dan Shields doesn't understand. Isn't TV just advertising surrounded by programming? And isn't the more households that have access to your station, your programs and your ads the better?

Doesn't it follow that the cable companies are giving channels like A and CTV the opportunity to reach more households and therefore increase their audience?

Just asking.

Don't hate on me.

WFDS

Monday, May 18, 2009

127...You know how when...

...a panhandler asks you for money for food, he is usually/probably going to spend it on booze, dope or nicotine?

Same thing with A Channel and CTV Ottawa. They are running these ads talking about how important local TV is [it is] and how they are there for the community and so on.

Imagine my surprise when, today, Monday May 18, 2009, I turn on CTV Ottawa for the noon news to keep in touch with my community and so on and see some band I never heard of in concert. For the full newshour. So, it seems, like the aforementioned panhandler, they say one thing but do quite the other.

Guess holidays are not for the community.

WFDS

Thursday, May 14, 2009

116...Remedial Media

Watching CJOH/CTV Ottawa's Noon News package and, geez, would someone please tell Michael O'Byrne what commas are for.

It is not a race dude.

WFDS

Monday, March 9, 2009

24...Americans are smarter than we are, Part 3

At least when it comes to local TV.

To get you up to speed on this, last week CTV decided that they couldn't make money with the number one TV station, A Channel Windsor, in a market of about .25 million adults 12 plus, directly adjacent to a market of 3.8 million 12 plus, Detroit. They also claim they cannot make money with other properties including the only locally licensed stations in Wingham, London, and Pembroke, Ontario. The Pembroke station has profile as a local station, repeater and all, in Ottawa/Gatineau, the number four market in Canada with a metro of about 1.0 million adults and London is a top ten market of about 400 K, 12 plus.

E!, an arm of Global, claims it cannot make money with its Hamilton station, which has repeaters all over Ontario and is ensconced in Canada's number nine market, with a 12 plus population of over half a million, a population that makes it a top 100 market in North America and so on and so and so on.

How is this so?

How can you lose money in a business that is, to quote the first Lord Thomson of Fleet, a license to print money?

Especially when you have the only game in town in a lot of towns.

Get out your clicker and play along with me.

They get greedy, they do and try to cut costs by getting rid of local programming. Contrast what Canadian stations do to what the stations in Detroit do. Local 4 and 7WXYZ and FOX2 run like a zillion hours a day of local news and make bags of money off it and it is the same in virtually every market in the States. I ask you this: how do you make more money out of your store if you close it? And when you watch the local news it is L O C A L or localized. In a lot of respects we are such a backwards nation. If the airwaves are public and TV stations are the servants of the people isn't tons of local content the way to go?

Most stations in the US are privately owned affiliates of networks, for example, CBS has 200 plus affiliates but only owns and operates 16 sticks; they pay the affiliates to run their programming, but have to be sensitive to the wants and needs of the Heartland and Dixie and the Northwest and and and so, unlike a lot of the Toronto centric CanCon crap that we try to force fee the populace [remote please] they are market driven, driven to serve their markets.

TV and radio is about getting stories out; the fact is there are not enough stations in this country. Just look across the water from Kingston, is Watertown, New York, 90 000 people 12 plus, about 2/3 the size of Kingston but, snap: 12 commercial radio stations, 5 TV stations. Kingston, one local TV station and like six or seven local radios. Heck, good old battered steel town, Hamilton, seven times the size and yet only 1 TV station, which, because of greed, instead of dominating Hamilton and making bags of money, is trying to be everything everywhere in Ontario [remember ON TV?] and ends up being a non factor everywhere. Where are the local stories being told?

When you watch Detroit, Watertown, Buffalo local TV, you see local stories and local ads. Little guys are shut out in Canada; it is go big or fold up thy tent.

Back to my fave story: A Channel in Windsor is the number one station in Essex County, which, if cleaved off from Detroit would be the about the 110th biggest market in North America and when combined with Detroit is the 10th or 11th and they cannot figure out how to make money with the number one station in a town that size? Oy vey, what about these things called commercials? Or, infomercials?

You have to spend money to make money; there are larger on air staffs in the Motor City and that talent in Detroit is making exponentially more money than talent in Toronto. T.O. is a much bigger market, but less competitive and less money and less money and less competition means less talented talent. You have the internet; listen to Toronto radio personalities and compare them to those down the 401 in Detroit. You get what you pay for.


The big danger for Canada is that TV is a reflection of the people who are consuming it; when I watch Detroit/Seattle/Buffalo TV I see those towns reflected in the local news, which is L O C A L; when I see Canadian TV it is a reflection of Toronto and how people from the Big Smoke perceive the rest of the country.

WFDS