Global Flops Again.

If you're reading this, producer and lineup editor of Global's supper hour newscast, you screwed up again.  Why was Tiger Woods winning the Masters today your lead story today?  Woods is an American, and the Masters take place in Augusta, Georgia.  Bad weather in Eastern North America and Monday's Alberta provincial election are stories that should have been given priority.  Woods should have been placed near the end of the program. 

Rethink Your Priorities.

I regularly watch Global's supper hour news, but there are times I wonder at their lineup editor.  The opening story tonight?  The firing of NBC TV personality Matt Lauer over sexual harassment and assault allegations.  Why was this the lead story on a Canadian newscast?  They didn't even have the excuse that Lauer's an expat Canadian, as are a number of US media personalities.  So why was this the opening story?  Why not the much more important story to Canadians, the appointment of Sheilah Martin to the Supreme Court of Canada, replacing retiring Justice Beverley McLachlin?  I'm sure some Canadian celeb will turn out to be a creep in due order, and give them their required sleeze quotient.

Endangered Species.

Walking near the Bessborough Hotel today I saw something I hadn't before, and it's very likely I won't again.  It was a vehicle belonging to Sun News Network.  I was tempted to knock on the passenger side window to ask the young lady sitting inside why she was working for them, but of course I'm not stupid enough to do something like that.

SNN may not be around much longer.  The attempt by parent media company Quebecor, owner of various Canadian media properties, to create a Canadian equivalent of Fox News, has proven unsuccessful.  Viewership numbers have been tiny, and requests to the CRTC for a change in their carriage status on cable, which Quebecor has claimed to improve the station's potential audience,  have been rejected.   My question is why SNN  hasn't tried advertising on other TV networks and the print media in an effort to increase their audience, as I've seen no evidence they have.

Thumbs Down, Globe And Mail.

I was going to comment on a news article on your site today.  Unfortunately you want me to register.  You need to get with the times and allow your comments section to be logged into by readers using their existing accounts on places like Google and Facebook.  Your competitors do.

Bucking The Trend.

There's been a lot of talk in recent years about the future of the print newspaper.  Even The New York Times has faced questions about its very existence.  But Saskatoon's daily paper, the Star Phoenix, apparently doesn't have to worry.  An article in today's edition states that readership is actually increasing.  A survey by Newspaper Audience Database Inc.  shows that readership for both the print and online editions has grown more than 8 percent in 2011, the highest gain of any Canadian newspaper.  Newspaper readership in Canada reportedly remains high, with more than half of Canadians over 18 reading a print or online newspaper daily.  It would seem people find something in the written word they can't get from video newscasts or things posted to Youtube.

Meanwhile, a new paper is about to hit Saskatoon streets.  Paper boxes have begun to appear for a Saskatoon edition of Toronto based  "commuter" newspaper Metro, which will launch its debut issue April 2nd.  However, it seems they may want to be a bit careful where they put their boxes.  The other day I saw the maintenance staff at the Centre at Circle and 8th grab pick up and haul away a Metro box that had been placed by the bus shelters at the bus mall in the rear of Centre East.  I'm guessing they didn't bother to get the permission of mall management to put it there.  Not a good way to get in the good graces of a potential advertiser.

False Advertising.

This site calls itself the Canadian Free Press.  Yet the front page contains virtually nothing dealing with Canada.  Rather it's a bunch of US political stuff, much of it of obvious cluelessness, such as 'Birther' nonsense.  They should call the site Shameless American Right Wing Fanboyzone or something like that.  On the other hand they do say at the top of the page "...Because Without America There Is No Free World."

I Thought There Might Be A Loophole.

Under Canadian election law radio and TV stations can't broadcast election results until the polls have closed in the area they service.  The idea is to prevent voters from being unduly influenced by election results elsewhere in the country.  As a result the national CTV and CBC news channels are currently blocked here in Saskatchewan, where the polls won't close for just over an hour.  But the thought came to mind that the Sun News Channel might be accessable, since it's a new channel, and therefore whoever arranges such things might have missed it.  But it too is currently blocked. 

Frankly it wouldn't matter to me if I knew the results elsewhere in the country before I voted.  My mind isn't going to be changed on the day of the election.

Heat Without Light.

If you're in Saskatoon and subscribe to Shaw digital cable you can see the new Sun News Network channel on channel 177, and apparently this applies in other markets as well.  A press release indicates the channel will be free for the first six months.  I won't be watching it given the stupid BS about "political correctness run amok" in one of their ads.  Funnily they played this promo right after a Liberal Party campaign ad, but presumably they have to play campaign ads no matter who offers them.  It will be interesting to see how well this channel actually does, as Conrad Black's attempt to create a right wing national newspaper, the National Post, has never made money.

Glutton For Punishment.

Doug Camilli of the Montreal Gazette does a gossip column for Canwest News Service.  In today's column he covered Patrick Stewart being made a Knight Bachelor by the Queen.  In it he refers to Stewart's "lucrative but laughable years on Star Trek:  The Next Generation."  I can't help but think he must have a masochistic streak given the possible response from Trek fans.  Personally the last thing I'd want to encourage is hundreds of irate e-mails flooding my mailbox.

Narrow Perspective.

Get too interested in the world of celebrities and you might lose sight of the rest of the world.  A brief article about today's ABC Nightline interview with Jesse James caught my eye.  Kat Angus of Canwest News Service describes James' comment that he's currently the most hated man in the world as "the understatement of the century."  I wonder if Angus is serious or mocking here.  If the former that strikes me as rather dumb.  A large percentage of people on this planet have no clue who James is, let alone hate him.  Even a lot of those who do just roll their eyes at the reports on his stupidity, having better things to engage their emotions.  And taken at face value James likely isn't even the most hated man in America these days given how many people have a hate on against Barack Obama.

Too Much Tiger.

Canadian newsmedia, you're spending too much time on Tiger Woods and his apparent fooling around. Especially you, Global. His problems did not belong in the opening slot of your supper hour newscast, or indeed in the first half of the broadcast. Important things belong there, like Harper in China and the US troop surge for Afghanistan. The failings of celebs should be left mainly to the entertainment news shows unless they do something extremely bad like cause a death.

Don Whitman, RIP.

One of the distinctive voices of Canadian televison has been silenced. Don Whitman has died of cancer in Winnipeg at age 71. Born in Herbert, Saskatchewan Whitman worked on radio in Saskatoon and North Battleford before joing the CBC in 1961. Whitman went on to be a fixture of the CBC's sports broadcasts, and his long career included being on hand to report on the terrorist attack on the Israeli residence at the 1972 Summer Olympics and doing play by play when the Saskatchewan Roughriders won the 1989 Grey Cup in the dying moments of the game. His death comes only a month after his former CBC Sports colleague Don Chevrier passed away.

Don Chevrier, RIP.

A familiar TV voice to many Canadian sports fans has been silenced. Don Chevrier died today in his home in Palm Harbor, Florida, apparently as a result of a recently diagnosed blood disorder. He was 69. He worked for various Canadian networks, including CTV and CBC, and was the broadcast voice for the Toronto Blue Jays and Ottawa Senators. This comes on the heels of reports that Don Wittman, another veteran of Canadian sports broadcasting and contemporary of Chevrier's, is currently fighting cancer.

Confirmation.

This may come as old news to some visitors to this blog but I'm going to write about it anyway.

One thing I'd noticed of late visiting the magazine area of the Saskatoon Public Library is that a new issue of the right wing news magazine Western Standard hadn't turned up in a bit. I finally got around to checking out my suspicions today and sure enough publisher Ezra Levant announced October 5th that they would be going over to a strictly digital format. Frankly I wasn't hugely surprised. There had been talk for a good while that the magazine wasn't doing well, especially after they sent out an e-mail to various folks asking for unpaid volunteers who might be interested in working on the magazine.

Looking for the website on Google I came across a few comments on Western Standard's demise. There were of course the expected nonsense about horrible socialists and left wing media. The more sensible comments generally said things I agreed with. Most obvious is the problem of starting any sort of magazine in our increasingly online oriented age. There was also the suggestion that some of the big media outlets have drifted right and undercut the market for an openly right wing magazine in Canada. You can see that with Macleans, the Canadian equivalent of Time. In the past while it has gotten more right wing in its editorial stance and choice of contributors, such as the signing on of Andrew Coyne as national editor and columnist.

I also wonder if perhaps the magazine wasn't Canadian enough. I was never a big fan of Alberta Report, the right wing magazine that expired in 2003 and for which the Western Standard was intended to be a replacement for. But to me at least it seemed to have a lot more Canadian flavour to it. Western Standard had too much syndicated American stuff in it. I remember one issue I thumbed through had a column by some American pundit that had little relevance to Canadian readers. There are differences between Canadian and American culture and politics, and you just can't lazily assume discussion of elements of one automatically apply to the other.

A Question of Priorities.

I'm skeptical of claims of media bias. For every claim that the North American media is a bastion of liberalism(in the modern American abuse of the word, of course) I could find you a claim that it's a tool of the corporate elites. But I'm far less skeptical of accusations of exploitation and sensationalism. A classic example occured tonight at the start of local CTV affiliate CFQC's six o'clock news broadcast. They pushed aside what was obviously intended to be their top story, a report on how a local taxi driver helped police capture a robber, to give us "breaking news" about the JonBenet Ramsey case. Why? The story has no direct relevance to the citizens of Saskatoon. It didn't even occur in Canada. Yet CFQC's news department decided this was so important a story that it should be covered immediately. Call me cynical, but such a move seems a rather blatant example of pandering to prurience. Of course it's just the latest example of what's been going in with the Ramsey case for ten years. Some of the coverage over the years has seemed pretty damn close to abuse of the poor girl. And why? It's safe to say dozens of little girls were murdered in the US in 1996, yet that case was the one that got all the press. But one assumes most of those cases didn't have various elements that made for easy use by the media, like the artfully done photos, video footage, and so on of JonBenet Ramsey, the odd to outsiders world of child beauty pageants she was involved in, and other details that have made for tabloid fodder, whether it was the actual tabloids exploiting it or not.