Coverage area of proposed FM station in Hudson/St. Lazare provided by Dufferin Communications

Is Hudson part of Montreal?

I'm not asking on a technical level, but more on a psychological one. Do people in that triangle between Montreal and the Ontario border consider themselves part of the metropolitan area, or part of their own region? There's a train that comes once a day to bring commuters into the city, and plenty of people who work on the island live in this region. But is it enough to say that these towns are mere suburbs of greater Montreal?

One Toronto-based company is arguing that it doesn't, and that forms part of the basis for an application they have submitted to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for a commercial FM radio station to serve the Hudson/St. Lazare area.

The company is Dufferin Communications. You might recognize them as the company that recently got CRTC approval to setup an AM radio station in Montreal with programming targeted at the region's LGBT community. That station will be running on 990 AM after CKGM vacates the frequency to move to 690 - hopefully to be up and running by the fall.

I spoke to Dufferin VP Carmela Laurignano for an article that appears in the West Island section of Wednesday's Gazette about the Hudson application.

This application, for an FM music station, actually predates the AM one, even though the CRTC heard the other one first. Much of the application dates from as far back as 2009. Laurignano said she didn't know why the CRTC waited so long to hear this application, but that she understands they have a lot on their plate and such long waits are not unusual for matters that aren't pressing.

Laurignano said the big reason behind this application is the sense that this is an underserved market. The region has a French-language commercial music station, CJVD-FM 100.1 in Vaudreuil, but no corresponding English station yet, even though its English-speaking population is large and getting larger.

The frequency

The application, which can be downloaded from the CRTC's website here, is for an FM station at 106.7 MHz, with a 500 watt transmitter at a Bell tower on Route Harwood in Hudson. As you can see from the coverage map above, it would cover Hudson, St. Lazare, Rigaud, Vaudreuil-Dorion and the area around Oka, but wouldn't reach much beyond that before it started seeing interference from WIZN 106.7 FM in Burlington, Vt., and to a lesser extent the adjacent-channel station CKQB 106.9 FM (The Bear) in Ottawa. There's also a reserved but unused channel of 106.5 for a CBC station in Cornwall.

The frequency is important, because it's considered the last really desirable one in the Montreal area. It was the former frequency of Aboriginal Voices Radio and was subsequently used by the pirate KKIC radio in Kahnawake before it got CRTC approval for a licensed station at 89.9.

And there's another application pending for this frequency, too. Canadian Hellenic Cable Radio Ltd., the company behind CKDG (Mike) 105.1 FM and CKIN-FM 106.3, has applied to move the former to 106.7, keeping its transmitter location on Mount Royal but increasing its power. Because the coverage areas of CKDG and the proposed Hudson station would overlap, it's unlikely the CRTC would allow both on the same frequency.

Dufferin's application includes a backup frequency should the CRTC judge 106.7 improper. It's 107.9FM. Assigning that frequency might anger National Public Radio fans in Montreal, as that's the frequency used by the closest transmitter, in Burlington, Vt. Its reception here is quite good for a border station, but it would be hard to see it overcoming a much closer transmitter on the same frequency in Hudson.

The frequency is also less desirable for Dufferin because it's adjacent to its own Jewel station at 107.7FM in Hawkesbury.

The format

The proposal calls for a format of adult contemporary/easy listening music, similar to what can be heard at The Jewel, a network of radio stations Dufferin owns in cities including Ottawa, Toronto and Hawkesbury, Ont. This means a lot of Céline Dion, Barbra Streisand, Sarah McLachlan, Michael Bublé and Frank Sinatra.

Dufferin estimates in its application that only about 14% of its Jewel playlist (200 of 1,400 songs) can be heard on Montreal English and French music stations, which it uses as part of its argument for fulfilling a niche.

The station would also be committed to local news and information programming seven days a week, including regular newscasts during the morning and afternoon drive periods on weekdays. A total of four hours a week would be "pure news" - and half of its newscasts would be news local to the Hudson/St. Lazare area - with other talk programming representing almost 12 hours a week.

Unlike the bigger Montreal radio stations, this one wouldn't have a live announcer all day. The morning and afternoon drive programs would be live, but Dufferin says in its application that mid-day and evening programs will be voice-tracked (meaning that the announcer breaks between songs will be recorded in advance), and late night and overnight programming completely automated.

The budget

The proposed station's financial projections show revenue gradually growing from $480,000 the first year to $1 million in the seventh year of its license. Expenses would start at $700,000 (including a $90,000 startup cost) and reach $850,000 in the seventh year.

Under these projections, the station would start making money in Year 4 and pay for itself in the seventh year.

About 95% of its advertising revenue is expected to be local, with 20-30,000 minutes sold a year at an average rate of between $22 and $34 a minute.

The hearing

Those who have opinions on this application can share them with the CRTC by submitting an intervention or comment. The deadline is Feb. 21. A hearing is scheduled March 21 in Gatineau.

If approved quickly, Laurignano says Dufferin would get on the application right away, and hopefully get it on the air by fall 2012.

Related Posts

• CRTC gives clear channels to TSN, Tietolman-Tétrault-Pancholy
• CRTC hears applications for 690 and 940 AM
• Sherbrooke radio station shuts down
• Rejected AM radio stations preparing Plan B
• CRTC limits musical montages on French radio stations

Bell Let's Talk national spokesperson Clara Hughes in an interview with TSN Radio in Toronto (Bell Canada photo)

Today is Bell's Let's Talk Day, a day in which Canada's biggest telecom company raises money to help treat mental illness, and helps bring the issue out into the spotlight at the same time.

Until midnight Pacific time, Bell is donating five cents for every long-distance call and text message sent using its network, as well as every (non-robot) retweet of its Twitter account, to this charitable cause.

I was reminded of this campaign when I watched CFCF's noon newscast today. It was hard to miss it. Half of the first 15-minute block was devoted to it, with a story by a local reporter profiling someone with mental illness, and an interview with the campaign's spokesperson, Olympian (and national sweetheart) Clara Hughes.

It didn't stop there. Later, a health news story about the potential causes of suicide (probably a coincidence because the study just came out), a sit-down interview with an expert on mental illness, and a chat with reporter Tarah Schwartz about a special report on depression airing on Thursday. That's not including the commercials devoted to the subject and all the other programming that's airing on CTV, including a special at 7pm.

A year ago, I asked similar questions about this campaign, and whether the perfectly laudable cause justified the apparent intrusion of Bell Canada into the editorial decisions of CTV's newsrooms. (One could argue that many have simply decided to join this cause without being ordered to, which is possible, but there's a reason we're not seeing as much coverage of this on CBC and Global, and do we really think it would get so much airtime on CTV if this was, say, a Telus campaign?)

There are also questions to be asked about Bell's motives in this. Every large company puts profit ahead of anything else, and it makes sense for a company whose reputation is as poor as Bell's to spend millions of dollars making it seem more human. And it sends the message that if you really want CTV News to pay attention to your cause, no matter how positive it is, you need to get Bell onside.

But rather than rehash all that, I'll share an email that was forwarded to me by someone from Bell Media, who I'm guessing saw my tweets critical of the campaign today or was directed to last year's blog post. It was sent from a viewer of CTV's Marilyn Denis show, which also devoted segments to mental health today, including one on postpartum depression.

He added only: "This is why we do it."

I've redacted the person's name since it's not important.

Subject: Thank you thank you thank you

Hello Marilyn

My name is ***, mother of 4 girls 8,6,4 and 5 months.

I started my last pregnancy with depression and it is becoming a giant battle!

I feel darker and darker and the show today made feel good and thank to CTV, let's talk day. It is good to know that I will talk and search for help.

What a show thank you again.

There are a lot of thing behind my depression, I have in Canada for 17years no status, with 4 children provide a good life. Being a great mother and wife. Keeping on packing weigh. Being there sometimes became a burden etc....but I do it because I love my family.

Well I just wanted to say thank to you and CTV for this day Let's talk.

I never wrote to a show but the one today saved my life.

By the grace of God!

There are worse reasons to abuse one's power.

Related Posts

• Is selling out okay for a good cause?
• The convergence utopia
• If you were a journalist now, what would you have done that Mr. Murphy has not done?
• A time to remember – unless The View is on
• CTV Two: The second-rate brand

Global Montreal's new virtual set debuted Monday

There wasn't much fanfare. In fact, it wasn't even explicitly mentioned during the first night. But it would have been hard to miss that Global Montreal's newscast has a new look, thanks to a new set.

Unlike CFCF, which needed to build a new set from scratch, CKMI's set is entirely virtual, with anchors sitting at a desk in an all-green room. So while it wasn't quite as easy as flipping a switch (there were complications in planning that pushed back the launch date), all the changes are in a computer's memory.

Above you see anchor Jamie Orchard in the new set. She's the only thing real there. The floor, the windows, the pillar, all have been added digitally through chroma key (a bit more advanced than your usual green screen because the camera's movements are synchronized with the computer changing the perspective of the digital background).

The background cityscape is the work of Gazette photographer Phil Carpenter. He'll also be doing a daytime version for use during the summer when it's daylight at 6pm.

The top of the newscast features graphics that fade in behind the anchor

Having a digital set has its advantages, like cool effects. One involves still images fading into place behind the anchor, covering up the city skyline.

There's also the fact that the set can seem much bigger than it actually is. That has led some to go a bit overboard with perspective. I'll leave it to you to decide if Global has gone too far here, or if the fantasy-studio-on-the-waterfront look works.

For the sake of comparison with the previous set, here's a few before-and-after shots:

The old standup position next to a digital giant screen

Note the non-existent newsroom in the background

The old studio - The anchor and desk are real, the rest is simulated

The new set - again anchor and desk are the only things real here. (Jamie's wearing different clothes here because they only started using this shot on Tuesday)

Among the options available with the new set, over-the-shoulder graphics can be done in two different ways, both of which were used during the first newscast on Monday:

Behind, on a wide shot...

... and the classic in front

The set change comes weeks after the newscast finally became high-definition, at least as far as anchors are concerned. (Packaged reports, live hits and weather presenters are still in upconverted 16:9 SD, so they're not advertising their newscast as HD yet.) You can read late anchor Richard Dagenais's experience with HD makeup on his blog.

You can watch the complete newscasts with the new virtual set on Global's website: Monday, Tuesday.

I visited Global Montreal on Wednesday to speak with station manager Karen Macdonald about other changes coming to CKMI for an upcoming article.

Related Posts

• We must do something about the poor reporters
• Global Quebec’s fake local news
• CTV’s Express feels like anything but
• Mike Le Couteur is going to Ottawa
• Even more details about Montreal’s digital TV transition

Related Posts

• Caption Natasha Gargiulo and Freeway Frank
• Caption CBC’s Sue Smith
• Caption Lori Graham
• Caption Mitch Melnick
• Caption Mike FM’s Patrick Charles

One of the advantages of living where I do is that I happen to be in the Papineau federal riding. It's apparently the smallest geographically in Canada because of its high residential density.

But more importantly, it's the riding currently being represented by Justin Trudeau, Liberal Party superstar and the closest thing this country has to a political prince, making him an easy target for harmless fun.

Being a constituent apparently gets me one free calendar every year. This year's came last week in my mailbox - almost four weeks into the year, far beyond the point when calendars in stores enter liquidation pricing. I don't know if it's a party expenditure (since it has the Liberal Party logo on it) or if it comes from his MP's budget (since it has his parliamentary contact information on the back).

What I do know is that, like last year's calendar (this is apparently his third), it's filled with pictures of Trudeau, in most cases more than one on each page. As you can see in the video above, I count 33 pictures of Trudeau in his calendar, which is the same as I counted in last year's. Some photos are captioned as "Justin", others "Mr. Trudeau", others are written in the first person, and the rest don't have a subject.

But that's not interesting. Nor is it interesting that his welcome message spends more time bashing the Conservatives than talking about his family. What's interesting is that someone thought it didn't look silly that a calendar with 12 months has 33 pictures of Justin Trudeau in it, and a year later decided that shouldn't change.

Related Posts

• The Ruth Ellen Brosseau love song
• Canadian Tire not so Canadian in Quebec
• Be careful who you make fun of
• Sacré orange!
• Cyberpresse creates political donation map

Recently I've been thinking about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and how it spends the billion dollars a year it gets from the Canadian taxpayer. It's not just because Sun Media is on a mission to have it shut down. There's also a debate over whether it should be exempt from cuts the federal government is imposing on all its services.

And there are people who think the CBC should be doing more than it does right now. OpenMedia.ca has a project called Reimagine CBC in which people are asked to pitch ideas to transform the public broadcaster and make it more relevant in this new media universe. There are things the CBC does already, like be active on social media. There are ideas that are so vague they sound like they came out of management.

Then there's Kai Nagata, who is suggesting the CBC get out of producing television entirely and shift all those resources to the Internet so it can become an online news and cultural leader. He even spiced up his submission by posting a video to YouTube parodying the Rick Mercer rants in which he explains his reasoning.

Nagata, you'll recall, is the former CBC and CTV television reporter who did not own a television.

His reasoning is interesting. He points out that people are moving away from TV and toward online these days, and suggests that abandoning television and focusing on online will give it more bang for their buck.

But I'm not convinced. For one thing, if the CBC succeeds in making killer web videos, wouldn't it just make sense to put that kind of stuff on television, where it can make more money? The CBC does have a lot of infrastructure, including hundreds of television transmitters, many of them in small communities where the CBC is the only over-the-air television. It also has regional control rooms and studios for newscasts that might be less important if everyone was getting their news from the web.

I think Nagata underestimates the power of television. Canadians still watch it, and many supplement it with online consumption of media. CBC's ratings may be low compared to CTV and Global, but they're still high when compared to most cable networks, and more people watch television shows on TV than online.

And that's assuming we forget all about Radio-Canada. Nagata points to the success of its Tou.tv online video website, but seems to ignore that the thing that makes it so popular is that it has a bunch of television series on it.

What should the CBC get out of?

Still, I like Nagata's suggestion because it gets us thinking. I don't want to start sounding like Pierre Karl Péladeau, but it annoys me a bit that the CBC competes directly with private broadcasters in some areas. Particularly areas where the private sector does a better job.

Like local news. In Montreal, the market leader among anglophones is CTV's CFCF. It kills in the ratings. It has more hours of original local news than its competitors combined. It has more journalists, and more of its news is local.

So why is CBC trying to compete? More importantly, why is the CBC trying to compete by doing the same thing? Why not abandon the supper-hour newscast and do something else, like local cultural programming?

On the French side, it's a bit more complicated because Radio-Canada is so popular and because the main private broadcaster already produces so much original programming. On one hand, there's a good argument that the culture is healthy enough that it doesn't need the CBC's help, and that removing the public broadcaster would make the private broadcasters healthier and encourage them to invest more in original Canadian programming. On the other hand, shutting down Radio-Canada would lead to having only one major television player in French, and that's very worrisome. It would also be a net loss for original Canadian television no matter how you slice it.

CBC television can be thought of in two ways: a creator of television programming and a conduit for that programming. For scripted series, "creator" usually means that the CBC hires a production company to produce a TV series and it airs episodes of that series. A scheme could be conceived in which those series are still produced but air on private television, on cable or online.

Or what if the funds that went into the CBC were instead transferred to the Canada Media Fund, which helps fund television series no matter what network they air on? What if we focused our money more on creating better Canadian television series, ones Canadians actually wanted to watch? What if we got rid of the overhead and gave all that money directly to the people who actually produce Canadian television programming?

And what if, instead of a network that carries the CBC network to distant communities, infrastructure was used to bring both private and public Canadian programming to them? What if CBC's production facilities were made available to ordinary Canadians to make their own television, which could then be uploaded to YouTube or the CBC's website for people to see?

I don't think anything like that is going to happen. Even if we establish that it makes sense, there's still too many unanswered questions. Cutting local stations would seriously affect CBC News Network. And communities will resist efforts to take away their television stations, even if they're just low-power retransmitters of distant CBC stations.

But this discussion needs to start somewhere. And that means we have to figure out exactly what we need the CBC for, and what we'll need it for in 10 or 20 years. I don't have all the answers, but I think technology has changed enough that we don't need the CBC to be doing the exact same things it was doing 30 years ago.

Related Posts

• Kai Nagata’s renaissance
• Caption CBC president Hubert Lacroix
• Yearning for local television
• The CBC/Quebecor misinformation war
• Even more details about Montreal’s digital TV transition

Not much has changed since last year, so I'm sorry to report that Montreal TV viewers will, once again, be largely forced to endure simultaneous substitution during Sunday's Super Bowl and watch commercials from CTV instead of the originating American network. And cable and satellite providers will have to continue to calmly explain to irate subscribers that they're only doing what they're required to do by the CRTC, who will have to explain what "simultaneous substitution" is and why it's there.

CFCF's digital transmitter closed the loophole where the high-definition feed wasn't substituted in Montreal, and now Videotron and other cable providers must replace the WPTZ feed with CFCF in standard and high definition.

Here's how it works for the various options of getting television:

Over the air

This method gets a significant boost this year, because the Super Bowl is being carried by NBC instead of Fox. Montreal antennas can pick up WPTZ Plattsburgh (650kW) much better than WFFF Burlington (47kW), so more people will be able to watch the Super Bowl this way. But it's still difficult to capture American stations if you have cheap indoor antennas.

This is the best method (and the only legal one) for Montrealers to get American ads in high definition live, along with the Super Bowl itself.

CFCF will be carrying the Super Bowl, but obviously it has the Canadian ads.

Videotron (analog and digital)

Videotron has resisted substitution, especially for the Super Bowl, and does so only when absolutely necessary. Still, it is required to substitute both the standard and high-definition feeds in the area covered by CFCF.

This means all customers in the following areas will see their signals substituted:

• Montreal and on-island suburbs
• Laval
• The north shore
• The south shore
• Joliette
• St. Jérôme
• Montérégie
• St. Jean sur Richelieu
• Vaudreuil-Dorion

Quebecers outside of Montreal (as defined above) and the Gatineau region (which is part of the footprint of CJOH Ottawa) will not have their signals subtituted and will be able to watch the American ads on NBC channels.

Other cable providers (including Bell Fibe)

Same as Videotron, I'm afraid. They don't have a choice in the matter.

Bell Satellite TV

Because Bell feeds the same data to all its customers via satellite, it is required (as of 2009) to substitute American feeds with Canadian ones nationwide. So even if you're in an area not covered by a CTV station, you're still going to see the CTV ads.

Shaw Direct

Because Shaw Direct includes technology allowing the provider to control what signals individual clients receive, it can implement simultaneous substitution selectively. The result will be similar to cable: substitution in areas covered by CTV stations, no substitution elsewhere.

American satellite providers (DirecTV, Dish Network)

These are technically illegal in Canada, but many people have found ways to get service north of the border, either by pirating them or using fake U.S. addresses. Since these are American providers, they are not subject to simultaneous substitution rules.

Online

There's no legal way to get the Super Bowl itself online except through ways sanctioned by CTV (they're not streaming it, but it is available on mobile). There will probably be black-market feeds, but why bother when you can get it in HD on cable or over the air?

The ads are another story. Expect all the good ones to be online shortly after broadcast. In fact, many are already online and creating buzz. YouTube has a special site devoted to Super Bowl ads that you can watch whenever you want, in high definition.

Bars

Because most of the loopholes have been closed, there aren't many bars advertising the American version of the game anymore. To provide a high-definition feed in Montreal, they would either have to set up an antenna capable of receiving the American station or subscribe to an American satellite service and hope nobody notices.

If you spot one that promises to show American ads, let me know in the comments.

Other loopholes

There are also methods that have no guarantee of success. You could try watching west-coast feeds. Some cable companies offer Seattle stations as a way to time-shift, and then forget to do substitution for live events like this. But broadcasters have become wise to people using this loophole and I suspect the chances of it working is low.

You could also, I suppose, just go to Vermont for the weekend and watch the Super Bowl there.

UPDATE (Feb. 3): The Globe and Mail's Susan Krashinsky explains the reasons why U.S. ads don't air on Canadian networks. I'd also add that some are for products that simply aren't available in Canada.

Related Posts

• CFCF sets up HD transmitter to close Super Bowl ad loophole
• CTV ruins Super Bowl ad fun
• CRTC Roundup: No Super Bowl loopholes this year
• Five ways for Montrealers to watch U.S. Super Bowl ads
• Super Bowl commercials FTW

Dave Bronstetter (CBC photo)

Dave Bronstetter, the veteran CBC Montreal personality who was most recently the host of radio's All in a Weekend, is hanging up the microphone after more than three decades in broadcasting.

The announcement was made Saturday morning on his show by Sonali Karnick, who has been replacing Bronstetter. Bronstetter has been on leave from his show since last fall for reasons that haven't been made very clear publicly.

Karnick said Bronstetter will return to do one final show with her on Feb. 18. They will be running some best-of clips between now and then, and have asked listeners to send in their favourite memories and leave goodbye messages for him.

Most Montrealers will associate Bronstetter with his long stints as host of weekday shows Homerun (in the late 80s) and then Daybreak, from when Royal Orr left 1996 until 2006, when he stepped away from a five-day-a-week job to take the reins at All in a Weekend.

At the time, Bronstetter said burnout and fatigue we having serious effects on his health.

I've been asked a few times over the past few months about why he's been on extended leave. Bronstetter himself has been asked about it a lot as well, at least through posts on his Facebook wall. In response, he's been mostly vague, saying he hopes to come back soon and he's getting better by the day.

Bronstetter just celebrated his 59th birthday, though his Facebook profile has him listed as being born in 1905.

The announcement didn't include news about Bronstetter's permanent replacement at All in a Weekend. Karnick left her job as sports reporter for Daybreak to take up a job at CBC Sports in Toronto. She was recently brought in as the interim host of All in a Weekend, supposedly until the end of the season. Karnick would be an obvious choice, assuming she's interested in staying.

UPDATE: A story from The Gazette, which confirms no permanent replacement has been chosen but Karnick will continue until the end of the season. The news was also mentioned on CTV's local newscast.

UPDATE (Feb. 6): Brendan Kelly, who worked with Bronstetter as a regular contributor to Daybreak, talks to Bronstetter, who confirms he's leaving on the advice of his doctor because he's burned out and depressed.

Related Posts

• CBC open house this weekend
• CBC Montrealers sing Christmas songs for a good cause
• Nancy Wood moves to investigative reporting
• CBC posts Daybreak host position
• Nancy Wood saga isn’t going away quietly (UPDATED with CBC bullshit)

Cogeco President Louis Audet

On Thursday, I got up early (meaning: before noon) and went to the annual shareholders' meeting of Cogeco, the cable company that is also a big player in the Quebec radio industry.

I covered the meeting for Cartt.ca, the online publication about the broadcasting and telecom industry run by Greg O'Brien. If you're a subscriber, you can read my report here. If not, it's not the end of the world. Much of it is industry stuff you probably don't care about that much.

The stuff you might care about is repeated below:

The finances

There is, of course, the financial side: The company released its quarterly results that morning, and depending on how you measure these things they're either really good or disappointing. The company is still very profitable, but its profit margin is lower, mainly because radio doesn't bring in the kind of money that cable television does.

You can read details of their quarterly results here (PDF).

The previous year has been a big one for Cogeco. There was, of course, the finalization of the purchase of Corus Quebec and its radio stations including CKOI, CHMP, CKAC, CFQR and others around Quebec. This acquisition had major effects in radio stations outside Montreal. One former Corus station in Saguenay wasn't bought by Cogeco and now has a new owner. Two stations in Quebec City were sold as required by the CRTC, and a station in Sherbrooke was shut down because Cogeco already owned too much in that market. Meanwhile, in Montreal, the company went ahead with a plan for all-traffic radio stations, converting CKAC into a French-language one when the CRTC process took too long and eventually failing to secure one of two clear channels for its English-language one. They're going to try again (more on that below).

There were also other purchases, like data services providers MTO Telecom and QuietTouch Inc., and transit advertising company Metromedia CMR Plus.

On the flip side, rumours abound about Cabovisao, the Portuguese cable provider that Cogeco owns (its only major asset outside the country). That company's poor performance has been a drag on Cogeco's bottom line, and analysts assume they'll sell it at the earliest opportunity.

The press conference

I was invited to a press conference just before the shareholders' meeting at a conference centre downtown. "Press conference" might be pushing it a bit. It was in a tiny room, at a table with about eight chairs. On one side, Cogeco President/CEO Louis Audet and his flak. On the other, me and three other journalists: One from Cogeco Nouvelles (of course), and a reporter and photographer from Presse Canadienne.

(I find it funny that 98.5's website ends up using the PC story)

It would be easy to condemn other media for not being present, but they didn't really have to be. The financial results were sent out, and reporters could listen in on a conference call with analysts (the Financial Post's Jamie Sturgeon got a whole story out of that about how cable providers are increasingly moving to a Videotron-style à la carte package system).

Still, it was interesting to attend, particularly for someone like me who doesn't get to play reporter at press conferences too often. The three journalists asked Audet questions about its decisions over the past year, about why it was getting into transit advertising, whether it would sell Cabovisao (they won't announce anything in advance, but he's not exactly defiant that they're never going to sell it), and whether he's worried about Radio X coming to Montreal and competing with CHMP. (He's not).

There were also the questions that I'm sure Cogeco is tired of hearing. Can it continue to survive as a mid-sized telecom as its competitors get bigger and bigger? Yes. Is it planning to set up or buy TV specialty services so it can have better leverage versus vertically-integrated companies like Bell, Shaw and Cogeco? No (the CRTC ensures they don't abuse their positions). Is Cogeco Cable going to come to Montreal? Absolutely not. Will Cogeco enter the wireless phone market? No.

We had about half an hour with Audet before the meeting came to an end so he could prepare for the shareholders' meeting. There weren't any pressing questions remaining, so the journalists packed it in without a fight.

Cogeco chairman Jan Peeters chairs the shareholders meetings of Cogeco and Cogeco Cable

The meeting

I'd never been to a shareholders' meeting like this before, so I decided to stick around for it. There were lots of people in suits, many of them of advanced age. The kind of people who have enough invested in a company (and enough free time) to want to go to such a meeting.

Journalistically, it was boring. When one person has 90% of the voting power (through proxies), there isn't about to be any big power struggle. The meeting had no questions, no one voted against any decision as far as who should be on the board of directors, who the auditors should be or any of the other standard annual general meeting stuff. The motions were moved and seconded largely by the company's directors (who are also shareholders), who read from notes that told them what they should say.

The more interesting part was afterward, when Audet gave a presentation about the company (one that included some promotional videos).

News from Cogeco Diffusion

At the shareholders' meeting, I spotted Richard Lachance, the Cogeco VP who's in charge of its radio operations. He was front and centre at the table when Cogeco made its presentation to the CRTC about its plan for an English-language all-traffic station. During that hearing he seemed frustrated, perhaps because Cogeco's competitors were attacking it, or because he knew he might not get the clear channel he was going for (even though those channels had been vacant for more than a year after the shutdown of CINW 940 and CINF 690). But he was quite friendly with me, answering my questions frankly and even giving me his card at the end.

Like Audet, Lachance isn't panicked about the possibility of another competitor in the francophone talk-radio market in Montreal. He pointed out that they already have one in Radio-Canada, and that they are also fighting music stations for audience. Lachance said content is king, and that is the main reason they would come out on top against Radio X or the new French news-talk station being prepared by Tietolman-Tétrault-Pancholy Media at 940 AM.

Lachance pointed out improvements made to 98.5, including bringing over sports shows and Canadiens games so it has more original content during the evenings, and adding more weekend programming, including a weekend overnight show that is also carried by FM93 in Quebec City and FM98 in Saguenay.

A two-transmitter traffic station?

Asked about Cogeco's new plan for an all-traffic station in Montreal, Lachance maintained what he said during the CRTC hearings, that the 690 and 940 clear channels were the only ones that could adequately cover anglophone areas of Montreal, and that other options like 600 or 990 were not sufficient.

But Lachance said their engineers have devised new plans that they can bring back to the CRTC. He wouldn't get too specific on the details (like what frequencies they'd be on), but he did say that at least one of those plans involves having more than one transmitter. So they could, for example, use their existing Kahnawake tower on an AM frequency, and supplement it with another transmitter in the West Island or Vaudreuil/St. Lazare area that covers holes in its coverage.

Lachance said plans will be presented to the Ministry of Transport next Friday (the station, like its French-language counterpart, would be dependent on $1.5 million a year in funding from the government), and if they can agree on one a new contract will be signed and Cogeco will re-apply to the CRTC.

Tietolman-Tétrault-Pancholy is also readying another application to the CRTC for an English-language AM station - a news-talk station to complement its French one and share some of its costs. Details on that, too, are not public yet but there's also speculation that they might try a multiple-transmitter approach to solve the problem of poor West Island coverage.

Related Posts

• CRTC caves in to Cogeco
• Cogeco’s self-serving plan for Quebec radio
• Cogeco to buy Corus Quebec radio stations
• CHMP beefs up weekend lineup
• Radio ratings: A good fall for Cogeco and CKGM

There must be something in the water at CKBE-FM, or maybe a delayed (and unusual) reaction to Aaron Rand's departure last year, because both the morning and afternoon traffic announcers are pregnant.

The video above is from morning traffic announcer Natasha Hall. She's been keeping a blog at The Beat's website chronicling her pregnancy and all the stuff that a first-time mother learns that isn't in the guidebook or in the movies. (It's similar to Lisa's Wedding Blog, a video series done by former CJAD promotions director Lisa Fuoco in 2009-10.) As Natasha's video title says, she's got about a month left before that thing the size of her head gets pushed out and she can go back to walking instead of waddling.

The afternoon announcer, Claudia Marques, has a bit more time to wait. She's at about 30 weeks now.

Cogeco has posted part-time, temporary positions to fill both of their jobs. Requirements include three years of on-air experience and knowledge of Montreal's road network, along with the usual qualities needed to be an on-air talent at a radio station.

The deadline is Monday.

Related Posts

• Radio ratings: A good fall for Cogeco and CKGM
• Star 92.9 takes out attack ad on The Beat
• Nat Lauzon back on the air with The Beat
• The Beat is on – but is 92.5FM* any different?

The company announced this week it is adding three new hosts for weekend programming on the station: Eric Arson, who will host music programming in the afternoons, Mario Langlois who will host an hour-long sports talk show on Sundays, and Isabelle Ménard who will do overnights Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Though 98.5 has a strong lineup on weekdays, as well as weekday evenings since sports programming moved there from CKAC, its weekends are mostly music, which competes poorly with established music stations.

The new schedule doesn't change that much. Guy Simard and Sylvain Ménard keep their weekend shows as is, and much of the schedule is still devoted to music (particularly when the Canadiens aren't playing).

One would think there would be more sports or talk programming they could air on weekends, rather than continue to leave it to mostly music.

Here's how the schedule change compares to what it was previously (changes in bold). The new schedule took effect Jan. 21.

 Saturday

 Sunday

Related Posts

• Tales from Cogeco
• Radio ratings: A good fall for Cogeco and CKGM
• Radio ratings: 98.5FM on the rise
• CRTC caves in to Cogeco
• Cogeco’s self-serving plan for Quebec radio

Don Bastien speaks at a recent CTV Montreal upfront presentation to advertisers

While viewers concern themselves with a high-profile change behind the anchor desk, there's another, perhaps more important, staffing change happening behind the scenes at CFCF.

Don Bastien, who as you can see from the photo above has been general manager of CFCF/CTV Montreal since 2001, is retiring. Today, coincidentally the 51st anniversary of the station, is his last day.

Louis Douville, the general manager at CJOH (CTV Ottawa), takes over starting Monday.

Bastien described his retirement to me as having "a touch of sadness" because of all the people he would be leaving. He's been with CTV and related company Baton Broadcasting since 1972.

"That's probably the most difficult part, when you've been interacting with them on a daily/weekly basis for all this period and all of a sudden that's going to come to an end."

Bastien's planning to take it easy for a while, taking some time to catch up with life and family. They're going to a ski trip in France next week, and he jokes that he might be playing golf "a little more than I did". Beyond that, he plans to keep up with various philanthropic activities, and he's been appointed to the board of St. Elias Mines of B.C., and he'll be looking for other opportunities to keep active. But he says the days of a Monday-to-Friday 9-to-5 job are over.

The decade under Bastien was transformative for CFCF, in good ways and bad. When he was appointed to the position in 2001 after being CTV's national sales director based in Montreal, the station had just been bought by CTV from WIC when WIC was bought by Canwest Global. CTV imposed a common brand for all its television stations, and the "CFCF-12" and "Pulse News" brands that had existed for decades were eliminated. A few years later, even the call letters were gone and everything became "CTV". Many viewers still resent this stripping of the station's identity.

A few years before the acquisition, the station cut just about all programming except for the newscast. What little additional programming remained would eventually be cancelled as well. The telethon, the morning newscast, Entertainment Spotlight and Sportsnight 360 all disappeared under Bastien's watch. Some elements of the latter two have been incorporated into the weekend newscasts, but to a large extent CFCF is just a CTV rebroadcaster with a local newscast.

It's a popular newscast though, with ratings that continue to obliterate the competition, and a high percentage of local news content. Bastien said maintaining this dominance, particularly in the face of increasing pressure from specialty channels, will be a challenge for his successor.

More recently, there has been significant technological change at the station. It began transmitting in high definition, later swapping out its analog transmitter and 50-year-old antenna on Mount Royal. Just last September it moved into its new studio, a million-dollar investment as it prepares to upgrade its newscast to high definition.

But when asked what his biggest challenge was in his decade here, Bastien points to the 2003 move from 405 Ogilvy Ave., where CFCF had been based since just after its launch in 1961, to 1205 Papineau Ave. in what has become the city's broadcasting neighbourhood.

"The relocation project was a huge undertaking," Bastien said. "Not necessarily from a technical point of view. But it was an opportunity for us to upgrade technology. When we went from tape-to-tape editing to linear editing. The real challenge in the relocation project was not moving from one building to the next. We were not moving technology, we were moving people, who had worked in a single building all of their career. We were changing areas of the city. That was huge, working with entirely different facilities."

The move meant CFCF's master control was moved to Toronto. Though the newscast itself is controlled from their building, advertisements and network programming are handled way down the 401.

The technological change is still ongoing. CTV is moving ahead with upgrades to equipment to prepare for the newscast moving to high definition. This will require new studio and field cameras (scheduled to arrive in the coming weeks) and new editing equipment and servers, which represents a substantial investment. Bastien said it will be dependent on how CTV authorizes capital expenditures. No date has been set, but Bastien said he expects it to happen either this year or next. Hopefully the recent upgrades of both CBMT and CKMI's newscasts to high definition (or at least partly HD) will put more pressure on CTV to follow suit.

Asked what advice Bastien had for his successor, Bastien said Douville will need to "maintain our connectivity to our viewers, to our market, to our community."

It's a connection Montreal anglophone television viewers take very seriously.

Louis Douville

Douville comes back home

"It's always been a dream to come back home," says Douville, who takes over as CFCF's general manager starting Monday. At that point, he said during a phone interview on Friday, he will be introduced to the staff and learn about things like where the photocopiers are. "Monday is mostly going to be about passing the torch," he said.

But the training should be short. Douville has a lot of experience as general manager of a CTV station and said he's very familiar with CTV Montreal.

Douville grew up in Montreal, attended Concordia University, and his family lives here. But his 30-year career took him to Edmonton, Saskatchewan and Ottawa before coming back home.

Douville described CFCF as the "crown jewel" of CTV, mainly because it's the only station covering all of Quebec, while much smaller regions have multiple CTV stations.

"I'm fortunate that I'm taking over a station in good shape," Douville said. With the station's ratings dominance, "there are no pressing issues" and he reassures that "I'm not coming in to make many changes."

Douville recognizes that the conversion to high definition is a priority. "It's a situation we face in all our CTV stations" outside of Toronto, he said.

But he also said that it's the content, not the resolution, that matters most. The market share is holding even though the newscast is still standard-definition, he said, and "those numbers speak for themselves." Douville also said the technical quality is still very high (the lighting, the set design, etc.) and if it wasn't for the 4:3 aspect ratio people probably wouldn't notice it wasn't HD.

CTV Montreal's 6pm newscast on Friday ended with a brief goodbye to Bastien.

Related Posts

• CFCF makes Paul Karwatsky permanent co-anchor
• Welcome to CFCF’s postvanderheyden era
• More from CFCF’s new studio
• Todd van der Heyden leaving for CTV News Channel
• Kai Nagata’s renaissance

Related Posts

• Caption CTV’s Christine Long
• Caption CBC’s Sue Smith
• Caption Lori Graham
• Natasha Gargiulo joins Virgin Radio morning show
• Caption Mitch Melnick

Paul Karwatsky can put the reporter microphone away for good.

When Todd van der Heyden left CFCF for CTV News Channel, the speculation on who would replace him really came down to one choice: Either it's Paul Karwatsky or it's not Paul Karwatsky.

Karwatsky was the only other male anchor at the station, and while it wasn't impossible that a woman would be picked to sit beside Mutsumi Takahashi, managers in TV news are still concerned enough about how things look that such a selection would seem unlikely.

Karwatsky was a great idea on paper. He's a Montrealer, was already working at CFCF and had anchoring experience. The only strike against him was that he was young. And when your viewers have grown up with people like Bill Haugland and Brian Britt, going young presents a risk. (A risk that has already blown up in their face once.)

But when Karwatsky was selected to be "interim" co-anchor with Takahashi after van der Heyden left, it was just a matter of time before the position was made permanent. Barring some dramatic failure, he was clearly up to the job. And it would have taken a lot for them to decide to go with someone from the outside who CTV Montreal viewers are unfamiliar with.

As it turns out, it required only two weeks. CTV announced on Wednesday evening that Karwatsky has been made a permanent co-anchor with Takahashi. What was essentially a probation period or tryout has clearly been successful.

And being young isn't the worst thing in the world. Andrew Chang at CBC is younger, and although his appointment as anchor of CBMT's supper-hour newscast seemed similarly risky back in 2009, he's fit into the role remarkably well.

The Gazette's Bill Brownstein has the story, which has many of the same platitudes contained in the CTV story but also some colour about Karwatsky's background.

What about weekends?

Now that Karwatsky's position on the weekday desk has been made official, there's the question of what to do with his former post. Before moving to weekdays, Karwatsky did weekend newscasts at 6pm with Tarah Schwartz and solo at 11:30pm. Schwartz has been doing both newscasts alone, which means her shift starts much later than it used to and the lineup editor has to do more of the work to setup the 6pm newscast.

CTV could choose to continue this way, or could hire someone else to take over Karwatsky's old job. (UPDATE: News Director Jed Kahane confirms he will be hiring another anchor for the weekend desk.)

Either way, they could probably use another backup anchor. Caroline van Vlaardingen has been substituting on occasion as needed, and Cindy Sherwin has also done some anchoring, but other than that the cupboard is pretty bare.

Related Posts

• CFCF GM Don Bastien signs off
• Welcome to CFCF’s postvanderheyden era
• More from CFCF’s new studio
• Todd van der Heyden leaving for CTV News Channel
• Kai Nagata’s renaissance

It was so long ago that it's hard to remember what it was like back then.

It was seven years ago this month that, while attending a national student journalism conference in Edmonton (thankfully that year there were no debilitating illnesses), I got a call on my cellphone from the city editor at the Gazette offering me a paid internship that summer.

My reaction was subdued. The man who offered me the job even remarked on that point. It's not that I wasn't happy - I was over the moon - but for some reason the only thing that I could think of was how much this conversation was going to cost me in roaming charges.

Though it occurs to me now that I'm not the kind of person who pulls out the theatrics when someone gives him really good news.

After a short, unpaid internship at the West Island Chronicle that I actually enjoyed even though it wasn't exactly hard-hitting journalism, and another at CBC Montreal that resulted in a few paid shifts at CBC Radio over the previous holidays (which in turn convinced me that being a guest booker wasn't quite my cup of tea at the time), I was really excited at the idea of working at a major newspaper in my home town.

The summer of 2005

I remember parts of that Gazette internship (I was the copy editor, and there were four reporters, a photographer and a designer). I remember meeting Michelle, the person who did the copy editor internship the year before me and who said I could come to her if I had any questions. Michelle is now the paper's city editor.

I remember breezing through my training on my first day, since I was already familiar with QuarkXPress (at the time they were using version 3.32, while I had been using version 4 for my entire time at Concordia's Link newspaper). So even though the first day was to be just for training, they put me to work on the next day's paper for a few hours.

I remember Ray, the foreign editor at the time, handing me a page with a Washington Post story on it, and me discovering that a name was spelled two different ways in that story. I remember that when I pointed this out to him, he told me to call the Post and ask them about it, and he gave me the number to call.

I remember thinking that was insane. You mean I just call up the Washington Post? But I did, and after I explained what happened, they realized there was an error and a correction moved on the wire a few minutes later. I remember thinking how awesome that was that I found a mistake in a Washington Post story on my first day.

I also remember all the mistakes I made during my internship. Thankfully I wasn't put in charge of anything for months, and there were plenty of people to check my work. Whenever I made a mistake, a more senior editor would calmly explain what I'd done wrong and have me try again.

I remember when the internship came to an end, when the schedule went up for mid-September and my name wasn't on it. I didn't have any plans for what I'd do next. My education was done and I had no desire to go back. I had no jobs on the horizon, and I'd never done any paid freelance work.

I remember a strange twist of fate when a position opened up for a part-time copy clerk, an entry-level job that involves a lot of running around at night fetching proofs and doing small tasks. As it turns out, I went directly from one to the other without missing a week. I remember the newsroom manager telling me she had to get back my termination papers from HR. I was in that position for two months, which was enough time for me to literally write the book on it (I put together a fancy-looking guide on how to perform each of the tasks), before another copy editor position opened up and I was back on the desks with the two monitors.

The year of firsts

I remember the first times I did various copy editing jobs, particularly slotting (i.e. laying out) sections. The first time I slotted Nation. The first time I slotted World (which involved going through the wires and choosing what stories to put in the paper). The first time I slotted the city section. The first time I edited the front page. The first time I was given the responsibility of floor editor, which made me the last line of defence for all pages before they were typeset. (It was when I was in that position that, one night when a major error was caught on the front page after deadline, I got to literally call up the plant and tell them to "stop the presses").

I remember about a year later, September 2006, when again a schedule went up without my name on it. As it happened, there was no twist of fate this time. After my last shift (in which I was the last one in the building at 1:30am), I left and didn't come back. Everyone said something would happen to bring me back. But it didn't.

The year of nothing

For the next year and a half, I was unemployed. I had gotten into freelancing, which combined with unemployment benefits kept me afloat. But while I wasn't loosing losing money from my savings, I wasn't adding to them either.

I knew I had to do something, but I wasn't sure what it was. I don't remember offhand if I applied for other jobs, or what they were. I remember that I enjoyed what I did at the Gazette more than any other job I'd done, and I didn't want to do something less enjoyable than that.

It was during this time of no salaried work that I setup a blog and started sharing random thoughts with the Internet, not sure where that would lead.

The return, and again

I remember when, completely out of the blue in January 2008, I got an email from my former boss asking if I'd be interested in a nine-week contract to fill a parental leave. That nine-week contract lasted two full years. And then again, in January 2010, when my bosses ran out of ways to extend my contract, the schedule went up and my name wasn't on it. Once again, I was unemployed.

I spent the month of February 2010 in my apartment watching the Olympics and contemplating my next move. I'd even had discussions with a different media company, though that ended up going nowhere.

As they had in 2006, my colleagues said I would be back. I was skeptical. But they were right.

Again out of the blue in the middle of February, I was told by a bunch of people simultaneously that a handful of temporary copy editing positions had just been posted. The paper was switching from QuarkXPress (software that was 14 years old) to Adobe InDesign, and needed relief staff to put out the paper while everyone was trained on the new system.

The interview was short, I was asked if I could start again on Monday, and the day after the closing ceremonies of the Olympics I was back at my old job. I've been there ever since, working between two and five days a week depending on how many shifts they needed to fill.

The contract life

It's the nature of contract work, especially in a field like journalism where so many people want jobs but there are so few good ones available. Despite the on-again-off-again employment, I considered myself lucky. The two people who were copy editor interns the years before me are still there, but all who came after aren't. Jennifer, Kate, Lucas, Cari, Sebastien, Ambreen, Angela, Dylan, Mel, Jill and Kamila. Those who filled in on short-term contracts like Phil, Jasmin, Amy and others I've probably forgotten about. Plus all the reporter and designer interns who came and went within months, and the photographer interns whose best hope after their stay was to be added to the end of a long list of regular freelancers. Many of them have found other jobs, some even better than The Gazette. But others would probably jump at the chance to come back, if only there were positions available.

On the flip side are those who went from contract to contract for years without having permanent jobs. There was even a name for this: "permatemp". In one extreme example, a copy editor was working for nine years before he was finally given a full-time permanent position as a copy editor.

I haven't done any research to confirm this, but I believe I'm the person who's been there the longest without any permanent status whatsoever.

The permatemp situation has for the most part been eliminated. Partly because there are much fewer people taking maternity leaves (most temporary replacements derive from that). Partly because of an agreement with the union when the last contract was signed to post new positions for people whose jobs were temporary in name only. And partly because there have just been so few non-interns hired in the past five years for even temporary jobs.

On the copy desk, I was the last on the seniority totem pole (I'm now second-last, thanks to a temporary job filling a short-term parental leave), despite being first hired six and a half years ago.

Welcome to the family

I think I've buried the lead enough. Last week, I was offered (and accepted) a permanent position as a weekend online copy editor. As of Feb. 1, I'll be working at least two shifts a week on a contract that never ends.

I'd like to say it's forever, but with the industry the way it is, one can't be certain of anything. What I do know is that my job is a lot more secure than it was before, and my worries about unemployment are much less pronounced. They're more abstract, more long-term, more if-this-company-goes-bankrupt or if-they-lock-us-out. And I'm in the same boat as my colleagues.

The difference is mostly psychological. The pay is the same, the work is the same, and the benefits are similar. But as corny as it is to say, I'm part of the Gazette family now. I'm no longer a temporary fill-in. I'm an employee. As much as The Gazette is permanently tied to me, I am permanently tied to it. I can think of my work there in the long term, not just three weeks ahead.

I don't know what that all means, and what will change. But I know there will be a slightly different mentality toward things like big projects. I've already been asked to help with one, and am eager to do so.

The position technically replaces Tyler Todd, who left the paper months ago for personal reasons and decided not to come back. I know this disappointed many of his coworkers because even though he didn't seem to enjoy it terribly, he was a very good editor. There's some irony in that Todd was first hired in the fall of 2005 to replace me as a part-time copy clerk. In hindsight, my path to permanence might have been faster if I'd stayed a clerk back then.

The next generation

As I remember my past, I remember the editors who helped me learn to excel at the job I enjoy so much. I remember the managers who praised me to their managers, and who did what they could to make sure I had chances to succeed. I remember the people who came after me and whose chances weren't as good as what I had.

And I think of the people yet to come, whose job prospects are even worse than mine were. Those for whom six years on and off part-time contracts would be a dream come true.

I think of the journalism school I came from, where last I checked the program I was in has since doubled in size, putting out twice as many journalists even though only a handful of the people I graduated with have salaried jobs as journalists.

Nathalie Collard wrote in La Presse last week about recent departures at Radio-Canada. Unlike The Gazette, where people are on contracts of three months, at the CBC they have casual workers who will know they're working only when they see their name on the schedule. Or in extreme cases, those who sit at home hoping to get a phone call asking them to work that day.

It's a system that on the one hand lowers the barrier to entry for new employees, but on the other hand offers them no security whatsoever when they get inside. Some people have been contract, temporary or casual workers there for years, de facto permanent but technically not.

I wish I could offer reassurance to people just coming into this business, or who are still looking for jobs. I can offer advice - be flexible, don't undersell yourself freelancing, don't work for someone else for free, find a niche, go where there's demand instead of where everyone else is, think outside the traditional media box - but I know there are cases where it doesn't matter how good you are or how much you love your job or how much your coworkers consider you invaluable. I know because I lost the job I love three times for reasons that were out of my control.

Now I don't have to worry about that happening for a fourth time. Unless there's a lockout, or a strike, or a situation where they have to lay off permanent employes employees (something that, despite the company's financial troubles, hasn't happened in the editorial department since I started there), I'll keep working indefinitely.

I hope the next generation doesn't have as much trouble getting a real job as I did. I hope it doesn't take decades before the journalism industry has found a proper business model. I hope freelancing for a few scraps won't be a last-resort career option for people who are so dedicated to this profession they are willing to live poor to make it happen. And I hope those whose passion isn't really journalism realize that quickly and move on.

For young journalists to be, I can only say I hope you succeed. Hard work does pay off, but not always in the ways you expect. And it takes a while. In my case, six and a half years.

In the meantime, follow good advice, like these nuggets from Gazette Arts editor Basem Boshra, a must-read particularly for those who want to freelance for big papers.

And, as Michelle said to me my first day, if you have any questions, I'd be happy to help.

Related Posts

• Want to watch me talk in front of a brick wall for half an hour?
• My Grey Cup screwup
• More journalists of tomorrow
• Gazette locks out two bargaining units
• Gazette begins charging for website access

Monday marked Todd van der Heyden's debut at Express, the afternoon show on CTV News Channel with Amanda Blitz.

Because he's from Montreal, because he's a nice guy and because he's a geek at heart, I wanted to be encouraging and wish him well in his new job.

Unfortunately, after sitting through the first three-hour program, I was left frustrated, both at what CTV seems to be doing with its all-news network and at how that industry is changing in general.

When it launched in 1997, what was then called CTVNews1 was licensed as a continuous 15-minute news wheel, repeating the headlines four times an hour. This was to distinguish it from CBC Newsworld, at a time when all cable channels had genre protection.

But as the CRTC came to realize that cable news was healthy enough to warrant direct competition, restrictions on the CTV network became relaxed, and now the two are effectively head to head in terms of format. This is a good thing.

What's not good is that rather than focus on more news to keep people better informed, CTV seems to be relying more on pointless, time-wasting banter that just wastes viewers' time.

Coming up, more chatting

Express's format seems to be mainly discussions with reporters about news stories, punctuated about half a dozen times in each day by discussions between the anchors about the news. These chats throw out personal anecdotes or reminders of history or sentences that start "it's interesting because..." - the point is probably to have more "analysis", but it comes out as anything but. Like people at a water cooler talking about a big story but neither person being fully informed about it.

It's not to say either anchor is uninformed. They clearly have a solid grasp of the news. But reporters are brought in to talk about stories for a reason. Anchors deal with so many different topics in a day that they can't become an expert in all of them.

On the local supper-hour newscast, anchor banter is a way to fill leftover time and get the newscast to the top of the hour. Endearing personalities to viewers is a side-effect to just having a flexible filler whose length can be adjusted on the fly. Because some anchors have been doing this for years, they make it seem natural, filling five, 10 or 30 seconds and making it seem as if they just happened to run out of conversation at exactly the right time.

But on Express, this banter is an integral part of the show, and I can't imagine why. There wasn't a single one of their chats that left me more informed about a topic.

I didn't do an exact count, but even though Express is three times the length of CTV Montreal's 6pm newscast, there were maybe half the stories discussed in it. I don't recall seeing any packaged reports at all, and some segments were simply repeated in their entirety.

A waste of four minutes

Let me give you a more concrete example. At one point during the show, there was some "breaking news" about a soldier being arrested and accused of leaking secrets. They had reporter Mercedes Stephenson live to talk about this news.

This, in its entirety, is what was known at the time:

A member of the Canadian Armed Forces, Jeffrey Paul Delisle of Bedford, N.S., has been chaged with a breach of trust under the criminal code for passing secret information to a foreign entity. He was arrested on Saturday. The government says Canadian citizens are not at risk, and it is taking steps to mitigate the release of this information. The investigation began in July 6, 2007 and the alleged acts took place between Jan. 10 and Jan. 13 of 2012.

I just timed myself reading that paragraph out loud, and it took less than 30 seconds.

The segment took a total of four minutes and 40 seconds, including an extended discussion between van der Heyden and Blitz, even though they had just learned of the story. The information listed above was repeated multiple times. There was speculation about what "foreign entity" meant. There was comparison between this and WikiLeaks or other cases of intentionally leaked information, even though they didn't know what information was leaked, how it was leaked, or who it was leaked to.

I'm not faulting them for not knowing this information. It's breaking news, they report what they have. And the RCMP wouldn't give further information. But rather than spend 30 seconds or a minute reporting the news and then moving on to another story, they kept discussing how they didn't know anything for almost five minutes.

I don't understand how I'm supposed to be better informed by this. I don't see how this isn't just a gigantic waste of my time.

Rumours as news

Here's another thing that bothered me. At one point an expert was brought on to talk about parenting, and she discussed how teens are finding ridiculous new ways to get drunk. It's a popular topic among journalists who want to attract viewers by scaring parents and inventing "trends" based mostly on rumours.

She brought up one method, which is infusing alcohol into gummy bears and then eating them during class.

The other method she mentioned was how teens are soaking tampons in alcohol and inserting them vaginally to accelerate the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream. She prefaces this by saying "I wanted to make sure this wasn't a hoax", which suggests she did some double-checking. But had she actually done some research, she would have found that a hoax is exactly what this is. Not only has there never been a single actual person who has admitted to doing this, but it just doesn't work. Tampons don't soak up enough alcohol to get someone drunk, they're very difficult to insert once they've been soaked, and they hurt like hell once inserted.

The story goes entirely unchallenged, leaving viewers under the incorrect impression that enough teenagers are attempting this that it has become a "trend".

This isn't just bad journalism. Pretending that people are doing these things successfully will make teenagers believe that there's a successful way of doing them. Instead of realizing after their first attempt that it was a stupid idea, they may try again, convinced that their technique must just need some fine-tuning because everyone else is doing it in a way that works. Pretending that it's a scary trend is probably going to make the problem worse, or it would if teenagers weren't just a bit smarter these days than your average TV pundit.

Anyway, this is a tangent, back to criticizing the show.

Second-hand news

Another segment was about the Shafia trial in Kingston, Ont. Reporter Merella Fernandez was brought in studio to discuss the latest developments with the two anchors.

Since the studio is in Toronto, I'm guessing Fernandez wasn't in the courtroom. And since the proceedings aren't broadcast, she's getting her information second-hand. One assumes it's from another reporter in Kingston, but this is never mentioned.

This bothers me because I'm seeing it more and more in cable news (I won't go so far as to call it a "trend" without quantifiable evidence): reporters are brought in to talk about a story they've only gotten second-hand. I see it a lot on Sun News Network, but I expect more from CTV.

I understand how TV news works. Maybe they didn't have a reporter out there and relied on Canadian Press for information. Maybe they had a reporter who was busy preparing a packaged report for evening newscasts and didn't have a bunch of time for a live hit on News Channel. That's understandable. But if a reporter is getting information second-hand, that should be explained.

Besides all that, a few technical problems and some name slipups, it went well. Hopefully it has nowhere to go but up.

They can start by making sure CTV News Channel has a bit more news.

Express with Amanda Blitz and Todd van der Heyden airs 1-4pm weekdays (Eastern time) on CTV News Channel.

Related Posts

• Global Montreal has a new (virtual) set
• Welcome to CFCF’s postvanderheyden era
• Todd van der Heyden leaving for CTV News Channel
• Caption Lori, Todd and Mutsumi
• How’s my hair?

CKLX-FM 91.9 has applied to the CRTC for permission to change its format from jazz to talk radio, citing its poor financial situation and the lack of francophone talk radio options in Montreal.

You can download and read the application here (ZIP).

Planète Jazz, which launched Dec. 14, 2004, is the last commercial jazz radio station in Canada, its owner says, after similar formats in Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton and Winnipeg abandoned it for other more popular formats. Though it won't release full details to the public, RNC says CKLX has revenues "well below" $1 million a year, about 18% of what was forecast in the station's business plan.

It has come to the conclusion that the format does not work, and it must either change formats or consider shutting down the station.

Though it's not stated explicitly in the application, it's hinted that the new format would be similar to that of CHOI-FM in Quebec City, a station also owned by RNC Media that has controversial opinionators who talk more than they think (people like Stéphane Dupont). It's been dubbed "radio poubelle" and compared to right-wing talk-radio stations in the United States, but it's popular, with more than 200,000 listeners.

RNC Media also owns the similarly-styled CKYK-FM in the Saguenay region, as well as music stations Capitale Rock in Gatineau, Planète-branded stations and other Radio X and Radio X2 stations across Quebec.*

CHOI is so controversial, in fact, that the CRTC ordered it be shut down because of its comments. Only the sale of the station from Genex Communications to RNC Media (and the issuing of a new license) saved it from going dark.

RNC conducted a survey of Montreal listeners to gauge their interest in a new station "that would have a style that discusses subjects in the news, that asks real questions and isn't afraid of its opinions". Based on that, it predicts a new talk-radio station would have a 10% market share, and 20% among the key demographic of men 25-49. It also sees its revenues going from $2.6 million in the first year to $8.2 million in the seventh year of its license, far above what they could have hoped for Planète Jazz.

The market for French-language talk radio has been open for opportunity, particularly since CKAC turned into all-traffic last September. Other than Radio-Canada and community/campus stations, the only talk radio station is CHMP 98.5, which has shot to the top of the ratings. It also has to do double-duty as a sports station in the evenings.

The application, survey and other documents curiously make no mention of the license for a talk-radio station recently given to the Tietolman-Tétrault-Pancholy media group. That station is also expected to launch next fall. It's unclear if they're unaware of the license or if they're just ignoring it in their projections.

RNC Media President Raynald Brière declined to comment on the application, saying "le dossier n'est pas complet."

The application, which would see the license changed from requiring 75% jazz to requiring 50% talk, is a Part 1 application, which means the CRTC has not called a hearing to discuss it, and if there's no significant opposition it could be approved without the owners having to appear in front of the commission.

The deadline for interventions is 8pm on Feb. 13. You can file an intervention or comment here, by clicking "submit" next to the item about RNC Media.

*UPDATE: This move is strangely the opposite of one being done in Abitibi, where RNC Media is abandoning the Radio X format in favour of Capitale Rock, replacing talk radio with music. (Thanks Psychodork for pointing this out.)

Reaction

UPDATE (Jan. 20): The Journal de Québec reports about this move, getting the manager of its Quebec City stations to comment. The company wants to export the CHOI format to Montreal, but adapting to the market. Less talk of bringing back the Nordiques, more talk about traffic. (Is this really what separates Montreal from Quebec City?) The paper also talks to André Arthur, who thinks they should put Stéphane Dupont (the guy who told Haiti "fuck you" after the earthquake) in Montreal.

There was also a discussion on Tuesday on CHOI itself about the application, with an interview with Patrice Demers. They even discuss potential hosts, saying Patrick Lagacé is unlikely and Jeff Fillion is very doubtful, but nothing is set in stone.

The proposal also was discussed on Radio-Canada's Les Lionnes, which prompted not one but two discussions on CHOI. You can imagine how Radio Poubelle and a public broadcaster TV show hosted by three women think about each other.

La Presse covers this in the form of a column from Marc Cassivi. There are also blog posts at Voir from Sportnographe's Olivier Niquet and journalist Fabien Loszach. Each of these got criticized on CHOI, which blasted Cassivi for being uninformed about what can be heard on CHOI, and said Voir's complaints that CHOI's programming is sexist, racist or homophobic are simply false.

Stéphane Gendron reacted to the news on Radio X, in which he said he would be interested in an on-air position at the station, because he's more of a radio guy than a TV personality.

Jeff Fillion himself also comments the news on his Radio Pirate.

At least one blogger has called for people to rise up against this move, and another defends the sophistication of Radio-Canada against its Radio X-supporting critics.

Quebec's FM93 wants to go mostly-talk

Coincidentally, the application from RNC Media comes about the same time as one from Cogeco Diffusion to change the license of CJMF-FM (FM 93.3) in Quebec City to allow for more talk. Currently the station offers a hybrid format of talk and music, but its survey numbers show more than 60% of its listeners tune in only for talk programming.

The new schedule would see talk programming in the mornings and evenings on weekends (noon to 4pm would remain music) and weekday evenings. Weekday mornings and afternoons are already all-talk.

As an added bonus to Quebec City listeners, the change would mean the station broadcasts all Montreal Canadiens games. Currently it offers only a selection. This will be welcome news to Canadiens fans in the region who may have been able to tune in to the bleu-blanc-rouge on AM station CKAC but have no hope of listening to 98.5.

The deadline for interventions or comments in the CJMF-FM application is Feb. 6. It is also a Part 1 application and can be seen on this page.

Related Posts

• CFQR gets license renewal – and a slap on the wrist
• CRTC Roundup: They saved local TV!

DiMonte began his first shift back at Montreal's Spirit of Rock on Monday, and I managed to score an invitation to see it from the studio (even if it meant pulling an all-nighter after a late shift at work). This is the story of that day.

Terry DiMonte reads the paper just before he starts his first show. (And by "the paper", I mean the section in Saturday's Gazette seemingly devoted to him)

It's hard to imagine someone like Terry DiMonte being nervous about going on the radio. So I didn't take it too seriously when he warned me the week before that he would be a nervous wreck on his first day.

But as he walked into Astral Radio's Fort St. offices just after 5am, it was apparent he wasn't quite 100% back in his chair and it would take some time to make him fully comfortable. He knew he would be judged from the moment he pressed the button that turns on his microphone, that thousands of people who knew about him coming back (either through the promotional campaign Astral put on or through the full-page piece in Saturday's Gazette) would be tuning in just to hear his voice again.

He was worried about screwing up, absent-mindedly referring to Q107, the station he left a month earlier, instead of CHOM. Thankfully for him there were posters with CHOM's logo and frequency all over the studio, so he needed only look up if he forgot.

In the end, he didn't screw up. He got the call letters right, and the frequency, and the motto. He needed to be reminded of the phone number at one point, but mostly it was like he never left. And if he was nervous at all during his first break ("break" being how radio types refer to "the part where I'm on air"), he didn't show it as he said hi:

The first song for DiMonte's first show was Back in the Saddle by Aerosmith, which came as a suggestion on Facebook when overnight host Ronny Mack asked fans which should be the first song. DiMonte hadn't thought of that song as an option, but considered it very appropriate considering he's coming back from Calgary.

The team

Maureen Holloway joins Terry DiMonte on his first show

Shortly after the show began, DiMonte was joined in studio by Maureen Holloway. Holloway hosts is a big part of the morning show at Q107 in Toronto, and contributed to his former morning show at (a different) Q107 in Calgary. Both are owned by Corus. Because Corus no longer has a Montreal station with the sale of CFQR and others to Cogeco, she wasn't on the air here and Astral managed to reach an agreement to bring her on to do a segment just before 6am and have it repeated at 7:15.

But because Holloway was just finishing a vacation and happened to be in Montreal, she came into the studio and joined DiMonte for a few hours, giving him someone to chat with on air. His actual cohost, Heather Backman, doesn't start until Jan. 16.

Holloway's arrival, a surprise for DiMonte, resulted in a reunion for the two friends who have worked together for many years, going back to when DiMonte hosted the morning show at Mix 96.

The show has two other regular contributors, both of whom come in studio to do their bits: Eric Engels with his once-daily Habs report and Trudie Mason with news on the hour.

Mason did her first newscast at 6am:

DiMonte did some sports news after that, and got in a mention of Calgary Flames captain Jarome Iginla scoring his 500th career goal. It was a legitimate sports story of national interest, but a bit of a reminder that there's still a bit of Calgary in DiMonte.

Engels only comes in once a day. You can listen to his first Habs report here (MP3).

Esteban Vargas sits behind the big board pressing all the cool buttons

The last contributor to the show is the guy behind the scenes, board operator Esteban Vargas. I recognized the name, but I didn't know where I'd heard it. He suggested it might have been when he was doing odd shifts as a traffic reporter, which might have been true. But I think I actually recognize the name, oddly enough, from the Kelly Alexander Show podcast, even though I haven't listened to that in quite a while.

Though he's been at Astral for six years, and clearly knows what he's doing, there were a few jokes about child labour when DiMonte posted a photo of Esteban online.

The magical computer box lists songs, commercials, traffic reports and all the other live an recorded sounds that go into a show.

Terry needs a clock

It was one of those things. If you see in any of these videos DiMonte looking ahead and up as he talks, he's looking at a non-existent analog clock. There used to be one on the opposite wall, but it disappeared some time after he left in 2007. There's one on the wall behind him, but that's incredibly awkward to try to look at when you're on the air from that chair.

DiMonte explains the reason best in the video, but the clock provides a reference not only for the time (which he can just read off his computer screen), but also how much of the show is left, and how long until the top of the hour. After decades in radio, it's become second nature to him to see an hour in terms of the analog clock and to mentally plan accordingly.

DiMonte was repeatedly assured that a clock would be acquired and installed.

Media circus

There were quite a few people around to witness DiMonte's return. In addition to myself, the studio was visited by cameras from:

Global Montreal

CTV Montreal

... and CHOM's own promotions department. (There was a second, more professional-looking camera also taking video)

The CHOM video of DiMonte's first day has been posted online. It includes his first and last words on his first show. The latter part includes a specific thank-you to me, which I didn't expect. My mom heard it, but in case you want to listen to just that part, here it is (MP3).

A complete list of DiMonte's news coverage is at the bottom of Monday's post. So far it includes a Saturday feature and live chat with The Gazette, a story and later in-studio interview at CTV Montreal (they've produced a behind-the-scenes video vignette), and a brief on Global Montreal, plus wherever Astral's press release has been republished.

But DiMonte has also been talking to non-traditional media. Besides me, he's talked to Gazette blogger Bugs Burnett and the Cornwall Free News, besides one-on-one chats with people on Twitter and Facebook.

Terry appreciates you calling

Plenty of DiMonte's critics say he has a huge ego and everything is about him. While I'd never accuse any successful media personality of not having an ego, DiMonte spent quite a bit of time his first day answering calls from listeners, even with the studio filled with people and everything else going through his mind.

The calls were relatively short, and some had to be interrupted because DiMonte had to go back on the air. In general, they went something like this:

Even Andrew Carter at CJAD was getting calls from people welcoming DiMonte back, one Astral employee walked into the studio to report with a laugh. (I tweeted that, resulting later in Carter coming in and asking "who's Fagstein?" - after a bit of nervous panic, we introduced ourselves, and it turns out he likes the blog.)

DiMonte also communicated via Facebook and Twitter, as he's become a bit more adept at social media in the past few years.

Cake

A special cake was brought in to celebrate DiMonte's first show

A special "welcome back Terry" cake was brought in, much to DiMonte's surprise. That missing bit on the left is where he stuck his finger in to taste the icing. "I bet that's fantastic," said the guy who continues to be worried that his return to Montreal is a one-way ticket to extreme weight gain.

What's next?

In case there are still people in Montreal who don't know about DiMonte's return, the big promotional push will come next week when Heather Backman joins the show and things start moving on all four wheels. I haven't been told of any extreme promotional plans, just the usual contests (including their "man cave" watch-the-Super-Bowl-with-Terry deal) and advertising/marketing.

Maureen Holloway and Terry DiMonte share a hug as she departs for Toronto

UPDATE (Jan. 16): CHOM's website has some audio clips from DiMonte's show. They include more episodes of Holloway's Dirty Little Secrets, Engels's Habs Report and Pierre Houde of RDS talking about Michael Cammalleri, as well as interviews with visiting artists like Martin Short, Mark McKinney and Demetri Martin.

There's also a short-answer get-to-know-Heather segment, in which we learn they haven't yet decided whether they'll call her Heather Backman or Heather B.

Related Posts

• CHOM’s new schedule adds Terry DiMonte, Heather Backman in mornings
• Pete Marier leaves CHOM over contract dispute
• Terry DiMonte returns to CHOM Jan. 9
• Astral’s Martin Spalding on Terry DiMonte, CHOM, CJAD and Virgin Radio
• Terry DiMonte returns to CHOM, and is back in Montreal for good

Terry DiMonte does his first show back at CHOM on Jan. 9.

The news that Terry DiMonte was coming back to CHOM came out all the way back in June. The date was set and publicized in November. But details on such things as who his cohosts would be and what happens to the rest of the schedule were kept under wraps until Monday when DiMonte started his first show.

Here's the details of its new schedule:

Mornings Rock with Terry DiMonte

The morning show, from 5:30 to 10am weekdays, is being completely reconstructed around DiMonte. His cohost, starting Jan. 16, will be Heather Backman, who left CJFM a year ago for an opportunity in Cleveland, which she's leaving to come back to Montreal.

Backman and DiMonte don't have any history, which makes the choice a little out of left field. But she did a demo with DiMonte and there was something about it that he and Brand Director André Lallier liked. "She's very witty," Lallier said. "She brings a certain edge. She has a good laugh. A fresh perspective."

Backman and DiMonte together just sounds good, he said, and in radio that's what's important.

The show also includes some regular contributors:

Maureen Holloway will do entertainment segments twice each morning from Toronto.

Maureen Holloway will do entertainment segments (called "Dirty Little Secrets") at 5:50 and 7:15am daily. Holloway works out of her home in Toronto for Corus stations across Canada, and was a feature of DiMonte's morning show at Q107 in Calgary. She's also an old friend of DiMonte's.

Holloway previously contributed to CFQR, but since it and other Corus radio stations in Quebec were sold to Cogeco, there's no Corus station in this market, so they were able to negotiate having her on CHOM.

Because she happened to be in the area finishing off her vacation, Holloway joined DiMonte in studio on his first day.

(As an aside, I find it funny that DiMonte comes from Q107 in Calgary, Holloway comes from Q107 in Toronto - both owned by Corus - and Backman comes from Q104 in Cleveland. Gives you an idea of the lack of imagination when it comes to branding radio stations.)

Trudie Mason does newscasts on the hour

Trudie Mason of CJAD walks down the hall just before the top of the hour and gives the news headlines (usually preceded off-air by an apology from DiMonte for not being on time).

Eric Engels talks about the Habs

Eric Engels continues contributing his Habs report to CHOM's morning show, though it's moved to 6:55am. Engels is a Habs reporter who writes for HockeyBuzz and does the Engels Angle on CTV Montreal's website, among other things. You can follow him on Twitter at @EricEngels.

Esteban Vargas sits behind the big board pressing all the cool buttons

Esteban Vargas is the unsung hero behind the big board, queueing all the songs and audio clips and traffic reports and everything else. He's been at Astral since 2005, working mainly as an operator and in promotions.

• Tootall (Weekdays 10am-3pm). His shift remains unchanged, as does his noon-hour Made to Order show.
• Bilal Butt (Weekdays 3-8pm). Bilal gets upgraded back into the afternoon drive slot vacated when Pete Marier left the station last month. The afternoon drive show expands in length to five hours.
• Jason Rockman (Weeknights 8pm-midnight). Rockman shifts earlier to take over Butt's slot. His Amped show runs weeknights instead of one day a week.
• Brandon Craddock (B.C.) and Ron MacKinnon (Ronny Mack) continue to share overnight duties from midnight to 5:30am.

Weekends

• Sharon Hyland stays on weekend mornings, shifting earlier so she starts at 6am instead of 8. "It's all good," she writes on her blog.
• Rob Kemp takes on the midday shift on weekends, from 11am to 4pm each day.
• Randy Renaud remains the weekend evening person, 4-8pm Saturday and 4-10pm Sunday
• Jay Walker maintains his Montreal Rocks show from 10pm to midnight Sundays.

Chantal Desjardins moves to CJAD

The one personality leaving CHOM is morning co-host Chantal Desjardins. But she's not leaving the building. Instead, she's joining Aaron Rand's show on CJAD weekdays from 3-7pm, essentially doing the job of sportscaster that Barry Morgan did. Now Morgan can concentrate on his own show, which comes on after Rand's.

Desjardins says she's "really enjoying" her new job already. "I think Aaron and I have natural chemistry...he is very encouraging and his energy is contagious. And have I mentioned I've slept in until 9am the last two days? Amazing."

She says she also plans to keep doing stuff for CTV on the side and is "looking forward to a new adventure."

Rand says he's excited about Desjardins. "Chantal is funny, opinionated, and smart, AND she brings a female perspective to the show, which is something I’ve always thought was a good complement my style," he told me. "We’d worked together before on a couple of occasions, and I immediately liked her style and personality."

"And, it gives Barry Morgan a chance to spend all his time focusing on his evening show from 7-10, without having to worry about doing the afternoon sports run on my show."

"So as far as I’m concerned, it’s a win/win all around."

Rand has made Desjardins a part of the last half-hour of his show, from 6:30 to 7pm, when the two chat about weird and funny stories. "I figured that would be a good way to incorporate her into the show beyond her sports reports,  and give her a feel for how I work so she can get comfortable with my style," Rand said. "After that it’ll be a matter of getting her more involved on a regular basis."

Desjardins let her Facebook friends know about her new job, drawing dozens of encouraging comments.

Rob Kemp okay with weekends

Kemp also put on a happy face about his new job. Kemp posted on his CHOM blog taking the bright side of being on the radio only two days a week.

Lallier talked up the new weekend lineup, saying that ratings show that 30-35% of the audience is now on weekends, which means Saturday and Sunday are no longer audience wastelands. Weeks after the Q became the Beat and put big names Ken Connors and Nat Lauzon on the weekend, resulting in ratings boosts, it seems CHOM is also paying attention to weekends.

What about Pete?

I asked Lallier about Pete Marier, and the possibility of him coming back. A cursory look at the new schedule suggests it wouldn't be that difficult to shift things around to put Marier back on the afternoon drive show.

Lallier's answers differed little from what Astral VP Martin Spalding told me just before Christmas. They wanted Marier to stay and form one of the "three pillars" of the station. They offered him a "very, very good" contract for an afternoon drive host, and gave him multiple opportunities to accept. Lallier pointed out that even after it became clear Marier wouldn't take the contract and his show was terminated, management still let him go on air one last time (something that is very unusual in professional radio because it can lead to people saying things on air that make the station look bad) but that again Marier said no.

Marier himself remains quiet, despite lots of activity from his fans (a protest had been planned via Facebook for Monday morning outside CHOM's offices, but was called off because a poor showing would have seemed worse than none at all). At least one other radio veteran who works at Astral has expressed hope that Marier can put his emotions aside and work out a deal with management to come back.

Coverage

Astral's press release explaining all these changes was issued Monday morning.

The Gazette's Bill Brownstein had a feature on DiMonte in Saturday's paper, in case you haven't read it yet. It includes a sidebar on what happened to Marier.

Global and CTV both sent cameramen to document DiMonte's first show. CTV later sent reporter Cindy Sherwin to talk to DiMonte. Global's brief is at the end of Monday's newscast (skip to 23:15).

CTV Montreal also interviewed DiMonte on the noon newscast on Thursday.

A live chat with the Gazette

UPDATE (Jan. 11): The Gazette invited DiMonte to do an hour-long live chat on Wednesday, in which he talks about his favourite music, his weight loss and what it's like to come home. Even his mom stops by and asks him to get some rest.

Of interest to us, he offered the following on Pete Marier:

I feel bad that Pete left but have been hopeful that there is a raprochement possible. He chose to leave. I hope we can change his mind

(Answering a question on whether Marier would come back) I hope so Pat... there seems to be a detente brewing there

On Ted Bird:

I would LOVE to have Ted back..the best fun I ever had...and maybe someday...but right now he loves what he's doing at K 103...so not in the NEAR future I don't think...unless we can change his mind

DiMonte also called Rob Kemp a "talented young broadcaster" and said he met Backman for the first time in October but "liked her very much".

UPDATE (Jan. 14): Richard Burnett talks to DiMonte for his Gazette blog. DiMonte also talks to the Cornwall Free News.

Related Posts

• Terry DiMonte leaving CHOM for better offer in Calgary
• Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again
• Pete Marier leaves CHOM over contract dispute
• Terry DiMonte returns to CHOM Jan. 9
• Astral’s Martin Spalding on Terry DiMonte, CHOM, CJAD and Virgin Radio

Related Posts

• Caption CTV’s Christine Long
• Caption Natasha Gargiulo and Freeway Frank
• Caption Lori Graham
• Caption Mitch Melnick
• Caption Mike FM’s Patrick Charles