Promises, promises…Sun News

Has there ever been a more hyped new television network than Sun News? After months of build up, promising to change the way Canadians view news and opinion, all I could see and hear was a great big thud.

Sun News is terrible, almost unwatchable. I have spent the last few days tuning in to as much of Sun News as I could stand. Usually I like to wait at least a week before talking about a new show or network. That gives the producers and the talent time to work out the bugs and get some kind of head of steam. On Sun News however, I see no hope of overcoming the problems they have within a week or even a month. Don’t get me wrong, I would like to see the channel succeed. I believe Canadians need a quality news and current affairs channel and we need to hear new and different opinions. I don’t have to agree with the content. I do have to be able to sit down and watch the content. I dare anyone to try to watch Sun News for any length of time.

The problems with Sun News are many. I will attempt to tackle the most basic failures I have seen so far.

My biggest upset is that the channel hypes non-stop and then doesn’t deliver. Almost every commercial break has a promo that talks about the new direction, the fight for freedom, the different way of doing things. So far the content is all too familiar and predictable. I saw the interview with Bob Rae on David Akin’s show, Daily Brief. There wasn’t a single tough question. There was no new angle. This interview could have run on CBC NN or CTV News Channel and felt right at home. It was as boring as any political interview I have seen by Evan Solomon but with the added non-attraction of watching unrelated footage that not only had little to do with the story, but was looped so I could see the same images over-and-over again. Worse still, I saw all the footage earlier covering a phone interview with the Sun Reporter on the campaign trail with Stephen Harper. You can’t start off by selling stale product and expect to stay in business.

Charles Adler did an interview on the first night about Cuba on the anniversary of the Bay of Pigs. Was the guest an expert? An ambassador? A professor? Even a journalist who has covered Cuba? No chance. The interviewee was a rock DJ from Alberta who has taken two vacations in Cuba. At first I thought this was a joke, especially when the DJ said he knew little about any politics, let alone Cuban politics. Sadly it was an attempt at a serious interview but provided neither heat nor light. It amounted to a waste of air time.

These of course are just examples of what I can best describe as third rate television, far less than one expects from a national network. So far the content speaks to a lack of preparedness, a need for far more research, producers and guest bookers who are at best inferior, and journalism that is at best unprofessional.

My second big beef is the incredible lack of on-air talent. Sun News has managed to put together a roster of people who are not ready for prime time on national television. The stumbling and fumbling, even from long time radio host Adler is completely off putting. The inability to find the camera to speak to time-after-time speaks to unprofessionalism that I have seldom seen anywhere, even in the classroom at Ryerson and Centennial College.

Ezra Levant’s non-stop whining and digs at the CBC have made a man I have always thought interesting, into a blowhard and a bore, even when I agree with him. An hour of Ezra, unfocused, unedited, unremitting is a test a strength I am afraid I have failed. Just to make it clear, this is not about left versus right or agreement versus disagreement. I totally agree with Levant about the CBC’s Vote Compass for example, it is wrong-headed and often biased. But a good commentator makes the point in a couple of minutes and doesn’t drone on-and-on for an entire segment repeating the same facts and charges three or four times. Further, Levant’s rants tend to the personal as opposed to a man speaking to national issues. Do I care about his lawsuit in Alberta months after the fact? You’re on the air today, at least try to be relevant.

The other on-air personalities and hosts are no better than Levant and Adler and most are worse. It is a team that has been oversold in ability and experience. It should come as no surprise that they have failed to deliver on the promises of Sun News management and the advertising hype.

I could go on to talk about the garish sets, the lack of enough pictures to tell stories, the poor studio direction, but I think you have already gotten the idea, Sun News is only different in that the level of incompetence far surpasses what we have come to expect from main stream broadcasting and journalism. Sun is not Fox News North. Fox News is hosted and produced by people who know how to do professional television. Even when I hate them, they are entertaining and watchable. Sun is neither. I was hoping for a Canadian network that would push CBC NN and CTV News Channel to improve. So far there is no chance of that. Let’s hope Sun News improves in the near future before it becomes totally irrelevant and fades into the Canadian sunset.

Filed under: Media Commentary, Fox News, CTV News Channel, CBC NN, David Akin, Sun News Network, Daily Brief, David Adler, Ezra Levant, Vote Compass

The Guessing Game in Egypt

The Egyptian Revolution was and still is a remarkable story. Thousands of people taking to the streets and squares of an autocratic country, standing up for the rights and freedoms we take for granted in Canada. For close to three weeks we watched and listened to world shaking events live as they happened half a world away. Once again the power of the people was too much for a dictator to deal with. We have seen similar scenarios play out in places like Berlin and Manila. We have also seen it go the other way most recently in Teheran and decades ago in Beijing. I suppose it is the failures in China and Iran that make the story so poignant in Egypt. It is the possibility of brutality, ugliness and doom that make one turn on Al Jazeera or CNN to witness what’s going on, all the while hoping and praying for the success of the brave folks who are standing up to their undemocratic leaders.

While musing on the events in Cairo it is impossible for me to not also think about the successes and failures of the journalistic coverage of those events. It was truly the best of times and the worst of times for 24 hour news stations.

Trying to cover and understand live events, especially massive events like a revolution is a daunting task for even the best minds in journalism. In Egypt it was the possibilities not the actual events that were so riveting. Let’s face it, except for the day when the protesters were attacked by Mubarak supporters on camels, there was not much to see. Tens of thousands of people milling about, sleeping, arguing and most of all, waiting don’t make for great pictures. What kept the story going was the speculation. What would the Mubarak government do? Would Mubarak call in the troops to force an end to the protest? Would Mubarak attempt to negotiate a peaceful end? Would he finally have to quit the leadership as the crowds were demanding?

It was truly exciting because we did not know how it would end. And this is where the networks failed. To be fair, I don’t know if it was possible to succeed, but for eighteen days and more viewers were bombarded not with facts but with speculation: one former ambassador to Egypt speculating that Mubarak could not be forced out; an academic who guessed that Mubarak had no choice but to leave. On and on the experts droned for hours that morphed into days and weeks. The poor viewer was left with a cornucopia of opinion. It’s too bad no two experts seemed to agree on anything. The facts were few and far between. The details did not add up to any real understanding of what was going to happen in the end. It was closer to sports play-by-play than it was to journalism. Between periods or innings we went back to the experts, the former players and managers to assess what they were seeing. Only when there is little or no action, what the heck were they basing their comments on?

The day before Mubarak left we were told that he was going to make a statement. All the so-called experts announced that he was quitting. Wrong again. Mubarak said he was staying until the next election and asked the people to go home and allow the economy to get back to normal. So that was it. The insiders and pundits quickly offered that the revolution was almost over. Mubarak would stay. He would change his style of government but he was not going anywhere. That speculation was still going strong when Mubarak abruptly left for a resort in the Sinai and his vice president, Suleiman, was left to announce that Mubarak had finally quit. Jubilation ensued, not just in Egypt, but all around the world. The experts were back and proclaiming the revolution over and won by the people of Egypt.

I hope they are right this time, but let’s face it, while Mubarak is gone, it is the army that has taken power. The generals are saying all the right things…new constitution, free elections in six months or more, but hey, from here it looks like another military dictatorship, at least for now.

In the last few days we have begun to read and hear about the root causes of the revolt. Soaring food prices and massive unemployment emboldened the people of Egypt. As Bob Dylan said, “When you ain’t got nothin’, you have nothin’ to lose.” There are even some questions beginning to trickle out about whether the military will readily give up power. Good. But where were these questions and background while the story was happening? If you believed CNN and Fox it was only the successful revolt in Tunisia that led to the Egyptian uprising. Al Jazeera English was better, but they too got caught up in the speculation to the sometimes exclusion of the facts.

24 Hour news once again had a great story to tell. As far as pictures and images were concerned, they did a great job, especially considering the pressure they were under from the Egyptian authorities. But as far as concrete information was concerned, all news was a wasteland of speculation, guesswork and boring interviews with out-of-touch experts that were sitting hundreds or thousands of miles from the action. Like I said earlier, I don’t know if there was any way around this problem. The longer a story lasts the more difficult it is to find new angles and new talkers, but I do know that some context about conditions in Egypt that allowed for all those people to spend 18 or more days in Tahrir Square would have helped me to understand the story.

Oh, and once again as a major story breaks, CBC NN and CTV News Channel become almost completely irrelevant. I have asked this question many times before and I ask it again: why would anyone who has access to Al Jazeera English or CNN watch a major international event on CBC NN or CTV News Channel? Unless Stephen Harper is in trouble, or Bev Oda is fudging the truth again, why would I watch a Canadian all news channel at all? It’s not the fault of the CBC and CTV news staffs that they are badly outgunned by the big international networks. But it is a fact and calls into question the ability and usefulness of Canadian all news networks unless Bell Media and the government of Canada are willing to properly fund such enterprises.

Filed under: Media Commentary, Political Commentary, Al Jazeera, Bell Media, CBC NN, CNN, CTV News Channel

Self-Censorship: The real failure of Canadian journalism

I have just recently returned from working in India for over a month. I won’t go into what I thought of the world’s biggest democracy, this blog is not a travelogue. I did get the opportunity to watch quite a bit of Indian television. You won’t be surprised to hear that there are quite a few English channels in the country, at least two of which are all-news, all talk stations. While I did dip into BBC-International and CNN-International, these stations were not readily available on my travels, so I found myself trying to find any news that was available.

I struck it lucky on two counts. The first being the visit by President Obama to Mumbai and Delhi while I was India. The Indian stations provided an interesting take on the president’s visit. I got to see a range of opinion that I never would have seen or heard at home. The bottom line in the coverage, as it would have been in Canada if Obama was visiting Toronto and Ottawa, was what is in it for us. How are the U.S. promises going to affect India? Parochial? Not really. It amounts to serving the viewers with information that is important to them.

The second stroke of luck was to be in India during both an election campaign and the aftermath of the Commonwealth Games. It was here that Indian TV revealed itself to be far different to the Canadian and American mold we have become so used to. I was shocked and pleasantly surprised to see interviewers and panels that were hard-nosed, tough and sometimes incendiary. I don’t mean unfair, I mean pointed.

On one occasion I saw an election panel made up of one sitting cabinet minister and seven other men running for parliament. Each guest was a member of a different political party. The subject of the interview was primarily public works, buildings, bridges, but in fact the real crux of the conversation was corruption. In Canada you might expect the opposition candidates to attack the cabinet minister and in India they did too. But here was the difference, the host went after the cabinet minister with a gusto I have never seen in North America. He pointed out the scandals. He pinpointed the lies. He called the minister out by explaining what he said in the past and what he had done. There was no Canadian style pussy-footing. He finally asked the minister why anyone should ever believe a word he says and further why would any sane voter choose him or his party? This is the party in power, remember.

I was glued to the television. It was great theatre but more important it was great journalism. It left me feeling empty and despairing however about the brand of political interviewing and the level of polite political discourse practiced by Canadian interviewers and TV hosts. Anyone who has watched CBC NN or CTV News Channel, let alone The National, Global National, or CTV News would feel the same way I felt. The comparison to the beige news and current affairs we are treated to was stark. Anyone who has ever seen Evan Solomon and one of his panels hem and haw through a nice polite discussion would be embarrassed by the difference.

A few days after that discussion, on a different channel I saw a news program eviscerate the two most important men, both politicians, behind the Commonwealth Games. They had, it seemed been going after these guys for months. They had interviews with them done over the course of those months. They chronicled the changing stories of the Commonwealth Games’ leaders. The shone a bright light on the lies being told throughout the process. They investigated the funding and the waste. In the end they took full credit for the fact that they were responsible for the firing and political downfall of two more corrupt Indian political leaders.

There is a fearlessness in Indian TV that is remarkable. In Canada, journalistic organizations seem to be afraid to take on the government. Not so in India. In Canada I have heard important interviewers say they can’t go after their guests because if they offend them they won’t come back and perhaps neither will anyone in their political party. In India this excuse doesn’t play. It is time for Canadian journalists to understand that they are in no way beholden to our political and business leaders. When the government has a story they want to get out they will come calling. When business has a new product to sell they will be available for comment. Politicians and business people need the media more than the journalists need them. When did we forget this fact?

Canadian media has lost its mojo, its power. Not because of what is being done to them, but because of what they are doing to themselves. Canadian journalism is for the most part too timid and too worried about the backlash from the people they cover. In today’s media world there is no place for the tough investigator, the crusaders are all but gone. It is a polite world of you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. I saw this happening at the CBC in the Mulroney years when we backed off stories that might affect our budget. CTV was once led by men like John Bassett who wore his political views on his sleeve for all to see. You didn’t have to agree with them, they didn’t care.

Today self-censorship may be the biggest roadblock to good journalism. If you don’t believe me, watch Indian TV.

Filed under: Media Commentary, BBC International, CBC NN, CNN International, CTV News, CTV News Channel, Evan Soloman, Global National, John Bassett, The National

Boredom ‘R’ Us

Back in the olde days, when I was running Canada AM and that show was a serious news and information program, I had a boss and mentor, Don Cameron, who was easily the most brilliant television producer I have ever met. He had a visceral understanding of what made information television work. If he were alive today he would be shocked by what passes for current affairs in today’s multi-channel universe.

When I took over Canada AM, Don gave me a list of rules to follow. His first rule of great television still makes sense to me even though it is now broken dozens of times every day: never interview journalists or university professors. His point here was that television is an emotional medium. It is people who have strong views, who take a side or are somehow attached to the story, that make us sit up and take notice. Facts work in newspapers and magazines but emotion carries the day on TV. The viewer remembers the distraught parents, the beautiful child, the homeless man…the viewer forgets how many, how high, and how much soon after the story ends. With this in mind Don Cameron insisted on booking people who had a real stake in any story we covered. A cabinet minister has to defend the government’s viewpoint. A mother tells a personal story. A worker who lost a colleague has an emotional response.

Journalists and professors are very knowledgeable but by the very nature of their work they step back and look at all sides of a story and inevitably they deliver the dreaded, “on the one hand and on the other hand.” This is boring to all but other journalists and university profs. The proof is in the numbers: CNN is last among U.S. all news and information channels, CBC NN reaches fewer viewers than local news in Saskatoon and CTV Newsnet has fewer viewers than local news in PEI.

Don’s second rule banned all regular panels. He said if you have an Ottawa panel every Friday and the big Ottawa news breaks on Monday, do you not discuss it on Monday and save it for your panel? Or does the panel ignore what is now old news on Friday? Either way doesn’t work. Don didn’t like regular panelists either. He felt that over time their answers become predictable. I, for instance, hate seeing Richard Gwyn on TV. I know he knows his stuff but I also know every position he will take on every story because I have read and seen his take for over 30 years. No matter what he says, to me it is same old, same old.

Why do I bring this stuff up now? This week a new head of CNN was named, Ken Jautz. It will be Ken’s job to lift CNN out of its current doldrums and back into the game they originated. When interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter Ken all but admitted that CNN is now mostly boring, but especially in prime time. He said, “We need to make our prime time more compelling and engaging, sometimes more fun, you could even say. We are going to adhere to our basic programming strategy of nonpartisan information inclusive of all different points of view. But we need to be livelier and more engaging.”

Jautz intends to improve the numbers at CNN by changing the hosts. I for one will be glad to see Larry King gone, his expiry date was sometime last century and his softball approach and kissing up to his guests was never very palatable to me. Maybe more important, he wants to up the ante on opinion, “By the time you get to prime time, in today’s media environment, there are so many websites and outlets, people know basic facts. In addition to facts, they want analysis, they want context, they want perspective and they want some opinion. And yes, I think we should provide them with as many points of view as possible, but we should provide them from all different ends of the political spectrum and from newsmakers as well as pundits.” Newsmakers…a full spectrum of opinion…this is a language I understand and agree with. This sounds like the ghost of Don Cameron.

Now if we could only convince the people who produce current affairs television in Canada. In my opinion the failure here has grown out of fear and laziness. The fear is that the producers will not be able to fill all of their time slots. Panels and regular guests present the guest bookers with a guarantee that they will easily fill a large portion of their hour or half-hour. No chance of dead air or the host talking to himself. (In my 5 years at Canada AM this never happened to me and we had to fill two hours every day, but the fear persists.) Regular guests and panels can also be depended on to not cancel and they know how to make it to the studio on time. It’s safe…boring but safe.

The laziness grows out of the fear factor. Why search for good guests when you have a tame pack of regulars who provide all the content without any of the work? Regular guests provide their own research and one easy phone call gets them to the show. Why look for a new and exciting guest who may or may not freeze on air or not deliver the needed patter? Why try to coax a newsmaker to take part in your show?

International panels are a major bugaboo for me. Here we are in this amazing multicultural country with brilliant people from every corner of the Earth living in our midst and how do we discuss a crisis in Pakistan? We book Richard Gwyn and Janice Stein. There are dozens of wonderful Pakistani people who understand both Pakistan and Canada. They can relate to all sides of a Pakistani issue and they know how to explain it to Canadians. Gwyn and Stein read The Times of London and New York Times. They may even call someone in Pakistan but when it comes to an emotional attachment they are severely lacking. They provide information not entertainment.

The folks behind “Fox News North” are right about one thing, our all news television in Canada is boring. If they were to comment on our talk shows, it is my guess they would have the same comment. For the most part I agree with them. There are remedies for our boring talk TV. Heed the words of Don Cameron and get off you fat, lazy asses and do some hard work finding great guests who will surprise, engage, entertain and inform us.

Filed under: Media Commentary, Canada AM, CBC NN, CNN, CTV Newsnet, Don Cameron, Fox News North, The New York Times, The Times of London

Badly Served in Canada

My wife is constantly amazed that I read every page of the newspapers that are delivered to my door every morning…seven days a week. Of course I watch a lot of news on television too. That makes me a bona fide news junkie. According to the statistics I read in one of the newspapers, it can be difficult to differentiate when you are plowing through so much news, I am not an uncommon Canadian. It seems we are a country of news junkies in comparison to our American neighbors. The market for quality news coverage is still very strong here. So why are Canadian news outlets from print, TV and radio following the U.S. down the road to coverage of non-events, non-stories and celebrity garbage…I mean gossip?

Each day it feels like it takes me less and less time to read the papers. The Sunday Toronto Star is an empty shell that can be perused cover to cover in about ten minutes. I barely know who Lindsay Lohan is and what makes her famous yet I am bombarded with her brush with the law and her impending jail term. I’m sure Lohan’s incarceration will have little effect on the world economy other than to sell a few more newspapers.

When I was at CBC my bosses conducted a poll of news viewers; which station they watched, why they chose to watch a specific newscast, their age, education background and yearly earnings. The results were obvious. The CBC’s viewers were older, richer and better educated than CTV, Global and CITY viewers. CITY-TV viewers were the youngest, poorest and least educated. But put that way, it is highly misleading. The difference in average age from CBC to CITY-TV was about 5 years, 44 for CITY and just under 49 for CBC. CBC had the most university grads but most CBC viewers barely finished high school.

I remember thinking at the time that CITY’s rock and roll news was a great thing for CBC. Younger folks got hooked on the news watching Gord Martineau and his gang. They developed the news viewing habit in simple bite sized, picture stories. The way I saw it, when they matured and wanted more, they would graduate to CBC News. CITY was news with training wheels. CBC was the 18 speed racing bike.

The world of television and TV news is far more complicated today. It is as much about style as substance. There are far more choices. The internet and all-news channels provide way more options. A friend told me that watching network news in Canada today is like watching yesterday’s newscast. He has seen all the stories during the day on the net and has no time for the déjà vu provided by the TV newscasts.

Given all of the above I have to ask what CBC, CTV and Global are doing. Instead of creating a new kind of in depth version of a newscast with fewer stories and more context, they are still competing with CBC NN, CTV News Network and the internet. They are still trying to cover all the stories without getting down to what is important and giving those stories more time and effort. In Canada this is doubly stupid because the networks own the services they are competing with.

When Newsworld was first created I believed it would be the best thing that happened to national newscasts. It would free them from having to be everywhere covering stories large and small from across the country and around the world. I expected the news bosses to choose six or seven important stories and give them in depth coverage. Why not? The small stories about the snow storm in Calgary and the 20 car pile-up outside Chatham were now taken care of. There would be more time to look at the cost of the G-20 and whether we really need a census any more. (By the way, we still have not seen a single investigative report on how our government spent $1.2 billion on a summit that cost everyone else a tenth of that sum or less.) Alas, this has not happened. Today’s newscasts in Canada look very similar, in coverage, to what they looked like before Newsworld and CTV News Network. If anything, CBC especially, has taken many steps backward. They have done away, for the most part, with their excellent long form journalism and replaced it on most nights with fillers and fluff that should not have a place on a serious national newscast.

Why did I expect change? Because CBS, NBC, and ABC changed when CNN came along. They realized the futility of challenging CNN for speed. They understood that they couldn’t cover in half-an-hour what CNN had 24 hours to report on. Before CNN a typical network newscast in the U.S. packed 12 to 14 stories into their 30 minutes minus ads every night. Since the advent of CNN, the average American network newscast averages 6 to 8 stories and on many nights an investigative feature on an important subject is one of those stories.

In Canada we may be a nation of news junkies but we are not being well served by our national institutions. The CBC, Global and CTV are mired in formats that were out of date in the 90’s. The Globe and Mail seems to be providing less and less serious news coverage and little investigation into important stories, in some cases preferring to be touts for their own (CTV Globe Media) Olympic coverage or even stooping to stories on which dance team was eliminated from a CTV reality(?) show. CBC Radio is the lone exception but rumors abound that Richard Stursberg is coming to make radio news as inane as he has made TV news.

With new hosts coming to CTV and Global and a renewal process at CBC TV that is an abject failure, perhaps the time has come to take a long look at what network news is doing and look to the future rather than the past to bring about the kind of change that a news hungry population craves.

Filed under: Media Commentary, ABC, CBC, CBC NN, CBS, City-TV, CNN, CTV, CTV News Network, Global, Gord Martineau, NBC, Newsworld, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star

Sun TV Rises

The Hill Times recently had one of the best and most substantive looks at the new Sun TV News channel and its ability to succeed or fail in the Canadian television marketplace. If you get the chance read the article at http://hilltimes.com/page/printpage/foxtv-06-28-2010. The article lays out the business reasons why a channel that has been created to emulate Fox News in the United States has a real chance to succeed in this country.

The primary argument raised by Kory Teneycke, the former Federal Tory mouthpiece and the man who seems to be the driving force behind the new station, is “We think there’s a big space in the market. I think most of what’s on cable news, today, in Canada is pretty flat. I don’t think it actually gets to the heart of debate on most issues; I think the news stories that end up on the air are too often of little relevance to Canadians and I base that opinion on the fact that most Canadians aren’t watching and that rates of viewership in Canada are much lower than they are in other countries, so all of that, from a business perspective, speaks to the fact that there is an opening in the marketplace and that’s the opening that we’re hoping to fill.”

So far so good. I agree with everything Mr. Teneycke says here. CBC NN is just about as boring and obscure as it is possible for an all news station to be. There is little to grab the imagination and get one’s blood boiling. Issues are discussed but tough questions, even, or should I say especially, on Evan Solomon’s political show are non-existent. One gets the feeling that Mr. Solomon is worried that if he makes it too tough on his political guests they will not appear again on his program again. Hey Evan, they need you more than you need them—get a backbone.

At CTV News Network discussion is rarer than a Leafs Stanley Cup run. For most of the day and most of the week all CTV News network does is run the same stories over and over again until the audience is so sick of them they must change the channel. It’s like CNN headline news without the constantly changing and updating stories.

Both networks are handicapped by not having their own reporting teams. They must depend on CBC and CTV network reporters and their availability. CBC and CTV networks have too few reporters to do the job for themselves, let alone staffing their all-news cousins. All-news in Canada has been a scam on the public. The stations were created as a way to raise money by subscription for the main networks without having to be a properly staffed news organizations. Last year CBC NN, or Newsworld as it was called, made over $60 million for CBC with few viewers and little of interest on the air. CTV News Network, with even fewer viewers, less than a typical Blue Jays – Orioles crowd, managed to bring in $15 million. The reason for the big profits are twofold, first the “must carry” designation. Cable and satellite companies must make the news channels available to all their customers. Second, every subscriber pays a monthly subscription fee, whether they watch the channels or not. Next year they lose their “must carry” status and it will be interesting to see if they can survive in a real marketplace where viewers actually have a choice.

So Sun TV News plans to fill the void that CBC NN and CTV News Network are leaving. Their argument is that since Fox, CNN and MSNBC have so many viewers in the United States and CBC NN and CTV News Network have so few viewers in Canada there must be an audience for real all-news and talk TV here. They believe Sun TV News will be the station to capture that audience.

This where I disagree with Mr. Teneycke. I see no reason to believe that Canadians, who so far have rejected extreme right or left wing views and who it is my experience producing talk television, both resist and resent people shouting at each other or the audience, will be prepared to watch Fox News Canadian style. Sun won’t even have the advantage of must carry that CBC and CTV had when they created their news channels. Sun will have to sell their channel one subscriber at a time and one cable and satellite company at a time. In this polite country where “sorry” is the most used word in our lexicon, is there really a market for what Sun and Mr. Teneycke are selling?

Changing the subject, few television viewers today will remember the giant who passed away last Saturday. Murray Chercover was the driving force that helped turn CTV into the most successful network in Canada. As President and then CEO Mr. Chercover was the glue that held together the disparate stations that made up the CTV network. When CTV was created it was ruled by the station owners from across the country. Murray had to get them to agree to whatever the network planned. No easy task with owners like the Bassets in Toronto and the Peters’ in B.C. Somehow he succeeded. He made CTV number one with the brilliant acquisition of American programming and the creation of a strong news and current affairs team that to this day bests CBC in the ratings with less than a quarter the staff and budget.

How did he do it? I can’t say I was close enough to the action at CTV to know but I did work with Murray Chercover a few times and I can tell you what I saw. Murray was always kind to his staff and the people around him. He was team builder. He allowed people to take chances and he rewarded his best employees by hiring from within. He had a sharp mind and always seemed to ask the most important question.

My fondest memory of working with Murray Chercover was when I was chosen to produce the Terry Fox Telethon just days after Terry Fox had to stop his run across Canada. On a Wednesday the network decided to produce a telethon on the upcoming Sunday night. I was a thirty-year-old producer of Canada AM. Murray called me into his office and asked if I could do this. Being young and stupid I said yes. I was lucky. Terry Fox was so popular and his deeds so breathtaking that almost every celebrity we asked was willing to take part. My dilemma was that I had too many guests for the three hours we were allotted. I went to Murray and asked for another hour. I’ll never forget what he said to me: “Howard, I’d rather see a four show in two hours than a two hour show in four hours.” He then asked me if I still wanted the extra time. I said yes and Murray Chercover trusted my opinion.

The bottom line: The Terry Fox telethon was the most successful telethon in raising money and audience ever in this country. I produced the show, but Murray Chercover made it happen.

Filed under: Media Commentary, CBC, CBC NN, CNN, CTV, CTV News Network, Evan Solomon, Fox News, Kory Teneycke, MSNBC, Murray Chercover, Sun TV News

Fox North

The media is buzzing. The newspapers are writing stories every day. TV commenters are filling the blogs and web sites with gloom and doom. University teachers are being called for their take on the impending story and op-ed pieces are being penned by learned experts. I’m sure the editorial writers across the land are sharpening their pencils in readiness for the big announcements. And what’s all the fuss about? It seems that Quebecor is about to attempt to launch a right-wing news and talk television service that has already been dubbed “Fox North” by the naysayers.

As far as the Canadian media are concerned, and you can count me among them, Fox News is the antichrist of TV networks. I have no problem with their conservative viewpoint. But I object strongly to their lack of honesty and their continued and unfettered spreading of false and unsubstantiated facts that are the lifeblood of the service they provide. Call me old fashioned but I still believe the number one rule of journalism is that you get the facts right. You can comment and spin all you want but you can’t publish false or unprovable information. Fox News and its band of crazies led by Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck are guilty on all these counts.

Still, is there really good reason for Canadian media to react the way it has? I guess I’m not ready to get upset just yet. First and foremost there is a huge hurdle that the new network has to climb. They are asking for “must carry” status from the CRTC. That would mean that all cable and satellite companies would have to find a prominent place for the new service on their dial and that all Canadians who subscribe to cable or satellite would have to pay a monthly fee for the channel whether we want it or not. In order to get “must carry” Quebecor would have to prove that they are a necessary and missing piece of the broadcast fabric that exists in Canada today. That’s a stretch. With three English all news networks already out there they would first have to prove that the others, CBC NN, CTV News Network and CP24 are either totally biased and blind to conservative views, or that a conservative viewpoint is missing from our TV choices and that being conservative is enough reason to make it essential. That’s a real problem even in Stephen Harper’s Ottawa. I don’t believe they will get “must carry”. Then what?

That will mean they will have to do deals with all the cable and satellite companies to find space. Then they will have to depend on Canadians’ willingness to ante up for the new channel. It will become our choice as viewers as to whether we want to buy another all-news and talk channel. That could be a tough sell with the costs of cable and satellite rising and most Canadians looking to pare down their media choices.

It is important to note that the existing news, talk and current affairs channels in Canada are not exactly catching on with the viewing public. CBC NN and CTV News Network have so few viewers that I suspect it would be cheaper to put their content on DVD and deliver it to the 25,000 or so folks who tune in. CP24 is one of a handful of stations that people watch but don’t listen to. Whenever I see the channel in offices, gyms, bars, the sound is turned off. It is a weather and time channel. CPAC, has anyone watched this channel lately, actually gets the same size audience as CBC NN for most of the day. Documentary Channel should do better but it remains an afterthought for viewers.

So why does Quebecor think another all news and talk station is a good idea? I suppose it is the fact that all the other news and talk stations are doing so poorly. They must believe that there is actually a void, as far as viewers are concerned, in the market. That void would have to be engaging television. The truth is that unless there is a big story breaking there is no reason to watch all-news TV. Worse, if a big story breaks anywhere outside Canada, the home grown networks can’t compete with CNN. So what will make us tune in to “Fox North”? The people at Quebecor think that strong right wing views and personalities will cause the kind of stir that will attract a large enough audience to make the station the kind of hit that Fox News has been in the U.S.

So far very few right wing media organizations have succeeded in Canada. The National Post can barely give their newspaper away. Alberta Report faded away. Sun Newspapers (owned by Quebecor) have been losing money and laying off staff for two years. So where is the market? It might be the talk radio crowd. They seem to gravitate to the wild right but every poll of their listeners has shown them to be older, lower income and lower educated. Not the crowd that the advertisers are looking for.

The bottom line for me is that the Canadians I know, even the very conservative ones, tend to be more moderate in their ideas and their expectations. In the land of “sorry” I am not sure that media crazies will be a welcome addition. Quebecor’s track record for picking winners in English Canada is a poor one. I expect we are getting our shorts in a knot prematurely.

In the meantime I welcome any organization that can create new jobs for journalist and TV producers and I even welcome the addition of an opposing point of view. I wish the Quebecor people good luck and hope they can deliver a strong but fair conservative view to Canadians. If the rumors are correct they have already helped the CBC by stealing perennial screw up reporter Krista Erickson. I guess she will now be free to date Tory MPs and maybe take a few free flights at the taxpayers’ expense.

Filed under: Media Commentary, Political Commentary, Alberta Report, Bill O'Reilly, CBC NN, CNN, CP24, CPAC, CRTC, CTV News Network, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Krista Erickson, Quebecor, Sun Newspapers, The National Post

Time to Lose All-News

I have just recently returned from China where just about the only English channel that was available to me was CNN. Tuning in the news became an end of day ritual similar to ending the day in Canada with The National or CTV News. Interestingly I was struck by the incredible lack of news on what purports to be an all news television service. For two weeks it seemed the only thing happening in the world was the U.S. health care debate. In the last few days of my trip the Israelis, never overlooking an opportunity to commit a major diplomatic faux pas, announced the building of a slew of new homes in Arab East Jerusalem, this while Vice President Joe Biden was in town trying to make nice to the Netanyahu government in hopes of restarting the peace process.

Two weeks, two stories of any consequence. It became clear to me that that’s what is wrong with the concept of all news television. There are no local stories. There are only big stories. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately big stories don’t come along all that often. Thus channels like CNN and CBC NN are left to hash and rehash the same story over and over again. What I’m saying here is that on days without a Haiti earthquake or a primary election involving a black candidate and a prominent female candidate CNN can be really, really boring. Watching the news networks’ attempts to heighten, that’s a nice way of saying sensationalize, a story can begin to be an antidote to insomnia.

It becomes very clear very quickly why CNN has dropped to fourth place among American news networks. Without an election or an earthquake it is far more interesting to watch Fox News. Why? Because the people at Fox are willing and mostly able to ratchet up a story in the most unethical way. They don’t care about the facts, they only care about the ratings. Sad to say it is more interesting to watch the ranting of an over the top bozo who has never let the facts get in the way of a good story than to watch another dry panel discussing the ins and outs of the minutia of health care or a different dry panel discussing the history of the U.S. and Israel.

I learned very early in my TV career that television is an entertainment medium. When I was producing local news my biggest competitor was not CTV or CITY, the ratings winners were Three’s Company and game shows. When I was at The Journal the audience giant was Hill Street Blues. Heck, I remember my host, Peter Kent, now a Tory M.P., refusing to go to studio for taping until the episode of A Team he was watching ended.

What does all this mean? What struck me was that CBC NN and CTV’s all news channels have little opportunity to ever gain a serious (in size) audience. They have too little going for them and far too much stacked up against them.

If CNN with reporters and crews all over the world is having a hard time finding enough stories to grab and keep viewers what chance does a Canadian all news network have?

Here are the facts. The Canadian news channels have to share a small band of Canadian reporters and a ludicrously tiny few international reporters with the main network they are attached to. If a story breaks anywhere outside of Canada they are ill prepared at best and hopelessly over matched as a rule. When Haiti broke did anyone tune to CBC NN for the story? If you did you missed the super coverage provided by CNN and for the record, most Canadians found their way to CNN.

Even if a big story breaks in Canada the news networks are ill prepared. Not because they can’t get cameras to the scene but because the reporter with the best ability to cover the events has his or her eye on that evening’s national newscast. The main network newspeople hire the reporter. They pay the reporter. The reporter’s future is dependent on the folks who run the national news. Until CBC NN and the CTV all news channel have their own reporters and their own bureaus worldwide they will never excel at what they are licensed to do: fast, complete coverage of breaking news stories. Don’t hold your breath, that will never happen. If they can’t do that, why bother to exist at all.

The truth is, and no broadcast journalist wants to deal with this, the highest rated program on CBC’s all news channel was The Antiques Road Show. Since the changes at CBC NN no program has come close to the numbers that showed garnered.

Worse news still, CP24 gets better ratings than either CBC NN or CTV. Why? Because it makes better background viewing. You tune to that channel without actually watching it. The weather is right there. The time is always there. The business numbers are constantly there. If a great story is breaking you can catch it as it scrolls by and tune in to CNN for the details. There’s no need to pay attention and there are no discussions and panels ad nauseum to focus on. In fact it is a better station with the sound turned off.

The time has come for CBC and CTV to face the facts. All news TV in Canada is not a great idea. It’s a waste of time, effort and most important dollars. CBC and CTV would be far better off using the channels as a kind of CBC 2 and CTV2. The news people could still jump in if there were a breaking story. The National could still have a second home during the hockey playoffs and everyone would be a winner, especially the viewers.

Filed under: Media Commentary, Antiques Road Show, CBC, CBC NN, CNN, CP24, CTV, Fox News, The National, Three's Company

Weekend Update

The Olympics start today and that’s great news for anyone who has attempted to watch CTV for the past three months. Hopefully when the coverage starts the endless repetitious promos stop. CTV has managed to make me tired of the Olympics before they have even started.

More good news, CTV News and The Globe and Mail actually covered what could be called negative, and dare I say newsworthy, Olympic stories this week. There was one item on the search for doping athletes and another item on the possibility, or as some may think, the probability, of more cheating by figure skating judges.

Let’s not get too excited though. CTV News and The Globe have not stopped shilling. Page three in The Globe still belongs to the interminable in-house torch relay. CTV stars and management along with Globe reporters still get their cute white uniforms and moment in the sun while former Olympic gold medalists like Kerrin Lee Gartner are still shut out. Heavens, Lloyd Robertson found five minutes on a heavy news day to interview his co-hosts for the opening ceremonies, Brian Williams and Catriona Lemay Doan. The special insights they offered were that Canadian athletes are ready to win some medals and that our days as genial Olympic hosts are over. That took up more than 20 percent of a national newscast.

Jeffrey Dvorkin, who was an important player at CBC News for years before going to the states to head up NPR (National Public Radio) News, reminds us that CBC also oversold the games when they had the broadcast rights. I was at CBC for the Calgary games and at CTV for the Montreal games but I don’t remember this much over the top, unabashed and unashamed selling ever going on.

Is it only me and cynical types like me that are turned off by so much hype? I hope not. I’d like to think my reaction is fairly representative of the audience at large. In any case, now that the actual games have started we can all cheer for our favorites and begin to forget the excesses of the Canadian Olympic broadcast consortium.

As if the end of the Olympic promos was not enough good news, CBC this week finally acted by chopping half of Mark Kelley’s abysmal CBCNN program, Connected with Mark Kelley. While I am certain that most Canadians would have far preferred complete cancellation, we will have to make do with the show being cut from two hours to one hour. A new producer was hired to run the show and perhaps to make sense of ludicrous format that depended on news nobody else cared enough about to air. It is my guess that CBC will eventually kill Connected when they can figure out a way to walk away from the show without losing too much face. The CBC brain trust also has to figure out what to do with the likable host who is responsible for creating the worst news and current affairs show on Canadian television.

In the meantime I hope the brass are going back to the same focus groups who told them they didn’t care for Connected to find out that CBCNN’s morning fare needs a lot of help. Heather Hiscox, Anne-Marie Mediwake and Suhana Meharchand are not helping viewership with their rehashes of yesterday’s news coupled with rip and read wire copy stories. If you are sick in bed and have run out of the kind of cold medicine that makes you drowsy, mornings on CBCNN are the perfect way to induce sleep.

People, CBC types, I don’t, or at least shouldn’t have to tell you: a television program needs content to attract viewers. Three or four hours of the next best thing to dead air doesn’t sell TV’s.

So incrementally it’s been a darn good week, meaning that progress has been made. It’s not time to celebrate yet but it is time to be optimistic that some sense may be beginning to return to Canadian broadcast journalism. At least I hope that’s the case.

Filed under: Media Commentary, Anne Marie Mediwake, Brian Williams, Catriona Lemay Doan, CBC NN, Connected with Mark Kelley, CTV, CTV News, Heather Hiscox, Jeffrey Dvorkin, Lloyd Robertson, NPR, Suhana Meharchand, The Globe and Mail