dewline | Entries tagged with broadcasting

It feels to me like just a rebranding to go with a new host, but today, CBC Radio is starting anew with their Sunday morning current affairs talk show. Michael Enright has moved on to new projects with the CBC, and Piya Chattopadhyay is his successor as host of the renamed Sunday Magazine.

She's been guest-hosting everything from The Current to Q to TVOntario's The Agenda, as well as hosting her own show on Radio One for four-five years, Out in The Open. All of this leaves me thinking that she's been training up for something of this scope and scale all that time. And now we're here.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Location: Home
Current Music: The Sunday Magazine

So, Transplant is getting picked up by NBC for US broadcast.

https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/nbc-transplant-ctv-1234606881/

And Coroner is getting picked up by the CW Network.

https://www.tv-eh.com/2020/05/12/cineflix-rights-sells-coroner-to-the-cw-network/

Both of those...they're both medical dramas of different kinds. Coroner also doubles as mystery/crime fiction. I'm not sure how they'll fit onto US broadcast schedules. Transplant, which started up on CTV, with its pro-refugee/immigration perspective. That, I'm sure, will enrage the reich-wingers in the US once the word gets out. Coroner started out on CBC, our Crown-owned public broadcaster, and is a woman's-perspective show, and it does not shy away from showing broken people being broken and trying to heal themselves and one another.

And both series depict life in different aspects of Toronto as itself, as its own place. Not pretending to be anywhere else.

If you're looking for different things from your TV-watching than you've had up to now, then do consider these two series.

Current Mood: hopeful

Some articles that you might want to look at.

First, the redoubt-building going on here in Canada (buried in a long profile on Murdoch's sons...and why would any sane Canadian government want this family setting up a doomsday retreat here?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/business/media/murdoch-family-21st-century-fox.html

Then two items from NPR that speak to motive:

http://www.npr.org/2017/04/24/525337958/beyond-sexual-harassment-lesser-known-scandals-could-cost-the-murdochs-a-14b-dea

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/24/525421649/ailes-accuser-says-fox-news-execs-ordered-eavesdropping-on-her-digital-devices

Current Mood: nerdy

Tonight, CTV - one of the privately-owned TV networks here in Canada - aired Captain America: the Winter Soldier.

I have to wonder about the timing, given the last three months in the real worlds. How long ago would the scheduling choice for this particular night have been made?

Current Mood: curious

To be blunt: I believe that CBC had its financial hands tied over the past decade with malice aforethought by the previous governing party, and the Rogers takeover of the Hockey Night in Canada brand was a consequence much desired by our most recent former Prime Minister. If not Rogers, then Bell. If not Bell, then Telus. But I believe that the fix was in to tear the brand out of CBC's hands.

http://thehockeywriters.com/the-swift-decline-of-hockey-night-in-canada/

Current Mood: annoyed

And yet not a disappointment, really.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/08/08/pol-crtc-sun-tv-news-ruling.html

Current Mood: satisfied

Just checked ctv.ca. They've got the local rights for SHIELD.

First, there's this one:

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/926428--truth-lies-and-broadcasting-in-canada

Bad enough that what trust we have for truth in advertising up here might be about to take a major hit in the breadbasket. For details on what the CRTC's announced on this:

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2011/2011-14.htm

And then I'm hearing reports that the CBC's English-language stations' broadcast licenses are all coming before the CRTC for renewal hearings this year(along with everyone else's):

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/process/tvcal2011_12.htm

And in a completely "WTH!!!" vein, with sympathy for my British friendlisters:

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/media/story/2011/01/24/bbc-online-cuts-budget.html

Talk about shock and awfulness.

Current Mood: worried
Current Music: The Ballad of Salvation Bill - Les McLaughlin and Friends

Go read this.

Then start digging through the links therein.

Update: The motion discussed at the top of that link passed by a ten-vote margin, if memory serves. So there's that much out of the way. I fully expect Canada's Not-So-New Government to ignore it simply because it was an Opposition-sponsored motion, and they don't like the content of it anyway. But the vote is on the record now, at least, and there's no "memory-holing" of it to be done.

Meantime, I'd suggest you keep on looking in on publicbroadcasting.ca anyway.

Current Mood: determined

A few things I wanted to point out for anyone interested:

First, from the Toronto Star: an article whose print edition headline read as follows:

PM to Cities: Drop Dead

Considering the percentage of our population now living in cities, that could be more than a little troubling. So could Harper's insistence upon continuing the dance with the "Provinces' Rights First!" fan club that, among other groups of voting fellow citizens, got him into office.

(Of course, he's also playing this one as a "Provinces' Responsibility", which may be a bit of a problem in its own way.)

In addition to the above, a couple of quick links to essays by Justin Beach over at publicbroadcasting.ca:

On comparing the CBC to coffeehouse chains' product lines:

http://www.publicbroadcasting.ca/2007/11/decafinate-cbc.html

On national self-identification and self-exploration:

http://www.publicbroadcasting.ca/2007/11/who-are-you-warning-may-contain.html

A lot of what Justin puts down there makes sense to me, although I'm interested in seeing what else might be said on the subject, both in my company and over at publicbroadcasting.ca itself.

Back to you...

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Storming New Caprica - Bear McCreary

I am annoyed by Jim Shaw, CEO of Shaw Communications, over something that he's threatening to do to the Canadian Television Fund unless CBC is further starved of funding - via CTF specifically - posthaste.

Mr. Shaw, please cease and desist in this behaviour. Shaw Communications, as far as I can tell, is doing quite nicely as it is. CBC's survival and current levels of funding does not hurt your company irreparably. Your employees are capable of keeping the corporate ship afloat without you making such noises as these. And as a Canadian citizen, a friend to assorted customers of yours, and a CBC viewer and listener, I wish that private broadcasters would kindly fall silent on the subject of the CBC. Their complaints over the fact of its continued existence annoy me. Especially when it succeeds at doing the work that the Broadcasting Act of Canada requires of it.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: CBC Radio One - Ottawa Morning

Some of you will have noticed (and in some cases, subsequently skipped over) the ILoveRadio.org blogfeed that Tod Maffin sends out to the Net at large. He's got something else going as well, now:

Inside the CBC

It's the Mothercorp's first official("but never officious") blog -- not merely a column -- and Tod is the guy in charge of it. I like it.

Go take a look. We'll get back to comic books fairly shortly.

Current Mood: Enthused

May's ending the month on a heat-wave note. I'm seeing "Mass Panhandle" protest posters in the bus shelters along St. Laurent Blvd. today, for reasons as yet unclear to me. So the heat's apparently getting to a great many other people around Ottawa lately as well as myself. Not good.

Ouimet makes a very cogent comment on the CBC Senior Management Council's foray into the real estate game in the wake of the Auditor-General's alleged insistence a few years back that they do so.

Hadeel's off to Rwanda. Good luck with the trip, Hadeel!

A very weird art crime happened within spitting distance of the National Gallery this week.

More to follow...