Cityline Celebrates 25th Anniversary

ON SCREEN:

CITYLINE
City -- Wednesdays
CITYLINE 25th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL
City -- February 25



Blasts From The Past

Tracy Moore Marks The 25th Anniversary Of
"Cityline" With A Walk Down "Memory" Lane

By Eric Kohanik

It's “Fashion Friday” on Cityline and the studio audience is buzzing inside City's production centre in downtown Toronto.

Minutes before taping begins, host Tracy Moore chats up the crowd before choosing one person to undergo a makeover that makes jaws drop at the end of the show. After the taping is done, exhilarated audience members file out, still abuzz over what they've seen – and over their gift bags containing products highlighted on the show.

“I want to sit in that audience and get those prizes,” Moore jokes later.

Cityline has been a daytime staple for a quarter-century, growing from a local show to a popular fixture across Canada. With most episodes featuring themes – including “Around the House,” “Family Day,” “Home Day” and “Fashion Friday” – the show has built its following with the help of a lengthy roster of lifestyle experts who make regular guest appearances.

Cityline will celebrate its 25th anniversary with a primetime special on Feb. 25. Hosted by Moore, it will showcase highlights pulled from Cityline's archives.

“It's going to be a walk down memory lane, for sure.” Moore says.

At the helm of Cityline for just over five years, the 39-year-old Moore is the third regular host in the show's history. Although Dini Petty headlined the show when it launched, it was Marilyn Denis who was the face of Cityline from 1989 until 2008.

Amid the complex division of media assets after ChumCity (then City's parent company) was acquired by CTVglobemedia (now Bell Media) in 2007, Denis (also a morning-radio co-host on Toronto's CHUM-FM) ended up in CTV's bullpen. The network eventually launched The Marilyn Denis Show in 2011, using a format similar to Cityline.

Citytv and Cityline, meanwhile, became part of the Rogers media empire. After Denis' departure in May 2008, the show used a series of guest hosts before making Moore the regular host in October.

“It's been a good run,” Moore reflects. “I don't even think we thought it was going to be this amazing. It's really turned out well.”

A married mother of two, Moore started her career as an intern at CTV before becoming a videographer at CBC. She worked in news at CBC Newsworld (now called CBC News Network) and Toronto 1 (now known as Sun News) before jumping to City's Breakfast Television as its reporter and backup news anchor. After taking time off to have her first child, Moore decided to switch gears, becoming one of Cityline's guest hosts before landing the gig as regular host.

Coming from a news background, Moore says it was “about a year-and-a-half” before she felt comfortable in the role. “It's such a big show that, for the first few months, you're trying to figure out who these guest experts are, what the tone is supposed to be, and how to deal with a live audience,” she says. “Doing a live lifestyle show is about instant reaction and that's a tough transition. It took a few months to really understand how Cityline connects with viewers.”

Cityline's longtime supervising producer, Chrissie Rejman, disagrees with how soon Moore caught on. “It was over the course of a month,” Rejman insists. “Tracy was laughing. She was forgetting that she was 'interviewing' somebody and, instead, she was having a conversation. That was the difference. That's what we looked for.”

Rejman is effusive in praising how Moore connects with viewers – and the studio audience. “What Tracy is absolutely fantastic at is she's always willing, after the show, to have her photo taken,” says Rejman. “That personal contact with everybody is a really important ingredient.”

For her part, Moore says she is just trying to be herself. “With television being the way it is right now, people need a little bit of levity with their information,” she says. “This is what I get from the audience.

“They have a date with us every morning. They trust us. And we take that very seriously.”

Cityline – City – weekdays

Cityline 25th Anniversary Special – City – Feb. 25

(First published in Channel Guide Magazine - February 2014.)

CBC is back in Olympic spotlight

ON SCREEN:

2014 WINTER OLYMPICS
CBC and other channels - Beginning Feb. 7


Going For Gold

After Almost Six Years On The Sidelines, 
CBC Jumps Back Into The Olympic Spotlight

By Eric Kohanik

It's been close to six years since CBC was the official Canadian broadcaster for the Olympics. And, for CBC Sports Weekend host Scott Russell, sitting on the sidelines for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and the 2012 Summer Games in London wasn't easy to stomach.

“It was, personally, tough to be out for two Olympics,” Russell admits. “Although I went to Vancouver and to London, it was in a much different role. We're so happy to be back in the Olympic broadcasting business at CBC. We couldn't be more excited.”

CBC once had a lengthy run of Olympic coverage. Before the CTV/Rogers Olympic Consortium scooped up rights to Winter 2010 and Summer 2012, CBC had billed itself as “Canada's Olympic Network” since 1996, broadcasting the Winter Games in Nagano (1998), Salt Lake City (2002) and Turin (2006) as well as the Summer Games in Atlanta (1996), Sydney (2000), Athens (2004) and Beijing (2008).

CBC unveiled its broadcast team for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi at the network's headquarters in Toronto back on Oct. 30 as it kicked off a 100-day countdown to the opening ceremonies on Feb. 7. Chief news anchor Peter Mansbridge and Hockey Night in Canada veteran Ron MacLean will cohost coverage of the ceremonies from Sochi's Fisht Olympic Stadium. CBC's English-language Olympic telecasts will then be split into four major dayparts.

Diana Swain and David Amber will co-host Olympic Morning each day, while Russell will man the anchor desk for Olympic Daytime. MacLean will take on evening hosting duties on Olympic Primetime, while Andi Petrillo and Andrew Change will co-host Olympic Overnight.

Time-zone differences will be a major factor. Many live events will air during the mornings and afternoons in Canada. And that will actually put Russell and his Olympic Daytime telecasts into a “prime” spotlight.

“There's a lot going on in that time slot and that's perfect,” Russell says. “We'll be moving around from venue to venue in order to capture as many things as we can that are going on, live.”

CBC's mainline TV coverage will be supplemented by TSN, TSN2 and Rogers Sportsnet and Sportsnet One as well as CBC News Network. Radio coverage will be divvied up between CBC Radio and TSN Radio, while French-language TV coverage will be split between Radio-Canada and RDS.

Meanwhile, online coverage at cbc.ca/olympics will also offer a wide variety of video content. Most notable among that will be live online streaming of Olympic competitions.

There have been a lot of technological and social-media innovations since the last time CBC was Canada's official Olympic broadcaster. And Russell admits that will mean new challenges.

“I mean, the last time we covered the Olympics, in Beijing, I'm pretty sure that the iPad didn't exist,” Russell jokes. “I'm also positive that Twitter was not a factor, right? So, this immediacy is a challenge. And the multi-platform situation is also a challenge.

“But I think it's something we've concentrated on at CBC. The way we approach Sports Weekend is now very much a multi-platform strategy. And that's the way Canadians want to consume the Olympics. They need the information as it happens.”

CBC has high ratings hopes for its coverage in Sochi. No wonder. Canadians have always had a fondness for the Winter Games.

“We have this feeling of being a winter nation,” Russell muses. “We are able to race down the mountains, to play on frozen ponds. So, yeah, these are Games that we are comfortable with. And we are comfortable being at the head of the class in the Winter Games.

“I think that's the way the country is built. We are a country of extremes. Our geography lends itself to playing outside in the winter, and to hockey and skiing and curling and all of these things that are about us as Canadians. And so I think it's only natural that, when it comes to the Winter Games, we sit up and take notice.”

2014 Winter Olympics – CBC and other channels – beginning Feb. 7

(First published in Channel Guide Magazine - February 2014.)

Murdoch Mysteries

ON SCREEN:

MURDOCH MYSTERIES
CBC -- Series premiere Jan. 5;
Mondays beginning Jan. 6


Top Cop

Yannick Bisson Continues To Shine As 
The Artful Detective Of "Murdoch Mysteries"

By Eric Kohanik

It's a sunny fall day and there is much to celebrate inside Toronto's Sullivan Studios.

Production is almost done on another season of Murdoch Mysteries. Over on the police-station set, Yannick Bisson is wrapping up his scenes as William Murdoch, the Victorian-era detective whose artful sleuthing helps solve the cases facing the Toronto Constabulary each week.

“It seems everything gets the most intense and the most difficult in the last week,” the 44-year-old Bisson concedes during a break.

A 30-year acting veteran, Bisson has a fondness for Murdoch. “It's certainly been the most rewarding role yet,” the Montreal native says. “We've had some pretty big setbacks happen for him. There's been a bit of a glass ceiling for him in terms of how far he can go in his career. Between that and romance, he's taken a few hits.”

Bisson is backed by a solid ensemble, including Thomas Craig as Inspector Thomas Brackenreid, Jonny Harris as Constable George Crabtree, Hélène Joy as Dr. Julia Ogden and Georgina Reilly as Dr. Emily Grace. Nevertheless, Bisson grapples with certain challenges.

“It's always been relatively easy to do,” he says of recreating the show's historical feel. “You show up and they've got these great clothes that sort of bundle you in. You flip across the parking lot onto a set that they've put so much effort into. The scripts are so wonderful. You really do step out of your trailer and step back in time.

“That part is easy. The toughest part for me is the endurance. In one day, we do three times the average person's workday, just by virtue of the hours, the intensity and the speed that we work at. So, in five months, you can get burned out. You have to take care of your body. You've got to stay fit, exercise a lot, get out in the sun and recharge.”

The end of any show's season is enough to fuel a wrap party. But there are a lot more reasons to celebrate now.

Based on the Detective Murdoch novels by Maureen Jennings, Murdoch Mysteries is now in its seventh season, but only its second on CBC. The show had been in the domain of Rogers Broadcasting, airing on its chain of Citytv stations. Although it was successful, Rogers executives decided the series no longer fit their revamped City brand. They pulled the plug after the fifth season.

“It was definitely a low point,” Bisson told a Toronto crowd of fans in November, after a screening at the inaugural Canadian International Television Festival. “We had done five years. We had good ratings, really solid ratings. It was real disheartening. It was discouraging.”

That didn't last long. According to producers, CBC called 24 hours after Rogers ditched the show.

A ramped-up publicity campaign by CBC took “Murdoch Mysteries” to new heights of popularity last season. The network then boosted the usual 13-episode order to 18 this season. After a break for the Winter Olympics next month, the series will resume with its extra instalments.

“It's certainly a new outlook,” Bisson says back on the set. “It's been fun doing the show for somebody who wants it.”

With 1.6 million viewers (including regular TV, on-demand viewing and online streaming), Murdoch Mysteries is Canada's top-rated homegrown drama. But its reach goes farther. The show airs in more than 100 international markets – including the U.S., where it was recently picked up by Ovation, which is airing all 96 episodes of the seven seasons under a different title: The Artful Detective.

Whatever the moniker, the exploits of Detective William Murdoch and company continue to shine brightly. And although Bisson has worked in the U.S., the Murdoch Mysteries resurgence has refuelled his passion for Canadian TV.

“I think, artistically, we have much, much better product,” Bisson says. “Also, you know, I'm a Canadian. I'm very much loyal to that. I'm very much a proponent of the Canadian industry. It has given a lot to me. And I have a lot to give back.”

Murdoch Mysteries – CBC – Mondays

(First published in Channel Guide Magazine - January 2014.)

The State of Canada's Media

CHCH TV personality Donna Skelly (right) is spearheading an effort to keep the Hamilton station
alive by putting its ownership in community hands and broadcasting more local news.
The station is one of many news organizations across North America in danger of closing.

A pressman scans the final edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
coming off the press. It is now an online publication.

Are we losing the community voice?

Local news coverage is under threat as
the economic risis rips through media outlets


By Eric Kohanik
Special to The Hamilton Spectator

(March 21, 2009)

There is a massive shift under way at Canada's TV stations and media outlets, and it will profoundly affect how they serve local audiences.

Financially troubled times have decimated newsrooms and threatened to close community-based media outlets.

Under this climate, with its unprecedented issues, the federal watchdog monitoring the Canadian broadcast industry will take up its licensing review of private TV stations next month. The hearings of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will have far-reaching implications. Not only will they examine the heart and economic lifeblood of Canadian TV broadcasting, they will touch on fundamental issues at the core of all media outlets -- journalism and local news.

In fact, the hearings beginning April 27 may be the catalyst that blows the journalistic holes in Canada's media landscape wide open.

The main spotlight will be on Canada's two biggest broadcasting rivals, Canwest Global Communications Corp. and CTVglobemedia Inc., who run the country's two biggest private networks, Global and CTV, as well as two secondary networks, Canwest's set of E! stations and CTVglobemedia's A Channel string.

Among the E! outlets is Hamilton's CHCH.

Both Canwest and CTVglobemedia have been slashing operating, programming and capital costs in recent months, moves that mirror similar cuts by broadcasters in the United States.

The cuts have included significant staff reductions, program cancellations and, in particular, a marked decline in local news coverage.

With stations trimming budgets and staff, reliable TV journalism at a local level is in grave peril. But television isn't the only journalistic arena hit by this. It is affecting local journalism everywhere.

Newspapers and other media outlets across North America have been slashing costs, too. Significant layoffs have occurred at every major Canadian newspaper organization, including The Hamilton Spectator. As a result, what was once reliable, strong and trustworthy professional coverage of local news, issues and even entire communities could soon become extinct on TV screens, websites, radio airwaves and the pages of major newspapers.

Some may blame today's economic downturn, but others say the problem has been brewing for a while.

"Even before the recession, the fundamental question facing journalism was whether the news industry could win a race against the clock for survival," the American-based Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism pointed out this week in its annual State of the News Media report.

That clock may be ticking louder than ever.

Much of the attention at next month's CRTC hearings will focus on the fact that Canada's private broadcasters will likely be vying for only one-year licences for their TV stations, instead of the standard seven-year term. At one time, a one-year licence renewal would have been viewed as a rare and severe reprimand from the CRTC -- a punishment for a station not meeting a fundamental promise of performance. Last month, however, the commission announced it was leaning toward one-year licences at these hearings as a way of grappling with specific issues and with the huge financial upheaval affecting the TV industry.

Figures released by the CRTC last month revealed that the total profits, before interest and taxes, of Canada's 99 private-sector conventional TV stations had fallen to just over $8 million for the year that ended Aug. 31, 2008. That's a 93 per cent drop from the $112.9 million in profits chalked up by 97 stations that existed a year earlier.

Locally, Hamilton's CHCH is projected to lose about $29 million next year, according to material filed to the CRTC to support Canwest's application to renew the station's broadcast licence.

In an e-mail exchange, Canwest spokesperson John Douglas said the five stations in the E! network, including Hamilton, have been consistent money-losers for a decade. Canwest is trying to sell CHCH as it wrestles with a long-term debt of more than $3.4 billion.

Broadcasters will also be asking the CRTC to scale back longstanding requirements for Canadian content, a move that will likely have a profound impact on local programming and news coverage.

In its report last month, the CRTC called out what appears to be a clear financial shift away from local programming.

While the money private broadcasters spent on local and other Canadian programming remained "essentially unchanged" last year, at $619.6 million, Canada's private broadcasters boosted spending on foreign programming by 7.4 per cent, to $775.2 million, on the back of increases the previous year.

That jump prompted the CRTC to announce that it is considering whether broadcasters should be required to spend an equal amount of money on Canadian and non-Canadian programming.

But in this big financial picture, it may not be content spending but acquisition that has done more to put the industry in such poor shape.

In recent years, CTV gobbled up CHUM's radio stations, TV stations and cable networks, while Canwest secured the former Alliance Atlantis cable specialty channels.

In Canwest's case, the debt load of its $2.3-billion deal for Alliance Atlantis is magnified by an additional $3.2-billion tab dating back to 2000, when it acquired a chain of major newspapers across Canada. All of which has sent Canwest officials scrambling to begin selling assets this month and to hammer out a new credit deal with its lenders. Canwest now has until April 7 to reach an agreement.

So, how did Canada's media giants end up in such a mess?

Some might point to years of bad decisions that go all the way to the top, particularly the overzealous spending sprees to acquire American shows, with prices sometimes driven up more by a desire to keep shows out of competitors' hands than by any pressing need to fill actual holes in schedules.

Others might blame technology and the Internet, and the growing generations of consumers who have forsaken traditional mass-media outlets in order to get news and entertainment via personal computers or mobile phones.

That has shifted the focus of the advertising industry to those frontiers. But the economic downturn has also led companies to cut marketing and advertising budgets everywhere. That has put a major squeeze on media companies.

Some might even lay at least part of the fault for the current fiscal mess of Canada's media industry squarely at the feet of government bodies such as the Competition Bureau and the CRTC, which have, over the past few years, approved mergers and takeovers that have led to more and more power -- and more and more debt -- being shouldered by fewer major players.

Of course, the complications that arise from mergers, corporate takeovers and financial meltdowns aren't unique to the media world. The steel industry, retail sector and automotive arena are only some of those suffering similar turmoil.

This time, though, the media world is being dragged into it in a different way than ever before.

The influence of TV's big players now extends far beyond TV boundaries. Canwest's assets include its daily newspapers, while CTVglobemedia's interests include the Globe and Mail and a chain of big radio stations across the country.

Other major conglomerates -- Corus Entertainment Inc., Astral Media Inc., Quebecor Inc., Torstar Corporation, Rogers Communications Inc., Transcontinental Inc. -- have also amassed (with the blessing of almost everyone who had a say) multiple layers of assets in the TV, radio, print and digital worlds.

The result? Whereas the collapse of one company might have had a minimal effect on the overall media landscape in the past, the crumbling of one of them today would have far-reaching aftershocks.

This has put the entire media industry, and perhaps all of journalism, in an unprecedented state of disintegration -- a progression that was gradual but is now magnified by the economic downturn.

So, what's ahead? Once the dust settles, the media landscape may look quite different for consumers.

Newspapers are, perhaps, among the most vulnerable. Across North America, major papers in such cities as Halifax, Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago and Philadelphia have already closed down, ceased physical publication or filed for bankruptcy protection. Others have been put up for sale, with no buyers willing to step up.

"This moment is nothing like any experience any of us have had," Rich Boehne, CEO of the Denver Rocky Mountain News' parent company, E.W. Scripps, told staff members Feb. 26 as he announced that the 150-year-old paper would publish its final edition the next day. "The industry is in serious, serious trouble."

"I think we have finally arrived at the point where newspapers are going away," Michael Wolff, the founder of a news website called Newser.com, told CBS News correspondent Jeff Greenfield last month in a TV report on the state of the newspaper industry. But Wolff didn't see that as a problem when it comes to consumers getting news and information.

"From a consumer's point of view, it's kind of heaven," Wolff said. "There is so much more of it, and it's so much cheaper, that I would be hard-pressed to argue that, in information terms, we are losing anything."

Although information may be plentiful in today's multimedia world, much of it is the same. Fewer and fewer media are controlling more and more of the message. And while the power bases have grown, the individual local voices that make each of them unique are dwindling.

"By our calculations, nearly one out of every five [American] journalists working for newspapers in 2001 is now gone," the Project for Excellence in Journalism points out, "and 2009 may be the worst year yet."

It could mean a dramatic shift in who is covering local news and how. Two years ago, local news website Pasadenanow.com, based in Pasadena, Calif., blazed a new trail, and raised eyebrows in the journalism world, by outsourcing its coverage of local city council meetings -- to India, where two reporters would write stories after watching webcasts of council meetings and interviewing Pasadena's councillors by e-mail.

In the TV world, Canwest and CTVglobemedia both announced strategic reviews of their E! and A Channel stations, with the eventual aim of selling or closing some of them. In fact, CTV recently revealed that it wouldn't even seek a licence renewal next month for its affiliate in Brandon, Man., or for its A Channels in Wingham, Ont., and Windsor and a repeater station in Wheatley, Ont. Unless buyers come out of the woodwork, they will all close down at the end of August.

On the Canwest front, some or all of the E! outlets could face a similar fate. It's forcing some to look at a new form of media ownership.

Donna Skelly, co-host of CHCH's Live At 5:30, has been spearheading a business model that could put station ownership into community hands, filling the station's schedule with mostly local news programming.

The proposal would see the station funded by contributions from the community or other partners, along with an annual grant from the Local Programming Improvement Fund, a pool of money which the CRTC will set guidelines for at next month's hearings.

"I really do think that this is going to be what we have to do in order to grow local news and to protect local news," Skelly explained during a recent interview. "The only unique part of programming today is news. Otherwise, any other show you can pretty much get, whether it's on an American station or a Canadian station, or both.

"By going back to local content, you are carving out a niche. You are tapping into a market that [network executives] have ignored."

- - -

The chopping block

Already Closed

Major Canadian and American daily newspapers that have recently ceased publication:

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: March 17, 2009
Rocky Mountain News (Denver): Feb. 27, 2009
Albuquerque Tribune: Feb. 23, 2009
Baltimore Examiner: Feb. 15, 2009
The San Juan Star (Puerto Rico): Aug. 29, 2008
South Idaho Press (merged with Twin Falls Times-News): August 2008
Capital Times (Madison, Wis.): April 26, 2008
Halifax Daily News: Feb. 11, 2008
Cincinnati Post/Kentucky Post: Dec. 31, 2007
King County Journal (Kent, Wash.): Jan. 21, 2007

Under Bankruptcy Protection
The Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul)
Tribune Company (publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and 10 other daily newspapers)
Philadelphia Newspapers (publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News)
The Journal Register Company (publisher of the New Haven Register and 19 other dailies)

- - -

See this story at the website of The Hamilton Spectator:

http://www.thespec.com