Revolving Anchors

November 11, 2011

While personalities come and go Global BC has actually had some remarkable stability to their lineup of their newscasts. Usually if an anchor or reporter goes they’ve found something in another market, or are never seen again except if your buying a house in White Rock.

That being said Global has decided to shuffle their anchors after held arangements. Sophie Lui who has been shuffeled around Victoria, the Morning News, and Weekend news, has a permanent home with Jay Durant in the Noon News. The long standing YouTube famous team of Randene Neil and Squire Barnes get moved to News Hour Final at 11pm. The odd one out is Jill Krop who officialy a reporter and no longer an anchor which she has been for most of her career.

The move come a month after CTV and CITY TV both made changes to their staff. However the shuffle at Global is the most intriguing as it is basically all internal with no new shows or staff coming in.

As a viewer I’m shocked to see Krop knocked out of the anchor slot. It will be intriguing to see if she gets a big role in the evening newscasts but after spending her career in a studio, being out in the field may be a hard adjustment. What Krop did to loose the anchor chair perhaps could the stuff of gossip around the water coolers of Burnaby mountain for quite some time.

REVISED

On November 21, 2011 Global TV shed more light on the anchor move. Jill Krop will still be behind the anchor desk, but as host of a segment call trending.

http://www.broadcastermagazine.com/news/global-bc-announces-new-co-anchors-for-news-hour-final/1000711148/

The Americisation of Canadian Television

October 28, 2011

Since it's invention the American television industry has been intervwined with all other television industries, but no industry is as dependent as the Canadian industry on the United States. The government has managed to keeep things in check by setting quotas on Canadian content, and also heavily subsidising television production.

Despite these effort American and Canadian broadcasters have found ways around this. The advent of cable lead to many American production to come north of the border to get some government money and allowed CTV and Global call the American show "Canadian content".

The only thing we can really call our own is in the branding of our stations. In the begining we had CTV and CBC, instead of ABC or NBC. TSN and Much Music instead of ESPN and MTV. However as time progressed laws have allowed the world renowed American branding to seep into Canada.

Armed with the goodwill of Canada's media masterminds, Bell, Shaw, Astral and Rogers they've given up on establishing brand names and buy them from south of the border. In the digital age Disney, ESPN, and MTV, and National Georgraphic have found a presence on Canadian television. Even the Queen herself Oprah has made it to our screen without even a maple leaf in her logo. But Shaw was more interested in promoting the Oprah name, than proclaiming they had found a place for re-runs of their W network programing. Rogers implemented such a push as well to bring FX to Canada. At least we see the word Canada in the title.

The latest American deal see one of the big boys make their way into Canada. Corus's new channel ABC Spark http://www.channelcanada.com/Article6164.html estentially brings the ABC family channel to Canada. Not that we haven't seen it already with the network's #1 show the teen soap Secret Life of the American Teenage a prime-time show on Much.

In this modern age the imediacy of media is creating a challenege for the identity of Canadian teleivsion. So many of the phenomeons of television are being created by the increasing number of cable channels in the US and being promoted over the internet. The capacity of Canadian television as we know it is still behind the US and it always feels that we are catching up. In the speed to catch up the broadcasters can't think of original branding so they buy the show and brand name sight unseen.

I have a sad feeling it come to having a USA network Canada.

http://www.logodesignlove.com/images/negative/usa-network-logo.jpg

Digital Madness - Sept 25

September 25, 2011

Digitial Madness

After converting to digitial years ago I did not feel the effect of the recent digitial switchover.

In spite of all the madness over converting "if you have rabbit ears" I was shocked to hear from an old friend who had the antenna, and did not convert. Of course he's gotten nothing since August 31 as promised, but dosen't care. Considering that most of CTV's and Global's shows are on-line (ergo: 90% of American programming) with some bits and pieces covered by YouTube the question enters whether or not any signal device is need anymore, or even a TV.

Also word has it that Shaw cable in Vancouver which proclaimed that mid september would be the end of Analogue braodcasting, has regened on that and now said that Novemeber is the cut off.

After the chaos over digitial broadcasting in the states and the cut off dates being as meaningless as the judges scores on Dancing with the Stars you'd think the Canadian braodcasters would be better prepared seeing the follies of their Yankee counterparts. However our broadcasters were no more better and the technicans don't work well under the deadlines, which makes me wonder why they had them in the first place.