Aug 20, 2022·edited Aug 21, 2022Liked by Line Editor
Good summary of the business challenges TV news is facing. As much as the CTV Town Hall was really bad (and, I support these things for a living! Who briefed these execs?) one comment that stood out what that CTV was moving to a 'multi-channel strategy' that acknowledges their weakness in capturing a younger audience moving to online sources. Most of that audience probably didn't know who Lisa LaFlamme was until the news hit Twitter this week. I'm old (in my 50s) and I haven't regularly watched TV news in a very, very long time. I can't imagine the desired 18-34 year olds are tuning in!
So -- that's where we're at. And, if online sources were doing a great job of providing news coverage, all would be good. But, what I'm seeing is a huge rise online in punditry and analysis. Don't get me wrong, a lot of this is useful (I subscribe to The Line, after all), but it isn't a substitute for actual reporting. Moreover, it relies on someone, somewhere building sources, learning a beat and -- you know -- doing news reporting that can be analyzed and talked about. Which is expensive. I don't really care if traditional news papers or TV news go under. But, I am concerned about the health of a democracy where there isn't a business model that supports independent news reporting. What's even scarier is I'm not sure a lot of 'consumers' understand the difference between opinion, analysis and reporting and are happy to 'tune in' to the pundits that confirm their existing worldview. That ain't healthy, folks!
I'm not sure what the answer is. Government funding to support news creates a huge conflict as independent news reporting is what keeps governments (and others in power) accountable. But, where's the business model for reporting -- especially the kind of investigative journalism that has so often been really important in uncovering big issues and big stories?
I hope a future report focuses in on the most important aspect of this story, namely, the implications for free speech in this country given the current state of the media business.
The brouhaha surrounding the departure of Ms. LaFlamme will have been a reminder to all who toll in the private sector media that their hold on their position is tenuous and that all it takes is a bad earnings report for their position to be the victim of a corporate reorganization. Loyalty, and fierce dedication to their craft count for precisely nothing.
At the same time, it will have escaped no one in the business that the shining house on the hill, the state propaganda organ, aka the CBC, is flush with cash.
Sign on there and your days of financial worry are behind you. Toe the party line and you can coast to retirement and a lavish pension on a salary and benefits you could only dream about in the private sector.
And no need to worry about remaining on the top of your game. As long as you are ideologically correct, the fail up principle will protect you even as you descend into irredeemable mediocrity and spend your days writing the rank puff pieces that the central committee orders.
But the openings are few and the candidates many.
How are you going to one of the chosen few who gets to sign on and put their financial worries behind them?
By pressing the PM and his Keystone Cops cabinet for answers on the hard issues of the day? By taking at face value the adage that the role of the media is to call the powerful to account?
Or, given we live in the real world, do you stand a better chance of landing a sinecure at the CBC by becoming known for fawning, supine, adulatory, coverage of the PM and his sorry and supremely talentless front bench that would make the reporters at Rodong Sinmun blush in shame?
Could this phenomenon not explain why so much of what passes for journalism in this country is little more than happy talk in which members of the media outdo themselves in accounting to the powerful?
Or the reason that the PM's pressers are solemn, reverential affairs in which the press, on its very best behaviour, gently lobs softballs the PM's way and takes his woke addled non- responses at face value with nary a murmur, a practice that on a recent trip abroad shocked the foreign press?
So, who goes first? Jen if she develops a smile line or Matt if he loses hair. Oops, sorry Matt. I meant his hair colour changes. We love you both as your are, now and forever.
I hate to break it to you, but I no longer view, listen to or read Canadian MSM. We gave up our cable subscription some fifteen years ago, and have never nissed it. So I was puzzled as to who, exactly, was Lisa Laflamme.
I now get my U.S. sources (New York Times, Wall Street Journal) and U.K, sources (The Economist), with a sprinkling of local news as I drive to and from work. On the other hand, I'm a paying subscriber to a dozen Substack newsletters with differing points of view, and feel quite well informed as a result. (Thank you at The Line.)
I intend to stay far away from Canadian MSM just as long as there is heavy government involvement, whether through regulation or subsidies. I think that both of these imperil journalistic independence. As for the Canadian government's threats to censor my Internet connections, good luck to them. They have to catch me first. WWW isn't the only protocol out there.
Notwithstanding their political differences, all Canadians can agree on one thing, namely, that as a ventriloquist, our PM is in a league of his own.
Take his latest dummy, the one he calls Little Commish Brenda.
Why when he sits that dummy down on his knee and launches into his schtick you would really swear it was Brenda parroting 'No interference' twenty times in a row.
I mean you can't see the PM's lips move at all!
Well, just a little bit if you look really closely.
I have mixed feelings over the whole TV news situation. As someone involved in the energy industry I’ve watched so many good people come and go with every change of ownership or even change in the corporate suite that this hardly registers as an abnormality. Sad but true. As for the imminent demise of TV news as we know it today I have a tough time feeling any sadness. It seems to be the same Groundhog Day rerun every night. Inclusion. Reconciliation. Environmental apocalypse. Wokeism in full force. The final straw for me was the nightly cat videos. If change is to actually include real news and not gospel hour soap box preaching it would be a welcome change. Every evening the formula seems to be find someone unhappy with their often petty first world problems and let them bitch about how the world is holding them down. My fear is they will double down on the fluff. Cheaper production costs than actually covering historical world changing events in the Ukraine.
Excellent dispatch. I particularly appreciated someone finally bringing up that rather important angle to the LaFlamme story - that bit about TV news in a slowmo death spiral, or more particularly the classic suppertime/late night broadcasts featuring an anchor. One of the first things that occurred to me when the story broke was - how much does she make and how much will her successor collect. No proof, but strong suspicions it is for less - a lot less. This does not detract from the fact that media companies seem singularly inept when it comes to reporting on their own companies. The Bell/CTV execs come off as idiots. Especially liked the bit about the VP huffing that she, a woman, would never fire another woman.
"Indeed, more often than not, at least some of the blame is now being put on Ukraine for fighting back in the first place. [...] In this, [Putin is] aided by the both-sidesism instincts of the news media as well as the international NGO community. To see this at work in Ukraine, look no further than the recent appalling Amnesty International report, which criticized the Ukrainian military for taking up defensive populations in populated areas (the Kremlin loved it, of course)."
Add to the media and NGOs both-sidesism, Roger Waters' one-sidesism in his interview with Michael Smerconish on CNN. The full unedited version of it can be found on the Smerc's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZsRj3_iDfM. Happy to see Smerc push back on Waters position. I love Rogers' music, but question his political views.
Great dispatch editors! A lot more in depth than I was expecting based on the length of the non-experimental podcast edition. Well done.
I believe anything coming out of Russia about as much a cat saying there's no food in the bowl 5 minutes after you just filled it. Yes, I'm sure Kiev fibbs from time to time, but I'll believe them >95% of the time.
I think the most misogynistic part of the whole story is how so many women are now ignoring Laflamme's gravitas. And it's sad that so many fellow reporters are portraying her as a weak little woman suffering at the hands of the powerful cigar-smoking good ol' boys. Aside from the fact that these are Disney-fications of fact, they also perpetuate the idea that all women are weak and helpless.
As you pointed out, ALL of the players in this tale are operators of some sort or another. Laflamme has been playing the cards she's been dealt. She was never going to retain her job with the current economics of TV, new producers, and a new direction for news at CTV. But she stayed at the table and found a way to use her contacts, power, and considerable agency to set fire to the building as she left.
Most people who feel they have unfairly lost their jobs dream of doing exactly what Laflamme did. However, how many Canadians have the contacts, power, agency, and friends to make it happen?
I listened to your podcast & read this dispatch. Much as you seem to be gloating over the fact that you knew the “real” issue behind the Laflamme firing, I think that you also focused on just another tip of the iceberg. I’m of the generation that watched TV news. I ceased to do so when Donald Trump became president. I did it for my mental health. I have not returned. I know that broadcast news is dying.
My response to the Laflamme firing was fear. I am afraid that the hard won rights of women are being eroded. The US has overturned Roe v Wade. In this province, an essay, by a purportedly 20 something year old female, won third prize for advocating exactly the same rewards for child bearing as the Third Reich. I am deathly afraid. My mother received her BA when she was 40 & her MLS when she was 49; 5 years before I received my MLS. I know how hard these women worked to carve out space in the working world. We are more than a receptacle for the penetration of men. But I am afraid that our freedoms may be coming to an end. Rather than gloating about the fact that we somehow missed the boat, an examination of why so many of us reacted to Laflamme’s firing with horror would have made better journalism. If Bell Media had replaced Laflamme with a younger woman, the optics would have been far better. Next time, if there ever is a next time, since there are very few women currently in powerful public positions, a grey haired woman is fired and replaced by a much younger man and there is an outcry, perhaps consider writing about the ever increasing erosion of a woman’s ability to function outside of the home. My mother was Mrs. Paul Langhammer until she began to work and she became Mrs. Birgit Langhammer and then just Birgit Langhammer. I am afraid that we are entering a period of history when women will once again be Mrs. Paul Langhammers. And heaven help us who have never married, never born children.
Yes, workplace dynamics like that are very, very common in some businesses. Nearly every business, of course, can claim that appearance counts; the whole notion of "casual days" is because they police appearance. Elaborate apologia for appearance-based hiring of every job from flight attendants to fashion-store staff are easy to dig up.
And, yes, there are tough underlying economic realities in the news business.
None of that *excuses* a damn thing. The attitude of "oh, well, that's the world, it isn't fair, what are you gonna do" ... has been a steady current against which progress has been swimming since "the way newsrooms work" was to have no females at all, or guys who have a "weird, foreign" name like "Sachadina". Most "anglicized" their name, he'd have gone with "Homer Saxon" in 1960; ask Jon Stewart. I did a quick google on this and found two news anchors that are de-anglicizing their public names, very recently: Neetu Garcha and Sonia Mangat; the shift is ongoing, though decades old.
If we can get past anglicizing names to make the audience comfortable, maybe we can get past gray hair. Not without sacrifice: clearly CTV needs to fire this guy, and two more who are innocent, but happen to look like him, because life isn't fair. And pour encouragez les autres.
"We thought about calling him collateral damage. Honestly, he looked more like roadkill after LaFlamme’s video roared past."
Goodness, I enjoy that I'm able to laugh at a great joke inside cogent, reasonable analysis. Best money I ever spent on news. Tell me, did Bill Maher inspire you at all?
Funny how the Lisa LaFlamme comet unceremoniously flamed out just a week after The Line warned us about CBC dominance (by attrition) in the news markets going forward.
Bell Media appears to be downsizing in anticipation of sagging ratings and failure to sell ads to cover the overhead. But CBC? Life is great when politicians continue to fork over hundreds of millions of tax dollars for a product that few people tune into. (The National is a third place holder in the ratings, far behind CTV and Global.)
This brings to mind an interesting question: If a day comes that CBC becomes the only news outlet in the major markets, will anyone be left to watch? Will anyone care, or even believe what the CBC is peddling?
Good summary of the business challenges TV news is facing. As much as the CTV Town Hall was really bad (and, I support these things for a living! Who briefed these execs?) one comment that stood out what that CTV was moving to a 'multi-channel strategy' that acknowledges their weakness in capturing a younger audience moving to online sources. Most of that audience probably didn't know who Lisa LaFlamme was until the news hit Twitter this week. I'm old (in my 50s) and I haven't regularly watched TV news in a very, very long time. I can't imagine the desired 18-34 year olds are tuning in!
So -- that's where we're at. And, if online sources were doing a great job of providing news coverage, all would be good. But, what I'm seeing is a huge rise online in punditry and analysis. Don't get me wrong, a lot of this is useful (I subscribe to The Line, after all), but it isn't a substitute for actual reporting. Moreover, it relies on someone, somewhere building sources, learning a beat and -- you know -- doing news reporting that can be analyzed and talked about. Which is expensive. I don't really care if traditional news papers or TV news go under. But, I am concerned about the health of a democracy where there isn't a business model that supports independent news reporting. What's even scarier is I'm not sure a lot of 'consumers' understand the difference between opinion, analysis and reporting and are happy to 'tune in' to the pundits that confirm their existing worldview. That ain't healthy, folks!
I'm not sure what the answer is. Government funding to support news creates a huge conflict as independent news reporting is what keeps governments (and others in power) accountable. But, where's the business model for reporting -- especially the kind of investigative journalism that has so often been really important in uncovering big issues and big stories?
I hope a future report focuses in on the most important aspect of this story, namely, the implications for free speech in this country given the current state of the media business.
The brouhaha surrounding the departure of Ms. LaFlamme will have been a reminder to all who toll in the private sector media that their hold on their position is tenuous and that all it takes is a bad earnings report for their position to be the victim of a corporate reorganization. Loyalty, and fierce dedication to their craft count for precisely nothing.
At the same time, it will have escaped no one in the business that the shining house on the hill, the state propaganda organ, aka the CBC, is flush with cash.
Sign on there and your days of financial worry are behind you. Toe the party line and you can coast to retirement and a lavish pension on a salary and benefits you could only dream about in the private sector.
And no need to worry about remaining on the top of your game. As long as you are ideologically correct, the fail up principle will protect you even as you descend into irredeemable mediocrity and spend your days writing the rank puff pieces that the central committee orders.
But the openings are few and the candidates many.
How are you going to one of the chosen few who gets to sign on and put their financial worries behind them?
By pressing the PM and his Keystone Cops cabinet for answers on the hard issues of the day? By taking at face value the adage that the role of the media is to call the powerful to account?
Or, given we live in the real world, do you stand a better chance of landing a sinecure at the CBC by becoming known for fawning, supine, adulatory, coverage of the PM and his sorry and supremely talentless front bench that would make the reporters at Rodong Sinmun blush in shame?
Could this phenomenon not explain why so much of what passes for journalism in this country is little more than happy talk in which members of the media outdo themselves in accounting to the powerful?
Or the reason that the PM's pressers are solemn, reverential affairs in which the press, on its very best behaviour, gently lobs softballs the PM's way and takes his woke addled non- responses at face value with nary a murmur, a practice that on a recent trip abroad shocked the foreign press?
So, who goes first? Jen if she develops a smile line or Matt if he loses hair. Oops, sorry Matt. I meant his hair colour changes. We love you both as your are, now and forever.
I hate to break it to you, but I no longer view, listen to or read Canadian MSM. We gave up our cable subscription some fifteen years ago, and have never nissed it. So I was puzzled as to who, exactly, was Lisa Laflamme.
I now get my U.S. sources (New York Times, Wall Street Journal) and U.K, sources (The Economist), with a sprinkling of local news as I drive to and from work. On the other hand, I'm a paying subscriber to a dozen Substack newsletters with differing points of view, and feel quite well informed as a result. (Thank you at The Line.)
I intend to stay far away from Canadian MSM just as long as there is heavy government involvement, whether through regulation or subsidies. I think that both of these imperil journalistic independence. As for the Canadian government's threats to censor my Internet connections, good luck to them. They have to catch me first. WWW isn't the only protocol out there.
George
About the RCMP.
Notwithstanding their political differences, all Canadians can agree on one thing, namely, that as a ventriloquist, our PM is in a league of his own.
Take his latest dummy, the one he calls Little Commish Brenda.
Why when he sits that dummy down on his knee and launches into his schtick you would really swear it was Brenda parroting 'No interference' twenty times in a row.
I mean you can't see the PM's lips move at all!
Well, just a little bit if you look really closely.
I just can't wait for the next act.
I have mixed feelings over the whole TV news situation. As someone involved in the energy industry I’ve watched so many good people come and go with every change of ownership or even change in the corporate suite that this hardly registers as an abnormality. Sad but true. As for the imminent demise of TV news as we know it today I have a tough time feeling any sadness. It seems to be the same Groundhog Day rerun every night. Inclusion. Reconciliation. Environmental apocalypse. Wokeism in full force. The final straw for me was the nightly cat videos. If change is to actually include real news and not gospel hour soap box preaching it would be a welcome change. Every evening the formula seems to be find someone unhappy with their often petty first world problems and let them bitch about how the world is holding them down. My fear is they will double down on the fluff. Cheaper production costs than actually covering historical world changing events in the Ukraine.
Excellent dispatch. I particularly appreciated someone finally bringing up that rather important angle to the LaFlamme story - that bit about TV news in a slowmo death spiral, or more particularly the classic suppertime/late night broadcasts featuring an anchor. One of the first things that occurred to me when the story broke was - how much does she make and how much will her successor collect. No proof, but strong suspicions it is for less - a lot less. This does not detract from the fact that media companies seem singularly inept when it comes to reporting on their own companies. The Bell/CTV execs come off as idiots. Especially liked the bit about the VP huffing that she, a woman, would never fire another woman.
"Indeed, more often than not, at least some of the blame is now being put on Ukraine for fighting back in the first place. [...] In this, [Putin is] aided by the both-sidesism instincts of the news media as well as the international NGO community. To see this at work in Ukraine, look no further than the recent appalling Amnesty International report, which criticized the Ukrainian military for taking up defensive populations in populated areas (the Kremlin loved it, of course)."
Add to the media and NGOs both-sidesism, Roger Waters' one-sidesism in his interview with Michael Smerconish on CNN. The full unedited version of it can be found on the Smerc's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZsRj3_iDfM. Happy to see Smerc push back on Waters position. I love Rogers' music, but question his political views.
Great dispatch editors! A lot more in depth than I was expecting based on the length of the non-experimental podcast edition. Well done.
I believe anything coming out of Russia about as much a cat saying there's no food in the bowl 5 minutes after you just filled it. Yes, I'm sure Kiev fibbs from time to time, but I'll believe them >95% of the time.
I think the most misogynistic part of the whole story is how so many women are now ignoring Laflamme's gravitas. And it's sad that so many fellow reporters are portraying her as a weak little woman suffering at the hands of the powerful cigar-smoking good ol' boys. Aside from the fact that these are Disney-fications of fact, they also perpetuate the idea that all women are weak and helpless.
As you pointed out, ALL of the players in this tale are operators of some sort or another. Laflamme has been playing the cards she's been dealt. She was never going to retain her job with the current economics of TV, new producers, and a new direction for news at CTV. But she stayed at the table and found a way to use her contacts, power, and considerable agency to set fire to the building as she left.
Most people who feel they have unfairly lost their jobs dream of doing exactly what Laflamme did. However, how many Canadians have the contacts, power, agency, and friends to make it happen?
I listened to your podcast & read this dispatch. Much as you seem to be gloating over the fact that you knew the “real” issue behind the Laflamme firing, I think that you also focused on just another tip of the iceberg. I’m of the generation that watched TV news. I ceased to do so when Donald Trump became president. I did it for my mental health. I have not returned. I know that broadcast news is dying.
My response to the Laflamme firing was fear. I am afraid that the hard won rights of women are being eroded. The US has overturned Roe v Wade. In this province, an essay, by a purportedly 20 something year old female, won third prize for advocating exactly the same rewards for child bearing as the Third Reich. I am deathly afraid. My mother received her BA when she was 40 & her MLS when she was 49; 5 years before I received my MLS. I know how hard these women worked to carve out space in the working world. We are more than a receptacle for the penetration of men. But I am afraid that our freedoms may be coming to an end. Rather than gloating about the fact that we somehow missed the boat, an examination of why so many of us reacted to Laflamme’s firing with horror would have made better journalism. If Bell Media had replaced Laflamme with a younger woman, the optics would have been far better. Next time, if there ever is a next time, since there are very few women currently in powerful public positions, a grey haired woman is fired and replaced by a much younger man and there is an outcry, perhaps consider writing about the ever increasing erosion of a woman’s ability to function outside of the home. My mother was Mrs. Paul Langhammer until she began to work and she became Mrs. Birgit Langhammer and then just Birgit Langhammer. I am afraid that we are entering a period of history when women will once again be Mrs. Paul Langhammers. And heaven help us who have never married, never born children.
Yes, workplace dynamics like that are very, very common in some businesses. Nearly every business, of course, can claim that appearance counts; the whole notion of "casual days" is because they police appearance. Elaborate apologia for appearance-based hiring of every job from flight attendants to fashion-store staff are easy to dig up.
And, yes, there are tough underlying economic realities in the news business.
None of that *excuses* a damn thing. The attitude of "oh, well, that's the world, it isn't fair, what are you gonna do" ... has been a steady current against which progress has been swimming since "the way newsrooms work" was to have no females at all, or guys who have a "weird, foreign" name like "Sachadina". Most "anglicized" their name, he'd have gone with "Homer Saxon" in 1960; ask Jon Stewart. I did a quick google on this and found two news anchors that are de-anglicizing their public names, very recently: Neetu Garcha and Sonia Mangat; the shift is ongoing, though decades old.
If we can get past anglicizing names to make the audience comfortable, maybe we can get past gray hair. Not without sacrifice: clearly CTV needs to fire this guy, and two more who are innocent, but happen to look like him, because life isn't fair. And pour encouragez les autres.
"We thought about calling him collateral damage. Honestly, he looked more like roadkill after LaFlamme’s video roared past."
Goodness, I enjoy that I'm able to laugh at a great joke inside cogent, reasonable analysis. Best money I ever spent on news. Tell me, did Bill Maher inspire you at all?
What I don’t understand is why people have become so hostile to main stream media. Why are journalists treated too often with disdain?
Thanks for the “transcript “..... bye bye CTV news. Thank heavens there are PBS, NPR, BBC
Funny how the Lisa LaFlamme comet unceremoniously flamed out just a week after The Line warned us about CBC dominance (by attrition) in the news markets going forward.
Bell Media appears to be downsizing in anticipation of sagging ratings and failure to sell ads to cover the overhead. But CBC? Life is great when politicians continue to fork over hundreds of millions of tax dollars for a product that few people tune into. (The National is a third place holder in the ratings, far behind CTV and Global.)
This brings to mind an interesting question: If a day comes that CBC becomes the only news outlet in the major markets, will anyone be left to watch? Will anyone care, or even believe what the CBC is peddling?