Montreal TV in Canada

There was a recent article that appeared in a local newspaper that lamented the lack of English TV production in Montreal. To be more specific, the lack of "openly" Montreal fictional TV produced. It is truly amazing how non-existent it has been, not only in recent years, but for decades.

Gone are the days of local programming aimed at Montrealers. Still, it wasn’t that long ago that quite a few shows were based here. Some even managed to be seen by a much wider audience. Some CBC shows were produced here, but you'd probably have to go back to the 1980s to find the last time that happened. On channel 12, Travel Travel was hugely successful and sold abroad. It didn't really focus on Montreal, but the hosts were always local television personalities. As for shows that were produced for the local market alone, they are too numerous to name. They are now all gone, and that too is a damn shame.

So what were some of the more "memorable" contemporary - and I use that term very loosely - shows that were supposed to be set in Montreal? The last one that I remember was a CBC show called "Urban Angel". It only ran a couple of years, and that was nearly two decades ago... A cool fact about that show was that it was picked up by CBS and shown once a week in what is now David Letterman's time slot. Urban Angel was unique in that it was actually watchable. The same can't be said of the next two gems on the Montreal list...

Do you remember a show set at a ski resort near Montreal back in the early 1980s? It was called "Snow Job". It might quite possibly go down as the worst show in the history of Canadian television. I remember one episode in particular where a young Wayne Gretzky made a cameo. No doubt Wayne would probably want to have that tape burned, if it hasn't been already...

And the last show on my list was highly touted by CTV before it went on the air. It was meant to mimic what had been very popular American prime-time soaps. Unfortunately for Mount Royal , by the time it premiered, powerhouse shows like Dallas and Dynasty were beginning to fade. Even more unfortunate for the program was that it had no plot or point to it. You did get your weekly fix of Montreal location shots, but that was not enough to save it from the inevitable.

What is quite amazing is that Montreal-centred English-language theatre and fiction are thriving right now. I see it with the endless line of talent that makes its way onto the Arts Notebook program on Radio Centre-Ville every week. Why this hasn't translated onto television screens is a mystery. And it is rare that a work of Canadian television fiction ever portrays the interaction between anglophones and francophones in Montreal. Almost everything you have seen on Canadian TV to this point has presented the groups are the stereotypical two solitudes. There seems to be a fear of presenting any other reality, because some people might be offended.

Maybe all the Montreal TV talent has left for greener pastures... Or maybe the decision-makers down the 401 just don't care if there is any Montreal representation on the airwaves. Having said all that, don't expect anything to change. Even the control rooms are in Toronto now!

FOX4 DFW Roast of Social Media HD

Funny because it's true...

Musings...

Not that long ago, you could never envision a day when people in far away lands would be able to listen to your program. I remember the first time I found streaming radio stations in the mid-1990s, and just how amazing that seemed. Of course now we are completely shocked when a station doesn’t stream.

I'm still amazed to see where podcast audiences tend to come from. I don't know how much this holds true for other places, but ex-Montrealers seem to have maintained a deep attachment to their home town. There are so many people out there who are deeply nostalgic for the Montreal they grew up in.

Things are different in Montreal now, as with the exception of newscasts, local TV in English has all but disappeared. Local radio has changed dramatically since the 1970s and 1980s. There are far fewer big "names" out there than there used to be. Will people be nostalgic in 30 years time for anything they see or hear now from Montreal broadcasters?

On a somewhat related note, in terms of television, they keep telling us we have more choice than ever before. Technically that is true, but most people can relate to flipping through thousands of channels on their cable or satellite systems and finding nothing on worth watching. There were only about 30 cable TV channels 25 years ago, so why did they seem so much more interesting?

The concept of all-news actually began as all-news, rather than all-news and an endless stream of talking heads. Back then, you had to watch for the news, because you could not go and get it yourself on the Internet. The audience is now very fragmented. But don't feel too bad for the old-school broadcasters - their parent companies own just about all the specialty channels. One way or another, they are capturing the audience...

No Telethon of Stars in 2010

It seems there will be no Telethon of Stars this year. It had been held in one form or another since 1977. This year, they intend to do a webcast instead. Of course, a fund raising campaign of this sort has become a huge business since the 1970s. Clearly, when the telethon began in the 1970s, the show itself was the primary way funds would be collected every year. Nowadays, the fundraising continues all year long. Previously, I have mentioned my disgust with the way most big charities now operate. As for this particular telethon, things really haven't been the same since the early 1990s.

Back in the 1980s, a TV network like CTV was an association of private local television stations. Now, it is the network that owns and controls the local stations. In the name of “branding” every sign of individuality has been eliminated, right down to the call letters. In most markets, the only local programming left now are the newscasts. Back in the day, CFCF was a huge entity. Programming was controlled locally and was aimed directly at the Montreal market. And yes, there was quite a bit of local programming available.

The Telethon of Stars was by far the high point of the year for CFCF. It was a gigantic local television event that usually took place at the start of each December. What made the show all the more amazing was its bilingual format. Clearly you needed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible in order to raise funds, and so the entire show was held in both official languages. It seemed like a true reflection of how most people really got along in Montreal. Linguistic divisions were set aside for at least one weekend a year and the show was always a big success. They even managed to get some big names up to Montreal to perform. It was a big, big deal...

The telethon expanded to include TQS in the mid-1980s, and that gave them a wider reach throughout the province. Unfortunately, it would also lead to the demise of the bilingual broadcast. Starting in 1994, the annual show would continue, but in French only. From then on, English viewers would be relegated to what would primarily be a movie marathon. They made all kinds of excuses about why the telethon could no longer be bilingual, but the truth was that it was an obvious political decision.

By the time the new "V" decided to dump the event, year-long fundraising, the Internet and marketing diseases as if they were fast food made the relevance of one specific yearly show less important. 2009 saw the return of the bilingual telethon - sort of. It only lasted a few hours, and unlike the seamless flow of decades past, this time it came across as very awkward. Call it inevitable, but the end of the yearly telethon is another sad turning point in Montreal English television history. A very symbolic one.

The Final Years of CFCF/CIQC/CINW

I recently posted a link to an article about the history of CFCF radio. This would have technically been the station's 90th anniversary had it not been axed at the beginning of this year. In all fairness, the 2010 version of the station bared little resemblance to the CFCF of old. In fact, it didn't even have much in common with CIQC.

For a lot of people, when the signal moved from 600 to 940 on the AM dial, it ceased being the same radio station. It was more than a simple change of frequency, it was more as if they were trying not only to distance themselves from their history, but to pretend they were in no way connected to their past.

If I am not mistaken, the story goes that around 1990 (give or take a few years), when CFCF Inc., then still a mega-broadcaster, sold CFCF and CFQR. At the time, they insisted the radio station change its call letters to break the obvious perceived connection to the rest of the CFCF family. That happened in 1991, when the station went all-country. You may remember tuning in to hear an Expo game and being shocked when an announcement referred to the station as Country 600, CIQC.

CIQC went to a talk format in 1993, and they pretty much maintained it until their 1999 move to all news on 940. From late afternoon on, the station became as close to a Montreal English-language sports station as you could get back in the mid-90s. Having the Expos helped in that regard.

I have some fond memories of Expos coverage on CIQC that I have wrote about before. It's kind of symbolic that the Expos began their demise at the same time the station pulled the plug on itself in 1999. After that happened, English-language sports talk in Montreal almost completely disappeared until Team 990 was born.

940 News went on the air in 1999. The premise with that kind of format is that people do not tune in for extended periods of time. I tried to listen, but heard the same loops of news being repeated over and over again. They added a talk component to their format in the mid-2000s, but that wasn’t really any more successful.

Ironically, there are no more 24 hour radio news rooms in Montreal right now in either official language. That is pretty alarming for a city of nearly 4 million people. Back in the 1980s, if there was a power outage or a fire in your neighbourhood at 2 o'clock in the morning, you could tune in to the next local radio newscast and probably hear about it. Where are you supposed to get your information from now? You can't...

So 940 went to an oldies format toward the end of their existence, and predictably that didn't pan out. You can't seriously expect to market music on an AM frequency in the 2000s. You'd have had a hard time doing that in the late 1970s.

When the plug was pulled on the two Montreal stations earlier this year, it was sad. Sad for people in the business who saw two less opportunities to do their “thing“, and even sadder for the public, who now have two less listening choices than they did before. So at best, people can be nostalgic about the station that was - even as late as the 1990s. The station that was the home of Montreal sports for the longest time, and to some of the greatest announcers in Montreal radio history.

Fall of a Titan: 89¾ Years of CFCF, by James Careless

Fall of a Titan: 89¾ Years of CFCF, by James Careless

War of the Worlds

One of the greatest examples of the power of early radio. Many who heard the original broadcast freaked out, as they were convinced the Earth was being invaded by Martians. This monumental broadcast was created by Orson Welles as part of his Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was inspired by H. G. Wells' science fiction novel The War of the Worlds. It originally aired on October 30th, 1938.

It is believed that six million people heard part or all of the live broadcast, and at least half of them either believed what they were hearing was true or were at the very least, becoming concerned. We are used to hearing/seeing “fake” news now, but to fake an entire news event on radio was unheard of back in 1938.