REVOLVING DOOR:
Christy & Fraser, the on-air duo that parted ways with Pattison Media’s NOW! Radio (CKPK-FM) in Vancouver earlier this year, have been tapped as the new co-hosts of the JACK FM morning show. Christy Farrell and Fraser Tuff were heard on Wild 95.3 (CKWD-FM) and 101.5 Today Radio in Calgary, before moving to Vancouver to help launch the NOW! brand in the market. They replace DREX on Jack, which has come to an end as Rogers Sports & Media makes changes across both JACK and alt rock sister station SONiC Radio (CKKS-FM). As previously reported, Carly & Jay move over from SONiC to a 4 – 8 p.m. time slot on JACK. Former afternoon drive host Jason Manning is being heard from 1 – 4 p.m., following “The Playing Whatever Lunch,” hosted by Meredith Geddes, who is hosting middays from 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. Read more here.
Frank Cavallaro has taken over mornings at Evanov’s Lite 106.7 (CHSV-FM) Hudson-St. Lazare. A 40+ year broadcaster, Cavallaro has worked at stations from New Brunswick to Winnipeg, including Mix 96 (CJFM-FM), CJAD, and 940 NEWS (CFNV-AM) Montreal, in addition to serving as a weather presenter on CTV and CBC in Montreal. He succeeds Ted Bird in the role, who parted ways with Evanov in March.
Jeremy White has joined 640 (CFIQ-AM) Toronto as a fill-in host. White’s first foray into talk radio, he was most recently heard in evenings on Energy 95.3 (CING-FM) Hamilton up until the end of last year and hosts afternoon drive on 105.5 JYY Concord, New Hampshire.
Amandalina Letterio is joining Global News’ national weekend broadcast as an anchor, starting May 11. Letterio was previously an anchor with CTV Morning Live in Regina and has worked with the CFJC newsroom in Kamloops and Castanet Media in Kelowna.
Alex Brown, who was caught up in layoffs at CTV Saskatoon in February, has joined Rawlco Radio news/talk station 650 CKOM as a reporter. Brown was anchoring CTV Morning Live Saskatoon up until February, and with the network for a decade with stops in Regina and Winnipeg.
Zahra Premji has departed CBC Vancouver where she’s been an anchor and reporter for the past six years. Premji is joining Fraser Health Authority in a communications role. Prior to CBC, she worked with 980 CKNW, Global BC and CTV Vancouver Island.
Melissa Duggan has joined CP24 as a reporter/anchor. Duggan recently left CityNews Toronto after 11 years, where she’d held roles from associate producer to more recently anchoring and reporting with a focus on international news.
Aaron Sousa is joining Global Edmonton as an Online Journalist. Sousa arrives from CBC Edmonton where he’d been a reporter and associate producer for both radio and online since last June.
Tamara Khandaker has joined Al Jazeera’s flagship podcast The Take as a producer. The veteran podcaster, whose hosting and producing credits include The Globe & Mail’s The Decibel, CBC Podcasts’ Party Lines and Global News’ daily pod Wait There’s More, was most recently hosting CBC world news podcast Nothing is Foreign and its daily current events pod Front Burner.
Will Menzies will be covering weekends on Energy 95.3 (CING-FM) Hamilton, in addition to afternoons on Magic 106 (CIMJ-FM) Kitchener-Waterloo. With Corus Radio since 2019, Menzies also serves as Music Director for both Magic and 1460 CJOY, among other duties.
Sarah Farrell has been appointed General Manager of Pinewood Studios in downtown Toronto. Farrell joined Pinewood as Legal Counsel in 2013, eventually overseeing Legal, HR and Client Relations, before taking on her current role as GM.
RADIO & PODCAST:
CBC Podcasts’ spring slate is highlighted by shows on the “Broomgate” curling scandal, the Bre-X gold scam, and an exploration of the rise of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Upcoming summer offerings include CBC/NPR co-production Tested, an exploration of the 100-year history of sex testing in elite sports and who gets to compete in the women’s category. Read more here.
CBC’s Writers & Company, the longtime CBC Radio program that concluded last year after 33 seasons, is joining Simon Fraser University’s Digitized Collections. Featuring over 1,000 original interviews by Eleanor Wachtel, the project is being facilitated in collaboration with SFU’s Special Collections and Rare Books and the SpokenWeb project. Wachtel’s interviews have spanned writers, filmmakers, photographers and artists from around the world ranging from Mordecai Richler, John le Carré, and Saul Bellow to Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, and Michael Ondaatje, among many others.
Triton Digital has released its Canada Podcast Ranker for March, reflecting the reporting period of Feb. 26 to March 31. Three new sales networks have joined the Canada Podcast Ranker, including Cumulus Podcast Network, Beasley Media Group, and Focus On the Family. The top-ranked podcasts were unchanged this month, however top-ranked debuts included Three (SiriusXM Podcast Network), Shawn Ryan Show (Cumulus Podcast Network), SERIALously?! (Audioboom), Dave & Chuck the Freak: Full Show (Beasley Media Group), and Understood (CBC/Radio-Canada).
The Globe and Mail has launched Machines Like Us, a new podcast exploring technological breakthroughs propelled by advances in artificial intelligence. It’s hosted by Taylor Owen, the Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communication, and Founding Director of the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy at McGill University.
The Vancouver Canucks are the only team in the Stanley Cup Playoffs not travelling with a radio broadcast team. As reported by Daily Hive, Sportsnet 650 (CISL-AM) is calling games remotely from the CityTV studios in Vancouver, in line with a cost-saving measure instituted by Rogers Sports and Media during the pandemic to stop sending radio broadcasters on the road. That includes the Canucks, Calgary Flames, Toronto Maple Leafs, and Montreal Canadiens (English broadcast). Corus Entertainment, which has the radio broadcast rights for the Winnipeg Jets and Edmonton Oilers, still fund travel for their radio broadcast teams. While the Leafs broadcast team is on the road for the playoffs this year, the club is picking up the tab.
LISTEN: Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s, the second season of Connie Walker’s podcast for Gimlet Media, delved into her own family’s history with residential school abuse, marking a breakthrough for the investigative journalist who has been recognized with a Pulitzer Prize and Peabody Award, among other accolades, including making the Time 100 list of most influential people of 2024. We welcome Walker to the podcast to talk about that breakthrough, what’s next as Stolen searches for a new home, and how media can better support Indigenous journalists.
LISTEN: Ken Connors is leaving his weekend morning job at Montreal’s CJAD 800 on his own terms. He joins the Sound Off Podcast to talk about his broadcast career that started at McGill Radio, and continued throughout Ontario, to Ottawa and back to Montreal, including stops at CHOM, Standard Broadcasting’s CJFM, 940 News, Q92 and then back to CJAD where he has been since 2016.
FEATURE: Dave Charles is celebrating 60 years in radio. Virgin Radio International Chief Content Officer Ronnie Stanton interviews Charles on reaching that six-decade milestone. “From not so humble beginnings as a creative on-air rat bag to the international consultant and voice of reason he is today, it’s been quite the journey,” writes Stanton. “As a fellow dual citizen of Canada and Australia, as a fellow believer that radio’s best days are ahead of us not behind, and as his friend; I felt like the perfect candidate to sit down with Dave and ask him what’s what on this auspicious occasion.” Read more here.
SIGN OFFS:
Remembering Bob Cole, the soundtrack of hockey ❤️ pic.twitter.com/Gf5cqtKkTU
— Hockey Night in Canada (@hockeynight) April 27, 2024
Bob Cole, 90, on April 24. Captivated as a youth by renowned play-by-play broadcaster Foster Hewitt, Cole started his broadcasting career in his hometown with VOCM-AM St. John’s, NL, moving over to CBC Radio in 1969. He was the radio voice for the 1972 Team Canada-Soviet Union Summit and while Hewitt made the now-famous call of Paul Henderson’s goal on TV, Cole did the same on the radio broadcast. He moved into television in 1973 and when Bill Hewitt retired, Cole became the play-by-play voice for Hockey Night in Canada on CBC games involving the Toronto Maple Leafs. Cole was the primary play-by-play announcer for HNIC from 1980-2008, until he was replaced by Jim Hughson. He was also a staple during the Stanley Cup playoffs and handled play-by-play for multiple Olympic match-ups as well as the World Cup of Hockey. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1996 as the recipient of the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award for broadcasting excellence. In 2007, Cole won his first Gemini Award for Sports Play-by-Play. He was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2016. More recently, he was recognized with the Canadian Screen Awards’ Lifetime Achievement honour in 2022. Read more here.
Al Shaver, 96, on April 22. After graduating from the Lorne Greene Academy of Radio Arts in 1948, Shaver had a long play-play-play career across both radio and television with stops at CJOY Guelph, CJCJ Calgary, CHAT Medicine Hat, CFRN Edmonton, CKGM Montreal, CKWW Windsor and CKEY Toronto. In 1967, he headed stateside to become the original play-by-play voice of the Minnesota North Stars for all 26 seasons, first with WCCO Radio and later KSTP-AM and WAYL-AM. He opted to stay in the Twin Cities when the team moved to Dallas in 1993, calling University of Minnesota men’s hockey before his retirement in 1996. Among other accolades, Shaver was inducted into the media section of the Hockey Hall of Fame and Minnesota Broadcasting Hall of Fame, He was awarded the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award in 1993. The press box at Xcel Energy Center, home of the Minnesota Wild, bears Shaver’s name. His son, Wally, and grandson Jason followed in his footsteps as sportscasters.
Stacey Brooks, 50, on April 22 after a battle with breast cancer. Brooks worked in entertainment marketing for the better part of the last two decades, most recently as Director of Marketing at Super Channel, which she joined in July 2023, following 16 years at Bell Media. Among the senior marketing roles she held at Bell were Senior Manager, Marketing Communications and Customer Acquisition and Senior Marketing Manager, Bell TV. Originally from Scarborough, ON, prior to working in entertainment, Brooks held roles with software and tech solutions providers including Chancery Software, Creo, and Sonar Group. Read more here.
TV & FILM:
Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) members have voted overwhelmingly in favour of authorizing strike action if there is no resolution in its ongoing negotiations with the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA). WGC and the CMPA have been negotiating renewal of the Independent Production Agreement (IPA) for the past six months, with WGC members working without a contract since Dec. 31. Among the sticking points are meaningful protections around the use of AI for both live action and animation writers, better compensation for animation writers, and minimum staffing on shows once they are in production. The first strike mandate in the organization’s history, 96.5% voted in favour of job action with more than 70% of eligible voters casting a ballot. Read more here.
Amazon, Rogers Communications, and the NHL have announced a two-year agreement to bring Monday night hockey to Canadian fans on Prime Video. The NHL’s first exclusive national broadcast deal with a digital-only streaming service in Canada, Prime Monday Night Hockey will stream all national regular season Monday night NHL games in English for the 2024/25 and 2025/26 seasons. Produced by Prime Video, it will feature a new broadcast team offering analysis and play-by-play coverage, and stream live exclusively to Prime members in Canada. Read more here.
Sportsnet and the Calgary Flames have a new agreement that sees the network continue as the team’s exclusive regional broadcast partner for eleven more seasons. Since Sportsnet’s inception in 1998, Sportsnet has been the home of the Flames’ regional broadcasts. The new long-term extension ensures Flames regional broadcasts will remain on Sportsnet through to 2035.
Tubi, Fox Corporation’s ad-supported streaming service, has partnered with sports streamer DAZN on a groundbreaking licensing agreement will see DAZN Ringside and DAZN Women’s Football FAST channels launch in the U.S. and DAZN TV and DAZN Women’s Football launch in Canada. This is the first time the DAZN Women’s Football FAST channel will be available in North America, which the streamers say highlights a shared commitment to spotlight elite soccer, but also women’s sports in general. DAZN Women’s Football will be available 24 hours a day, offering a mix of live and classic soccer matches from the UEFA Women’s Champions League (UWCL); Liga F; and the Saudi Women’s Premier League. DAZN Ringside gives fans the best action across boxing and MMA from partners Matchroom Boxing, Golden Boy, Wasserman and MF & DAZN: X Series, including over 300 hours of archive fights, documentaries, and The DAZN Boxing show. DAZN TV features boxing, MMA, and international soccer.
Bell Media is moving into the FAST channel space, announcing the launch of 10 English and French-language channels featuring CTV, TSN and Noovo programming, among other content. Spanning entertainment, factual, news, and sports, all 10 channels are now available on LG Channels, and expected to roll out on Samsung TV Plus shortly. Read more here.
View this post on Instagram
Citytv lifestyle program Cityline will conclude with a farewell episode this Friday after a 40-year run as Rogers Sports & Media moves to evolve the show. Beginning in September, it will be featured as a fifth live hour of Breakfast Television. Moore, who is on board to host the new one-hour offering that will air from 10 – 11 a.m., said while difficult, change is necessary to adapt to changing consumer viewing habits. Canada’s longest running daytime show targeted to women, Cityline is taped in front of a live studio audience. The show was originally hosted by Dini Petty when it launched in 1984. Marilyn Denis succeeded her in 1989, helming the show until 2008 when Moore took over. Read more here.
Ontario Creates has released new data indicating the province’s Film and Television industry contributed $1.8 billion to Ontario’s economy in 2023, down from a high of $3.15 billion the previous year. Domestic Television Series production was strong in 2023, with 138 productions contributing over $639 million in expenditures. Live Action production accounted for 371 of a total 404 productions. Broadcaster in-house production is estimated at $669 million. Ontario Creates says while the U.S. labour disruption posed challenges for Ontario’s Film and Television industry, leading to production delays and disruptions, indicators are pointing towards a rebound for 2024. However, it says factors such as shifting content strategies among foreign streaming platforms, budget cuts for independent production by Canadian broadcasters, and increased production costs may affect the rate of return and new normal production levels.
Vice Media Group has announced a new structure for its production business, which will see Vice Studios Canada focus on factual series for streamers like Crave. The renamed Vice Studios Group will encompass five production entities, including Pulse Films, UnTypical, Vice Studios LatAm, and a news documentary unit, in addition to Vice Studios Canada. Vice Studios Group will be led by co-presidents Jamie Hall, based in London, and Danny Gabai in Los Angeles.
The Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television (the Canadian Academy) has announced its third and final round of Special Award recipients, led by Dune filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, Blue Ant Media CEO Michael MacMillan, and actor, writer and comedian Patrick Huard. Villeneuve is being presented with the Academy Icon Award, presented to a Canadian individual or institution for their exceptional, ongoing contribution to the media industry at home or abroad. MacMillan is being recognized with the Industry Leadership Award, honouring innovation and leadership in Canada’s media industry, while Huard will receive the Earle Grey Award, recognizing a Canadian performer for their exceptional body of acting work in Canadian television and film. Read more here.
The Guild of Music Supervisors, Canada (GMSC) and Canadian Music Week (CMW) have announced Patrick Watson as the recipient of its inaugural Impact Award at this year’s Canadian Sync Awards on June 3. The GMSC Impact Award celebrates a lifetime of contributions and influence on music, culture, community, self-expression, and vision, as well as their profound prominence in the sync world. Montreal raised and based, Watson composes, performs, and records his albums with longtime collaborator Mishka Stein. He has made several scores for film and television, including Wim Wenders’ films Perfect Days and Everything Will Be Fine. Other notable projects featuring his ‘syncs’ include: The Rest Of Us, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Grey’s Anatomy, Orange Is The New Black, Ray Donovan, The Good Doctor, and The Blacklist. Submissions for the awards are open until April 26.
Valerie Creighton, President and CEO, Canada Media Fund, will receive the Glass Ceiling Award at this year’s inaugural Hollywood Reporter Women in Entertainment Canada event in Toronto on May 30. Presented in partnership with Shaftesbury, the Glass Ceiling Award recognizes excellence in leadership in the Canadian entertainment industry from women role models who are setting the agenda and driving the industry forward.
Hot Docs is honouring Canadian writer-producer-director Alison Duke, co-founder of OYA Media Group, with the Don Haig Award. Duke is the producer behind A Mother Apart, a tale of healing and forgiveness in which Jamaican-American poet and LGBTQ+ activist Staceyann Chin embarks on an international journey to reimagine the art of mothering—having been abandoned by her own mother as a young child. The Don Haig Award is presented to an outstanding Canadian independent producer with a feature length film at the festival, selected by a jury of independent filmmakers.
ONLINE & DIGITAL MEDIA:
MTM Jr.’s latest study of media consumption amongst Canadian kids, aged 2-17, finds three in four teens (72%) are aware of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and one in four (25%) are using them on a monthly basis. In its sixth year, the study finds Snapchat is maintaining its popularity, with almost half of kids aged 7-17 (48%) having used it in the past month and 80% of users doing so on a daily basis. For the first time, MTM Jr. asked teens about their Snapchat scores and found that over half can identify what their “Snapscore” is. Video games also remain a staple for most kids, with four in five (79%) having played one in the past month.
From the small screen to the big screen X is changing everything. Soon we’ll bring real-time, engaging content to your smart TVs with the X TV App. This will be your go-to companion for a high-quality, immersive entertainment experience on a larger screen. We’re still building it… pic.twitter.com/QhG6cVDpZ8
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) April 23, 2024
X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, is set to launch a dedicated smart TV app that will feature a trending video algorithm, AI-powered trending topics and a cross-device experience so users can start watching on their phone and continue watching on TV. The social platform’s video offerings currently include original programming hosted by former congresswoman and political commentator Tulsi Gabbard and former Fox Sports host Jim Rome.
REGULATORY, TELECOM & DIGITAL MEDIA:
Innovation, Science and Industry has released the 2023 Price Comparison Study of Telecom Services. The report shows wireless prices declined an average of 18.2% for data plans in 2023, consistent with the annual 18.6% price decline reported by Statistics Canada (Monthly change in cellular services price index) for the same time period. For home internet, the report found prices decreased across all service plans last year with significant decreases on plans up to 100 Mbps, including decreases of 8.6% for plans offering the universal access target of 50 Mbps.
CTV News and Chief Anchor and Senior Editor Omar Sachedina have announced the creation of the new Sachedina ∙ CTV News Fellowship, in partnership with RTDNF Canada and the University of Toronto’s Massey College. The fellowship will provide the opportunity for a journalism student from a Canadian university or college who has recently graduated or is within one year from graduation to receive a stipend of $10,000 to produce a substantial and original piece of journalism that will be considered for publication on a CTV News platform. Read more here.
The Michener Awards Foundation has announced the finalists for the 2023 Michener Award for meritorious public service journalism. This year’s finalists are The Canadian Press, CBC/Radio-Canada, The Globe and Mail, The Montreal Gazette, and The Narwhal + The Toronto Star. The foundation has also announced its Michener-Deacon Fellowship has been awarded to Ève Lévesque and Marie-Christine Noël, who will lead an investigation into food security in Canada for L’Actualité. The Michener-L. Richard O’Hagan Fellowship goes to Jean-Hugues Roy and Naël Shiab to create a free online course on data journalism. The recipients will be honoured at the annual Michener Awards ceremony at Rideau Hall on June 14, hosted by the Governor General of Canada.
Journalists for Human Rights (JHR), in partnership with the federal government, is launching an initiative dedicated to empowering independent Russian and Belarusian journalists facing severe censorship. The project will work to assist independent journalists in combating information manipulation and further empower them with up-to-date skills to produce fact-based, human rights-centered reporting. The project will provide digital security training, investigative journalism workshops, and mental health support, among other resources.
Western Association of Broadcasters (WAB) will welcome JUNO-winning, Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist, producer and singer songwriter Aysanabee to its annual conference, June 5-6 at Fairmont Banff Springs. From Sandy Lake First Nation, a remote fly-in community in the far reaches of Northwestern Ontario, Aysanabee won the coveted Songwriter of the Year and Alternative Album of the Year awards for Here and Now, the first Indigenous artist to win in either category. Set to appear at WAB’s Gold Medal Awards dinner, he joins a speakers’ lineup that includes Conrad Black, Valerie Geller, Pat Bryson, and more.
B.C. Association of Broadcasters (BCAB) is still accepting last-minute registrations ahead of its May 7 conference at the River Rock Casino Resort in Richmond. This year’s speakers lineup includes broadcast veteran George Stroumboulopoulos in conversation with Rock 101 (CFMI-FM) morning show host Willy Percy, music programmer Sean Ross of Ross on Radio, and representation from the CRTC, Canadian Association of Broadcasters, Radio Connects, and more. Read more here.
BROADCAST TECH & ENGINEERING:
Numeris has announced the release of its Hybrid Linear TV measurement service for its video clients, developed in partnership with Kantar Media. Enhanced Television Audience Measurement (TAM) incorporates Return Path Data (Big Data) from Set-Top-Boxes (STBs) to TAM data (Panel data). Numeris says the approach addresses the fragmented TV landscape while reinforcing audience behaviours already reported under TAM. The audience measurement agency says the hybrid method will provide more granularity and better accuracy, offering audience stability, program-level audience estimates for niche or spill stations, and a better understanding of the complete broadcast TV landscape by reporting data from U.S. spill and unencoded stations that currently isn’t available. Read more here.
Ross Video has introduced Raiden, data-driven weather graphics software designed to help newsrooms elevate their storytelling with more immersive real-time weather content. The first release of Raiden brings weather graphics to the XPression toolbox, allowing meteorologists to collaborate with producers and designers across departments to prepare weather and climate content from anywhere. The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service (RUV) was the first adopter of the Raiden system in their newsroom.
Vaudeville Sound Group’s Vancouver location has invested in a new Foley stage and assembled a team of experienced Foley artists to enhance its audio post-production offering. Vaudeville’s Foley work for immersive projects includes the recently announced mixed reality (MR) game Starship Home and virtual reality (VR) game Fight Flight, in addition to delivering the true-to-life 3D Foley for the creative launch of the Alliance for Open Media’s Immersive Audio Models and Formats (IAMF) specification with Google and Samsung at CES 2024.
