The Big A
London, ON, March 2009
They held a big rally in London today in support of local television, part of a national campaign to raise awareness of the dire state of the industry, and to get the government off its keister in helping the industry survive.
Of course I want to have a vibrant local media landscape. The thought of a city the size of London - 350,000 - without its own major broadcast television station boggles my mind. It's unthinkable that we might be so ill-served, yet that's clearly where we're headed unless something changes both drastically and soon.
At the same time, I admit I'm somewhat ambivalent about this particular effort. CTV, the parent company of our local station, has mobilized all of its properties to build support for changes to the regulatory environment in Canada that would make it easier for them to make money from local television operations. According to the conventional broadcast conglomerates that dominate the market, they simply can't make money the way things currently are.
Fair enough, and I'm glad they've decided to give it a shot. But I think I would have had more sympathy for their plight if they had raised the alarm before pulling the plug on the majority of their local programming.
The cynic in me feels hundreds of community-minded folks jammed ourselves into a downtown courtyard today to support an organization that's already given up on this city. I think I'd have been more inclined to join the fray if the media organizations - and not just this one, but all of them - committed to reinvesting their profits from a changed environment back into the communities they serve. If I knew they'd be creating jobs and building a foundation for the long haul, I'd feel a whole lot better about waving a flag.
As it is, I suspect they'll quietly walk away from their operations as soon as the opportunity presents itself, because business ultimately trumps community when the remotely located leaders of these conglomerates rarely visit the communities they supposedly serve. For now, it smacks of a PR campaign that targets the CRTC (aka the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the regulatory dinosaur-agency that dictates who does what in Canadian media and more often than not mucks it up) and accomplishes little to restore what's already been taken away from the communities these conglomerates supposedly serve.
Your turn: What happens when a major city loses its major media? What then?
About this photo: This sign hangs over the now-abandoned remote studio that our local 'A' affiliate used to operate out of the Covent Garden Market. Ironically, this is where the rally was held. Today's rally notwithstanding, I'm not sure how much longer this sign - or the station itself - will be there. For more sign-related fun, head over here.
Update - May 30, 2009: Online editor Dan Brown ran a snippet from this entry on May 30th as part of his weekly Best of the blogs feature in the London Free Press. Thanks Dan!
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8 comments:
Haven't watched A channel in years. It has been the Windsor news station as much as the London news station.
Is it still on? Don't know, don't care.
What happens to the local community without local news? Maybe we get honest reporting, instead of the "old boys club" connections that keep all the back-room deals hidden.
Perhaps the countless things that are wrong in this city actually get brought to light and exposed.
Take a good look at the Toronto Star and some if its investigative reporting, compared to the London Free Press and its complicity in glossing over any wrongdoings in this myopic xenophobic backwoods little Mayberry.
London hasn't been open to change for a hundred years, why start now.
Hello carmi!
I lost interest in the A Channel news a long time ago. Mostly because I realized that there was very little London related news being reported. There has been more than one time that I actually made an effort to watch A Channel for information on something I know had occurred here in London but they didn't even mention it. I got the information from City TV news instead. That is why I gave up on the A Channel.
Like Klaatu stated it has been a Windsor station even more so than London's. Albeit I rarley watch the news anyway.
Terri
Klaatu doesn't care about local TV or the London Free Press. He would rather get all his news from Toronto.
Have you ever thought that all those big city reporters learned the trade in small cities first? You don't walk into a job at The Star without putting your time in.
I've always thought we should have a skill testing question of some sort before you can post comments. Just to weed out the morons.
Gee Tony, judging by your judgemental and angry post, you sound like a reporter trained in a small town.
Yes I have seen former C.F.P.L. reporters go on to bigger stations, and they are as poorly spoken and ill mannered as they were at their small towns.
You're right though, I don't care about poor quality T.V. or newspapers, and judging by the viewership/readership I am not alone.
The reporters from small towns get to go to the BIG CITY because they will work cheaply and put up with starter position duties.
P.S. are you sure you would pass a comment filter?
An adendum to my previous post:
According to Tony ( he of the vehement and righteous opinion)
" You don't walk into a job at The Star without putting your time in"
Does this mean you can walk into a job at the Free Press without putting your time in?
To quote Adam from Mythbusters
" Well there's your problem!"
P.S. Anyone who responds to a post in an insulting manner while a guest on someone else's blog,and posits the need for a comment filter, really needs to learn the definition of irony.
We are certainly in a transition period for all media--but then that's been going on at least since the telegraph (Read Neal Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death." I hate seeing what's happening to our newspapers. That's even worse than the lost of TV.
I'm devastated and angry that over a million people in our area will lose our local television station.
However I'm not surprised.Our local station has "lost" quality programming over the last ten years.It almost seems like the head office de jour wants any station outside of a major market to fail.
Will extended Sun multimedia usage (video ,interactive blogging) be enough to cover the gap left by the loss of A Channel ?
Carmi: With deep regret, I saw this scenario in the United States beginning to boil up during the 1996 NAB convention in Los Angeles. When the industry was deregulated there were a few large newtwork owners and 14 individual owners in my market. Then a nightmare was unleashed. Suddenly huge conglomerates were able to buy up newspapers, radio stations (in several formats in each market), outdoor billboard companies and more. As a result, there is little time allotted (if any) to public service announcements and no originating television programming other than local news stations. The individual owners were bought out with millions (primarily to gain access to an attractive FM Radio frequencies). There is no room for creativity. It's now all commodity-driven.
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