Do You Miss a Daily Newspaper? Tell This Lady About It

Hard to believe, but it's been going on nearly a year now that Guelph has gone without a local paper. The Guelph Mercury-Tribune, Guelph Today, myself, and a few others have tried to fill the void of the old Guelph Mercury, but can anything really replace that hole left behind by a local daily newspaper, and how are we all coping with that? Well, I now know at least one lady who would like an answer to that, and she'd like your feedback as well. ‎

This Municipal Election Year is an Animal Farm

From CTV Kitchener

 George Orwell's 1945 political satire Animal Farm was about a group of animals who take over their farm from the drunk and inept Mr. Jones and enjoy success until the pigs that led the revolution become corrupt and human-like. Orwell was commenting on the Russian Revolution, but Animal Farm may be somewhat prescient in terms of the way the municipal election is shaking out in some quarters. You see, the animals are making a play to take over.

Press Release - City Wants to Know Why We Don't Vote

Barely over one-third of eligible voters came out to cast a ballot in the 2010 municipal election, which is surprising given how loud some of the pettiness concerning local politics gets online. Well, with about a year a half to go before the next election, the city seems to want to figure that out, and it's going to the source to figure it out. 

Things I Read in Metro Today

I like Metro. I pick it up whenever I'm in Toronto (like I was this morning for a press screening of an upcoming movie). To me, it's a sign that the newspaper industry isn't as nearly deflated as the wags would have us believe. Every issue downtown in the subway stations is gone by noon, and that's despite the fact that a lot of Metro is re-edited, re-formatted, and re-hashed bits for the TorStar News Service.

So as I was flipping through today's issue, I had a number of reactions to some of the stories within. I thought it might be fun to put a few of those to the digital page. If you have an issue of today's Toronto Metro, feel free to follow along. 

PG 3 - "Road tolls 'not going to happen'" - Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and his war on people without cars continues, as his brother Coun. Doug Ford confirms that toll roads are "off the table" as a way to raise funds for the City's subway plans. I'm not for or against toll roads, but it always seems irresponsible to me to take any revenue options off the table. Especially when you've already taken option number one - tax increases - completely off the table. 

PG 5 - "Camera did not go off in Tory's pants: Party" - Tory Candidate George Lepp had his Blackberry stolen and someone posted a picture of a live male phallus on his Twitter feed, but an erroneous report said that the camera went off in his pants and then posted the picture to his feed accidentally. To me, that's the "magic bullet" theory of social media posting, but it gave New Democrat Peter Kormos a chance to get on his soapbox in Queens Park and demand that the speaker band Blackberries from the chamber. Silly season in the campaign has begun, and "Penisgate" is its name.

PG 5 - Photo Cap: Further proof that politicians need to stop playing dress up for the camera

PG 9 - "Royal couple's tour bypasses Toronto" - How dare they! Doesn't the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge know how important Toronto is, and that it's the Centre of the Universe? Come on! They're stopping in Charlottetown, PEI for two days, apparently because the Duchess is a big fan of Anne of Green Gables. Sure, nice spin Buckingham Palace!

PG 11 - "Girls' guide to surviving NHL playoffs" - Oh, our boyfriends and husbands are perpetually obsessed with hockey and its the Stanley Cup finals. What are we going to do? How will we deal with the rowdiness and excitement?! Really, we're still doing this? Please, I know women who get just as excited, if not more excited, about hockey as man. What a tired stereotype. 

PG 13 - "CityTV shows off its talent" - And most of it is American-made except for two shows: Canada's Got Talent, and Secret Millionaire Canada. Nice.

PG 14 - Drive Angry DVD Review - Peter Howell's review is pretty spot on with my opinion of the film.

PG 17 - "Jones won't snitch on her baby-daddy" - Matthew Vaughn's got a hot movie coming out this weekend, but he's in hot water at home with accusations that he's the father of X-Men: First Class star January Jones' baby. Of course, it's hard to feel sorry for the guy that's apparently traded Claudia Schiffer for January Jones, but...

PG 28 - Blue Jays pitcher Jo-Jo Reyes avoids becoming the losingest pitcher in MLB history. He'll have to settle for being tied for worst with Oakland's Matt Keough and Boston's Cliff Curtis. Reyes' last win was June 13th, 2008. 

PG 31 - Today's sudoku was ridiculously easy. Finished it in 10 minutes.

Saving Local TV

If you've been watching your local CTV or A-Channel station lately, then you know about their campaign to "Save Local TV." Well Saturday, CTV Southwestern Ontario in Kitchener held an open house to drum up support on their end, and by all accounts it seemed to be a rousing success.By the time I got to CTV's King St. location, just before 11 o'clock, there was already a line-up that extended around the front of the building and down the side. All that was involved was a basic tour of the newsroom and studio area; about five stops over 30 minutes. And for that, people lined up in the warming Saturday sun for about 30 minutes to an hour. (My wait was closer to 40 minutes.)

The crux of the situation is that ad revenues are way down for local TV stations, even in spite of the fact that satellite and cable companies are making billions just by carrying the channels. None of that money makes it back to the stations, however. And with time-shifting there's less incentive to tune into your local station when you can watch your favourite program anytime in a six-hour window.

If I may offer my two cents though, I think this is emblematic of deeper problem: how are you to encourage people to watch their local station when everything on it, with the exception of local newscasts, is exactly the same as the others? Sure, there may be one or two different programs squeezed in between network mandated programming line-ups, but there's actually very few hours in the day that a local station can call their own. Not to mention there's a real lack of separate identity: it's CTV Southwestern Ontario now, not CKCO Kitchener. The irony is, in the case of the A-Channel stations at least, that before being folded into the A-Channel network, all those stations were pretty individualistic.

But no matter how we got here, the point is still important and timely. At the very least, information that affects you daily, that has or will have an immediate impact on your life, will be seen on your local newscast. It's like why I say voting in municipal elections is important: it's where 99 per cent of the things that affect you a daily basis happen. The national news covers national issues, you want to know about school funding, property taxes, local festivals and sports, you go to your local TV station. It's worth saving and supporting.