Montreal City Weblog

Kate 09:28 on 2023-08-31 Permalink Reply  

• Ephraim 10:15 on 2023-08-31 Permalink

  Anyone know what it means to their cable licence? And if this has to do with the fact that they were required to broadcast about 20% in English because Montreal isn’t unilingual

• Kate 11:35 on 2023-08-31 Permalink

  Steve Faguy has some details which suggest Videotron still has the licence for now.

• Blork 13:00 on 2023-08-31 Permalink

  Community television like that had a much more prominent role before the Internet (and by “prominent” I mean it was a tiny speck then, versus now when it’s a microscopic spec). I can’t say I’ve watched MAtv much either, but a few years ago the QWF (Quebec Writers Federation — anglo writers) did a series of sit-downs with local writers that was nice to see.

  But ultimately I think they have no viewers. One could argue that they still have a role to play in terms of local media, but that’s sort of moot if nobody watches. And why does nobody watch? Because most people would rather scroll through Tiktok and the platform formerly known as Twitter than sit down and passively watch a few local talking heads blah-blah-blah about something that’s covered well enough (in their opinion) on Facebook or YouTube.

  User-generated media like FB, Tiktok, YouTube, podcasts, etc. was supposed to save us from the tyranny of the networks, but they haven’t really; they’ve just become networks in their own fashion. While any knob can stick up a podcast or YouTube video of a sofa filled with ango writers discussing their work, nobody’s going to watch it. Same as nobody’s going to watch it on MAtv.

• Kate 13:17 on 2023-08-31 Permalink

  We’re always dealing with the problem of who does the primary reporting – and I say this as someone who’s had a secondary news blog for more than 20 years. Social media is fine as a place to boost news stories we find interesting or complain about news that upsets or disturbs us, but someone has to go out and collect that primary news or investigate those stories, then write them up or record them for broadcast.

  What most people don’t realize is that reporting is a slog. You have to go out and question people who might not want to talk to you, or dig into matters that someone would rather keep quiet. A reporter has to sit through tedious council sessions or press conferences waiting for that one nugget of information that’s the key angle that makes a news story.

  I don’t know how much primary reporting was done by people working for MAtv Montreal. The little I heard of it sounded like it was mostly talking heads, and that’s where regular media fall down now. Social media makes us all news commentators, we don’t need to watch other people doing endless analysis and giving their opinions – not unless it’s one of the rare people whose thoughts on the news are worth hearing.

  But we do need the primary news, now more than ever, given how much obfuscation is created by social media, and potentially also by artificial intelligence.

  If we don’t have reliable primary news, everything we hear about is nothing but rumour.

• Blork 10:45 on 2023-09-01 Permalink

  I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure MAtv wasn’t any kind of primary news source. Anytime I’d pass by it was just local people sitting on sofas talking to mild-mannered and very earnest hosts about very non-offensive things.

• CE 11:12 on 2023-09-01 Permalink

  Im always surprised when I see that cable TV still exists. For anyone around my age and under, having cable is akin to having a fax machine and has been that way for a long time. I read recently that the average age of viewers of even youth-oriented cable networks is somewhere in the 50s.