1 of 1- cash
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If the Pope dies?
Will they have around the clock coverage. It's not a big deal like it used to be.
- Aytononline
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Will the All news cable channels give greater focus on this story. Yes and why not. Will the OTA channels break into programing for this. Likely not, but will be the lead story on any station that still has weekend news. Over on Newstalk radio, if there is any live programing, I can see them talking about it. Like OTA tv stations I don't see them having special programing.
I can see 100 Huntley Street covering this but again, no extra programs.
- NW
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cash wrote:
Will they have around the clock coverage. It's not a big deal like it used to be.
I bet all the Relevant Radio (such as 940-WIDG and 1640-WSJP) stations in the USA will be on it 24/7.
Locally, there's Rochester's 1460-WHIC (the "Station of the Annoyed" 
), the FM serving Buffalo on 101.7 and WGGO-Salamanca on 1590.
- turkeytop
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The "Entertainment" tabloid shows like ET, Inside Hollywood, and E Talk will milk the story for at least a month, just like they did when Princess Diane died. A celebrity death is entertainment
Last edited by turkeytop (February 22, 2025 9:39 pm)
After all is said and done, more is usually said than done.
- betaylored
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this clip may in no way reflect on what is happening behind the scenes but holy smoke
- newsguy1
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Now that the precedent has been set for popes to resign instead of die in office it is not such a big deal, but I guess still important if you are a Catholic, which I am not.
Also Francis had talked about resigning anyway.
But his death or resignation does pave the way for a choice of an even more progressive pontiff than Francis (who was not all that progressive really).
Could there be a black pope?
A Canadian pope?
- Easily Amused
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Now that the precedent has been set for popes to resign instead of die in office it is not such a big deal, but I guess still important if you are a Catholic, which I am not.
Also Francis had talked about resigning anyway.
But his death or resignation does pave the way for a choice of an even more progressive pontiff than Francis (who was not all that progressive really).
Could there be a black pope?
A Canadian pope?
I wouldn't put it past the idiot at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue decreeing himself. 🤨
- Radiowiz
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Now that the precedent has been set for popes to resign instead of die in office it is not such a big deal, but I guess still important if you are a Catholic, which I am not.
Also Francis had talked about resigning anyway.
But his death or resignation does pave the way for a choice of an even more progressive pontiff than Francis (who was not all that progressive really).
Could there be a black pope?
A Canadian pope?
A pope is decided by Catholic intentions, and nothing more. I'm not Catholic, so I can not accurately comment on what a good Pope should be. Here is something one might be able to go by as a guide:
- Hansa
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Now that the precedent has been set for popes to resign instead of die in office it is not such a big deal, but I guess still important if you are a Catholic, which I am not.
Also Francis had talked about resigning anyway.
But his death or resignation does pave the way for a choice of an even more progressive pontiff than Francis (who was not all that progressive really).
Could there be a black pope?
A Canadian pope?
Justin Trudeau is available in a few weeks.
- Leslieville Bill
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According to what I found, only around 5% of the province’s total population might be considered actively practicing Roman Catholics. Does that mean the story should be top of the news? I don't think so.
- Not an industry person. Just a guy with a love of Toronto radio.
- Hansa
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About 30% of the Canadian population is nominally Catholic so even if most are not regular churchgoers or even practicing, the pope is of interest. Popes are also transcendent figures who are influential beyond their own flock. There's also the pageantry around papal funerals and elections - not to mention the current film Conclave.
The Pope's death or resignation will be front page news and you are bound to see one hour retrospective documentaries on the news channels and probably also NBC, ABC, CBS and CBC News specials on the main networks as well as live coverage of the papal election.
- newsguy1
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I agree about Carol Pope.
So when a teenager makes a confession to a priest is it a "High School Confidential"?
- cash
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According to what I found, only around 5% of the province’s total population might be considered actively practicing Roman Catholics. Does that mean the story should be top of the news? I don't think so.
There's been way too much sexual abuse to take that institution seriously.
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Thread Starter- Dial Twister
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There's been way too much sexual abuse to take that institution seriously.
Ding...ding...ding. I think we have a winner here!
- newsguy1
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An old work chum of mine (an excellent editor and reporter) once told me he really wanted to be a priest. He was a devout Catholic.
But he said he just couldn't because he loved having sex with women too much.
Yep.
- turkeytop
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I was raised in the Catholic Church. But I lost my faith years ago.
In my opinion, Francis has been a good Pope for his Church.
Last edited by turkeytop (February 23, 2025 11:42 pm)
After all is said and done, more is usually said than done.
- torontostan
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The "Entertainment" tabloid shows like ET, Inside Hollywood, and E Talk will milk the story for at least a month, just like they did when Princess Diane died. A celebrity death is entertainment
Highly doubt that.
- RadioActive
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OK, I admit it - I accidentally killed the Pope. Just not this one. And therein hangs a bizarre tale.
It happened in 2005, when Pope John Paul II was gravely ill and was not expected to survive. The Pontiff clung to life for several days and his passing was widely expected. The only question was when it would happen.
At the time, our TV station's website offered what many still do - you could sign up for breaking news in your inbox so you'd have an instant headline the moment anything happened. Those email blasts took a few minutes to prepare, and we knew this was happening soon. So we prepared the copy in advance, waiting to launch this bulletin the minute we got confirmation over the wires.
As fate would have it, we had another breaking story going on, so we entered those details into our publishing engine and sent it out. Once it finished, I asked one of our writers to place the Pope's death story into the queue but not to hit "send" under any conditions. But it would save us time when it happened and it seemed imminent.
What we didn't know is that this publishing engine, a piece of garbage as it turned out, saw this new copy as part of the old blast we just sent out, even though it wasn't authorized to send anything. It simply ignored that and yep, even though it was supposed to be over, it picked up the copy and mailed it out to thousands of subscribers.
"Pope John Paul II has died, after a long illness," it read. "He was 84." Except, in the words of Monty Python, he wasn't dead yet!
Suddenly, other stations picked up the "confirmation," citing us as the source and reporting the death of JPII. As if a local Toronto station would have an exclusive like that when no one else was reporting it.
We were horrified and quickly realized what had taken place, sending out a correction immediately explaining what happened and taking the 'headline' out of the engine. We never did that again. The Pope did die a few hours later, and this time, when we sent out that headline, it was at least confirmed.
It was a total system glitch that we had no way of knowing would happen, but what an embarrassment! And that's how we accidentally and prematurely killed a Pope.
- newsguy1
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I knew a woman who was an editor with a news service and she admitted to doing the one thing you never do in the news biz.
Never write anything on a computer screen that you do not intend to send out.
This woman, let's call her Jane, was training a new editor on operating the main desk.
She wanted to be funny (god knows why) so she wrote a bulletin saying a plane had hit the CN Tower.
She told the trainee this is how you format a bulletin, then she gestured at the send button and said this is your send command, and somehow she didn't realize she actually pressed the button and sent the bulletin out.
She told me she tried desperately to kill the bulletin, but it still went out.
She was hauled up to a management disciplinary meeting and the only reason she was spared was because her union went to bat for her because she had a spotless record and had never made any significant mistakes, ever.
Interestingly Jane was one of the employees who hated the union and didn't want to be a member.
Without the union she would have been fired on the spot.
- Dale Patterson
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I knew a woman who was an editor with a news service and she admitted to doing the one thing you never do in the news biz.
Never write anything on a computer screen that you do not intend to send out.
This woman, let's call her Jane, was training a new editor on operating the main desk.
She wanted to be funny (god knows why) so she wrote a bulletin saying a plane had hit the CN Tower.
She told the trainee this is how you format a bulletin, then she gestured at the send button and said this is your send command, and somehow she didn't realize she actually pressed the button and sent the bulletin out.
She told me she tried desperately to kill the bulletin, but it still went out.
She was hauled up to a management disciplinary meeting and the only reason she was spared was because her union went to bat for her because she had a spotless record and had never made any significant mistakes, ever.
Interestingly Jane was one of the employees who hated the union and didn't want to be a member.
Without the union she would have been fired on the spot.
I remember that. But the story I heard was that she sent out a fake story that Kirby Puckett had been traded to the Blue Jays for the CN Tower.
"Life without echo is really no life at all." - Dan Ingram
- Hansa
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Re: If the Pope dies?
I knew a woman who was an editor with a news service and she admitted to doing the one thing you never do in the news biz.
Never write anything on a computer screen that you do not intend to send out.
This woman, let's call her Jane, was training a new editor on operating the main desk.
She wanted to be funny (god knows why) so she wrote a bulletin saying a plane had hit the CN Tower.
She told the trainee this is how you format a bulletin, then she gestured at the send button and said this is your send command, and somehow she didn't realize she actually pressed the button and sent the bulletin out.
She told me she tried desperately to kill the bulletin, but it still went out.
She was hauled up to a management disciplinary meeting and the only reason she was spared was because her union went to bat for her because she had a spotless record and had never made any significant mistakes, ever.
Interestingly Jane was one of the employees who hated the union and didn't want to be a member.
Without the union she would have been fired on the spot.
Did her view on the union change after that?
(In my experience it's often those who are the most anti-union who end up getting in trouble and turning to the union for help)