Yes. Go back to the old ways. Burn witches at the stake. Use leeches to cure everything. Etc.

Gotta love how people romanticize the past like it was so perfect.

Newsflash: IT WASN'T.

Radiowiz wrote:

NEWSFLASH: It was, depending on where in the past one looks. To make silly comments about burning witches or what leeches were once used for is uncalled for.  

Okay. So, to what end? Discounting today's efficiencies because some time in the past was "better" is what is uncalled for. What's the linear argument there, really? "Today sucks because we used to do it differently using technology and protocols that weren't invented yet"? At what point of history do we wish to flash freeze in time and permanently live in that era exactly in the language, medicine, technology, life expectancy rates, etc.,? I, for one, am ONLY alive (literally) today because of the wondrous advances we have achieved. In no way, shape or form would I wish to dial back time and live then.

So, again, what is the intelligent linear logic of, in this instance, romanticizing the past? That, Sir, to me, is uncalled for.
 

Last edited by cGrant (August 29, 2018 11:43 pm)

Radiowiz wrote:

Just because something is available to do, doesn't always mean it should be done. 
Television is a business, yes, (so is radio) but sometimes there is a working formula that should not be messed with just because something else can be done. 
If it's not a working formula then the owner is in the wrong business.  

Local content matters. Period. Pretending to be somewhere you're not is not acceptable. It never was. 
I mean, if it's a national or international issue, then yes, it can be shared content from market to market, but local content needs a local body present. No excuses. 

Fine. Don't mess with formula. Never. And WHERE would that have gotten us? Extrapolate that across everything. How about medicine? If we never experimented, what would medicine be like today? (point for leeches). If we did't experiment with justice, what would our legal system be like today? (point for burning witches)

What about radio? No experimenting? Well, c'mon. Technology is not evil. Neither is experimenting nor advancing.

And how does the owner of a radio/tv operation get that "winning formula" WITHOUT experimenting? Was this board's sainted Chum the "winning formula" from day 1? Did they experiment and tinker? I'm thinking "yes".

We wouldn't have THIS board if someone(s) didn't experiment.

I agree, local content does matter, yes. What DOESN'T matter is radio to a growing amount of people. That does sadden me as I am passionate about the medium.  That said, people are getting their local content in other ways; myself included. We must recognize that owners/programmers also realize that and, barring an actual requirement from regulators, they are being stingy with local content. Sadly, that, in my opinion, IS understandable.
 

Radiowiz wrote:

All you are doing is supporting the idea that a television business should just keep doing things cheaper and cheaper and cheaper to the point where people who WOULD tune in are now also gone.

When Global gets something as simple as a street name wrong I GET PISSED OFF and I am gone...the wrong person to scare away. (more than you know)
Just keep live and local bodies in each building and it's all good or just kindly sell the business to someone who is more willing to do that, thank you. 

A silly speech about the history of medicine or whatever does not cut it either so quit wasting your time.  

No, Sir, a "silly speech" is someone getting "pissed off" when "Global gets something as simple as a street name wrong" and "I am gone...the wrong person to scare away. (more than you know)". THAT is absurd. Absolutely.

And, YES, I do support television doing things cheaper. (I thought that was beyond obvious.) Other than yourself and some posters here, do you HONESTLY think that the AVERAGE viewer gives a damn what the technology and process is behind-the-scenes? I mean, really! You are microanalyzing these things to a very elitist molecule. People come home, grab a beer, sit down on their couch, turn the TV on and get washed-over with the content. What they DON'T do is say, "OMFG they pronounced a street wrong! Christ almighty! I'm changing the channel and never going back." Then, upon turning to another channel, "OMFG look at that! That guy is in Vancouver and it's the Toronto news! I'm changing the channel and never going back." That just doesn't happen with rational, non-psychiatric viewers.

I have absolutely zero issue with Global's MMC. None. The good folks in the other markets ARE getting their local news, albeit from a centralized (Toronto) location.

Amalgamation and using efficiencies is not evil. Especially when the end product is equal to the previous format. Yes, people lose their jobs. And so did the milk delivery guy, but do we go ape-shyte over that? I bet he had a family to feed as well.  
 

Radiowiz wrote:

The buck stops here. I don't really care about why we don't have a milkman today or why we don't have buggy whips. In MY lifetime I expect live and local news done properly with local bodies in each market.
MMC is garbage. I expect local bodies to be restored. If Global can not do that then they should sell the business to someone who can. 
The centralized Toronto location is not welcome. Enough already. 
Your speech is useless and pointless.  
But thanks for encouraging the idea that if  one ever wants to do anything incredibly stupid in another market outside of Toronto they should do it around 10:30 at night to help make Global look stupid. 
It'll be an amazing news story that (hopefully) the competing networks will be all over while Global is just rambling on about stuff that happened earlier in the day.
News does not take the night off...and the news business certainly should not be taking advice from anyone anti CBC anyway.

MY "speech is useless and pointless"?? Irony, indeed Sir. YOU "expect live and local news done properly with local bodies in each market"?? WHY?!?! If the LOCAL news is STILL getting to the viewer, do you think the AVERAGE viewer cares where it comes from? I cannot and will not accept your logic that the majority give a damn.

And, if it can be done for cheaper with mostly equal results, the average viewer simply doesn't care. The fact that you do is curious. Do you have a personal stake in this? I honestly believe you are being argumentative for argument's sake. Re-read this thread and note it is YOU, Sir that is throwing the dismissive jabs at my views. I am volleying them back at you, but ONLY because YOU are constantly drawing first-blood.

And, I am not allowed an opinion because I'm anti-CBC? Yeah, THERE'S another point in your trolling. It doesn't matter what my views are on other subjects whatsoever. The CBC, by the damn way, ALSO USES MMC. And, they have been for a much longer time that Global. They don't broadcast it live, either. But, somehow, because it's the sainted CBC, that just doesn't matter.

I'm finding your incessant dismissive jabs and questionable troll-like, non-linear, incongruous arguments quite tedious. I'll let you have the last word here as I, in my view, presented my reasoning on this topic sufficiently that it's redundant and tedious to reiterate the same point over and over. Now, go ahead, rebut with more of your "same".
 

ig wrote:

with live cameras and everything else on the internet that's available, if you can't create a minor market newscast from anywhere in the world, there's a problem and it's not with the technology.  

Sometimes it's not the world that's crazy, it's some of the people in it. 
Local news still needs someone there regardless of how technology changes. 
I like the way CityNews Toronto covered the shooting at Yorkdale.
I'm not in any way supporting the shooter.
I am however supporting the idea that technology, when not used correctly does more harm than good.

I guess someone has to copy that Yorkdale shooting in a smaller market later in the evening just to make the point stronger. Stop cutting out the local news bodies. 


 

ckvr barrie was bought out by chum/city sometime in the mid 90s and became the new VR.  immediately gone were the 3 person reporting teams... reporter, cameraman, producer.  all were replaced by a "video journalist" with a handheld cam on a mini tripod as a single reporter.  That was pretty good streamlining since it kept local news flowing at 1/3 the cost.  At least there were still people going out to cover local stories on a daily basis.

oh, @Aytononline, ask people in the Soo how they felt about 5 minutes of local cutaway during a 60 minute cast produced in sudbury....

 

splunge wrote:

That was pretty good streamlining since it kept local news flowing at 1/3 the cost.  At least there were still people going out to cover local stories on a daily basis. 

Excellent! Although your comment applies to CKVR, this is the EXACT same protocol that Global's MMC uses. I simply do not understand certain people's resistance to this concept. Local news IS still getting out to the local communities. There ARE still reporters in the local markets shooting the news. The ONLY flipping difference is the anchor is in one central location. What's hard to understand here?
 

Hansa wrote:

I guess there isn't any reason why Bell or Rogers couldn't shut down the studios for all of their radio stations across the country and just have an announcer sit in a booth in Toronto and do local inserts for the entire country. They could even have "local" talk radio done out of Toronto. All an announcer would have to do is say "hello, Edmonton" or "hello, Victoria", and have a few browser windows open to newspapers from different cities and make a few localised comments about the days news depending on which station their on. It would be *so* much more  efficient than having shows that are actually produced and hosted locally and the listener at home would hardly know the difference. 

You don't think some radio ALREADY does do this? Think of the MyFM and UCB models in Ontario to name just two.

Would the listener know the difference? Sure, some would. But, the bigger question is, would they care? Oh, a handful of people will tune away, yes. Others will keep listening. While others yet will continue to disregard radio as something meaningful to them and program their smartphone's music playlist.

We cannot keep thinking about the medium, as much as we are passionate about it, in the same way as we have. This thread's topic of television and MMC confirms that most will continue to watch broadcast television news. And on the radio side, the networked clusters and regional nets are not seeing a plummet in their numbers.
 

LocalNewsGuy wrote:

As someone who lives in an area served by a Global station using the MMC concept, let me weigh in.

I live in Durham Region, an area with a population of over 600,000 people. Our last daily newspaper shut up shop here in 1995 and our local radio outlet runs a 2-3 person newsroom that relies largely on news releases from the local cops for most of their local content. Our various Metroland newspapers are given away free, and consist of 2/3 advertising and about 1/3 local news, mostly grip and grins and local cop shop news releases. This leaves us with Global News, produced out of Toronto with a team of three local reporters, who act as their own videographers.

I'd invite any of you who support the MMC concept to watch this newscast. The reporters, while all very eager, are still young and inexperienced. And it shows. The local "news" tends to be coverage of an occasional news conference. b-roll of various local accidents and honestly, what seems to be a never-ending parade of aggrieved locals who complain about a wide range of things, whether it's a lack of school bus crossings in their neighbourhood, garbage not being picked up, or in the most recent example, a pencil case being sold by a local Walmart. There's no coverage of any of our various local councils, unless it's scalped from other sources, no examination of our booming housing markets and the potential displacement of thousands of acres of productive farmland and no questions being asked about upcoming municipal elections and how candidates propose to address the myriad of local challenges we face in this region.

We're not a "small market" by any means. But we live in an area that, because of our proximity to the GTA, can be classified as a "news desert." Frankly, people in nearby Northumberland County, which has two local radio stations, a weekly paper and until last year, their own daily paper, have far more access to local news about what's going on in their communities than we do here in Durham.

So my questions to Troy Reeb and others are these. Would you find this acceptable in your community? What will happen to the new Global stations in Kingston and Peterborough? Will they soon have to rely on news produced out of Toronto and courtesy of a handful of overstressed producers and video jockeys who seem to mostly gather their local news from Facebook and Twitter tidbits?

Think about it.

Well said. You can't do good journalism on the cheap. Impossible.
 

Last edited by Dale Patterson (September 2, 2018 4:02 pm)

Dale Patterson wrote:

      You can't do good journalism on the cheap. Impossible.   

Does anyone else see a connection between the adjacent "should we open up ownership" thread and this one?    IMHO Cdn networks (particularly TV) substantially sold out decades ago (the topic has come up in this forum under all five moderators).          

Could the future (particularly radio) be "local" (regardless of individual, public or corporate ownership)?