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July 18, 2019 9:12 pm  #1


CFRB's Honourable Mention - On 680 & 640

There used to be an unwritten law in broadcasting: never, ever mention your competition.
 
But it appears that’s gone forever after what I heard on air Thursday. I don’t want this to turn into a political discussion about Doug Ford, but in the morning he appeared on the Jerry Agar show to decry the incident at CAMH, where a killer disappeared and has now left the country.
 
It was the only statement the Premier made on the situation and it was a Newstalk 1010 exclusive that made headlines. For a while, some of his comments were simply quoted on other radio stations, since his involvement made the story even bigger.
 
And then I turned on 680 News and not only listened as they credited CFRB but actually heard an excerpt of the now infamous clip. I also heard 640 repeatedly refer to “Ford’s comments on CFRB.”
 
I guess it’s OK these days to essentially steal – er, borrow – anything, even an exclusive from your direct competitor, as long as you give credit. But my first and second news directors would have a hemorrhage if they’d heard that today.
 
Not sure when that unwritten rule changed, but it seems to have gone completely out the window. 

 

July 18, 2019 9:17 pm  #2


Re: CFRB's Honourable Mention - On 680 & 640

Yeah, the Corpse was doing the same thing. Perhaps they were trying to associate RB with being sympathetic to idiot DoFo statements.

Last edited by Chrisphen (July 18, 2019 9:19 pm)

 

July 18, 2019 9:18 pm  #3


Re: CFRB's Honourable Mention - On 680 & 640

So when did one radio station's exclusive become everyone else's property?

     Thread Starter
 

July 18, 2019 9:20 pm  #4


Re: CFRB's Honourable Mention - On 680 & 640

RadioActive wrote:

So when did one radio station's exclusive become everyone else's property?

 
When it went out over the publicly owned airwaves.

 

July 18, 2019 9:41 pm  #5


Re: CFRB's Honourable Mention - On 680 & 640

Chrisphen wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

So when did one radio station's exclusive become everyone else's property?

When it went out over the publicly owned airwaves.

Well, if you use that logic, then it's impossible to have an exclusive anymore for long. This has been going on for years in TV, ever since the cable news networks appeared. Fox, CNN, MSNBC and the big American affiliates all regularly take each other's stuff when one of them has a big "get."

I suppose the difference is that on TV, you can stick graphics all over the footage so everyone is sure where it came from. 

I remember a long time ago when the Beatles first came to America, there was a huge competition by Top 40 stations to be the first to play their latest song. Many, including WABC, used to put a deliberate tracer over parts of it as the tune played on air, usually someone intoning in a loud whisper, "WABC exclusive!" several times, so none of the other rock outlets in town could record it and rush it to air. 

'RB can't do that with the Ford clip, so I suppose getting an on air credit is as much as they could hope for.   

     Thread Starter
 

July 18, 2019 11:38 pm  #6


Re: CFRB's Honourable Mention - On 680 & 640

RadioActive wrote:

Chrisphen wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

So when did one radio station's exclusive become everyone else's property?

When it went out over the publicly owned airwaves.

Well, if you use that logic, then it's impossible to have an exclusive anymore for long. This has been going on for years in TV, ever since the cable news networks appeared. Fox, CNN, MSNBC and the big American affiliates all regularly take each other's stuff when one of them has a big "get."

I suppose the difference is that on TV, you can stick graphics all over the footage so everyone is sure where it came from. 

I remember a long time ago when the Beatles first came to America, there was a huge competition by Top 40 stations to be the first to play their latest song. Many, including WABC, used to put a deliberate tracer over parts of it as the tune played on air, usually someone intoning in a loud whisper, "WABC exclusive!" several times, so none of the other rock outlets in town could record it and rush it to air. 

'RB can't do that with the Ford clip, so I suppose getting an on air credit is as much as they could hope for.   

An exclusive is only an exclusive until your competitor's next newscast.  It's always been that way.  
 

 

July 19, 2019 12:27 am  #7


Re: CFRB's Honourable Mention - On 680 & 640

Prod Guy wrote:

An exclusive is only an exclusive until your competitor's next newscast.  It's always been that way. 

Well, of course that's always been true. But the point I'm making is that it's one thing to do your own version of a headline making story. It's quite another to actually take the audio from a competitor and play it on your airwaves.

That said, I'm sure the folks at 1010 are happy with all the free publicity this has gotten them.

     Thread Starter
 

July 19, 2019 12:47 am  #8


Re: CFRB's Honourable Mention - On 680 & 640

RadioActive wrote:

Prod Guy wrote:

An exclusive is only an exclusive until your competitor's next newscast.  It's always been that way. 

Well, of course that's always been true. But the point I'm making is that it's one thing to do your own version of a headline making story. It's quite another to actually take the audio from a competitor and play it on your airwaves.

That said, I'm sure the folks at 1010 are happy with all the free publicity this has gotten them.

Welcome to a world where radio just keeps doing things cheaper and cheaper and cheaper.

It is cheaper to pay CFRB ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for airing their content, provided that NT 1010 gets full mention on the competing station. 
Otherwise, "stealing" is just wrong. (ie an edit job, deleting all refrence to NT 1010,
with no payment to Bell media/NT 1010)

BTW, Television has done this for years!! Sports  coverage would have a "courtesy of (competing station's name)" message posted on the screen when the competition paid for the rights to a specific sport. 

 


RadioWiz & RadioQuiz are NOT the same person. 
RadioWiz & THE Wiz are NOT the same person.

 
 

July 19, 2019 6:03 am  #9


Re: CFRB's Honourable Mention - On 680 & 640

A killer snuck out of the country.     Let's focus on keeping him out.     Shouldn't that be the story?

 

July 19, 2019 12:03 pm  #10


Re: CFRB's Honourable Mention - On 680 & 640

Of course the danger of one media outlet using another media outlet's info is you are trusting the other outlet to get it right.

 

July 19, 2019 1:11 pm  #11


Re: CFRB's Honourable Mention - On 680 & 640

Radiowiz wrote:

Television has done this for years!! Sports  coverage would have a "courtesy of (competing station's name)" message posted on the screen when the competition paid for the rights to a specific sport.

This goes back to the early years of TV, although I'm not quite sure how it started. The "courtesy" key seems to almost give carte blanche to show anything, although if memory serves, there used to be some restrictions of at least having the event over with before showing highlights somewhere else. That's certainly not the case any more. 

There is one big exception to this rule and it's so draconian, it borders on the absurd. The Olympics gets a special status and mandates that only the network that owns the rights (and ponies up millions for them) can show any highlights on their newscasts. Everyone else is restricted to two minutes or less in total - and they can't air any video until 24 hours later, by which time it's no longer really news and something else they can't show for a full day has replaced it as the headline. Still photos are OK, but they really don't do the job.  

Some may not know how serious the Olympic Committee is about this. I remember one year when they actually hired hundreds of people to go through every single news website in the world hunting for video. My station accidentally ran about 10 seconds of video from a previous day's event on its site and was immediately contacted minutes later and threatened with a lawsuit. Of course, we took it down right away and it was a mistake, not deliberate. But with the amount of material an average newsroom gets during a single day, it was almost inevitable something would slip by. 

About the only good thing I can say about these idiotic restrictions is they force stations to be creative in covering the Games. I recall one time when City TV's Jim McKenny used a table hockey game to illustrate the action in one of the matches involving Canada. it looked ridiculous, but it was certainly hilarious!

I will always believe these no video rules are way too onerous, but they remain in place and have for years.

This turned into something way off topic, so we now return you to your regularly scheduled thread, already in progress. 

     Thread Starter
 

July 19, 2019 2:12 pm  #12


Re: CFRB's Honourable Mention - On 680 & 640

Broodcaster wrote:

Of course the danger of one media outlet using another media outlet's info is you are trusting the other outlet to get it right.

Not applicable in this instance, as no 'info' was disseminated. Valid point, though, considering CFRB's recent news fuckups.

 

July 19, 2019 3:49 pm  #13


Re: CFRB's Honourable Mention - On 680 & 640

This is way off topic but it wasn't worth a separate thread. I have to admit I laughed out loud when I heard Evan Solomon say on Friday he was filling in for Bill Carroll, who is normally filling in for Evan Solomon on Fridays.

I'm not sure my head can even absorb that...

Speaking of hilarious, I also laughed out loud when I saw this on a friend's Facebook page:
 

     Thread Starter