TomTV wrote:

Anyone notice that after canning Jen Valentyne saying that the live-eye was no longer a direction they were pursuing that BT is still doing live-eyes but just with existing staff? Nice cost-cutting there Rogers... next up it'll be the viewers doing the live-eyes themselves.

No, actually, that's not the case at all, and yes, Jen is suing rogers. 

I’ve been wondering about this for a while. In fact, if memory serves, I think I may have posted a thread on a previous incarnation of SOWNY with the subject line, “What in the world is going on at CityNews?”
 
I still don’t have an answer to that question. There no longer seems to be an anchor and I can’t help but wonder if that’s one of the reasons Gord Martineau suddenly retired when he did, seeing the writing on the wall  - or the contract.
 
I called it “the throw show” then and it’s just been getting worse over the last few months. On a typical program, Roger Petersen is live in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason, then throws to a story he didn’t even do. That’s followed by another toss to Cynthia Mulligan who not only throws to her own story but a completely unrelated yarn by Amanda Ferguson. And on it goes, with Avery Haines suddenly appearing at a Live Eye, handing it over to yet another reporter who seems to be totally disconnected to anything that’s going on at that location.
 
And it gets worse – they now insist on doing endless sidebars during their two hour 5-7 P.M. package. Nothing wrong with that, per se, if those follow-up stories come on right away. But instead they wind up showing them 20 minutes later, which means they now have to retell part of the original story that they just aired in order for it to make any sense at all. An incredibly expensive waste of air time. 
 
All these extra sidebars can easily make you wonder if they’re constantly airing about 6 or 7 stories over and over, what are you missing? It’s why I often end up switching to CFTO at 6.
 
And it doesn’t even stop on the weekends. I actually tuned into CityNews at 6 PM this past Sunday, and after the teasers, on came a reporter introducing herself, explaining why she was there and then throwing to her story. That was followed by a second and then a third on-air type. I made it a point to watch just to find out when we’d actually see the presumed anchor, Pam Seatle. She didn’t turn up on screen for the first time until six minutes into the show!
 
And it’s not just me. I have a friend who told me about a sibling that lives in the U.S. coming to visit him here in Toronto. She has no media background and knows nothing about how a TV newscast is put together.
 
He happened to be watching CityNews and she sat down to watch it with him. After about 15 minutes, she turned to him and asked, “Why are they doing that story again? We just saw that.” After another 5 minutes, she gave up watching altogether, saying she didn't understand the newscast and explaining she’d already seen what they had to offer. At that point, CityNews was less than half over.
 
Maybe City is trying to be innovative, something they really haven’t been since Rogers took over the place. But it’s not working. And maybe I’m just a traditionalist, but there’s a reason most newscasts have an anchor and a structure (for example, stories that are positioned logically, so you don’t go from a tale about a City Hall scandal to a fire in China and then back to local politics at Queen’s Park.) If that’s the case, the CityNews experiment appears to not only be a failure - it’s an outright freaking mess.

Leslieville Bill wrote:

I can see it now.  Instead of the Next Food Network Star or America's Next Top Model, it will be be the Next CityNews Reporter.  Each week a group of contestants vie for a spot as a reporter on a local new cast.  Heck, the winner would gladly do the job for free!  Now isn't that is welcoming to the News Division bottom line!  I'm joking but it will likely happen some day.

Many people used to joke about movies like the Truman Show or The Running Man... seemed absurd at the time that any rational human being would allow themselves to be filmed non-stop for days/months/years and then we get Big Brother and various other "reality shows".

As every person on this planet gradually becomes armed with a hi-def video camera on their smartphone, with the ability to stream live to Facebook or Instagram or whatever, it wouldn't be inconceivable that a future news station would literally be just a Facebook page with a constant live-feed from one random person at a breaking news scene tossing to another person somewhere else in the world at some other random event, who tosses to another person elsewhere, and so on (the current CityNews format). 

Just look for newscasts to be "Uber-ized" down the road where anyone can sign up to be a reporter on an ad-hoc basis and get paid for it when they get their story streamed.  

Last edited by TomTV (May 26, 2016 11:24 pm)

Anna Vlachos used to be their 11pm reporter. I believe she's gone on mat leave since I've not seen her for a while.  Could just be that they haven't gotten around to finding a replacement for her (and yeah I noticed the exact same thing that they've stopped reporting on actual evening news and are just recapping the 6pm stuff - annoying!)