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Another Bizarre Classic Moment in Radio From GNR640
I was pleasantly surprised when I turned on GNR640 Sunday morning, to hear Ottawa bureau chief Mercedes Stephenson and political analyst David Akin on the air on a weekend, talking about the call of the federal election. They vamped for more than 45 minutes, discussing all the different angles and issues, waiting endlessly for the Prime Minister to emerge from Rideau Hall. As Akin noted, he’d never seen a meeting with a Governor General take this long.
It’s worth noting that rival CFRB continued with its trivia show rather than taking this breaking story, which surprised me. (But I guess when Bell fires all its news staff, there's no one there to do a special.)
When Trudeau finally emerged around 11:15 AM and started explaining why all this was necessary, 640 took the speech, which after all, is what the entire special coverage was all about. But then, right in the middle of a sentence, as he was about to explain his reasons for calling an election that many pundits agree technically isn’t needed, the P.M. was suddenly cut off, and a spot for UPS aired, followed by a PSA for Unicef.
After that, it was straight into “The Money Show” a sponsored paid ad time program that airs every week on the station. We never did hear the end of the speech or the Q&A with reporters that followed.
Well, so much for breaking news! I guess nothing is more important than getting that ad time in – even a federal election call that many Canadians feel is controversial in itself.
If all they were going to do was interrupt the very speech every news outlet had been waiting for over the past few days, why do the special at all? I suspect this entire thing may be due to automation kicking in and airing what had been previously scheduled, regardless of breaking news. If that is the case, somebody should have known that would happen and taken steps to stop it.
By the way, worth noting that neither CTV or Global in Toronto interrupted their TV programming to cover this story. Only the CBC had it on OTA television, taking the feed from their all-news channel. Global doesn’t have one, but I can’t quite figure out why CTV didn’t break in with coverage from its cable news outlet, instead of continuing on a rerun I suspect few people were watching. Interesting choices made all around. And to this observer, most of them were not very good.
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Re: Another Bizarre Classic Moment in Radio From GNR640
Post script: Incredibly, after cutting away for a paid program, 640 came back on with more coverage from Stephenson and Akin at noon. I'm going to assume they stayed on across the Corus network during the speech, but it didn't air in Toronto. What a weird way to cover what is certainly one of the major stories of the year.
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Thread Starter- RadioActive
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Re: Another Bizarre Classic Moment in Radio From GNR640
grilled.cheese wrote:
I'm not voting liberal but every other party is a dud. Maybe i'll vote for whoever is the tallest.
I try not to get political here, but I agree with at least one part of this statement. Boy, are these people ever underwhelming! The only thing they seem good at is not answering questions. As a news person, that's extremely frustrating.
Erin O'Toole was asked no less than five times if his Conservative candidates would be vaccinated. He never answered the question once, and didn't even come near an adequate response. He could have put this to rest right off the top. I suspect now it will follow him for the next 36 days. Really dumb.
Can we vote for "none of the above?"
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Thread Starter- paterson1
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Re: Another Bizarre Classic Moment in Radio From GNR640
You can vote none of the above, but you will need to write that down since it doesn't appear on the ballot.
Some people just cast a blank, with no candidate picked.
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I'll give 640 credit for at least trying to cover this big story, while 1010 demonstrated themselves useless as a news source, but why isn't Roy Green taking a crack at this announcement during his 2-5 Sunday show, instead of re-running a long, boring piece from more than a month ago about freaking student 'George' and his battle with his principal over his graduation speech?
You're not the only one who was thinking about this. I would have thought he would have devoted most of the show to it, but the topic still hasn't come up, even in the second hour. Very strange. Unless this is somehow a pre-taped show, which I'm starting to suspect it could be. How could he, of all people, ignore the election call? It has to be in the can, but if it is, it's incredibly bad timing.
By the way, speaking of election talk shows, I just heard the most useless promo on CBC Radio 1 I think they may have ever played. It was a promo for Sunday afternoon's Cross Country Check-Up, which, of course, WILL be focusing on the election.
The promo, which ran just before the 3 PM news, said something like this. "You don't have to wait to contact Cross Country Check Up. Call us now and tell us what you think of the election."
What's wrong with that?
Not once did they tell you where or how to contact them. No phone number, email address or website was given. Just "contact us." How to contact them, they didn't bother to say.
What an odd day this is turning into.
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Thread Starter- RadioActive
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Re: Another Bizarre Classic Moment in Radio From GNR640
By the way, they've already set the debate nights on TV. Sept. 8th, a Wednesday, will see the French debate, while the English one takes place the next day. The CBC will certainly carry the latter, although I'm not sure if non-French speakers would tune in for a translated event on the first evening. I'm betting Global and CTV will have the English version as well, especially since Rosemary Barton (CBC), Mercedes Stephenson (Global), and Evan Solomon (CTV) will all be among those asking questions.
OMNI will also offer the debates, translated into Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi and Tagalog, although exactly where those will be broadcast or how you'd access the different languages isn't immediately clear. APTN will provide it in six Indigenous tongues.
One other interesting note - there are several criteria for being allowed into the debates. All the usual suspects will be there, with the possible exception of one. "Maxime Bernier's People's Party of Canada will need to show it is receiving at least four per cent of public support in polling if it wants to be represented in the two September events."
I expect we'll be hearing some on the extreme right complaining about that rule.
Not sure who will carry it on radio, beyond the CBC.
Federal leaders' debates set for September 8, 9
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Thread Starter- RadioActive
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Re: Another Bizarre Classic Moment in Radio From GNR640
why isn't Roy Green taking a crack at this announcement during his 2-5 Sunday show?
And the answer on his Twitter account confirms what I suspected.
"I'm taking some vacation time. Will be back weekend of August 28/29."
What a terrible day to take time off and he won't be there for two weeks! Who thought that was a wise idea on the eve (and now the day) of an election call? (Not to mention the disaster that's taking place in Afghanistan, a pet cause of his.)
All in all, not a great day for Corus radio, despite trying to do the right thing.
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Thread Starter- RadioActive
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Re: Another Bizarre Classic Moment in Radio From GNR640
The very least they should have done is air a pre-show announcement off the top about this being "The Best Of Roy Green."
I'm sure you and I weren't the only ones who expected non-stop election commentary. Instead, there was nothing and unless you know the reason, it sounds like he's completely out of touch.
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Thread Starter- Tomas Barlow
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Re: Another Bizarre Classic Moment in Radio From GNR640
By the way, they've already set the debate nights on TV. Sept. 8th, a Wednesday, will see the French debate, while the English one takes place the next day. The CBC will certainly carry the latter, although I'm not sure if non-French speakers would tune in for a translated event on the first evening. I'm betting Global and CTV will have the English version as well, especially since Rosemary Barton (CBC), Mercedes Stephenson (Global), and Evan Solomon (CTV) will all be among those asking questions.
OMNI will also offer the debates, translated into Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi and Tagalog, although exactly where those will be broadcast or how you'd access the different languages isn't immediately clear. APTN will provide it in six Indigenous tongues.
One other interesting note - there are several criteria for being allowed into the debates. All the usual suspects will be there, with the possible exception of one. "Maxime Bernier's People's Party of Canada will need to show it is receiving at least four per cent of public support in polling if it wants to be represented in the two September events."
I expect we'll be hearing some on the extreme right complaining about that rule.
Not sure who will carry it on radio, beyond the CBC.
Federal leaders' debates set for September 8, 9
I'd be willing to bet the news networks will carry the french one using translators. It can be interesting as the leaders often have very different messages for french Quebecers than for the rest of us.
Last edited by Tomas Barlow (August 15, 2021 4:13 pm)
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Re: Another Bizarre Classic Moment in Radio From GNR640
I hope some of the radio stations do, although 90 minutes to two hours of simultaneous translation is really hard to listen to.
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Thread Starter- paterson1
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Re: Another Bizarre Classic Moment in Radio From GNR640
CBC News Network and CTV News Channel will carry the French debates. CPAC will have the debate as well with translation on the English channel.
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Re: Another Bizarre Classic Moment in Radio From GNR640
I'm guessing the French one won't appear on CTV or Global, interrupting American sitcom reruns.
But I wonder if CBLT will carry it OTA in the GTA.
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Thread Starter- paterson1
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Re: Another Bizarre Classic Moment in Radio From GNR640
I'm guessing the French one won't appear on CTV or Global, interrupting American sitcom reruns.
But I wonder if CBLT will carry it OTA in the GTA.
Pretty sure to watch the French debate live with English translation you need to tune into either CBC, CTV news channels, CPAC or on line.