oh, i'll be watching .. i always watch the election returns.

& the lions share of viewing will be on CBC.

Tomas Barlow wrote:

I find CBC Toronto to be far below the quality of the national news. I’ll be watching CTV.

Same here.  When it comes to Ontario and Municipal elections,  the CTV teams are my primary choice;  while going to City as my alternate when a guest panelist isn't contributing much.
 

Doug wins easily. I thought the Liberals would do somewhat better. 

I bounced around from CTV, CBC. GLOBAL, CITY and CHCH. CHCH had an interesting discussion about how Union support has been divided. Public sector still with the NDP. Private sector with the Conservatives. I ended up sticking with CTV.

CTV overall to me had the best coverage by a good margin.  They had over 20 reporters in key ridings across the province with live reports, that's impressive. The biggest disappointment was City tv, and Global.  Global's election set was ugly.  Didn't watch CBC's coverage much, but they had a great looking election set. 

CHCH did a good job in their new facilities, overall smooth what I saw and lots of reporters out in the field in the Hamilton area.  TVO's coverage with Steve Paikin was very solid as well with good panelists.

Amazing that CTV declared the PC's winning the election ten minutes into the broadcast.  They projected a majority government eight minutes after that. They declared the NDP as the official opposition at 9:22pm.

Four years ago I worked for Elections Ontario as a tabulator.  I recommend to any retired person to work in an election.  A real eye opener and mostly in a good way.  The system we have handling elections works very well. 

Steven del duca made an excellent and touching concession speech.  Andrea Horwath's speech was poor and I didn't hear her congratulate the opponents.  Doug Ford has never been a strong speaker, but last night his speech was positive, well written and delivered effectively.  

mace wrote:

I bounced around from CTV, CBC. GLOBAL, CITY and CHCH. CHCH had an interesting discussion about how Union support has been divided. Public sector still with the NDP. Private sector with the Conservatives. I ended up sticking with CTV.

I watched both CTV News Channel and CBC News Network from the west coast.

CTV definitely had the better coverage. CBC’s coverage, at least when I was watching, seemed more focused on Toronto than CTV which had info from around Ontario. Though of course the election is largely decided in the GTA.

I noticed on Facebook that CTV London was doing something - there was a video of their rehearsal, and it looks like Jim Crichton was even part of it. Did they do an actual special or was this just something at 11?

Only 19 minutes in and the CBC called it for the Conservatives. Is that a record?

I also wondered about the 7 PM start time. (On 640, it was at 6:30!) 

From doing it for many years, I can tell you that the 6 PM newscast on Election Day is essentially a rehearsal for the big coverage to come. It lets a station test that their remotes work, catch problems and essentially stop glitches before they appear on the special that will generally have a bigger audience. 

But it also means once you get by the single sentence blah-blah-blah about how the candidate is hopeful and they worked hard to get out the vote, there isn't much else to see or say. How many times can you interview a campaign worker about how excited they are?

So you wind up with a bunch of filler. And only occasionally is it entertaining. Does anyone else remember City TV's Peter Silverman sampling the food at a venue and issuing a judgment on how it tastes? No one does that kind of ad lib TV anymore. I wish they did!

In fact, City TV's Party Politics, in which they threw a bash with an actual piano player and let people mingle around, while anchors covered the results, was sadly missed on Thursday night. (Someone once told me that that the "musician" was a guy named Rob Brown, who I think worked at the station and was able to play the piano. Every election, he sat there tickling the ivories the entire night, as the coverage unfolded around him. Truly bizarre, but 30 years later, still very memorable.)

Plus, every staff member got specially made free T-shirts or sweat shirts, and over the years, I've managed to assemble a collection of many of them. (I doubt Rogers would spring for anything so frivolous now.)










They often had clever titles, but this one is probably my favourite, the re-election campaign of Premier Mike Harris. 

Hamiltonboy wrote:

mace wrote:

I bounced around from CTV, CBC. GLOBAL, CITY and CHCH. CHCH had an interesting discussion about how Union support has been divided. Public sector still with the NDP. Private sector with the Conservatives. I ended up sticking with CTV.

TVO also had coverage. Did anybody watch?

I did not. It never occurred to  me that they would have election coverage.

RadioActive wrote:

mace wrote:

Hamiltonboy wrote:

TVO also had coverage. Did anybody watch?

I did not. It never occurred to  me that they would have election coverage.

Same with me. I never even thought about them for election coverage. Although I do enjoy Steve Paikin's work.

TVO has had Ontario election coverage for years.  Surprised people weren't aware of this.  I believe they cover federal elections too, but with a focus on Ontario. 

On today's french language noon tv newscast - Le Telejournal Midi - the coverage of the election began 18 minutes into the show and ended at 12:20. Some important meeting by some important people in Stockholm got precedence. CBLFT puports to serve francophones in Ontario.

I was working as a scrutineer at one of the polls. When I got out of there around 9:30 I tuned the radio to CBC to listen on the way home. By then the election had already been called for Ford.

After I got home, I watched it mostly on CBC but toggling back and forth between CBC and CTV London.

Can someone post the election coverage ratings? My guess CTV was first and CBC was last.