Media Beat: April 04, 2018

By David Farrell

Quoted

"Bots manipulate credibility by influencing social signals like the number of aggregated likes or shares a post or user receives. People see a large number of retweets on a post and read it as a genuine signal of authentic traction in the marketplace of ideas. Do not fall for this. Trends are basically over—they’re too easy to manipulate. This goes for any information online that feeds off of public signals, including things like search autocomplete or content recommendation lists. Journalists can no longer rely on information sources reflecting some form of online “popularity.” – Nicholas Diakopoulos: How not to get punked by automation, Columbia Journalism Review

Catherine Tait becomes 1st woman to hold top role at Canada's public broadcaster

Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly introduced Tait at a media briefing in Ottawa on Tuesday, saying she is a "champion for Canadian content" who has "successfully navigated the sea of change from traditional media and communications through to today's digital world."

Tait, 60, co-founder and former board member of Hollywood Suite, has worked in the film and television business in Canada and the U.S. for more than 30 years, including at Telefilm Canada in the 1980s as manager of policy and planning. From 1989 to 1991, she was Canada's cultural attaché to France. – CBC News / Official appointment notice here

Torstar takes a swing at Postmedia dominance in western Canada

The news corp that owns the Toronto Star is more than doubling the pool of reporters at its western Canadian Metro free daily newspapers. The newspapers will be used to direct readers to city-specific versions of thestar.com that will feature regional news along with national and international news and columns. Consumers outside the target markets will see a national edition of thestar.com. – Canadian Press

Q107 oldies exodus

Last week, when I learned Al Joynes had been let go by Corus, I also heard Andy Frost was presented with a similar folder. Andy, however, was given something rather rare in radio. He would be allowed to say goodbye to the Q107 listenership on-air.

I decided not to write about Andy leaving the station, but earlier today, during episode 321 of Toronto Mike'd, Al Joynes let the cat out of the bag. Andy Frost is leaving Q107.

If you'd like to hear Andy and me discuss his lengthy career at Q107, I urge you to listen to episode 291. Andy first arrived at Q107 in the mid-80s and is now best known as the host of Psychedelic Sunday. – Toronto Mike’s Blog & Podcast

Trudeau simply waving goodbye to Canada’s independent news media

The rest of the world is pushing back against these anti-competitive, tax-avoiding, democracy-flouting, privacy invading corporations, but the Trudeau Liberals have yet to take any meaningful action. Instead of cracking down, Ottawa has partnered with Facebook to combat fake news, even though this platform is a primary vehicle for spreading fake news! – Friends of Canadian Broadcasting ED Daniel Bernhard, iPolitics

Spotify's end-of-trade market cap set at $26.5B

Spotify Technology S.A. listed on the New York Stock Exchange with a closing share price of US$149.01, giving the music-streaming service a market capitalization of US$26.5-billion – more than the revenue from all recorded music worldwide in 2016. – Josh O’Kane, Globe & Mail

Spotify is truly the first millennial IPO

Today marks Spotify’s entrance into life as a publicly-traded company, and how things go might very well dictate what the IPO market looks like going forward…blah blah blah.

Listen, this whole direct listing thing is definitely making Wall Street’s butthole clench, and the hot-takes will be flying in at least one direction when we figure out what this company is actually worth because this is a fun new exercise in bullshit. But until then let’s step back and admire this whole thing for the zeitgeist-ian work of art that it really is; Spotify is about to unleash the first authentically Millennial IPO. – Dealbreaker

Irving Azoff is now a Sirius show host

The American talent manager extraordinaire, music industry power and CEO of Azoff MSG Entertainment, has signed on as the host of a new show on SiriusXM’s Volume channel that promises to present “Irving being Irving – passionate, opinionated and questioning.”

“Unmanageable” will feature conversations with some of the most influential people in the music business with topics including ticket prices, technology, artists’ rights, concert safety and the current state of live and recorded music.

The show debuts tonight [April 4] at 7 pm EST on channel 106 with special guests Jon Bon Jovi, director Judd Apatow and CAA’s Head of Music Rob Light. – Pollstar

What we know about the conservative media giant Sinclair Broadcasting

It’s not as well-known a name in television as Fox News' News Corp. or CNN's Turner Broadcasting System, but its reach may rival that of a cable juggernaut.

The company is the largest owner of local television stations in the country, with 173 stations in 81 broadcast markets that stretch from coast to coast and just about everywhere in between, at a time when local news outpaces national news outlets both in overall viewership and trust. Some 85 percent of Americans trust local news outlets, higher than the 77 percent for family or friends, according to the Pew Research Center. – Washington Post

Amazon’s threat to Trump fortune

President Donald Trump’s net worth declined by more than US$600 million in the past year, according to the Forbes 400 List of the richest people in America. However surprising Trump’s loss may be, the reason for it is even more unexpected. Trump’s real estate holdings, specifically those in New York City, have taken a big hit in the past year, as retail values are struggling in response to Amazon’s e-commerce gains.

According to Forbes research, the president is worth $3.1 billion, down from $3.7 billion a year ago. The loss has him moving from 156th on the list down to 248th. In accounting for the president’s $600 million write-down, the magazine cited the presidential campaign, which eroded his personal wealth, an expensive lawsuit, a dip in New York City’s real estate market that has hit retail particularly hard. “Values of several Manhattan properties, particularly those on or near Fifth Avenue, have dropped, shaving nearly $400 million off his fortune,” the magazine says. – John Patrick Pullen, Fortune