Media Beat: June 08, 2020
Mariah Carey joins Schitt’s Creek crew during YouTube grad event
By David Farrell
Mariah Carey joins Schitt’s Creek crew during YouTube grad event
Mimi made a special cameo during the Schitt’s Creek cast’s appearance on YouTube’s Dear Class of 2020 virtual commencement ceremony on Sunday (June 7), singing a few lines from the group’s rendition of her co-write Hope, as well as offering the same to the nation’s high school grads. The Zoom segment was produced in advance by the show's MD Aaron Jensen, a Canadian with an international rep as an arranger, composer and a capella singer.
Jian Ghomeshi’s back with a new podcast series
Ghomeshi is back once again, attempting to bring his talents to Canada’s Persian community and the global Iranian diaspora. And this time, he has the benefit of unnamed investors and the support of a prominent member of the Iranian-Canadian community.
Roqe, a new Ghomeshi-hosted podcast focusing on “the in-depth life stories, opinions, and identities of personalities in the Iranian diaspora,” quietly launched in mid-April, and has published 14 episodes ranging from 36 to 75 minutes in length. –– Jonathan Goldsbie, Canadaland
Rex Murphy’s words come back to bite him
“Canada is not a racist country, despite what the Liberals say,” trumpeted the headline of Monday’s missive from Rex Murphy. The column drew widespread condemnation, including from other journalists at The National Post, like this rebuttal from Vanmala Subramaniam.
Jonathan Goldsbie has juxtaposed Murphy's column with some of the pundit's more memorable racist remarks.
Broadcast Standard’s Council rules against opinionated CFRB newscaster
The CBSC ruling makes clear that “the role of news coverage serves an important public interest purpose. It is essential in a democratic system and it is for this reason that a traditional newscast needs to be objective and factual and does not lend itself to the inclusion of opinion or commentary.”
VMedia launches Canada's first live and on-demand streaming TV platform
RiverTV charges $16.99/month for more than 30 channels, largely drawn from Corus, Blue Ant Media and Wildbrain, formerly known as DHX. The ISP serves about 45K households in local markets across the country. –– The Canadian Press
Stingray reports $8.5M loss as covid hits radio revenues
Stingray Group Inc. swung to an $8.5-million loss in Q4 of its fiscal year as radio revenues declined due to the initial impact of the pandemic.
For the full-year, Stingray earned nearly $14M or 18 cents per share on $306.7M of revenues, up from a loss of almost $12M or 19 cents per share on $212.7M of revenues. –– CP
Ad spend tracker Standard Media Index set to launch in Canada
SMI aggregates all media spend from the billing systems of agency partners, and tracks spending across television, digital, out-of-home, print, and radio. –– Variety
How BBC’s Global News has adapted to remote reporting
BBC Global News, the BBC’s commercially funded international news platform, is not alone in experiencing record global traffic online and on TV during March. But the scale of its operation — 4,000 global journalists with 60 international bureaux in 77 cities, 24-hour news channels and various online platforms — has meant more considerable shifts towards remote working while increasing the content output.
In March it had 1.5 billion monthly page views, 61 million monthly video views and 179 million monthly unique browsers, according to web analytics firm AT Internet, via BBC Global News. Successive months have been lower as fatigue sets in but still above the previous norms.
Most publishers have been touting giant pageviews, mostly vanity metrics as the traffic is often poorly monetized, but the BBC regularly scores high on the scale of trusted news sources even across political party lines. Here’s what the global news entity has learned from the last few months of remote working. – Lucinda Southern, Digiday
How Bill Gates became the voodoo doll of Covid conspiracies
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has committed $300M to combat Covid-19, has remained sanguine about the barrage of false claims.
In a statement to the BBC, it said: "We're concerned about the conspiracy theories being spread online and the damage they could cause to public health."
The BBC's anti-disinformation team has been researching some of the more outlandish ones… Jane Wakefield, BBC News
Randy Rainbow takes on Bunker Boy
Set to The Jitterbug, a song cut from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, The Bunker Boy is American satirist Randy Rainbow’s latest parody of POTUS who took to the presidential bunker for a short period when civil rights protesters showed up at the White House fence last Friday night.
