List Time - Arts, Culture and Entertainment

Here is a list of what I thought were major achievements in arts, culture and entertainment this year.

1. The Winnipeg Art Gallery announced a major expansion of their gallery. Not only is the art gallery an architectural treasure but it is the foremost exhibitors of Inuit art. It has been a good year for the gallery with an amazing painting donated, some great exhibits and now the expansion.

2. Le Cercle Molière’s new théâtre opened in October. Canada's oldest theatre on Provencher Boulevard gets the street presence that it richly deserves and the venue to continues presenting French plays and culture.

3. Plug-In Art Gallery and the University of Winnipeg get together for a major presence of a well know gallery onto Portage Avenue and and a continued expansion of the university eastward to downtown.

4. Astron 6, a moviemaking collective from Winnipeg markets itself in Toronto and lands a film deal for Father's Day, a horror film put together by famed studio Troma of Toxic Avenger fame. Look for these guys for more films over the years.

5. Manitoba Theatre Centre get a royal designation from Queen Elizabeth. The continued strong showing year after year for Canada's first regional theatre deserves a salute.

6. Manitoba Museum wins international award for Beneath the Seas and hosts a retrospective of Manitoba rock, country, folk and French language music in Alloway Hall.

7. The Great Canadian Talk Show is cancelled by Kick FM at the behest of Red River College. The timing after the civic election is suspect.

8. Oldies rock station is killed on CFRW and becomes 1290 Sports Radio, the second time in a number of years sports radio tries to make a go of it in Winnipeg. Not to be outdone, Curve 94 FM kills their alt-pop music format and goes oldies as Fab 94.

9. Bachman and Turner go back on the road. Randy Bachman and Fred Turner might not be in overdrive but they are back to making rock music on tour across Canada.

10. ITV Brandon goes off the air. After the death of CKX in Brandon, it looked like the only alternative to the print media was ITV Brandon. Now it too has gone off the air.

The Angry and Fearful NDP

Increasingly, we are seeing more aggressive and nasty NDP attacks both on the official and unofficial levels. The TV and print ad campaigns have attacked Hugh McFadyen. This has been the official party response.

The unofficial response is to attack the media for not cheerleading their party. They lash out at the CBC, CJOB and Kick-FM. They fill the comments columns of Free Press and Sun with angry and fearful responses.

The bloggers of the NDP personalize and attack the Tory leader by calling him Hughie. They set up anonymous blogs to attack radio hosts and make accusations that could see them in court. I tried to pose a question on one of the blogs about whether the NDP planned on protesting any of the political shows on campus radio elsewhere across the country and within Winnipeg and was ignored. It would seem their concern was just for The Great Canadian Talk Show.

CBC reporters are referred to as:

individuals posing as reporters but are really just douche-bags

The NDP in Saskatchewan were thoroughly spanked for acting like spoiled brats for their fear and loathing campaign.

I believe some in the NDP are unaware of what a negative ad is. These ads fall into that category. I have explained before and will repeat again: contrast ads are negative ads.

There isn't anything wrong with negative ads but don't deny that you're doing them by referring to the truthiness of them. And don't pretend that that your unofficial campaign isn't making claims and namecalling in support of the NDP.

My guess is that this is likely to backfire if it continues to be over the top as it seems to have been over the last months.

No one is going to appreciate the claims that the NDP government will pay for a stadium no matter how far the cost will rise. Even a Blue Bomber fan is likely to have issues with that.

I suggest the official and unofficial campaigns cool it on the NDP front and maybe the party should come up with an exciting and perhaps, visionary policy platform.

Latest On The Great Canadian Talk Show

I spoke to Dean of Students Graham Thomson this afternoon for an explanation about the cancellation of The Great Canadian Talk Show.

In short, I said that the station seemed to have a good student representation on the show and I asked whether the show should have been given an opportunity to demonstrate that.

I put forward that there was a few shows on Kick FM that were run and operated by volunteers and asked if they were all in trouble.

Thomson indicated he was taking notes from all the people who called and he explained what the radio licence called for. I pressed him on that and said I wasn't sure that the show didn't meet a lot of the requirements of student participation and could have done more if the college had given the opportunity.

To close the conversation, Thomson indicated that he thought Marty Gold would have the opportunity to re-apply for a radio slot. In other words, it looks as if an appeal might be happening.

I have not heard confirmation of this but it could mean that the show with some tweaks could be given the opportunity for a come back. I await further information.

Crappy Coverage on Winnipeg Election

I won't go into content as that is a separate subject. I am more concerned about the TV news not showing up till one hour after the polls closed. In some cases, they really didn't show up at all.

Where were you CBC TV? was Dragon's Den more important than local election coverage?

Would you have skipped covering Toronto's election if Dragon's Den was on?

Well, the above would indicate that you did cover the election results through television last week in Toronto. Manitoba's civic election doesn't seem to have mattered as much.

The polls closed at 8. First to televise was Global at 9 pm. On at 10 was CTV. City TV doesn't do news anymore, do they? How do they even get a local licence?

CBC, the organization with the biggest news room for radio and TV's combined operations really only did a radio outing this time around. No slight on the radio people but TV visuals are hugely important in election coverage.

CBC Radio, CJOB and Kick FM all did radio coverage. Good work showing up to do civic duty, in my view.

The Free Press did some interesting work with a live feed. Good work on updates from the counts. Poor work done on what appeared on the counts in the margin.

Perhaps in a future civic election, someone from the paper will put up the unofficial count from their media group versus the count reported in to the election website.

Good to see some new people giving analysis. However, the half-hearted coverage and the late reporting showed a lack of preparation and care.

The overall effect was that anyone wanting to get election results and some excellent coverage was left bereft in terms of TV coverage, confused at print coverage with its live feed but out of whack elections numbers or radio coverage that lacked the visuals.

A provincial election is a year away. News media groups should be considering how they will cover this election in terms old technology and new technology. No doubt that cell phones and texting can update faster than anything we have seen. However, someone has to mind the fort and put up the data on screens whether it is the TV screen or computer screen.

Having someone who moderates the huge influx of info and offers context is an absolute must. Moreover, good analysis can help when data is slow in coming and background helps bring understanding of the candidates, the campaign and the issues.

While the non-mainstream media can cover certain aspects of an election, they generally don't have the resources to do what major media groups do when it comes to election night. This time around, the major media groups showed that even having better resources doesn't necessarily mean great coverage. I hope they put a better effort in these next months in advance of the provincial election.

In the mean time, alternative reporting can and should do its best to cover the provincial election.

I propose that we get numerous bloggers to shed some insight into the various ridings in the province and cover the election the best we can.

I am willing to work the Tuxedo riding as that is my home constituency. I will try to put some effort in a few adjacent ridings as well but hope that others will lay claim to some areas for themselves.

If someone could have a central webpage for the articles, all the better.

Let's hope for good election coverage in the weeks and months ahead.

My Politics

The issue of how Active Transportation and how it is affecting River Heights along Grosvenor Avenue and my post on it was mentioned on Kick FM's Great Canadian Talk Show on Wednesday.

Marty Gold said I was a "avowed lefty." I managed to catch that part of the show in between appointments at work. It made me laugh a bit and I dashed off a correction and "centrist" was added later on.

I guess to clear up any confusion, I should say that I am not a NDP or Progessive Conservative on the provincial front. In terms of the NDP, I find them to be very light on vision but prone to taking ideological stances on issues from hydro's transmission line to forcing Manitoba drivers to buy ethanol gas. In ten years, crime has got worse under their governance.

I don't support the Tories because I feel they still have too many problems with social conservatives who are reactionary. There is a strong hint of anti-urban forces within the party. In recent years the policy platform has been based on fear or crazy things like bringing back the Jets.

I have held both provincial and federal Liberal memberships in the past but they have both lapsed. I donate monthly to the federal Liberals because I still believe they are better than the high spending Tories. I am in complete opposition to Stephen Harper because of his style of politics, his ideology and for his lack of control over fiscal matters.

I'm a fiscal conservative and a social liberal in that I'm anti-deficit, a supporter of low taxes and pro-business. I also support allowing gay marriage and de-criminalizing a host of laws that only encourage organized crime to get involved as we have seen historically with Prohibition.

In terms of this election for city office, I want my new councillor to show some vision, address the issues with more than vague answers and to be transparent in terms of how they govern. I expect the same from my mayor.

I am comfortable with the term centrist. I believe it is where I stand politically and for the most part, I think people in the city pretty much straddle the center as well. We don't necessarily need a populist telling us what we want to hear. What we do need is someone with vision who can lead either to the left or right depending on the city's needs.



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