Patrick Johnston: Canucks keeping a close eye on the bank account. And diminishing options for local listeners.
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Let's take care of some price from the historic wall center.
What sparked Patrick Johnston’s column about Sportsnet 650 and media consolidation?
We now welcome in calmness with the province, Vancouver sun post media, Mr. Patrick Johnston, his column from last week, late last week, sports net six fifties demise reminds us that lack of competition is bad for Canadians. He reached out to the competition Bureau after Rogers announces the closure of its sale of the rest of Maple leaf sports entertainment for $4 billion. And one day later, AXS radio stations in the hinterland, of course, not in Toronto. And honestly, though he was later to our industry, I'm not sure anybody cares about it more or the people within it than you, Peach. So good on you for writing the column. For those who missed it, what's the argument?
Well... Listen, there are business issues, and sure, you can talk all you want about radio and the change in technology and all that. The fundamental truth is beyond that. as our pal Justin McElroy pointed out, that when he and I started in this business, he and I basically tracked together 14 years ago. If you look at Vancouver, we had the separate Sun and Province newsrooms. We had 1040. We had News 1130. We didn't have Sportsnet 650, but we had Global and CKNW being separate. We had the Georgia Strait. We had the Vancouver Courier. I mean, I know the Georgia Strait still exists in some form, but we had all these things. We had Metro. We had 24 Hours. We had a whole slew Of information sources. And again, technology has changed and people get their stuff in different ways now versus then.
But the overall truth is that those were all people who were professionals, who had sort of a code of ethics, who had a process on what we need to know and what we deserve to know and what the politicians and the corporate leaders and all that don't want you to know. Right. And fundamentally, that made our society better and better educated and better informed. And now we're in a world where not only does Facebook not want to have a share news links at all, but Google's making it very hard to get news punching through, even though, you know, fairness, Google is paying into the digital innovation fund and is in theory paying for jobs. The overall issue is, is that Canadians need to know what's going on around them.
A lot of it has been sort of invisible and now it's stark and clear that there just is no competition. That when you have, as an example for sports fans, every single major team in Toronto owned by one company and they own one of the major sports networks who happen to own the rights to the majority of those games. That's not good. That is not good for Canadians. Canadians deserve better. We should have more variety. It's time for regulators to step in and say, no, this is too much. I'm sorry, guys. Good for you for being able to buy everything, but that's not how this works.
It's a little dystopic, isn't it?
It's terrible. It's literally shit you put in movies, right? Yeah. This is stuff you put in movies, right? This is Tomorrow Never Dies. If you want a cheesy example, right? This is James Bond. Tomorrow Never Dies? Oh, okay. That one. I was thinking the edge of tomorrow. The whole point is he's manufacturing his own news and all this stuff. It's a very cheesy, simplistic version. But that's where we're at. And you're dealing with corporate control. And listen, we all try our best to report him and all that kind of thing. But fundamentally, in the end, there are always pressures. And it makes it harder and harder. And so, listen, I work for a company that obviously owns a lot of newspapers, but there's still a lot of different newspapers in this country.
There aren't as many as there should be, right? And we are in a chase against each other for the same stories a lot of the time. And that's good. And that's good for readers. Now, listen, readers, as I said, have had their habits changed, whether it's conscious or not.
How has local sports and news coverage in Vancouver changed since the 2000s?
And that's a challenge that we face. But as a society, we need variety. We need people chasing stuff, not just as competition, but the fact is people are looking under every corner of the tent.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–0:05
2
What sparked Patrick Johnston’s column about Sportsnet 650 and media consolidation?
0:05–3:44
3
How has local sports and news coverage in Vancouver changed since the 2000s?
3:44–6:10
4
Why does Patrick argue that lack of media competition harms Canadian society?
6:10–16:25
5
What did the Competition Bureau tell Patrick about Rogers’ broadcast acquisitions?
16:25–21:31
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Sekeres & Price Show
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