Friday, February 19, 2010

Soloman Bounced?

All five of us coast to coast to coast who tuned in to watch the Soloman Show today on CBC Newsworld were treated to an amusing reprieve when Evan got bounced for the CTV Olympic feed (complete with CTV commercials and news breaks). At first I did not know what was going on; had he been purposefully bounced, or accidently bounced? As my excitement grew, I logged in to Twitter to get the scoop from Kady O'Malley, which led to the following thread:

kady hey, anyone out there not in ottawa watching newsworld?
about 1 hours ago from TweetDeck

pragmatictory @kady What, are you referring to Soloman getting bounced for the CTV feed? Lang and O'Leary got to play today. Where's E-Solo?
28 minutes ago from web in reply to kady

kady @pragmatictory there seems to be a glitch somewhere up the line -- we're running ctv's feed on cbcnn.
26 minutes ago from TweetDeck in reply to pragmatictory

pragmatictory @kady So Soloman is actually doing a show, but the CBC is airing CTV programming instead? A pleasantly convenient glitch...
22 minutes ago from web in reply to kady

pragmatictory @kady Now I'm watching a blank screen. It is still an improvement on the Soloman Show. This has been an amusing episode...
18 minutes ago from web in reply to kady

kady @pragmatictory now we're airing a "technical difficulties are temporary" notice.
17 minutes ago from TweetDeck in reply to pragmatictory

pragmatictory @kady yes I have been watching this for ten minutes. It has given me a title idea for Evan's biography, "Dead Air: the Evan Soloman Story"
9 minutes ago from web in reply to kady

kady YAY! we're back on air!
8 minutes ago from TweetDeck

kady just in time for bloggerheads, with me and former colleague @aaronwherry at 6:40(ish)!
7 minutes ago from TweetDeck

This was the most that I have ever enjoyed the first hour of the Soloman Show. Eventually the CBC techies put him back on their just in time for "impartial journalist" Terry Milewski to publicly state his belief that the Prime Minister's intent in going to Haiti to announce new spending commitments was him "deliberately using the Armed Forces as props." Isn't there supposed to be an ethical divide between beat reporters and opinion editorialists? The guy breaking the story isn't supposed to be the same guy who draws partisan punch lines, but I suppose on the "Power Panel" Mishloofski really gets to stretch his wings.

Evan continued to do his show even though nobody was watching, which is I suppose par for his average day. But for that exciting 52 minutes that E-Solo was bounced from CBC Newsworld, I had the time of my life! This joy was soon to be crushed by "YAY! we're back on air!" but from this whole episode I did stumble upon the title for the Evan Soloman chapter of my book about CBC...

DEAD AIR: THE EVAN SOLOMAN STORY

3 comments:

  1. Even without the technical glitches no one watches the CBC. Their rating stink. Just another area to cut in March.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I guess the 'coalition of 'television medias are coming to each other's rescue.
    When one national media like CBC station attacks the PM the others like CTV etc follow. A backroom deal among themselves.

    So why not with the OLYMPICS. CBC lost to CTV to host(aire)th Olympics.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Quick math. 16 days @ about 13 hours/day = 208hrs of coverage.

    With $90,000,000 paid by CTV for the rights to the 2010 games that works out to $432,692/hr or about $7200/min.

    If CBCNW used the CTV feed for 10 minutes they owe CTV at least $72,000.

    ReplyDelete