Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - 12:36: Toronto Mike'd #266

Episode Date: September 14, 2017

Mike chats with Marc Weisblott of 12:36 about the current state of the media in Canada.

Welcome to episode 266 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a local independent brewery producing fresh craft beer. And propertyinthesix.com, Toronto real estate done right. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me from 1236 is Mark Weisblot. Welcome back, Mark. So here we

are for our end of summer episode. We're not quite into the fall quarter yet, but the idea is that I would be here every quarter reviewing stuff that we covered in the 1236 newsletter and talking about Toronto Mic'd, I think. There's always a whole bunch of drama

behind the scenes in this basement. And what we've done, we've done several hours at this point just talking about the shows that you've had, the guests who have come in, and the people who never seem to show up. Yeah, absolutely. We're going to do catch-up on everything. I always love these episodes. You always bring it.

There's no inconsistency with you. You bring your A-game every quarter. And I'm secretly hoping that you don't launch a 1236 podcast so you continue to visit me here every quarter. Okay, well, something like that could happen. It's in the discussion process right now. But look, the podcasting game continues to evolve. I find most of the people who write about podcasting are not very good at it. There hasn't been a lot of meta-journalism or media criticism or even

social media stuff. It seems to still be a world that you have to decode and figure your way around alone. But it is becoming more mainstream. I mean, we've reached a tipping point of sorts. The New York Times starting their morning podcast, The Daily, that has been cited as a big deal, a mainstream success story, having something up every single morning that's reaching a wide, wide audience, far beyond their original expectations. Now we've got the Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper, doing a little survey. If you look on their news pages now, there's a link. They're looking for people to come in and do some market research about podcasts if they want to figure out if they should get into this game.

I assume they're looking to the commercial possibilities of it all or at least a way to sell subscriptions. We'll see where it goes. My agenda for now in being here is to get people to care about the newsletter, 1236.ca. And the stuff we talk about here is reflected in the thing that you'll get every day, Toronto's daily lunchtime tabloid. That's what it's all about.

Because people who have listened, comments you've received on the website seem to indicate that people aren't exactly sure what I'm doing or why I'm in here. I think in the Venn diagram, though, in the Venn diagram, like a people who will subscribe and listen to this show and the people who would subscribe to 1236, it should just be one solid circle. Like if you're listening to this and you're not subscribed to Mark's 1236 podcast, see, I'm going to jump in the gun. You're going to have a podcast one day. Your 1236 newsletter, you're missing out. You have

to do that. And to do that, you go to 1236.ca. Yeah. And as far as going into the audio realm is concerned, if we do it, it'll be a lot different than this. It won't be the deep dive. Would it be daily? I envision too early. I'm not sure. I don't want to say anything yet. Too soon, too soon, too soon. I would say that the encouragement

is there to be experimental. And if it gets out of the gate, then there'll be something to listen to this fall. And if we stall it for a little longer, the people I work with, St. Joseph Media, they will be launching other podcasts. I may not even be at liberty to say what they are. So stuff is happening,

and it's a matter of figuring out whether I can fit into those. Podcasts for everybody. That's what I say. Everybody needs podcasts. Well, I'm subscribing now, I think, to 1,200 of them in my Overcast player. So there's always something to listen to.

And yet, not enough that reflects life in Toronto and the cultural stuff that I'm covering. Well, then I will continue to do mine. But I have a question about my little podcast here. And maybe you followed some of this on TorontoMic. com or on my Twitter feed. But I had this thought in conversations with some other people that maybe the kick out the jams episodes should be a standalone podcast unto themselves instead of how I have it today, where they're part of the Toronto Mike. Sorry, the Toronto Mike podcast umbrella. They get put on the same feed. So if you subscribe to Toronto Mike, you get Kick Out the Jam episodes

in there. Do you have any thoughts? Should they be two separate podcasts? This is you showing how you're still a hardcore old school blogger. Tell me. Because I'm not sure how anybody without a blog of their own would get into such an arcane discussion and get

responses from people who are passionate with an answer about whether you should do this or not. So you're six of one, half dozen of another. Is that yours? I think if people have figured out to subscribe to the podcast, if they have an app through iTunes or Overcast or anything else, they're familiar with how it works. They're used to getting multiple episodes of a show.

They understand how to skim through the back catalog and find out what's in there. So I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to achieve by separating the two things. I guess the only true advantage to separating it is, well, there might be two. One is there are some people, believe it or not, there are some people who enjoy Toronto Mic'd but don't care for the jam kicking.

Okay, but that's the beauty. They know how not to listen. That's the beauty of the medium. I mean, if you're not into what's happening here, you can give up. You can move on. Or I say listen to that first part where we essentially catch up. That is a Toronto Mic'd episode until the break, and then we come back and kick out the jam.

So if you really hate the, or don't want to hear the jam kicking, just listen for half an hour and bail. You're really complicating things. The only other advantage is monetization. So you could theoretically get two different podcasts. You could sell a different sponsorship package. And so there's a monetization benefit to separating them. Although that doesn't

really uh excite me like well it's up to you i mean i'm i'm going to subscribe either way and i think if anybody has been listening to this and doesn't like where we're going and thinks it's really tedious they would have given up on us by now right exactly um i'm gonna play a track let me hear this here because i'm hearing this for the first time given up on us by now, right? Exactly. I'm going to play a track. Let me hear this here. I'm hearing this for the first time. Do you know what I'm listening to? Always dangerous to listen to a song for the first time when you're recording.

Pro tip, don't do that. So I have... Okay, so that was just a funky introduction to the track you mentioned via Twitter. You said you wanted to hear Turn on the News. Is this Turn on the News? Turn on the News by Husker Du from the album Zen Arcade. I figured that would get us going here. Turn on the News, get it? We're going to turn on the news.

The drummer from this band, Husker Du, died early this morning, age 56, in Minneapolis. And what was his name? Grant Hart. Is this news to you? No, no, I did hear of him. You didn't know anything about it anyway. Okay, I knew that he died. We'd start here in the rock death

file and be a little bit sentimental. Because once upon a time, when I was coming up and figuring out my personal tastes, I think this kind of music, right? The proto-grunge,

the indie rock of the 1980s, this was the kind of stuff that gave you entry into a club. And it wasn't easy to find this music. You didn't hear a lot of it on the radio. You would see it written about in some magazines. But it was really the kind of thing that a tribe was created around. If you listen to Husker Du,

it was a badge. It was a button. It meant you represented a certain sensibility. So the fact that this drummer, who was also one of the two singer-songwriters, the other one being Bob Mould, a name that you probably have heard of

because he was with this band Sugar. He wrote the theme song to The Daily Show. That's another thing that he's widely known for. Really a legendary figure who managed to keep it going with his own solo career, wrote an autobiography. Grant Hart, on the other hand, had a bit more tragic circumstances. A lot of struggles remained more in the background. And the whole thing for 30 years now were people wondering

whether this band Husker Du would ever reunite. But it turned out that these two guys, Bob Mould and Grant Hart, were at such odds with one another that they never even wanted it to happen. So, here we are at the point where we've lost another legend. Grant Hart,

Husker Du, turn on the news. And I should tell people listening, we're going to kick out the jam sort of. You brought a jam that we're going to play at the end of this episode, and you're going to tell us why you dig it. But brought a jam that we're going to play at the end of this episode and you're going to tell us why you dig it. But Husker Do, I heard this guy died and I read some very nice

accounts about what he meant to them and some, but I have to plead complete ignorance. I missed Husker Do. Although I'm familiar with the name, I have missed their entire career. I completely missed Husker Do. Well, there were a lot of younger listeners who discovered this stuff more recently, right,

and tried to put on like they were paying attention all along. Right. I won't even fake that. Yeah, here was a band that, you know, managed to get in the van and tour around and build up a big cult following. A lot of drugs and despair, and then their manager died.

But somewhere in there, they got a big major label record deal, and they put out albums that, if you were a real indie rock elitist, you didn't like where the whole thing was going. I mean, they were trying to be successful. They wanted to be rock stars, and the whole thing dissolved going. I mean, they were trying to be successful. They wanted to be rock stars, and the whole thing dissolved around 1987, 88.

Here we are today, R.I.P. Grant Hart. Zen Arcade is a great name for an album, by the way. I thought it was a great title. Yeah, and a double album. I mean, these guys just churned out album after album, song after song. So a big part of my teenage years, and here's where I show off my bona fides

that I was actually into this stuff. You're not faking it. Yeah, not just corporate rock and the pop charts. See, I won't fake it. At one point, this is the stuff that meant something to me. Cool, man, cool. Now, let's, because we have so much, and as usual, we don't have enough time to fit in everything.

We're going to have to go really fast here, so I'm going to mention some sponsors, and we're going to just to go really fast here. So I'm going to mention some sponsors and we're going to just start rocking. There's so much content here. So everyone listening, please go to patreon.com slash Toronto Mike. Help keep this going. Give what you can.

And if you don't want to do that and you just want to like steal this great content, that's fine. Go to my site, torontomike.com and click the Terry Fox run at the top and give some money there because you'll get a tax receipt and you'll help the Terry Fox Foundation. That run is on Sunday. So I'm doing that Sunday. So one or the other guys, open up that wallet, maybe both. I don't want to take any money away from the Terry Fox Foundation. So maybe

you have to do both, but keep this going. And of course, I'm trying to think off the top of my head, Mark, how many pint glasses do you now have? Oh, well, you started off with Brian Gerstein, propertyinthesix.com. The last time I was here, right? Towards the end of the summer? Yeah, my second pint glass.

I'm supposed to take it home, I guess. I've already got the first. And yeah, I can't get out of here without the requisite case of Great Lakes beer. Absolutely. And there's a pumpkin ale in there. That's the big thing. Actually, of all places, I was on Indie88.com, and they had a clip on there where somebody was saying this is like the only decent pumpkin beer, apparently, in the city of Toronto. Well, we're learning it's never too early for pumpkin spice products, it seems.

Right after Labor Day. No, even before they rolled those out. So a lot of this is psychological, right? I mean, you get the same clickbait stories every year. Halloween decorations are already showing up in the store. Oh, I just read, yeah, someone has Christmas stuff out. I don't remember where, but... And yet there's a strategy to it all, which was explained by Dollarama.

They came clean on what they were doing. And it's a fact that if you put the stuff in the store and people go to the store week after week, day after day. They'll remember that you can buy the seasonal stuff there. And it's ultimately better for sales. They're not expecting you to buy it now. The whole point is that you remember it's there when you want it. I'm periodically in the dollar store near like Runnymede and St. Clair. There's a dollar store. And I go with my daughter sometimes because she really likes it.

That dollar store, I'm sorry, but there's a lot of $4 items in that dollar store. That's all I'm going to say. Yeah, and we're going to get into $5 and $10. It's only a matter of time. This is the domination of Dollarama. I mean, look, this is what the world has created, an opportunity to buy cheap crap made in China. It's all there for you all the time.

And they're now talking about self-checkouts in Dollarama stores. Oh, soon we will talk about that. Okay, I don't want to jump the gun. I know, that's coming soon. That's a sneak preview. We have an exciting piece of audio from a popular drugstore and their self-checkout. Okay, can't wait, can't wait.

Are we done with the sponsors here? Do you want me to say anything more nice about Brian Gerstein, GLB? What do you need? We're going to hear from Brian in a second here. But are we going to get a picture together today? Maybe. I'll see what we've got.

Because I'm wearing my Great Lakes brewery, I'm wearing my Great Lakes beer shirt. This is sponsor swag. I'm wearing it. I need a picture with you. Okay, it'll have to be done, even if I'm cower Great Lakes Brewery. I'm wearing my Great Lakes beer shirt. Like, this is sponsor swag. I'm wearing it. I need a picture with you. Okay, it'll have to be done, even if I'm cowering in the corner. I'm thinking we just do a normal pic. I know this sounds radical to you, but what if we just did a normal picture like I do with every guest?

We don't have to do any staging or any funny, goofy stuff. See, what people listening don't necessarily realize is what it's like to leave your house after sitting down here for a couple of hours, right? Because you've always got a kid or two who needs something. They've got to be fed. They've got to be bathed. They've got to be driven somewhere. So the fact that you're able to escape into this basement, I realize as soon as time is up, you're back to having to be this dad, right? The second you're out there in the wild, once again, you have other obligations.

So there's not a whole lot of time to sit there and craft the perfect selfie photo, right? We're just going to do a normal pic after this, and then I get the Great Lakes beer shirt in the pic, and that's great. Yes, the pint glass is yours from Brian Gerstein. Go to propertyinthesix.com. But let's hear from Brian himself. Here's Brian.

Propertyinthesix.com Brian Gerstein here, proud sponsor of Toronto Mic and sales representative with PSR Brokerage, with offices in King West and the Annex. PSR specializes in new condominium sales with the hottest projects in the city, including Kingley in King West and to one Bloor West. For VIP Toronto Mike access, just call me at 416-873-0292 for renderings, floor plans, and pricing. Any real estate consultation in person with me will also get you my property in the 6.com pint glass and a six-pack of GLB. Hey, Mark, did you listen to Music Week on Toronto Mic by any chance?

Music Week? Where was that? Splash and Boots were here. Oh, Splash and Boots. Yeah. What did you think of these Splash and Boots? You do not have a toddler at home. No, absolutely not. So you never heard of Splash and Boots?

Never heard of Splash and Boots. But now you do. There's some awareness now. And yeah, there were lively guests in here. They seemed to get what you were doing, and they appreciated your enthusiasm, right? These kiddie singers don't get a lot of respect

in the mainstream media. Well, I was thinking, coming off of Brian's jingle there, I remember back-to-back, so Splash the Boots were here, and Lowest of the Low, back-to-back, and both musicianship both couplets agreed that that was a great jingle uh so it was good to hear like professional musicians commenting on uh that that controversial jingle remember when i first launched that we weren't sure it would stick but it goes through my head on a regular basis okay

so it's up there with some of the greats, right? ZappaCosta singing for Pizza Nova, right? We got the Fabricland jingle on Toronto Radio. Pizza Pizza, 9-6-7-11-11. What other ones come to mind? So I guess by default, Brian Property and the Six has joined that rarefied company. Yeah, right up there with whatever, the Sleep Country Canada and all those recognizable jingles. So you enjoyed the Splashin' Boots,

and Lowest of the Low, first episode ever where there was an actual song played in this basement. They performed live. And was that exciting for you? I mean, you were listening to them right back in high school? Yeah. Shakespeare, My Butt was a big time album for me in high school. Huge deal. And there were so many singles off that album that I would hear in the mornings on listening to Humble and Fred on 102.1. I don't remember when it became The Edge exactly, but whenever that happened,

Edge 102. Big deal to me that these guys who I loved in high school, like Ron Hawkins sat there, took out his guitar, played a new track, which sounded great. I got video. That's the first time I think I've taken video down here in 265 episodes. So personal thrill. And even better is after the show, they put me on the magic list, which means I could go to Danforth Music Hall on Saturday night and show my ID and be given two complimentary tickets. Wow. And I think they could count on the fact that you weren't going to come on here the next day and trash the show, right? I mean, they knew that they had a fan. This is the whole thing, right? Right, right. You right? These days, the music industry has changed. It's harder now to get on a guest list than it used to be,

especially if you're some kind of critic, right? Because these artists are just not interested in getting negative reviews anymore. That's how much things have changed. And I don't think for the better. But there was once a time when the whole idea was if you were letting a member of the media into a show for free, were they going to turn around and say something nasty about you? So I don't think there was any risk with that. I think now they've accepted any publicity is good publicity when you're trying to make it in this

cold, cold world. So those episodes happened. And let's start with CMT. CMT stands for Country Music Television. Yeah, Country Music Television, which has been on in Canada since 1995. A channel, I remember there was a big battle at the CRTC to try and get a country music video network on in Canada. There were competing bids. All these broadcasters, they saw it as the next big thing. This was a time after Garth Brooks broke through

and Shania Twain was in the process of becoming a star. And the whole idea that there was going to be big money in country music, new country, was going to be where it's at. Everyone had the mugs and kisses. My mom had the Kiss 92 mug. So the idea of a country music video television channel in Canada came out of that era. Did you ever watch the Nashville Network? I remember it.

I never watched it. But I remember the Nashville Network because I remember they changed it to the National Network. And now it's Spike TV. The same assets were turned into that. But yeah, country music videos are once a big business, a big deal. I would follow all this stuff on the Nashville network, the video shows. I knew who all these acts were. I don't remember why I found it particularly interesting.

I guess it was a precursor to Donald Trump's America. interesting. I guess it was a precursor to Donald Trump's America. This was like the USA's indigenous music that was taking shape, right? Guys wearing big hats. Yeah, a lot of red, white, and blue, and pickup trucks.

I'm kind of allergic to most country music, so I didn't linger long, but you got the gist pretty quick. A lot of pickup trucks, and a lot of, like I said, star-spangled banner stuff quick. A lot of pickup trucks and a lot of, like I said, Star Spangled Banner stuff everywhere. A lot of Americana. Okay, so sign of the times here,

which I guess you were interested in, the fact that they decided that they were no longer going to bother to run any music shows on country music television in Canada. They dropped country music on the country music television. Yeah, they were going to pivot to something different owned by Chorus, where they'd run the usual reality shows and Three's Company reruns. They dropped country music on the country music television. and specialty channels. There is no longer one that has that thing hanging over it where they have to have programming dedicated to music.

I hear this jam a lot. My daughter must be listening to stations that play this song because, let this cook up here. This song, this is by Logic with Canadian Alessia Cara. And this is 1-800-273-8255. That's the name of this song? I think this is one of the most sublime hit songs to come around in a long time. I think partly I was inspired by reading Bob Lefsetz,

one of his email rants about it, describing how this song hit a tipping point during the MTV Video Music Awards. I had this on in the background a couple of weeks ago, and this guy Logic comes out and does this song with a whole bunch of people surrounding him. I wasn't paying much attention, but it turned out that there were people who had previously called the Suicide Prevention Hotline, which is the title of the song, or family members, other people impacted by mental health issues.

And then he got into this little tirade about saying, you know, this is an issue that the mainstream media doesn't pay much attention to. And without paying much attention, I thought this was like another Donald Trump thing. I figured this was, in fact, you know, another artist going out of their lane to explain what was wrong with society today that we're all not woke enough. In fact, the song and the message of it is really quite the opposite.

I think it's really touching. It's got a compelling video. It's got Don Cheadle and Matthew Modine and some other actors in there. So yeah, I'm rooting for this one this fall to be a bigger hit song than it already is. It's got a message nobody can disagree with and sort of a hip-hop power ballad. Reminds me of when One by Metallica turned into a minor hit record and was scaling the charts. So there's a lot to this.

The song packs in a lot of message and it's my pick to click. And I think for MTV and its VMAs, which the ratings were lower than ever, it was just another display of these pop stars trying to politicize not really knowing what they're talking about. But from the time MTV started, I would hear about it from a distance.

It was 1981, 82, 83. Much music hadn't gotten going yet. And from a distance, when I would hear about this thing, see stories, it seemed like the most remarkable form of media in the world. I wished that I could watch this thing. I don't think what came along with much music lived up to the magic of the original MTV. Earlier in the summertime, MTV was doing this online content strategy. They were running these lengthy pieces, these scolding essays about what people could think and what you needed to know and trying to follow the clickbait trend of being as lefty as possible.

A new president of MTV came in and said this was completely ridiculous. This is so outside of the mandate of what makes MTV interesting. So they fired all of these writers. They got rid of all this stuff that they were doing online and getting back to the basics now with

more music stuff. They brought back the Unplugged show coming soon. TRL Total Request Live. Back, baby. Is returning. Now, we're way outside the demographic for this stuff. So I speak about it with a sentimentality that might seem a little bit perverse.

But you know what? If you're curious about pop culture and where it's all headed, I think it's great that a television network would be dedicated to doing something different that would reset the cultural agenda a little bit. And people know about MTV. They've heard of it. They know what it is.

I've got high hopes. At the same time, I don't really expect much of anything because there are too many options out there and too much distraction. Does MTV mean anything today to your teenage kids? No, no, no. So it might in fact

be an aging... It's all YouTube for my teenage kids. So it's another aging Gen Xer nostalgia trip. I think that Logic song is good for society. And we'll see if it makes it to the top. It would be the next number one Hot 100 hit with a Canadian artist. Right, because Bieber was on that track that was...

Is it still number one? Despacito. Right. Not anymore. 16 weeks, though. Supplanted after a long time. So we'll see what happens with 1-800-273-8255. Is that right?

You did that off the top of your head. Well done. I could be working for Virgin Radio with that number. You should be. You mentioned the beginning of much music, and I always think of that opening, breaking in through the paper. You had Christopher Ward. Christopher Ward, your old buddy.

I was about to look at his book. It's behind me. And some guy named J.D. Roberts. This summer, tell me, did you see J.D. Roberts in the flesh? I let you know about this fact, which I... This wasn't a random guess? Well, I tweeted it, right? Without being specific about the fact that it was me who took the picture.

So a couple weeks ago, I was in Washington, D.C. I felt I needed to do some surveillance, check out the White House, and find out the current mood of America. Talking to Americans. And you know what? I think everybody there was having a good time. From a distance, we get the impression that everybody's under constant duress here with

Donald Trump as president. It's making everyone go nuts. They can't cope. They can't focus. They can't focus. They can't deal with anything. Much like our Toronto experience with Rob Ford in 2013, 2014. Once this becomes the new normal and things settle down a little bit, it seems like most people are having a lot of fun with what's happening here.

I think that's what's happened with me. I was telling my wife. I'll tell you what happened to me. It was really, for a long time, just such distaste and disdain for the man. Anything, even the jokes, any time Alec Baldwin would do something on SNL about him, I couldn't laugh at it, no interest.

But I've now come to this wonderful, I don't give a fuck thing. It's like now I'm just like, whatever, salad. For me at this point, it's the opposite effect. Because I saw the season premiere of Broad City, a show that I think I followed along for the past three seasons. It's a Comedy Central show.

And Hillary Clinton was a guest on Broad City last season in the midst of her campaign. It was one of those shows that took a few extra months off, so they hadn't put up any episodes since Trump got elected. And the fact that this show had aligned itself with Hillary, that the stars of this show sort of broke the fourth wall and went out of character to say that these are our personal sensibilities embodied in Hillary Clinton being president. I don't want to watch this show anymore. I'm not interested. It's created this distaste for me because I think you just get the same cliched tropes, the same old assumption about who the audience is and what they're thinking about.

So that's the effect that the era of Donald Trump has had on me. It's affecting my cultural choices because I don't want to be lectured to. I don't want to be told that every perception I have is wrong. So you're not following Bruce Arthur on Twitter then? Sorry, you're not following Bruce Arthur on Twitter? Oh, I'm following Bruce Arthur on Twitter. Oh, I'm following Bruce Arthur on Twitter. Look, I can screen out the predictable opinions. I know where they come from.

I know who's holding them. I think what all these months of Trump has taught us, that the whole rule book has been thrown out the window, and anything is possible. Anybody can be the next president of the United States. Who knows what can happen in terms of who gets elected to the highest office? But so while I was in Washington, I was thinking out loud and not even to myself, wouldn't it be interesting if I was meandering by the White House and I happened to run into Fox News senior White House correspondent John Roberts.

I mean, what would it take to have some sort of encounter with the guy? So I was taking a break from wandering around the Starbucks around the corner from the White House. One of the things that was fascinating about the neighborhood there, even though the White House is right there. Right. You've got Starbucks, other fast food restaurants like right around the corner. And like nothing really is going on in there, you know, like really quiet places. I was also in a Starbucks in the basement of the Trump Hotel there. You'd think this would be like a place that tourists would flock.

You know, there would be some sort of perverse appeal to the place, and yet nobody was around. But I guess that's Washington, D.C. for you. So I'm standing on the corner waiting for the light to change, and I look across the street, and there he is, my childhood VJ hero, J.D. Roberts, walking home from work, looking like he could have used a stiff drink or two or three.

Make it a triple. Who knows what happened that day? And I wasn't going to bother the guy. Once I interviewed him and it didn't go very well. CNN publicist called me back to complain about the story. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't really want to be his friend, but I made sure to snap a paparazzi photo on my phone

to mark the fact that the only person who I was interested in seeing in Washington, D.C. literally walked into my path. Never tell me the odds. When Jay Onright was here, he had a Bell Media PR guy sitting right here. And he never

called back to complain. I never got a complaint. Okay, you're doing well. But I mean, they're brand... No, I think that means you're doing something wrong. Well, the whole Jay and Dan thing is about pushing the envelope and being irreverent in different ways. So I'm not

sure what you would have to say to offend them or upset things. But maybe you gave it your best shot. No, I've got more in the chamber. But you mentioned you're in D.C. So it's funny that you went to Washington, D.C. And meanwhile, coming to Toronto, I hear we got Bill Clinton.

Hillary's coming to Toronto. Obama's coming to Toronto. What's up with that? Yeah, and while I was in Washington, they announced Hillary coming to Toronto. And the fact that they were all over with Fox News about was VIP ticket packages for Hillary Clinton. You can stand in her presence. You can take a photo with her. You've got one minute of talking time.

And the fact that they were charging... Wait, can I guess? Because I have no idea. What was the number? Yeah, what do you think? I'm going to guess that, because I know shitty bands have meet and greets, and it's like 250 bucks.

And I'm like, holy smokes, just for a pic or whatever. So for Hillary Clinton, I'm going to guess something crazy high, like $1,500. Double that. What? Yeah. In Canadian funds, anyhow,

it was reported as $2,400 U.S., so they kind of low-balled it by doing the exchange. But yeah, $3,000 to get a ticket to hang out with Hillary backstage. She'll be doing a talk promoting her book at the Intercare Center at the end of September. And, yeah, the last march of 1990s neoliberalism will be coming to town. And I think the fact that she's doing this book event outside of the states will get attention all its own, right? The idea that, like, it'll be Hillary Clinton unleashed, unplugged.

In a foreign land. She can say whatever she wants, and she won't get arrested. You know, she's got so much on her mind. So Hillary is doing an event. We've got Obama coming to Toronto in the same week. He's getting paid $400,000 a speech. I don't know if that was confirmed or denied as far as what he's getting paid in Toronto, but selling tables of 10 for $10,000. And then for half that

price, a table for $5,000. You can see Bill Clinton speaking for his friend Frank McKenna, fundraiser at the Royal York Hotel, St. Francis Xavier University. So we're getting all three of them. We're getting Clinton, Clinton, and Obama. And, yeah, I mean, part of what's happening here, and I can't articulate it as well as so many others, whether on one side someone like Mark Stein or Chapo Trap House podcast, which is on the left, the dirt bag left, where they just rail endlessly about the fact that this is really the twilight

of the Clintons and everything they represented. Like, they're going in for this last lap, even though, based on the results of the Clintons and everything they represented. Like they're going in for this last lap, even though, based on the results of the election, most people wanted them gone. I mean, and not the majority, necessarily. Right, because there's a lot of voters in California, right? But I'm watching season three of Narcos on Netflix, and the opening credits have a great shot

of Bill and Hillary kind of in their heyday coming off the plane, I guess, to visit Columbia. And so I've been seeing a lot of Bill and Hillary kind of in their heyday coming off the plane, I guess, to visit Columbia. And so I've been seeing a lot of Bill and Hillary lately. By the way, quickly, you mentioned those prices, and they're crazy. But if you want Gene Simmons to personally deliver his new box set, you can get that, I believe, for the low price of $50,000 U.S. $25,000 U.S. To get the delivery? To get the deal. Not the delivery,

but something they're doing actually in Toronto next week. You can hang out with Gene in the studio. That's 25,000. So for him to come to your door. Right. He will come to your door and personally deliver the box set for $50,000.

Okay. Thanks for setting that straight, because I was a bit confused. I wonder who would go for the delivery option over half the price to hang out with him in the studio. I mean, whether it's Hillary Clinton or Gene Simmons or anybody else doing these VIP meet and greets, you never find out if anyone took the bait. They're not going to release the attendance figures for the number of people who got a photo with Hillary Clinton. I mean, maybe somebody who ponied up for that

would put it on Instagram or something. You know, perhaps someone with $3,000 burning a hole in their pocket would do it sort of as a... And those people exist, right? There are people who have a lot of money, and $3,000 is not crazy for them to meet somebody they maybe just even get the pick. I think there are people like that out there.

Well, I'm thinking about doing it more like a prank, about, right, somebody who's like, I want to do the $50,000 James Innes thing. Well, I mean, I spent $3,000, right, to get a photo of Hillary Clinton. But the book event she was doing, it seems like she was there for all comers. Anybody go up to her and ask her some sort of ridiculous question if they got close enough.

Like I did for Wendell Clark when I went to his book thing. I asked, I told, yeah, I had my moment with Wendell, cost me nothing. Okay. So Hillary's there. She's up for grabs. I mean, as people get tired here of Hillary and Bill Clinton, the onus, I think, is on Obama to be a little more interesting. And he's moving towards more philanthropic endeavors and stuff like that. Maybe following in the footsteps of somebody like Jimmy Carter, right? I mean, he was seen as a joke when he was the president. And yet here we are almost 40 years later, where he's seen as like a huge humanitarian for everything he did.

Lays forever, absolutely. Yeah, into his 90s. So yeah, there is a chance for Barack Obama to liberate himself from this world of Goldman Sachs speaking fees and everything else. We'll see if that's what he puts on when he comes to town here. Here's his chance. Here's his shot. The one thing that happens when you do these speeches in Toronto is you get probably 10 or 100 times the attention compared to if he was doing that speech in New York or Washington or Los Angeles. The Canadian media just eats this stuff up. So, yeah, late September, early October, they're all happening.

They're coming. Clinton, Obama, and Clinton. New super group. That's right. I'll try to get him on Tronamite. Let's go. I am one of the last people left who still likes talking about radio, so we've got to jump into Radioland here.

I had Mike Stafford here recently kicking out the jams, and I asked him about how things were going at 640, and he's a straight shooter, that Stafford. The reason I love talking to Stafford is he's a straight shooter, doesn't hold back, tells it like it is, no bullshit with Stafford. Well, at this point, he's been with the station longer than anyone, so

he does have some superiority. He's a day-oner from Mojo Radio, right? Mojo Radio in 2001 or something? And now it's 640, right? They tried to do the opposite of Mojo Radio. They got more serene and serious, and then it leveled off into what it is now. You know, somewhere in between.

They had the Leaf games, so it was... Right, they did Leaf's lunch with Wilbur. What's his real name again? Bill Waters. Bill Waters, and had Merrick there, and had Jeff Brady. So it was sort of a hybrid of sports and news and infomercials and coast-to-coast AM and whatever else was happening. But in the past year, 640 has invested more heavily. They've got a new ownership structure from Chorus, from Global.

They've got some sort of mandate from the CRTC to spend, to invest in programming. So you started to see that reflected in 640, where they brought on a bunch of new shows. Matt and Supriya, I believe, if I have said those names correctly. Yeah, Matt Gurney.

Hasn't he been on your wish list here? I know. When he first got this gig at 640, we had an exchange, and I said, hey, you should come on. He said, for sure. And then he said, well, let's give it a little time because, you know, he's just starting and he wanted to get his feet wet. And I have to follow up.

So that was a long time ago. I think they're still just starting. And on the outside, you know, anybody would applaud the fact that here was a news talk radio station in Toronto. This is a format that gets a really old audience. I mean, I think there's still a lot of lying about how old the people are who tune in, right? They'll screen out your calls if you're an elderly person calling into a station like News Talk 1010. This is not a secret. I mean, there's a lot of producing and editing that goes on to the voices that you end up

hearing on the air. But 640, you know, morning show hired by two people in their early to mid-30s, an age group that's highly unlikely to start listening to AM radio all of a sudden. Does that make you a millennial if you're mid-30s? I lose track now. Yeah, pretty much. Okay, so millennial morning show. Early millennial, I don't know what age group

they're speaking to. To finish that initial thought, Stafford tells me the ratings are shit. I think that's a direct quote. Well, that's what happens when you change hosts in the morning show. That's the anchor for the whole day. So if they give it more time to figure out what works. Because they moved Oakley from mornings to the drive-home spot,

which I understand was his request. I won't review my sources on that. And Stafford, of course, likes where he is. He wants to stay where he is. But also, I know you're not a big sports guy, but I still tune into The Fan periodically if I'm in the car. And I'm reading

The Fan's ratings are down. And apparently, I have, on this podcast, I have more listeners than 1050. So I got that going for me. Do you think at this point you do? I have no idea. That may not be a verifiable claim. But yeah, okay, so this is the thing, right?

The Battle of Sports Radio, Fan 590 just celebrated its 25th anniversary. I caught on to a lot of gloating from Bob McCowan, the fact that he's been there all along, right? Early on, he was the morning man even on the station. And he precedes the fan. He was there at CJCL and CKFH doing these sports talk shows, right? The Leafs or Jays game would end and they would do the open line thing, late 70s all through the 80s. So he was a pioneer of sports talk radio in Toronto.

And Rogers, Sportsnet, Fan 590. They're the incumbent. Six and a half years ago, Bell Media said that they were going to reboot, turn 1050 Chum back into a sports radio station. And as we've been seeing it, it hasn't been going very well to the point where the overall rating for the summer period was the margin of error, whatever it is, it was as close to zero. 0.3. As you could possibly get.

I wonder if it was 0.0 and somebody just adjusted the abacus a little bit, you know, to make them not look so bad. Now, I mean, Mike Richards has been on the show and he's talked about, you know, he's all he's got a theory that TSN doesn't care about the radio or whatnot. And that might be true. But do they just I guess this has to because it complements the TV side, they would keep this going regardless. I get the feeling.

Yeah. And TSN radio stations across the country. So now we've got in Vancouver, they had TSN radio for a few years. In fact, there were two AM stations in Vancouver that are TSN radio stations. Some local programming, yeah, and other stuff from ESPN, just like in Toronto. There's TSN on 1150, CTOC, right? Right, right, right. And TSN 1050 from Toronto.

So this is supposed to be a whole national battle, and I don't envision a scenario where they give up on sports on 1050 Chump. You know, changes, definitely. They have a morning show that is going to get a new co-host, Michael Landsberg. You'd think Michael Landsberg had a name recognition, given what was going on with the fan? Dean Blundell was on there in the morning. You would think that there would be enough people that wanted sports radio in the morning

who, given the choice between Dean Blundell and Michael Landsberg of Off the Record, I mean, which one would you choose? And yet they couldn't make a breakthrough. They couldn't cut into the audience. The two, I mean, as a sports fan who listens to sports radio, I think the two big knocks against 1050, which they can't overcome, is one, that head start is so everything,

like in the radio market, that they got such a head start and everybody got used to going to 590 for their sports talk. But the second thing is the signal strength. To me, it's a big deal. The 590 is a powerful signal. Sounds great everywhere I ever go. And 1050, not so much.

Okay, well then, here we get into the whole idea that everything is going digital as far as radio is concerned. The more people will tune into radio stations on their iHeartRadio app, then we'll bother fiddling around with the AM dial. And if it goes in that direction, then perhaps the playing field changes a little bit and they can make some sort of

inroads. I just think it's so comical, right? Because we watch what happened with 1050 Chum when they change it to the team. There was a lot of sentimentality, including for me a little bit, about the fact that 1050 Chum, you know, which had been an oldie station, mostly on this voice-tracked autopilot, all of a sudden, you know, they were going to try something different and stop playing, you know, music after half a century. And then 16 months later, the team was a flop. The audience share was a 0.4, which is actually more than it is now overall. Right, which is funny. And they just went back to music.

It was like Dallas, right? When they find him in the shower. It was all a dream. Bobby Ewing. Bobby Ewing. We've been here all along. What are you talking about, the team 1050? You must have imagined this entire thing.

It never happened. Because you mentioned the team, I have to tell people that Stephen Brunt, who was part of that team project, he's coming on the show. We got a time and a date booked. So this has really happened.

I know you joked about the ones, the Ann Romers, and we never talked about Ann yet, but I guess we can do it really quickly right now. I think as far as most people are concerned, we've said everything there is to say until she actually gets down here. And Damien Cox, we're still waiting to hear about the tweet. What was he tweeting about?

Who was he talking to? I'm going to find out soon because his jams are loaded in my soundboard. I could literally play his jams now. It's funny. He and Simmons sent me their jams and are coming in soon, but I don't have the specific day and time. I know I've got to keep them apart. There's no love lost between Damien Cox and Steve

Simmons, apparently. Okay, so Stephen Brunt is done deal, coming in very, very soon, and he was part of the team. Yes, you're right. The team was a... Yeah, the team and then back to the music. A little less conversation. This is like real radio message board territory as far as talking about what's going on, some obscure radio station that people used to listen to when they were growing up. Like, what is it now?

You know, 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago. And yet at the same time, you know, there's an emotional attachment to 10.50 a.m. So you've got to wonder if they could be doing something else with that frequency and figuring out the calculus of where's the best place to do sports talk. And maybe they'll end up having to buy another station. There were rumors that they would take over 640. I don't know if that reached fruition. It doesn't seem like it would happen now. There were rumors that they would take over 640. I don't know if that reached fruition.

It doesn't seem like it would happen now. But a better signal might be in the future for TSA. And this costs, what, like tens of millions of dollars, even on the AM dial, you know, to get this real estate. If everything is going digital, is it worth anything for a company like Bell to buy an AM signal? Is there anything in it for them if you're constantly under the impression that the technology is dying? Just before I leave radio, one last thing. We'll leave the AM dial.

I just need to know because I know you've looked at numbers. I think it's David Bray. Do I have that name right? David Bray. Yeah, a radio consultant who posts stuff on his site. He posts stuff, and then guys like me and you and everybody, we kind of like, oh, there's some numbers, and we go and we kind of look at it and try to analyze it best we can.

Well, the main players really don't change all that much. It's mostly three or four stations going after the same one or two SharePoint deviation. But is it true that CHFI is number one with men? That's what they say. Isn't that amazing? PPM readers, right? You're supposed to wear this thing on your belt. But has it always been that way?

Is that a new development? I don't know if it's that new of a development. Is that a Marine Holloway effect? I don't know. Is it the fact that this station is the preferred one that you hear in all the little grocery stores? Yeah, dentist offices. It is, too. At my dentist, too.

The office favorite. I'm not sure what happens, but I think at the same time, for the way that most people listen to the radio, which is just something to have on in the background, CHFI seems to be doing the trick. And if they manage to capture this young male audience that uses the radio this way, I guess it's working out. And Christmas music gets a lot of credit. And they're starting that next week, I hear.

The whole idea that if you go to the all-Christmas format, while most people claim it's annoying, in fact, there are so many people who secretly love this stuff. My secret shame that I can't stop listening to Christmas music. As soon as Halloween is over...

That's my wife, by the way. If my wife had her druthers, she would start that stuff November 1. I don't want to disparage her. That's okay. Go ahead. Okay. Well, so Christmas music, it's been a winner for them, so I assume the last six, seven, eight weeks of the year, that's a lot of time,

will be dedicated to Christmas music on CHFI. I can't do it. I can't do it, but I mean, my wife would love to just do that. Indie 88 versus Edge 102. I need to know, has Indy 88 chipped away at the Edge at all? Have they? It seems to be slipping down the dial and getting less attention.

And I think they haven't yet figured out the formula that would make the station distinct and distinctive in the marketplace. Part of it is the fact that they've got all these people on the air who have experience with the edge that they worked at, CFNY and Chorus in the past. Josie Dye and Dave Bookman, who's on my list of people who said no to this podcast. I heard Bookman on the air. Usually, giving something away here,

I listen to Bookie on Indie ADA while I'm putting together my newsletter because he does these little talk segments that keep me abreast of what's happening in the world while he's on, and I go back a long, long way with him. So there's a bit of personal interest into hearing what he's doing and hearing that he's doing

well. So when I need that kind of office music for a couple hours in the morning, it's actually bookie that I listen to. So as far as what they're putting in between the chit chat, where the playlist is at these days, I don't know. One morning on Twitter, I noted the fact they were playing Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind, which I thought for this audience, for a discerning music listener, that's exactly the kind of song you want to avoid.

That's not the sort of tune, even in a watered-down context of what indie music is supposed to be. I wondered why they were playing it. The station clapped back at me and said, yeah, we play old alternative favorites. And it's like, okay, that's nice, but your station isn't doing very well.

Speaking of Indie 88 and Edge 102, this is Linkin Park's Heavy. Did Indie 88 play this? This feels, sounds edgy, edge. But no, I'm not. Did Indie play it? Do you know? I'll tell you what's up with this song.

Okay. Now, this summer, I was surprised at how many people were fascinated by the death of Chester Bennington. I thought, you know, it was tragic circumstances. He took his own life. And, of course, that would make the news. Linkin Park sold a lot of albums in the early 2000s. A lot of millennials grew up with this stuff. A lot of albums, though early 2000s. A lot of millennials grew up with this stuff. A lot of albums, though.

Took it really seriously. Like, they revered this guy and what he represented. If you were our age, a little bit older, the Gen Xers, yeah, you saw this in the same genre as Third Eye Blind. This was a bit of a joke. But from what I could tell, if you were 13, 14, 15 years old, you know, around Y2K, turn of the millennium, Linkin Park was your thing.

It was what you revered. It was what you listened to in your bedroom at night with the door closed, you know, meditated over what Chester Bennington had to say. Were you also surprised by this? No. Maybe it's because I listened to a lot of Linkin Park. Oh, okay. Now you're admitting it.

And saw them live at, what was it, Downsview Park, and enjoyed the show. They headlined, I want to say, an edge fest that I was at, and I thoroughly enjoyed Linkin Park. And you weren't the oldest guy in the audience then? No, I don't think I was. Close, though. But there's also that tie- with Chris Cornell to me really is significant

here because like, so he kills himself the same way Chris Cornell did on Chris Cornell's birthday. Uh, and we, we've already had reports of how close they were and we've all seen on YouTube or heard, uh,

that Chester Bennington, uh, sings hallelujah, Leonard Cohen's hallelujah at the funeral for Chris Cornell. Chris Cornell, that was a big deal to me when I was a teenager. I listened to a lot of Bad Motor Finger and a lot of Soundgarden. But I think that aspect of the story just makes it bigger than just the lead singer of a popular rock band hangs himself.

But here's what happened. or a popular rock band hangs himself. But here's what happened. They put out that single Heavy earlier this year, 2017. And it was a poppier kind of sound. They were going for the chain smokers demographic, trying to get back onto pop radio somehow, which means that you weren't going to do the new metal rock rap from before,

but do something that would be a hit with the kids. And I only paid attention to this in retrospect. Their fans, the Linkin Park fans, thought this was an outrage, that it was completely ridiculous, that their favorite band had abandoned their edge, everything that they ever stood for, to try and have a hit single. And it tanked. It went nowhere. I even looked up because you can find it on Twitter,

the Edge 102 playlist, 102.1 The Edge, the Edge music Twitter feed. They spun the song, I think, two or three times. Like they do a new U2 single, right? It's like this thing just came out today, and I guess we're obligated to play it. But it never went into rotation. And the fact was that as a current contemporary act,

Linkin Park had fallen out of favor. They became something of a joke. So I thought, okay, this is sad. This Chester Bennington died. But maybe it would be like when the guy from Blind Melon didn't make it. Yeah, and it was like, you know,

maybe like two or three lines in the newspaper. Somebody would mention it on the radio and everybody would get on with things. There wasn't really much of a follow-up. But so, to me, I would have to say I was surprised. You were surprised.

I was seriously surprised. You can't compare Chester Bennington to Shannon Hoon. Shannon Ho so, to me, I would have to say I was surprised. You were surprised. I was seriously surprised. You can't compare Chester Bennington to Shannon Hoon. Shannon Hoon, I mean, I like Blind Melon, too. They had two albums under their belt, one that was a flop and one that, of course, gave us No Rain, which you can still hear every rainy day, probably, on Indie 88. But Linkin Park had mega albums, like mega hits, mega selling albums. But in the whole history of music, there's stuff that sold a lot of copies

that I think the critical consensus afterwards was that it wasn't very good. Okay, yeah, sure. I know the... You can say the... We are trying to argue this here. They're not a limp biscuit, but you're saying they're close.

I remember this anecdote. There used to be a music industry message board, the Velvet Rope, and it was late 90s, early 2000s. A fantastic forum because you knew that a lot of these high-level industry executives were posting there. I still remember to this day a lot of trashing and thrashing of Linkin Park. Somebody mentioned on there,

I think it was a great anecdote, maybe it stuck with me because nobody ever published it. The reason they gave the band the name Linkin Park was so Linkin Park would be filed next to Limp Bizkit in the record store.

That's the only reason this band had this name. So enough of these teenagers who were CD shopping, and this was the dying days of CD shopping, you know, being a regular ritual, they would in fact be drawn to Linkin Park just because their CD was sitting next to the one by Fred Durst. Yeah, that's another band I've seen live.

But yeah, anyway. Okay, so where are we with this argument? Who won that debate? I want to leave here. We're both right, because Chester Bennington, yeah, there wasn't that much out there. I mean, maybe I'm looking in the wrong places,

but it felt like the right amount of mourning or whatever the kids do when they lose their own life. Well, in this current clickbait economy, a lot of articles get published with the expectation they'll be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and that people will read one story and click another. So if you see websites focusing heavily on one subject, one story, it's usually a symptom of the fact that a lot of people were reading it to begin with. So they come up with more, follow-up, a sequel, sequel to the sequel.

All the clickbait they can make about any given topic. And it seemed like there was a lot about Chester Bennington. And as a result of this, yeah, I'm left wondering, in fact, whether it was a story that the media missed all these years, that this was a more compelling figure than others would have given him credit for, and that, in fact, unlike all the grunge gods, a lot of whom have passed away, here's somebody that people missed the boat on. I mean, the guy couldn't even get his records played on the radio anymore. That's how it had gotten for them.

They were on tour. They were going to play in Toronto, Budweiser stage. Of course, the show got canceled. And there's the legacy for you. Another legend gone, Chester Bennington. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, the guy died.

It's depressing. He had six kids. So I don't want to come here and just ridicule him. You know, Shannon Hoon was singing backup in the Don't Cry video for Guns N' Roses on the Use Your Illusion album. And the whole idea was Blind Melon, right, would be successful, like, on the basis of this association.

That, you know, here was a guy who was hanging out with Axl Rose. Imagine there was a time, you know, now... There was speculation, because Soup, which was the follow-up that nobody bought, although I like it better than the album with No Rain, but that's another story. But there was speculation,

like the poor sales and reviews for the album contributed to the overdose death of Shannon Hoon. I would hate to think the poor reception and sales of this heavy, or whatever the album Linkin Park put out was called in 2017, had anything to do with this very final decision that Chester had to make?

I'm glad I made it down here so we could have a conversation about Linkin Park. How's this? No, the past two months, I was walking around, I wanted to talk this out with somebody. I wanted to speak to someone who had some thoughts about Chester and what he represented.

I think I'm satisfied now. I'm going home happy. Good. But not yet. Let's talk about the Shopper's Drug Mart self-checkout. And I have a clip. So I did a little editing just to get rid of the boring button presses. But let's listen to the voice of this Shopper's Drug Mart checkout robot?

Person? I don't know. Let's listen. Welcome to our self-checkout. Don't forget to scan your loyalty card. Scan your items now. Please use pen pad to complete payment. Thank you for using our self-checkout today.

Please take your bags and your receipts. That is a vocal fry that we would hear from a Kourtney Kardashian or someone of that ilk. Available at a Shoppers Drug Mart near you right now, because when they install these self-checkout machines, which has turned into a big political issue in Ontario right now. The fact that a $15 minimum wage is coming around the corner, that Kathleen Wynne is dedicated to making this thing happen. You know, it's one of the topics that she's running for re-election based on. The fact that she can put more money into the pockets of people that work for these big companies in particular, dealing with the fact that Galen Weston Jr., the CEO of Loblaw, a guy born with the silverest spoon in his mouth,

told shareholders that they're worried about this. They don't think they can deal with the repercussions of having to pay people more. And he was one of the executives who stated that they would be doing everything possible to fight back and install technology, whatever innovations they need to use in order to pay people less money. Now, he got slaughtered for this, right? I mean, here's this guy. He's a billionaire. He was born on third base.

What is he talking about? Does he have so little empathy for the people working for him that he could make a statement like this? On the other hand, that's Bay Street. That's business. That's how it works. Your job is to keep costs down as low as possible.

He was just doing his job. The shareholders wouldn't have it any other way. In the early 90s, I was working at a grocery store, and one of the guys I worked part-time with got into Costco. He got a gig at the Islington Queensway Costco. At that time, the

part-time workers at Costco were paid more than $15 an hour. We were all very envious. They were very well compensated. I'm just throwing it out there. We would have loved to have switched spots. We thought this guy had just struck gold by getting a gig at Costco. So the Shoppers Drug Mart self-checkout voice. Right, let's talk about his voice. It's become sort of a symbol here. I think we're going to be even hearing more about this over the coming year or two. Because there's something about that vocal inflection, right? The vocal fry? Is that how you describe it? It's called a vocal fry.

Somebody snarked on Twitter about how, you know, here's another example of men telling women how they should talk. Now, I realize that was tongue in cheek, but, you know, the fact that anybody would express any displeasure with the fact that here was a female voice who, you know, was not aesthetically pleasing and, in fact, a little bit irritating and that if you want to do self-checkout at Shoppers Drug Mart, you had to listen to her. Well, let's hear it one more time real quick here. Welcome to do self-checkout at Shopper's Drug Mart, you had to listen to her. Well, let's hear it one more time real quick here. Welcome to our self-checkout. Don't forget to scan your loyalty card.

Scan your items now. It's almost like its affliction is like slacker. The vocal fry is what it's called, and the Kardashians are famous for doing it. And you hear it in places like it's called, and the Kardashians are famous for doing it, and you hear it in places, like it's a new style. But it's also not a very Canadian style of speaking, right? It's like, welcome to the self-checkout.

I guess I'm curious. Something like Brooklynese about it, maybe a Valley Girl sort of thing? Yeah, more Valley Girl, maybe. Is there any region of Canada where people genuinely talk like that? Like, gag me with a spoon, or whatever. I just played a Zappa song,

so I got Valley Girl in my head. I don't know how this gets to live in a store. I can't believe this passed all the rounds of approvals and stuff like that. This is the voice actress they hired. Okay, so last year at 1236, I had Pizza Pockets. I turned that into a national

cause celeb, the fact that they were discontinuing McCain Pizza Pockets in favor of a fancier version, more artisanal style of Pizza Pockets, trying to make them look healthier than they really are. So I was very proud of myself for plucking this thing out of obscurity and turning it into a nationwide story. And this summer, this time, it was the Shopper's Drug Mart self-checkout voice lady. Somebody had tweeted about it earlier in the summer. It was actually Todd Maffin. Does that name ring a bell? He's a guy who was on CBC and one of these social media expert gurus.

Anyway, he's tweeted and blogged and posted tens of thousands of things. I figured eventually he would get around to posting something useful. And he finally did. It was the audio of the Shopper's Drug Mart self-checkout, along with this little condemnation about it. Condescending, mansplaining, telling a woman how to speak. So I drew attention to the tweet in something that I wrote about in the newsletter. All of a sudden, Todd Maffin's tweet, which had, I think, one like or share or something beforehand, it just blew up into the hundreds and thousands.

I took this thing from zero to 60,000. You have great power. As far as making the Shopper's Drug Mart self-checkout go viral. I heard talk radio stories about it, like it was a brand new thing. This is what I love about 1236, bringing, shining a light on stuff like this. Like to me, I don't want to hear about Doug Ford.

I want to hear about the Shoppers Drug Mart self-checkout vocal fry. You're going to hear about Doug Ford too, but I think these things are a needle in a haystack, and I'm always out there searching for them. And anybody should send me anything at any time that they think could get this level of attention because it's fun playing around with the news and how something becomes known and popular. What leads to the sort of outrage that we see on social media? What makes a topic pertinent enough that people are writing

impassioned columns about it, usually with some sort of scolding about how could this happen? So we escalated it to the point that Shopper's Drug Mart actually had to respond. And in the replies, it was buried a little bit. They didn't make much effort to get it recognized, but they left a little message at Todd Maffin to tell him that they are currently working on re-recording the self-checkout prompts. Now I'm a little disappointed, though.

I kind of like the idea now that when I go to a shop... Get in while you can! I mean, so as far as the dialect is concerned, my suspicion that this was done offshore. But it doesn't sound like a pro. It sounds like a regular, maybe that was the idea. I don't know.

It sounds like a regular cashier. But also, it's a robot voice from another country. And how I know this is because they specified that when they redo the self-checkout, they'll be using Canadian talent. So you see, we turn this into like a nationalistic issue. Suddenly it's about the patriotism of your self-checkout lady. So the advice that we can leave with at this time is that you should get in while you can. And the shopper's talking about self-checkout experience is not long for this world, and they're going to be changing that voice in the next few weeks, and 1236 will be on it.

Get in while you can. My local Shoppers Drug Mart has nothing that fancy. It would never have a self-checkout, I don't think. But I'm playing the Arkells' My Heart Always Yours because the singer produces a podcast called Mike on Much. Sounds a little close to Toronto Mike. Is there anything I should be worried about there?

But Mike on Much had Frank D'Angelo on. Please, can you provide for us a Frank D'Angelo update? Well, I mean, the easiest thing to do, even though it's time-consuming, is to find the Mike on Much podcast and listen to the Frank D'Angelo episode

because I think in the annals of Canadian podcasting history this was a masterpiece it was these guys that do this podcast the guy from the Arkells is a producer so he's in there Mike on Much but is Mike on Much

who is Mike on Much? he's the Much who is Mike on Much? he's the guy behind the scenes at Much Music and he does this podcast I emailed him and asked him more about it he didn't even get back to me maybe that I'm on here now he will because they're bringing back the spirit a little bit I think

of the old Nation's Music Station as far as doing interviews with mostly music stars and and i think it's a tight show it's really impressive the fact that this guy from the oracles is behind it uh that he does the production i think that should be better known than it than it really is uh so so one of the uh recurring themes on the show is they would constantly talk about frank d'angelo right right uh he He is our very own apple juice auteur, you know, a man of many talents.

I mean, so many talents. There aren't enough hours in the day to consume Frank D'Angelo content. He's got his sports talk show. You know, he's singing. He's a crooner on a whole bunch of albums. And, of course, you know, every year or so, he makes one of these movies. And the most recent one was called The Neighborhood.

So the Mike on Much podcast, after a saga in which they were constantly talking about the idea of having him on there, just like you and Ann Romer, except Frank was a little more elusive, right? He was nervous about what he was in for. Like, Frank is not used to appearing on platforms that he doesn't own, right? Okay, tell me, because now I'm intrigued. He has his own programming. He controls his content or whatever.

To get Frank D'Angelo to submit to an interview is not a very easy thing, and I think any experience he has, uh, uh, things didn't end very well because he ended up complaining about it. And he, you know, he doesn't want other people misinterpreting what he does or who he represents or where he gets his money from. So the whole thing is he wants people to watch the being Frank talk show. Um, and, And, you know, to be a real Frank fan, right, to be one of the Frank D'Angelo faithful, it means tuning in to things that he gives you.

So this Mike on Much podcast scored the interview. It was terrific. But is it real talk? Yeah, it was real talk with Frank. I've got to listen to this. I'm tiny bit jealous right now. I feel like I could have been Mike Unmuch if I had secured Frank D'Angelo.

But they got it and I need to hear it. There's a lot of gamesmanship involved. I think you have to come at Frank from the right angle. Otherwise it's not going to end very well. I'm going to to come at Frank from the right angle. Otherwise, it's not going to end very well.

I'm going to stick a van roamer. It feels safer. So, the Neighborhood movie came out this summer. Played in downtown Toronto at the Scotiabank Theatre, home of the Broken Escalator. And so, you know, he managed to book this movie in downtown Cineplex Theater.

And Frank prides himself on the fact that he shoots his movies as fast as possible. Right? None of this mumbo jumbo where you spend days trying to perfect every scene, every shot. He'll finish a whole movie. He's no Kubrick. Let's put it that way. he'll finish a whole movie he's no Kubrick let's put it that way is there

somewhere you can go to learn how many paid tickets were purchased for a movie of that nature something that scale well here's the thing I think that Frank handles his own booking of the cinema

so he just kind of rents the room plays it I don't want to say anything that I haven't confirmed here his own booking of the cinema. So he just kind of rents the room, plays it, just sort of like how his show is on CH. I don't want to say anything that I haven't confirmed here. Allegedly. At least, yeah, before I consult with my lawyers. Fair enough. It seems like Frank is fully in control

of his own distribution and where a movie plays and for how long. And of course, that requires paying money up front. Cash. Here it's cash in a paper bag that is delivered to these guys. We've got TIFF going on. There are so many filmmakers who would give anything to get that level of attention that Frank D'Angelo gets.

Let me ask you this, Mark Weisblatt. This is a question for you. If you had to guess how many people paid for a ticket to watch The Neighborhood in a theater, give me a ballpark guess. Well, I know like

five or six guys who went out together on a Tuesday night to watch a movie. To pay for it. Yeah, a bunch of Twitter guys. Is that your guess? Six?

Well, that's how many I know. I'm taking the under. You're taking the under? They personally went? I know. They posted their ticket st know. I'm taking the under. You're taking the under? They personally went. They posted their ticket stubs. I'm being funny. This was for real. So yeah, they made sure not to miss the neighborhood.

But hopefully Frank continues because he is a source of endless content. And where else do you have a Canadian creator, a guy responsible for so many films, who will go onto a podcast and trash talk the people who have written unfavorable things about him? There was a piece in Vanity Fair that he didn't like. Will Sloan reviewed a previous movie, Sicilian Vampire for the Globe and Mail. That didn't sit very well with the man behind the motion picture. So this is the reason that he wants to be in control. So there's a podcast recommendation. Mike on Much with Frank D'Angelo and Mike on Much in general. And this guy from the Arkells. Look, I mean, they did a big show this summer at Budweiser Stage, Ontario Place.

They put out a video. It was like one of those things like Platinum Blonde. Remember when Platinum Blonde played at Nathan Phillips Square? It was a sesquicentennial, 1984. They did a video to show how many fans they had in their hometown. It was going to be their big breakthrough for America, right? That they could show that they could bring out like tens of

thousands of kids to scream. That was the... Beatlemania all over again. Yeah, that was a platinum blonde apex. I remember that was a crying over you video all over Toronto Rocks and everywhere. Video hits and everything. So the Arkells did the same sort of thing on YouTube.

On Vivo. They put up videos of their big show. Thousands of screaming fans. Looked like a great time, early summer night. And I think this was their way of showing the American audience that they could actually play to crowds of this size. And the better songs that they have, the music that they're doing, I think it's built for audiences like that.

And I only started to understand what they were doing when they talked about influences that they were trying to make music that would click like Huey Lewis and the News or Hall and Oates. I think they mentioned ELO. They were using this influence to write the kind of songs that could play to these big arenas and reach this level of popularity.

I'm interested to see where that goes for another band from Hamilton, in this case. I hear nothing but good. Hamilton is Toronto's Brooklyn. I read that somewhere. When I asked Dave Hodge who he thinks the next big band's going to be, he went straight to Arkell's, and I heard. I read that somewhere. When I asked Dave Hodge who he thinks the next big band's going to be, he went straight

to Arkell's, and I knew he was going there. That's the sexy answer. Who is your next Tragically Hip? If there could ever be another Tragically Hip, it is the Arkell's. Well, there's also a video on YouTube of them playing Psycho Killer, talking head song with Jean Gomeschi singing. I don't know if that's a proud part

of their catalog, but I don't know if that's a proud part of their catalog, but I don't know. If you're familiar with them because of that, I don't know if it's going to go over very well. Speaking of Psycho Killer, earlier, I think maybe your last appearance, we played a track from Selena Gomez, right? With Psycho Killer sample. Yeah, and that didn't take off as much as I thought.

No, but maybe because she did not do any promotion this summer because she was getting a new kidney. Did you read about this? I did. I caught that in my feeds. These pop stars need to promote their stuff, you know? They need to get out there and get in your face, like Taylor Swift has mastered the art of doing this. Well, what about promoting kidney transplants?

I mean, who's the young star that represents those? You know, if you need those, you can't live without them. So maybe she can do some good in this world of branding. Taylor Swift has this new album coming out. Yeah, well, yeah. And she's on the side of UPS trucks.

You can get UPS to deliver your Taylor Swift LP to your door. Is that $50,000? No, because she doesn't deliver it. I don't think so. But the whole idea at this point, right, is that like, you know, we've seen that example with enough of these pop stars. Katy Perry is no longer considered all that credible,

but she was somebody who played up this whole strategy, this approach, the social media marketing of music that's not just about the songs, right? You're supposed to be fully immersed into the existence of this omnipotent person. And now Taylor Swift is here for everybody to be sick of her this fall.

We literally played that video over and over again to analyze it, the new video, Look What You Made Me Do, I believe. And there's messages in there, like anti-Kanye messages and maybe something against Katy Perry. There's just all this imagery that's supposed to— But why not anything against Donald Trump, huh? Because she realizes that half her fans would turn against her. Yeah, especially those who came from her country days. But let's, can you do,

I'm looking at the time here, will you be able to tell me about the Rebel Media drama in less than ten minutes? I don't know if I want to talk about it for ten minutes, but you seem more compelled about it. I've heard other episodes where you have

mentioned on here the fact that you need me to explain rebel media to you. That's the biggest rule that I have in your life. Come in your basement once every quarter and explain what this Ezra Levant thing is all about. Well, I had Alex Pearson on the show, and we talked a lot about the Sun News Network. And

as I understand, rebel media comes out of the ashes of that. And I know people have resigned, and there's some fight. I heard a Canada Land podcast about someone in England, I believe.

I mean, there's so much going on here. I got a bit from the Canada Land episode. I've got a bunch from you on 1236. So could you summarize the summer at Rebel Media? Hold on, let me give it a shot. What happened this summer in Charlottesville ended up being a turning point for Rebel Media. And it all happened because Rebel Media correspondent

Faith Goldie was on the scene covering the protest. So this was a whole thing with the tiki torches and the guys marching, saying Jews will not replace us, right? And a Vice News documentary that got a lot of attention in which the Vice reporter was embedded with these white nationalists and what they were doing, right? And this guy was packing all these guns, and he ended up on Facebook weeping about the fact that he was going to be arrested and how he regretted everything that he ever did.

This was a really brutal scene, right? And we're joking here about the Trump presidency, but of course, in the aftermath of this, that was really the day that a lot of things changed. So Faith Goldie of The Rebel, she was on the scene, and she was doing her periscopes and YouTube videos, Twitter, of course, making it clear that she was, by her standards, having a pretty good time, that she was energized by the situation that was happening there. And then while she was doing one of her periscopes happening right behind her,

we had the situation where a car ran into protesters, the Antifa protesters, the people who did not like neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, and managed to capture the image of what happened there. I mean, she had the clearest shot of this international news story. She had the clearest shot of this international news story. And this turned into some dark days for the rebel. Whereas at first, Ezra was pretty proud of the fact that he had a reporter on the scene, or at least he seemed to suggest as much. He was saying that these international news organizations were contacting him for footage. Everybody wanted to know about it.

A few days later, it came up that Faith Goldie had appeared on a podcast connected to this website called The Daily Stormer. Have you heard of The Daily Stormer? I have, but only after this instance. Oh, okay. So there she is on the podcast yucking it up with these characters who are not shy about their beliefs, which are beliefs that you would certainly want to categorize as white supremacist. So she's on there flattered by these guys. They think she's on there, flattered by these guys. They think she's great.

You know, they think that she's, you know, their girlfriend up in Canada who tells it like it is, you know, talking about white genocide and, you know, whatever other topics were on her mind. And, you know, they made some sort of joke about Ezra Levant asking her, does he eat bacon, knowing that he's Jewish? And her response was something like, well, he eats bacon, but only if it's free bacon. Oh, what a stereotype. Her boss, Ezra, catches wind of this. And with all the turmoil that was going on, he said he had no choice but to announce that she was no longer with the rebel, that they were getting rid of her. This was in the same week in which Gavin McInnes, another character, announced that he was leaving. He'd gotten a better deal somewhere else. I don't think he's announced where that is yet. He says he's got a more mainstream platform, right? Gavin McInnes, co-founder of Vice,

Gavin McInnes, co-founder of Vice. And, you know, in this whole alt-right thing, he's emerged as something of a big figure. The Proud Boys. The Proud Boys. This is really dark stuff. But I'll come around to a conclusion in a second. And one of the co-founders of Rebel Media resigned. Yeah, Brian Lilly.

From Sun News Network. And he works for Bell Media as well in Ottawa, CFRA. Yeah, he said, this isn't what I got into this for. I originally thought that, you know, we were going to be, you know, somewhat provocative in different ways in, you know, going after Canadian politics, you know, making videos about Justin Trudeau's socks. I didn't sign up for this shit. I wasn't really interested in being involved in the whole alt-right movement, what it embodies, what it represents.

At the same time, you've got Ezra coming out and saying, I'm not alt-right either. And alt-right, which was a term which was originally seen as a little bit subversive, it ended up representing something else entirely. It became synonymous with neo-Nazism. And there was nothing subcultural about it anymore. It wasn't something that you would want to be involved with in polite society. that you would want to be involved with in polite society. And for the fact that all along they weren't really disavowing this stuff,

that it took the events in Charlottesville to make all this happen, created a little bit of a crisis. Now, while all this was going on, Ezra had hired a kid in the UK. Kalen Robertson was his name. Sort of like Milo Yiannopoulos, like a Dollarama version of Milo Yiannopoulos, who would do these British reports for him. And, you know, he hired him on site, not a lot of vetting, no due diligence as to figure out this guy's background, what he was really all about. And what ended up happening was the tables turned. all this conspiratorial stuff that he was doing behind the scenes,

all kinds of nefarious things involving fundraising money, which wasn't going to the purpose that they were announcing it for, different claims, different accusations, which Ezra ended up having to refute. Now, the takeaway from all of this, of course, the kid who was trying to blackmail him is no longer with the firm. They've been doing some fighting on Twitter. He seems to want to strike out on his own. Do we need another Milo Yiannopoulos type? Do we need somebody to recite the same talking points on YouTube? Well, that's between him and his Patreon contributors, if people are interested in what he has to say.

But my takeaway, which is a little more empathetic towards Ezra than a lot of people have been. Even when I was on here before, I think I acknowledged some admiration about what he was doing in starting up his own media company from scratch. And I was really nervous about saying it on here because I don't want something showing up on Twitter that I'm some sort of apologist, right,

for every alt-right goofball out there. I'm not paying attention to absolutely everything that he's doing. I don't know. I mean, Andrew Scheer, the conservative leader, he also found himself in this trap because he also said he enjoyed watching The Rebel. Then he had to backtrack on that and say,

I don't know everything that they do. I'm watching it when I can. This company has to be responsible for everything they put out. They have to have some sort of editorial standards. So Ezra puts out a very special episode where he talks about the fact that they didn't have enough editorial oversight, that he was being stretched too thin, and that things were being broadcast on his channel beneath his brand.

He didn't even know what was going on. He couldn't say no to anybody. This Faith Goldie went to Charlottesville. He said he didn't want her what was going on. He couldn't say no to anybody. This Faith Goldie went to Charlottesville, he said he didn't want her to go there, but she went anyway. Once the dust settled on all of this, once article after article after article was written about Ezra, the rebel, National Post, five-page print feature about everything this guy was about. How he was representing something in Canadian society which wasn't all that polite. I was able to reflect on what happened here and realize that I

think all Ezra was trying to do was create an outlet for weirdos like him. Outsider eccentrics. mean, the company is called Rebel Media. People that wouldn't find a place with anybody else, that would never be hired by CTV, CBC, Global. What use would they have for the kinds of characters that he was giving a platform to? for the kinds of characters that he was giving a platform to. In that sense, I don't think Ezra is all that different from the village voice, from Gawker, from Second City, right? All these entities, all these legendary things, which came out of outsiders banding together and finding each other,

creating a counterculture out of the fact that they didn't see a place for themselves anywhere else. I think Ezra wanted rebel media to be like that. I think he still wants it to be like that. But based on all these departures, he has to find some new talent. We will find out whether his reputation now has been too tarnished. And if he can't pull it off, and most intelligent people don't think he can. You know, what I mean, you know, he had someone like Faith Goldie in there who, you know, had a legitimate background. Her high school had to disavow her right Havergal College they they put out a statement like kind

of cryptic you know saying that they they didn't condone any alt-right behavior in in so many words well of course they don't. So can rebel media reinvent itself as something that's on the outside? That's an outlet that gives you a perspective that nobody else is doing. Well, that's between Ezra and his supporters. I mean, he's got a website. He's looking for people to sign up. And if they like what he's doing, he pledges to keep on doing it. And, you know, based on all the attention that he's getting, it seems like the Canadian media need this guy. It seems like he does something, poking and prodding, that there's a demand for, even if the purpose is to be in opposition to it. And Ezra's been around a long time. And he's familiar with

the fact that a lot of people out there hate him. He revels in it. That's part of the shtick. He can't live without it. So we will see if he's the guy who can continue to carry this on with some sort of future. In the meantime, Faith Goldie is without a gig. There's some speculation that's floated how these people might find an audience in America, how a lot of Canadian characters and personalities who've managed to be considered too fringe for Canada, have managed to build up followings and followers in the United States. Somebody like Jordan Peterson gets lumped into this thing. Professor Jordan Peterson on Patreon. He's making, what, $62,000, $3,000, $4,000 a month now to U.S. for his lectures.

But he's not alt-right either. The thing is, there's so much to consume. There's so much to know about that I don't think you can argue about the distinctions between these people. I don't think you can defend any of them without risking, you know, seeming like you're antisocial. You'll get called a neo-Nazi. And this, you know, this has been the new shape of today's clickbait, right? Whereas people used to write articles online about all sorts of fun and quirky topics. Here I am trying to keep things light. And all this stuff keeps getting in the way about how everyone's a racist. And we've got fascists all over the place that need to be

beaten down. This isn't how society works. This is what's become of the imaginary world of the internet. And so I don't think it's been a great summer. I don't think it's been such a terrific time. I felt psychologically beaten down by a lot of this stuff. I don't want to read over and over again about how wrong people are. I don't want to see one attack after another about how something that appeared in the paper was insensitive and how all the editors should be fired and heads should be put on a platter. I don't know how much more of this anybody can take. But the people who are driving it and pushing this along, I don't know if they'll get tired of it anytime soon. What do you think? I'm still, that was great, first of all. I'm pretty sure it was over 10 minutes, though, but that's okay. Was it? needed to know what was going on and i needed to know what you thought about

enough yeah for you to have any thoughts yeah it's uh you are a uh not i'm not even sure there's anything wrong with it because you articulated it quite well but you are an ezra sympathizer that does not mean no no no no no no i should have paid more attention no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, night speech, right? How I'm sticking up for those who don't see themselves reflected in the status quo. And so I think if somebody starts up a company, you know, saying that they're going to, you know, find a whole bunch of media eccentrics and try to turn them into established stars, establish stars. I don't see how you cannot support that. The problem is that it's coming from a place, it's coming from a perspective that sometimes is a little rude, a little racist. And in that sense, I got to watch what I say. So from the rebel, the digital enterprise,

let's go to the dead tree stuff for a quick second here because Globe and Mail fired some longtime popular columnists. With a form letter. Right, Leah McLaren, Tabitha Southey, who were both in the paper every week as freelancers. Leah McLaren was around for a long time. Yeah. Started as an intern at the Globe.

Like forever, right? Late 1990s, newspaper war. Back at a time when they still could count on young people to buy a print newspaper. My ex, I believe my ex had a subscription to the Global Mail primarily because of her back in the day. The voice of a generation.

The Generation X thing was still alive and lively. When you speak about media outsiders, the whole idea of giving a newspaper column to a woman of 22, 3, 4. That was a radical act back

around Y2K, early 2000s. And it was Leah who reaped the rewards. People would get so incensed about her. The fact that she was given this space in the newspaper.

Because there were so many people in Toronto, journalists who were trying to make it, wannabes, who figured that they could do a better job. And the fact that Leah's mother and her uncle had both worked there for the Globe, there was always talk about nepotism, and this is how it all happened. Well, look, that's how the world works.

So she did column after column after column. She's also done some great feature writing. The columnist thing is a lot different, because you're given space and you're expected to fill it. So there's not a lot of screening sometimes about whether your ideas are good or not. You're working on a deadline, and sometimes you end up writing a column about how you breastfed the baby, or tried to anyway, of conservative leadership candidate Michael Chong, which will go down as Leah's most remembered Globe column of all. So they told her she was done, she was through, she was over, her services were no longer required as a weekly freelance columnist.

What I saw didn't seem to indicate that she could never write for them again. Nonetheless, the fact that it was so cool and impersonal from David Walmsley, Globe and Mail editor-in-chief, so cool and impersonal from David Walmsley, Globe and Mail editor-in-chief. She snapped back with a sort of parody response. It's on the Canada Land website. So, you know, the email was forwarded around with her permission and essentially told him off.

Like, what kind of way is this to treat somebody who's written for your newspaper for 17 years? So it wasn't just the fact that it was cold and impersonal, saying we're reducing our freelance footprint. But it was also that she found out that Tabitha Southey wrote a

column in the Saturday paper, got the exact same form letter, just with a different name attached. That is cold. Now, Leah has faded a little bit as far as the social media thing is concerned. I mean, she just hasn't tried to be as much of a part of it all. She's got two small kids. She lives in London, England.

So it hasn't been her thing. But Tabitha Southey, on the other hand, turned herself into a Twitter celebrity. You see her tweets all over the place. And one of the things that created the impression that her column was well-read every week was the fact that people would, more recently, they'd post screenshots. They would quote from it, get into all sorts of threads, you know, praising her for managing to get these side swipes, you know, into Canada's national newspaper. And, you know, how did she even get away with this? You know, a lot of, well, I mean,

one of the last columns she wrote was all about the rebel and Ezra Levant and how unhinged he is. and Ezra Levant and how unhinged he is. So he got the last laugh in this case. So a lot of outpouring of affection for Tabitha Southey, the fact that they let her go. Didn't hear much about it. The Globe and Mail runs a cryptically closed shop. You can't really get an answer from the Globe and Mail about what they're doing these days.

And the only way it seems you can find out about the politics of the Globe and Mail is to hear from the publisher, Philip Crawley. So he gave an interview a few days later where he said something pretty candid about the columnists, which was essentially that at some point you just have to hit the reset button without naming names. Eventually people get repetitive and

tired i'm paraphrasing here but but but but they they they give the impression that they are no longer interested in actually writing for the globe that they'd rather be doing anything else and they're just filling these column inches because it's a freelance paycheck. So he was specifically talking about one or the other, maybe both of these women. But yeah, it brought on more of a backlash, a bit more fury directed at the Globe. Whether these people that were complaining about it are subscribers or not, it doesn't seem like too many of them are. And at the end of the day here, even though the Globe is owned by a billionaire, David Thompson, they're still being forced to turn a profit if they can. They're still expected to generate money and make something happen. So right now they're announcing a revamped Globe and Mail that in December, December

1st, we'll see a different kind of paper. We'll see how much of this is hyperbolic or how much of it is genuinely different or interesting. One of the things that Philip Crawley is promising is that the print newspaper will reflect what people are talking about online so that they'll use data from Twitter, from Facebook, to determine what's worth a space in the print paper. The problem with this theory is that we've seen time and time again that the online readership and the print readership are not the same in terms of the age groups, the demographics, what the people reading do all day,

what they're interested in, there's usually not that much correlation anymore between a print reader and somebody who comes across columns on social media. Now, somewhere in there, there's got to be a pony. We imagine that at some point here, they'll find a magic business model and a way to make it all happen. And the bottom line here is that it's going to require people paying for content. That if you're going to put out dozens and hundreds of articles a day, then this is no longer going to come for free, and there's going to be a subscription cost attached to that. So I think that's where we're going with the Globe and Mail.

And if they are successful, look at Margaret Wente. She got the brunt of this backlash. The fact that here was this columnist who once or twice was exposed for plagiarism, not just alleged plagiarism, but an actual thing that they apologized for, and that she kept her job over there. If the Globe plan ends up working, I don't think you'll ever hear about Margaret Wente

on social media again. And the reason is because you have to pay to read her. All right, now we're coming up to like an hour and 50 minutes here so we're going to have to go a little rapid fire because I have several subjects to get to and I wanted to kick out the jams with you.

You mentioned the goal of making money online with your content. The Athletic is covering sports. They had a Toronto site, which I had a couple of the guys from there, James Myrtle and Sean Fitzgerald over here talking about it. But they're now rapidly expanding to all the Canadian cities that have NHL teams.

So all those cities they're going to expand to. They named a bunch of big name acquisitions, names people who read sports content are familiar with. And do you have any thoughts on, I guess, the onwards and upwards for the athletic that they're going to make a real go of this? I keep reading comments about

how the writing isn't as good as they expect it to be. Although this might be coming from established sports writers, right? Like Damien Cox. Damien Cox, Steve Simmons. Right. They're both going to come in here, and one of my questions for each of them will be,

what do you think of the athletic? Because there's going to be a bit of jealousy going on. I think they're going to say the same things. They like the idea of this, but they wish. I heard Damien Cox said something about diversity, like there should be more diverse voices, and I got to ask him about diversity, like there should be more diverse voices, and I've got to ask him about that, because the

Fan 590 daytime lineup are a bunch of white guys. Who's throwing the stones? I think part of the criticism is something I can empathize with the athletic side of it. You're putting together this content, you're writing really fast,

so there's going to be sloppy sentences. Typos are inevitable. I've got one or two every week that I end up having to regret. So if you want speed, if you want a report on a game that just happened or even something that's a little more analytical, but you're under the gun to get it in by a deadline, it might not have the same finesse as what's in the traditional newspaper. But at the same time,

newspapers are constantly being dragged for bad editorial decisions. So you can't win. Let's hear from... One of my favorite shows of all time is The Wire. One of the great characters in The Wire. There are many but one is Stringer Bell. Stringer Bell was played by Idris Elba.

Idris Elba was at TIFF and let's hear from him briefly. I wasn't supposed to say anything but Like our movie, this is improvised. I hope you don't mind. I just want to say thank you Toronto man

seriously This is this is one of the greatest film festivals in the world and you guys are amazing you're real moviegoers We feel very privileged right to to bring our film. I've just realized what TIFF actually stands for Toronto is fucking fantastic. So there's some great, a great clip for TIFF anyways. Will he lose any work out of that? No. Is there any sanctions that will follow about swearing?

Saying the F word? I guess not, right? I mean, if you're in movies aimed at grownups, at least they used to have a lot of swearing. That was part of the reason to see an R-rated movie, right? You know it's okay when the... Saying the F word with abandon. Sure, when the official TIFF Twitter account

shares that uncensored, you know that it's a different time now. I think that we're okay with that. Okay, well, yeah. So Film Festival wrapping up after another week, another year. We'll see what the future brings for TIFF because movies ain't what they used to be.

Movie stars aren't bringing in the box office that they were once expected to. And TIFF itself, the organization, has had to confess having some financial trouble, including the fact that fewer people are showing up to this light box downtown Toronto, right? The whole idea here was to make the film festival experience happen 365 days a year, and they haven't found the audience for that that they were expecting. So this guy, Piers Handling, the main director of the festival, he's stepping down. They say they're going to get into other things. They brought in the think-fluencers that will concentrate more on television.

Once we get the real story about what's going on there, I think it'll be fascinating to find out the politics behind some of their decisions, because this thing brings in a whole lot of money. They even get the city to shut down the street for half of the week. The streetcars. Yeah, for sure.

TIFF, big deal. Yeah, but look, it's all fueled by these movie star egos. When you see a George Clooney out there, you know, getting his chin wagged by an old grandma. I mean, all this stuff is so performative, and I think it's subject to a lot of transition in our world of social media authenticity. You know, does a movie star mean anything anymore? You sound like Jim Carrey there.

Is Richard Dreyfuss at TIFF? No, no, no. Richard Dreyfuss was two weeks ago, right? So tell me about Richard Dreyfuss. Fan Expo Canada. Annual event, right? Metro Convention Center. And you usually see an expected guest list of people signing autographs from sci-fi TV shows.

Or this year, a reunion of cast members from Rocky Horror, even Tim Curry, made the trip. But it's kind of rare that you see a real movie star, like a guy that won an acting academy award, showing up at an event like this, signing autographs and posing for pictures. Richard Dreyfuss made the track into Toronto. And it's not such a secret. He's got articles about this. He did some interviews talking about the fact that he's broke

and he can't get a gig. You know, he did a hiatus to be like an Oxford intellectual for a few years. And then when he came back looking for parts in movies, nobody wanted him. So there he is posing for pictures and signing autographs. And part of his routine, I don't know if this is like a situationist shtick that he's pulling or what, but one of the things that he makes a point of doing is talking about the fact that he didn't like working with Bill Murray, right, 26, 27 years ago.

Is that Whatabow Bob? And he won't shut up about the fact that he doesn't like Bill Murray. You know, that he was like a belligerent Irish drunk or whatever he called him. So, you know, there's Richard Dreyfuss posing for these pictures with his fans. You've got

people tweeting about the fact that they've been fans of his for 40 years or more. They worship the movie Jaws. It was their lifelong dream to talk to him for 60 seconds and snap a picture. And some anecdote that appeared on an autographed forum was from somebody that paid their 60, 70 bucks to get a signature from Richard Dreyfuss and put the What About Bob poster in front of him. And he managed to scribble out Bill Murray's face, showing the fact that to this day, he can no longer stand looking at the guy. I would not sign the poster unless he removed any trace of Bill Murray from it. Somebody tweeted, broke Richard Dreyfuss is my favorite Richard Dreyfuss. We're going to need a bigger boat. Rubber duck. Last time you were here, we hadn't yet had the rubber duck.

What's the rubber duck aftermath? Well, what is it? I mean, look, you had a Twitter sensation, right? You got down to the rubber duck in that noon hour when it was unveiled, right? Canada Day weekend. Yep. And what was the text of your tweet? Did we learn nothing from the Trojan War?

Okay, there you go. And then the reaction started coming in, right? Okay, there you go. And then the reaction started coming in, right? And we learned, I think, how a popular tweet does not equate with more followers. No, it doesn't. In fact, it doesn't get you anything at all. No.

Except for this fleeting effect of all these notifications on your phone. It actually sucks because you drown in the notifications and you lose all the typical real stuff that you cared about every day. Like, it gets lost. Are you still getting retweets? Not like before. It's trickling now, but every couple of days, there's another like or retweet. Like, it hasn't stopped completely.

Okay, so the rubber duck came to Toronto and, you know, it was a big hit and I think sort of a punchline for the whole Canada 150 thing, right? While here in Ottawa, you know, they were getting all sorts of backlash for the fact that Canada 150 celebrations didn't pay enough heed to First Nations.

There's too much focus on these characters like John A. MacDonald, who some feel should be better removed from statues and public schools, any trace of history. So I think the rubber duck was exactly the relief be better removed from statues and public schools, any trace of history. So I think the rubber duck was exactly the relief that people were looking for, right? Something that was completely ridiculous, that could break the tension, and that everybody

could agree on. Right. Except, of course, for like the Fraser Institute, Taxpayers Federation, who said that, like, the Ontario government was wasting their money, right? It was going down the drain. Initially, there was a definite pushback from people who felt that

we should not be spending a dime on a rubber duck. And yet, once the duck was here, peace descended upon the world, and everybody was excited to see it. And now, I'm sort of jealous that you went down there because i made no such effort despite being around so so everybody loved the rubber duck and and the first stop on its ontario tour was toronto you know went through a whole

bunch of of other cities other other ports you know along the way there was a little bit of drama you know some some Some weekends were a little too windy. They were worried that they wouldn't blow the duck up because it might blow away. There was one location where the duck had to be put on land because of worries about something going on in the water that might have endangered it. And yeah, I think the rubber duck is, even though it's not a Toronto, Ontario, Canadian thing, that it's in fact an American deal, the people behind it could only walk away happy.

I mean, this thing became the stuff of legend, you know, entirely because of Toronto. Once everybody loved it here, the crowds came out in these other towns. If you're in Belleville and you hear that the giant rubber duck is coming. Yeah, that's a big deal. Like whatever. This is more exciting than Gene Simmons driving to your front door with his CDs. So you come here every quarter, Mark, and we've got to know each other.

I think this might be your eighth appearance. And yet I feel like I'm just getting warmed up. I know. I need to come back tomorrow. These things are not allowed to be over two hours, I've been told. But we're at the two-hour mark now, so we're going to break that. I wanted to hear... Yes, yes, I could be wrong Why, why should I pretend God only knows in the end

I wanted to hear one of your favorite jams. And there you were trying to hit the post on a song that you probably have never heard before. Correct. But I wasn't going to be a jerk and talk over the singing. Neither was I. That's why I just said, I'll just sound stupid rather than trample on this thing.

But tell me, this is China Crisis Black Man Ray. So I was thinking about this song in the wake of the death of Walter Becker from Steely Dan. I almost said Donald Fagan.

He's still alive. Yeah, he's still with us. And Steely Dan had their run of albums in the 70s. A lot has been written about them. I don't think as much as was written about Linkin Park, strangely. But yeah, you know, a lot of memories of Steely Dan, the fact that this band made a bunch of albums and refused to go on tour, right? Like they said that that was distracting them from what they wanted to do. So they made album after album after album, and in 1980 wrapped their

project up. And a few years later, and by that point, the mid-80s, I was more attuned to what was going on, the world of rock and roll. And I remember reading about the fact that Walter Becker was working with this band China Crisis, a British synth band that had been around for a little while to that point. that had been around for a little while to that point.

But here for a few years, Becker was a recluse. Not only was he going to produce China Crisis, he was actually listed as a member of the band. So for a guy who at the time, and now that I know how old he was when he died, he was only 35 years old right yet he was already seen as this grandpa right like like someone who represented music from a from a different era but uh things must have clicked uh by the fact that they they generated this album flaunt the imperfection um and i had a fondness for this tune when it came out

because I think for me it represented the idea that pop music could be like something a little more elitist, that it didn't have to be so disposable, that it could be a fine art form. And that was what Steely Dan were going for all along. I may not have been old enough to appreciate Sealy Dan, but that song stuck with me.

And when I heard that Walter Becker died, I listened to it a few times. Memories of the mid-80s and, you know, when a pop song could be presented as fine art and a form that no one would take seriously anymore. So I'm glad I lived through it, and I hope I live long enough to be back again.

I do too, man. But we've got to set our sights higher. But I'm with you. We could easily, easily have done four hours today. I left so much good stuff, but I had to cherry-pick some gold at the end because will people listen to a three-hour podcast? I don't know. Okay, well, you should subscribe to 1236.ca. You'll get the newsletter every day at 1236 covering the kind of topics we covered here,

but I'm turning on the news, so I never know what's going to happen tomorrow. on the news, so I never know what's going to happen tomorrow. And that brings us to the end of our 266th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Mark is at 1236.

Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Thanks for the t-shirt. And property in the six dot com is at Brian Gerstein. See you all next week. Where you been?

Because everything is kind of rosy and gray Yeah, the wind is cold But the snow wants me today And your smile is fine And it's just like mine And it won't go away Because everything is rosy