Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - 12:36: Toronto Mike'd #294

Episode Date: December 19, 2017

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

Welcome to episode 294 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent brewery celebrating 30 years in the craft beer business. Visit GLB at 30 Queen Elizabeth Boulevard for $5 beers. And propertyinthesix.com, Toronto real estate done right. And Paytm, an app designed to manage all of your bills in one spot. Download the app today from paytm.ca.

I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me is 1236 author and master Mark Weisblot. 1236 editor and whatever. I knew you.

I was struggling there. You saw me reeling like master of what? What exactly? But yes, you have your title you are you are mr 1236 Happy Hanukkah to you. And I'm really grateful that you didn't play Adam Sandler to usher me in here. This is much better. The late, great Sharon Jones.

Tell me this as an ignorant Gentile. Tell me, what day are we on right now? Right now, as we record this, we're careening towards the end of day seven. And tonight we'll mark the eighth day of Hanukkah. Usually it doesn't end with much ceremony. I was going to ask, does it build up? No, no. Sort of ends with a

whimper. I mean, you light all of the candles on the last night, but I think the timing this year is a little more fortuitous. Here we've got a new month, a new moon. Right before the winter solstice.

Sometimes Hanukkah is much closer to Christmas, and this time we have a little bit of a breather between the two. Is that normal, or am I once again showing my great ignorance here? Oh, it varies every year. In fact, last year, Hanukkah ended in 2017 on January 1st. Oh, wow. It was the last day, New Year's Eve. I think I've got that right.

But still, I think the fact that it's ending here, you know, at a time of year when things are moving into that seasonal mode, transitioning from one holiday season to another. It's worked out quite nicely. Last week, I was at Toronto City Hall for the mayor's menorah lighting. I actually made it in and got to see this annual ceremony that they do there for the first time ever in Toronto City Hall. They were able to light actual candles. The first time? Yeah, the first time that they got permission to do it.

Okay, I hear. So going on in there, there was a bunch of free kosher wine. These mini latkes. You know what latkes are, right? They're like pancakes. The potato pancakes. I probably had, I don't know, three or four glasses of wine, maybe 32 or 33 of the little latkes.

Also, the donuts were making the rounds, two or three of those. It was the sort of event where after it was over, I mean, it was just an after work thing. I sat there in one of those modernist chairs at City Hall wondering, what have I done? You've become quite the social butterfly because you also, you made an appearance at the Myseum thing with the Moses, the Moses Myseum thing.

Like you were there, right? According to Retro Ontario. With Ed Conroy, yeah, showing his People's City video, the premiere with Tommy Ambrose. Now, the thing is online. Anyone can watch it. And here I am following up the podcast you did with Ed, right?

The Retro Ontario Christmas Crackers. Volume one. Two guys at the top of their game. Oh, really? Yeah, that's what was happening here. But this is real. You're not just saying that because you've already dipped in. I should point out, you've already dipped into some Great Lakes beer. Which one are you drinking there? This one is called

Hopped Improperly. Never seen this one before. We've got some emojis on the can now. Is this something like at Loblaws, they sell these vegetables, naturally imperfect, that are a little bit warped? Or the apples. I buy a bag of

apples at No Frills, and it's naturally imperfect. They're apples. What do I care? If they're cheaper, I'm in. This is the emoji. You call it the emoji beer. It's got a couple of smiley faces on it. I'm drinking the outtakes, right? The leftovers from GLB. It's got a couple of smiley faces on it. Okay, so I'm drinking the outtakes, right? The leftovers from GLB.

So that's my beer. Beer of choice. But back to, let's not bury the lead here. Let's not bury the lead. Really, so that episode with Ed Conroy of Retro Ontario, which we did last week, or was it this week? It's all blurred to me. It was $2.93.

You think that might be the best episode yet? That's not hyper this week? It's all blurred to me. It was 2.93. You think that might be the best episode yet? That's not hyperbole? That's like a legit Mark Weisblot opinion? Yeah, well, you guys refined the topics you were talking about. We learned about Uncle Bobby and all

sorts of Uncle Bobby stories in that episode, right? Including what happened to all the old Uncle Bobby tapes. Fascinated by that story. Yes, the Buffalo Retro Ontario, yes. About how Uncle Bobby's relatives in England asked for all the master tapes because they thought maybe this was a goldmine.

They could put them all out on DVD, kind of like a box set of The Wire. Yeah, that's right. They could do an HD version, maybe. What happened was they did a little due diligence. They realized this wasn't feasible, and instead of sending the tapes back, they figured it was easier just to throw them all away.

To turf them. Man, that's so tragic. But thank you, because that was a heck of a lot of fun, episode 293 with Ed Conroy. But I'm telling you, the episodes with you are also personal favorites because this is going to be frenetic. In fact, I feel like we need to move on just to get to the meat because this is a full course meal here today. You always pack the punch. There's always more content than we can get to.

I always leave gold on the cutting room floor. I feel like we need like a, for patrons, I need like the extra bonus episode of all the stuff that we didn't get to just for the patrons. Well, this is my fourth visit here in 2017, right? We set out to do the quarterly appearance and here I've come through with four in a row. Usually about a month and a half between coming to your basement,

sometime in the middle of the night, I'll start to think about the fact that I do these podcasts with you and how surreal it is, right, that I come out to New Toronto. You always tweet a picture of that rogue byway every single quarter. That's how I know you're close. All the way down here to sit in your basement and rant ad infinitum about the state of the media. I love it. I love it. Quick question right off the bat.

We've never had a question for you before, but Marcassar. Marcassar? I hope I'm saying that right. Marcassar? M-A-R-K-A-S-A-R. There's two A's in there. Marcosar, like a dinosaur. I think Marcosar.

Anyway, Marcosar is a regular commenter on Toronto Mic, and he writes, I'm curious to know if he pays much attention to reddit.com slash r slash Toronto, and if so, if he thinks the comment section is a cesspool or has improved in any measurable way over the last few years. I'm more concerned whether Reddit Toronto is paying attention to 1236. And to me, there was one time on there I was described as a media troll.

Is that right? I don't know. That was Jesse Brown who wrote that comment. That was years ago now, although it was accompanied by a compliment. That was years ago now, although it was accompanied by a compliment. Once in a while, somebody will write something about my podcast on the subreddit for Toronto. And it'll be something like, this is a great podcast with really interesting Toronto people and deep dives, and you guys should listen. And it always just dies on the vine, like very few comments, very few upvotes.

It just sort of disappears. So every time it pops up, I always get, you know, hey, somebody will make me aware and I'll say, oh look, there's some potential exposure and then nothing. So I get the sense that what I'm delivering here is not quite the Reddit's cup of tea. I don't know if it's a younger crowd. Reddit is terrific. I use it as a resource

every day, finding links to what other people are talking about. Although once in a while, somebody will post something on Reddit that's entirely original. There have been some gems that have shown up there over the years. I think in general, we're at a flashpoint now with social media, where to be a writer, a journalist, any sort of creative content creator. It's harder than ever, I think, to get affirmation from the audience that's out there. Twitter has turned into this battleground, you know, what was once, I think, a much more supportive environment where people would curate news and chat about what was going on.

It's turned into this place where people try to one-up one another with showing how much woker they are or whatever their ideological position happens to be. And not finding a whole lot of encouragement for the idea of trying to make a business, trying to succeed in the media industry. We've actually devolved in that respect. And I think going into 2018, it's at the point where social media will have to get smarter or people will leave the platforms behind. We'll be back to the point that we were at in the era of print journalism where people would put something out there and just have to be confident that the audience was watching or listening or reading because the comments that you get in response to what you're doing, reading because the comments that you get in response to what you're doing, very few of them provide that kind of encouragement, right? When all you're getting in return is people wishing for your downfall, for something bad

to happen to you, then it's not the kind of place where you want to be hanging around. We got to get to the gold now. So right off the bat, right away, I want to thank everybody who became a Patreon. You become a Patron, but you go to patreon.com slash Toronto Mike to do that. So it gets confusing. But Mark, I'm sure you heard all about the controversy

when Patreon announced that they were going to add a surcharge to the Patreon, where usually they take it out of the, you know, the talent, the creator's end. This was very controversial. I saw a bunch of people cancel their patronage of Toronto Mic'd, and then this decision was reversed by Patreon. But I noticed they didn't come back. So please come back, patreon.com slash Toronto Mike, and help crowdfund this passion project, this enterprise.

Mark, you're already drinking your, we'll call it the emoji beer. That's what we'll call it. I think that's what it's called. My hopped improperly. There's a bunch more beer for you to take home. I know you like your tradition, if I'm correct. I don't know if you do it on cold days, although not too cold today. Went for a bike ride. My toes did not become numb. That's how I gauge how cold it is. It's actually reasonably warm for December. But do you, you're still going to go to the water, go to the lake, the waterfront and enjoy a beverage? Is that? I don't know.

I mean, it's almost winter here. It's kind of dark outside by the time I get out the door. Yeah. Just wondering if that tradition would continue. But you do have the beer, should you decide to make your way a little further south. Are you ready? This is kind of exciting that Brian now mixes it up and he records something unique for every guest. Yeah, great.

Something else to be self-conscious about. I don't think it's so bad. I usually pre-screen them just to make sure. Ever since the Jill Deacon Paris Accord question, I've been pre-screening to make sure we don't get too heavy too quickly. So I think this will be okay. But let's listen to Brian Gerstein. Brian Gerstein, for those who don't know by now, is a real estate sales representative with PSR Brokerage,

and he's a sponsor of Toronto Mike. So that already means he's a cool guy. Let's hear from Brian. Hi, Mark. Brian Gerstein here, sales representative with PSR Brokerage and also wishing you a happy Hanukkah. My next order for 72 pint glasses is under production, with colour now on my property in the 6.com logo and the added tagline that Mike intros me with for Toronto Real Estate Done Right. Next time in, you will be getting one to drink with your Great Lakes beer. write. Next time in, you will be getting one to drink with your Great Lakes beer. 416-873-0292 is my direct number to chat about the upcoming spring market. I do love your newsletter. Hard to believe you will produce 241 1236s in 2017. This is quite an accomplishment. As a one-man band, do you give yourself vacations? That's a good question.

What if you get sick? Well, I don't know, because I have the energy to pull this off every single day. I'm wondering if I'm going to reach the point where I'm working on this thing and I enter some era in life, you know life where I'm constantly felled by illness, that it makes it impossible for me to follow through. But yeah, we'll be wrapping it up, 1236 for 2017 on Thursday. What's Thursday?

So you do give yourself a bit of break, because you're skipping the last week of the year. You give yourself a break here and there. Yeah, but the readership isn't showing up to work either. I'm still recording with Ron James. December 21st will be the final 1236 newsletter for the year. So if you're hearing this after the fact and you're curious enough to subscribe, we'll be back in January after that. fact and you're curious enough to subscribe, we'll be back in January after that. But yeah, taking about two weeks off and just feeling the flow of what else is happening before returning to the grind. Let me ask you before we begin our quarterly checkup here. So you have the

newsletter, which I read every day. I don't know anyone who doesn't read that newsletter because once I find out they don't read 1236, they're no longer a friend of mine, I'll be honest with you. So there's nobody like that. But let me ask you if there's any plans to do the obvious, which is to start a 1236 podcast. Yeah, didn't I get into that last time I was here? No, it was after we recorded. We had that chat. I think we had that chat on the floor. No, no, it was on the last podcast where I was all optimistic that this thing was going to happen. Well, there was the option to just put something out there without trying too hard to give it a kind of context.

Because I'm working with St. Joseph Media, they are dedicated to getting things right. If they do something with me, they want it to be worthwhile. A lot of the work I do in the newsletter every day is influential toward the future of this content company. So the podcast has ended up in the same category. Now, it will probably have a different name. It won't be called 1236. We decided on that much. Brought to you by 12?

Is it going to have it in the tagline or the byline or something? You're way ahead of me here. Your morning cuppa by 1236. We're going to get there because I think that... Do you like that, my morning cuppa? You want that? My morning cuppa? You get a cup of coffee, a cup of tea.

Cup of 1236. The future for publishers everywhere is to get into audio. And I think eventually every news brand will have to have some sort of component like that. So why not be ahead of the curve? So why not be ahead of the curve? So yeah, coming in 2018, if all goes well, there'll be a 1236 affiliated podcast and we'll do something different. But you'll be the host, right? You're not going to hire some big booming Andy Frost type or something. I'll be a voice in the midst of it all. I want to do a program that brings in a different sort of voices. I think there's a little world that's an echo chamber of people

who are commenting on what's going on in the world. I mean, we've had some examples out there, especially Jesse Brown and his Canada land. So if I'm going to add myself into the fray and compete with Toronto Mic'd when it comes to getting that attention it will be something entirely different so wait and see if we can pull it off in the first quarter of of 2018 and by the time i'm back here we'll talk about how it's gone sounds good i look forward to some healthy competition. This is like a Star Wars plot line where I sort of, you come on, you cut your teeth here every quarter,

and then you go on to crush me. I can see that as some great mythology. Paytm. Here's the new thing I'm doing. I get points. I get this, it's a President's Choice MasterCard, and I get money towards groceries as I use it. So I've been paying all my bills on Paytm, the app, through my credit card. So Paytm is giving me cash back because I use that app. And then the credit card is giving me money for groceries because I'm paying through the credit card. So I figured I figured out like the secret here. Like this is the double dipping that

where I benefit twice. So you can do that too. All of your bills in one place, go to paytm.ca. When you make your first transaction, use the promo code Toronto Mike, and you get 10 bucks right there off your first bill payment. That's from paytm. So it's paytm.ca. Promo code is Toronto Mike. And you can thank me later. Number two. Which one is that? Here we're into the GLB 30th anniversary. Awesome. That is going to expire at midnight on December 31st. It just explodes. It dissolves. Very good. That's the anniversary beer.

I hope you enjoy. Okay, so this is like shaping up to be something like my visit to the mayor's menorah lighting last week, right? like my visit to the mayor's menorah lighting last week, right? I'm just going to drink the entire time and walk out of here feeling a little bit of regret for what I got into in the middle of the afternoon. Well, that is yet to be determined. We'll see. I'll try to protect you from yourself as your designated podcast co-host here. Let us start. We have various categories. We're going to go through we have various categories. We're going to go through Toronto stuff, and then we're going to talk about broadcasting. Then we're going to talk about digital media. Then we're going to touch on politics, and then we will close up with print

media throughout. I do have some fun audio clips throughout, but let us begin with something that's not at all fun. I want to start with the sad news in Toronto about Barry Sherman and Honey Sherman. Of course, they are the billionaires. He founded Apotex, and I'll let you talk to me, but this somehow involves Frank D'Angelo. I'm not suggesting Frank is responsible for their deaths, but they were found hanging by their indoor pool. This has really captured my attention because it's one of those, like, we're talking billions of dollars is what we're talking. We're a very rich couple and found dead. But is it double suicide? It seems unlikely based on what we know. Is it double homicide?

Is it murder-suicide? So many things that the police have to look at. What can you tell me about the connection between Barry Sherman and his death and what that means for our friend Frank D'Angelo? We might as well talk about that, right? Because whether it's this afternoon while we're recording or at some point over the next couple days, the level of interest in this story is such that the police will have to make some kind of announcement

once they figure out what exactly happened here. But in the meantime, we've got a subplot involving our favorite Toronto filmmaker, Frank D'Angelo. And the fact is that he got into business with Barry Sherman. Going back to the days of the steelback brewery, they ended up being partners somehow in the entire venture. That ended up winding down. That ended up winding down, but in fact was Barry Sherman who believed in the idea that Frank D Barry Hertz named it as one of the worst 10 movies of 2017. Quite an honor, quite a distinction. And the fact is that this pharmaceutical money, all these billions, were backing all these Frank D'Angelo movies. In fact, Barry Sherman was quite proud of the fact

that he believed in the kind of show business that Frank was bringing us here. Now, I understand that Barry Sherman's oldest son was CEO of Steelback Brewery. So there's a lot of give and take here. The way I see it is that Barry helped finance the brewery, which, remember, this is a brewery that so there's a lot of give and take here there's so he the way i see it is that barry helped finance the brewery which remember this is a brewery that made no money but had like a i can't remember what the number was but multi-million dollar marketing budget and was

spending i remember i won number as i was 15 million but spending big bucks on marketing a product that wasn't making any money but the ceo of of course, is the son of Barry. Barry didn't really... Barry's son didn't take to the pharmaceutical industry and wanted to try something else, and then he kind of got parachuted in there. So yeah, this Barry Sherman-Frank D'Angelo connection is fascinating. Absolutely.

Yeah, sad news for the Fangelos, right, who are eagerly awaiting each new Frank D'Angelo movie. I'm not sure what the future holds. I think they'll be shocked to learn that these movies didn't self-sustain, that they couldn't sustain themselves, like they weren't profitable. Like, that shocks me.

I thought for sure they made enough money to warrant his prolific direct. Well, he directed, he starred, he did the soundtrack. Frank DeAngelo. We'll see what happens now that Barry's no longer around to cut the checks. We'll see. State of Strip Clubs. Tell me what's happening to Toronto's

peeler bars. There was an article in Bloomberg Businessweek, the magazine that the Bloomberg organization puts out every week. An unusual topic to be covered in there was the fact that gentrification is happening in Toronto. And one of the biggest casualties is likely to be all these peeler bars that we have all over the place in the city. Now, what's sacrificed by the fact that

the strip clubs may no longer be around? Based on this story, you know, the first casualty will be the fact that there are all these colorful characters. The owners of the strip clubs, you know, the guy that ran the lobby group that used to show up at City Hall, make presentations to explain why this tradition should be preserved. Eventually, when these strip clubs disappear, there won't be this stuff anymore around the city. But they're still here for the time being, right? The Zanzibar Tavern got some sort of ticket, a bylaw infraction over a video screen that was in its window. And in response, the owner of the Zanzibar, Alan Cooper, a very colorful character, gave a quote to David Haynes of Metro saying, this is like a Dostoevsky novel here, what's happening to me. So it may not be much longer until there's no such thing as a strip club on

a Toronto street. They've tried to put a lid on the number of licenses that explains the amount of lobbying that's gone on. But in the meantime, we've still got the brass rail. I was going to say, my old apartment overlooked the brass rail. So it was right where the old Uptown Theater was. It was 30 or 35 Charles Street West. And yeah, I could go on my balcony and just see the brass rail.

The manager of the brass rail said in the story that he didn't anticipate they would be around in 10 years' time. It's like 10 years' time. They've got that much longer to live there? You've got these big luxury buildings, right? That's right. It's just been finished at one Bloor East, the other one, the one at one Bloor West. I should ask you then, if you lived right around the corner,

I know you were married at the time, or at least on the way. Did I frequent the Breastnets? I mean, was it something you ever went into out of curiosity? I'll tell you now, I'm in my 40s. I have been in one strip club ever. When I was 19 years old, I went to a strip club,

and I've not been to a strip club since. Because it became a sort of ironic 1990s thing to do, right? It was what you did when you were in your 20s before the internet came along. But they're so sad, man. These women are doing it for your money, and they're paying attention to you and stripping naked because they want your money. The whole thing is so damn sad. It was all about the upsell.

stripping naked because they want your money? Like the whole thing is so damn sad. It was all about the upsell. You would have the dancers on the stage, right? And then they would invite you to buy a table dance, later a lap dance. That's what it was all about. It wasn't just about sitting there and nursing your $9 ginger ale. It was the idea that you would part with as much money as possible. But I think the culture of the strip club, much like the one portrayed in The Sopranos—

Bada bing. It was really about being some sort of regular there, right? That you would have these characters that would hang out in these places. They found it an appropriate setting to do their other business, whatever that business happened to be. And that was the main economic engine that drove these places, that it wasn't so much about the bachelor parties or the guys that were lurking through the door to sit in the front row watching the show, that there was this entire subculture of strip clubs that was going on.

I'm not going to pretend I know anything about it, but I would assume to this day that that's generally what goes on. Now, to bring it local, just before we leave the strip club story, the House of Lancaster that was on Queensway, I want to say it's like a little east of rural York, but it's shut down, say it's like a little east of rural York,

but it's shut down and it's going to become, I don't know what it'll become, condos or something. Yeah, but there's still House of Lancaster in Bloordale or in Bloor and Lansdowne. That was the last time I was ever in a strip club. And the reason I was there, 2008, Nuit Blanche, before Nuit Blanche became a thing that a bunch of drunken teenagers went to outside. It was still a bit more of an avant-garde event. They took over the House of Lancaster for Nuit Blanche.

And the idea in there was to have performances on the stage that weren't strippers. They were like, I don't know, they were Greek folk dancers. It was all very surreal, and they did this quite deliberately. So from that, I can actually say I was inside the House of Lancaster. The Bloomberg article also

mentions one that's closer to my turf in North Toronto. There was a notorious strip club called Cheaters. It was south of Yonge and Eglinton along Yonge Street. The neighbors wanted to get rid of this thing, right? For years and years. I mean, Yonge and Eglinton,

this is not the kind of residential neighborhood where you would associate it with a strip club. But there was Cheaters, later changed its name to Mystique. I know this because this is a neighborhood that I frequent most frequently. Eventually, they got the strip club out of the neighborhood, turned it into an LCBO for a few years. Today, the old home of Cheaters is now a kitchen stuff plus. The true gentrification.

Yeah, there's where it ends for one of the most notorious strip clubs in Toronto. So if you're around Yonge and Eglinton looking for some kitchen stuff, you can feel confident you're buying it in a place where some of Toronto's most exciting table dances have ever happened. I don't know. Did anybody ever go to a strip club walking out of there feeling gratified, satisfied? I guess maybe the answer would be somewhere inside of their pants. But I don't know. A lot of sadness associated with these places, right? If you weren't there out of some sort of irony, what would you get out of going there? What was your one experience at age 19? I mean, did you leave there feeling elated? No, I admittedly

had a pretty good time at age 19 at the strip club. I just never felt compelled to return. I never felt like there was never anything that I found alluring. It just wasn't my bag. Now, there's one around

Young and Dundas, Young and Girard. It's called Remington's Men of Steel, primarily a gay strip club, even though I know they also cater to women, sort of that magic mic crowd, speaking of audience, that goes to these places for ironic reasons. Right. Right now, they claim they're moving to the Queen and Bathurst area once they get kicked out of Young and Gerrard for the condos. But I'm not entirely sure how that's going to happen because there definitely is a very tight, very rigid licensing issue. We'll see what happens there and whether their claim is accurate, whether they'll be reopening, what sort of bylaws, what loopholes they'll have to work around to keep this idea alive. So even if the strip clubs featuring women all disappear, even if condos take them all over, this one where it's men on the stage,

that one vows to stick around. Charity the Cow didn't stick around. What happened? What's going on with Charity the Cow? I'm only following it mildly. No, Charity the Cow didn't stick around. What happened? What's going on with Charity the Cow? I'm only following it mildly. No, Charity the Cow is still there. Charity the Cow is not being moved. So tell me, give me an update then. This is a Markham thing, right?

Is this Markham? This is Markham, right? It's a subdivision in Markham called Cathedral Town. And as part of the construction around there, they got permission to mount a statue in honor of what was considered the greatest show cow in Canadian history. Charity. The family behind the subdivision development wanted to put this cow up there in honor of charity. to put this cow up there in honor of charity.

And the idea was that they would commission an artist, Ron Baird, a fairly well-known Canadian name. He was behind something called Spirit Catcher that was originally synonymous with Expo 86. I believe it's now in Barrie, Ontario. So this artist came up with the idea to have this chrome cow on 25-foot-high stilts as the center point for the subdivision. Well, it turned out that the people who bought houses around there, they were complaining. They were complaining. Specifically, their kids were being terrified by this chrome cow showing up in the bathroom window. This was like something they'd never seen before. that this thing be taken away, and they voted in favor of the idea that they should move charity somewhere else, that it wouldn't be there terrorizing the children of Cathedral Town. Yeah, that's what I remember hearing. It would find its own place somewhere else.

Now, more recently, after they voted to move it, it was observed that they were putting like a more solid base around the cow, installing stone beneath it all. From every indication, it looked like they were looking for more permanence. The neighbors who originally complained were wondering what's going on here. And as it turns out, the family behind it, the Roman barber family, the people behind Cathedral Town, as far as they're concerned, it's not moving. It's not going anywhere. And they're going contrary to what they've been ordered to do by Markham. So I think there's many months ahead. The story of charity, Not over yet. I wonder how it will be resolved, because at the same time,

there are a couple of parents there who are really outraged, really upset. They find this an affront to their existence. And really, it's all about the children. Won't anyone think of the children? I was going to say. All summer long, you would see on Instagram, people were tagging Cathedral Town. The only thing going on there were all these selfies from people posing in front of the cow.

It's the biggest tourist attraction that they've got going on there. Speaking of attractions in the sky, the Sam the Record Man sign has been uh put up at i guess as young and i haven't seen it yet but young yeah i haven't i haven't been there either right 277 victoria street right behind young and everybody it sounds to me like in the daytime people are greatly underwhelmed by this in the daytime because they didn't put it on the side of the building they put on top of the building so they have to have these like air vents or whatever so this thing doesn't blow down i guess it's a safety thing or whatever so air can get through it which means in the daytime it doesn't

really look like the sign used to look when it was at uh young young and uh when it was at the sound of the record man but uh at nighttime i've seen pictures where it actually looks fine so i don't know what the consensus is are people upset upset about what Ryerson did to this sign or what? The first reaction was a whole bunch of outrage, right? Once a thing was there, once it was mounted, a lot of people were wondering, what's going on here? This thing, it looks like a floor fan, right? We're not seeing the Sam the Record Man sign, the spinning neon discs.

It just doesn't have that same effect in daylight. But because of the aerodynamics of it all, I don't know. I'm not an engineer. It makes sense, right? Today's a windy day. I'm sure you don't want that thing coming down or whatever. If the air can go through it, it just seems safer. I don't know. I'm not an engineer or whatnot but it it makes sense that

they would have to modify it since i think they should have just slapped it on the side of a building like it used to be and then uh that you know yeah yeah but they couldn't pull it off because for some reason it ended up on top of the building right with with a different backdrop. They said 25 people worked at this company, Sunset Neon, to restore the sign. So I'm sure what you see there are the original components, but it just doesn't have the grandiosity that people were expecting. See it at night, people. That's the pro tip here. Go at nighttime. Well, look, I mean, the 1050 Chum sign still lives, right? It's on the side of the Bell Media Radio building, 250 Richmond Street. Not a lot of people know that's not the original Chum sign. Oh. In 1986, right after 1050 Chum changed format, something we talked a lot about on a podcast here last year.

A couple of vandals showed up in the middle of the night. They cut the cord on the 1050 chum sign. It was strewn all across Yonge Street. There's an infamous picture. I don't know if you remember this. Of course, it was front page news at the time, right? Somebody destroyed the chum sign. And Alan Waters, the owner of the station, he went to great lengths to make sure that it would be restored as a replica, right?

They couldn't save the sign that these guys cut off and ended up damaged in the middle of the street. So the chum sign that lives to this day, it's actually just about 30 years old. It's not the one that was there in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Interesting. What about the Ted Rogers statue? I saw this on—speaking of the Toronto subreddit, that's where I learned. I also every day pop into that Toronto subreddit just to see what the Zeitgeist, what are they talking about? And somebody

had a picture and said, hey, the Ted Rogers statue is missing. Then I tweeted that photo and I gave credit to Reddit and I said, hey, the Ted Rogers statue is missing. I'm sure it'll return, but it's not there right now. And Siobhan Morris from 1010 tweeted at me that it's been missing for months,

she told me. So I wasn't paying attention. I don't think... Yeah, at least a month. But look, we had some new drama. A different backdrop to the whole thing. I know you wrote about this on torontomic.com. It was whether the situation with

MLSE, whether the purchase of the Toronto FC by MLSC. No, the Argos. Sorry. Because they already own TFC. You're right. See?

I'm the sports expert in this duo here. I'm drinking too much beer. But yeah, they bought the Argos. Sorry, them buying the Argos along with Toronto FC. Thanks for setting me straight on that one. I'm telling you the beer is starting to take hold. What that means for the future of sports ownership in Toronto and whether, in fact, it means that Rogers owning the Blue Jays, right?

Something that they took over in 2000. It was part of a vertical integration, a media convergence, the idea that a big telecom monolith could own a sports franchise at the same time they own the broadcast rights. Ted Rogers was infamously not a big baseball fan. Might have been. He might have been even less interested in baseball than me. been even less interested in baseball than me. And yet, here after his death in 2008, with the Rogers Center renamed from the Sky Dome, they made a point of erecting a statue, right? A memorial to Ted Rogers that would permanently be outside of the stadium. Now,

with some rumblings that the company may want to unload the team, it makes things a little bit complicated, right? People wondering whether the statue will actually be coming back. As a fan, I hope it does not come back. I mean, thank you, Ted, for buying the team and keeping it in Toronto, but that's where players don't want to see that ownership, you know, immortalized in statue form. Like at the ACC, we've got a great statue being built outside with great Maple Leaf players.

Believe it or not, there used to be great Maple Leaf players. But, you know, why not do the same? I mean, we'd much rather see, for example, Robbie. The obvious is the only Blue Jay great to pass away. But the obvious is Roy Halladay. Man, would fans be excited to see a Roy Halladay statue erected where Ted once stood? That's what fans want. Well, at least they put up a plaque for Ralph, the program guy, right? He died in 2014.

He was a legendary program seller from Maple Leaf Gardens to Exhibition Stadium, ultimately the Sky Dome. So he's memorialized there, and he had much more to do with the Blue Jays' experience than Ted Rogers ever did. But look, the guy's name is on the dome. He's owned the place for the past 10 years or more. What is it now? Yeah, we're into 17, 18 years. He had Paul Godfrey as the original front man, right, who was behind this idea that sports and media could be one and the same, owned by the same company.

Now that Rodgers is saying they want to get out of the baseball business, not broadcasting baseball, but no longer owning the team, we're also starting to see rumblings that they might move out of Toronto. What do you think about that? No, no, please. No credible rumblings of any sorts. These are just lunatics, no, please. No credible rumblings of any sorts. These are just lunatics. Lunatic fans. I don't

believe there's any credible rumblings the Jays are leaving. Fantastic fan base, as we've seen in the last few years. They fill up the dome when the team's pretty good. This team is not leaving Toronto. No chance. But what about the fact that the stadium is sort of

outmoded, right? Where would you be able to build a replacement in downtown Toronto? I don't think they're leaving the Dome either. Like, I think they're just going to have to throw some money at that Dome and bring it up to code, as they say. I don't think they're leaving the Dome. I think it's, you know, let's face it. I think fans like it when the team plays well. And the last, not last season, which sucked,

but the two seasons before that, when the Jays went to the ALCS, nobody was complaining about the Dome. Like, nobody was complaining. I think if you put a good team on the field, we'll be fine with that as our home. And just, you know, build a winner. And I think we'll all be happy.

Okay, but we're still dealing with the legacy of that guy a couple years ago. Got in trouble on Twitter, right? Ken Pagan. Ken Pagan? No Got in trouble on Twitter. Ken Pagan. No, not Ken Pagan. Ken Pagan was a beer tussler. I'm talking about the one who threatened that he was going to throw the statue of Ted Rogers into the lake. Wasn't that a Reddit

comment? It was somewhere. It got enough attention outside of that comment alone. They should erect a statue of that guy. He's the real hero here. Mark, I always have this struggle with the 1236 episodes in that we have too much content

and not enough time. So maybe each topic now, I'm not going to put like a egg timer or something, but like a three minute max, I'm thinking on all topics if you want to get this to around two hours. Okay, let's go. First, I remember seeing the movie

License to Drive. I was a very young man. I watched License to Drive and I thought that was the funniest, greatest movie. I loved it. Corey Haim. It's this Corey Haim vehicle License to Drive. Now, you've tipped me off to the fact there's some Corey Haim movie and I'm going to play the trailer and then we're going to

talk about it. So here's a tale of two Corys. My name is Corey Feldman, and I've been acting since I was three. God, let's turn it around. If you don't get paid, we don't get paid. Hey, man, it's Corey Haidt. It'll be great to finally meet the other Corey everyone keeps talking about. Yeah, it would.

Hey, Corey, let me let you in on a little secret about Hollywood. Come on. You want to be in the boys' club, don't you? Did you tell anyone? He said if I did, my career would be over. It's just what you do, you know? What who does? Hollywood. If you continue down this road, you're gonna throw it all away.

Woo! I wear my... I wear my... I wear my... What do you expect me to do, Feldman? We're out of control. Perfect song for that trailer. It's just amazing. I mean, the Lifetime Network makes these movies, right?

It's D-list actors, D-minus list actors. They did the Saved by the Bell one, right? They did the Saved by the Bell one or something? Yeah, there's a long tradition of these things. So next up, at the beginning of January 2018,

A Tale of Two Corys. It's too good for Lifetime. That's an Oscar-worthy trailer. I'm telling you. I'm not sure about the portrayals. These actors in the trailer don't really have the look of the guys they're supposed to represent,

and yet, Corey Feldman is the executive producer of this venture. Now, all through the fall, we've had a lot of stories about the two Corys. The fact that Corey Haim, who died in 2010, allegedly was sexually assaulted on the set of his very first big Hollywood movie in 1986 called Lucas. And allegations over the years that, in fact, it was Charlie Sheen who was responsible for this assault.

The National Enquirer published an investigative report. They said they interviewed over 100 people, and they determined, in fact, that Charlie Sheen was responsible for sodomizing a young Corey Haim. Now, this is pretty explosive stuff. Unfortunately, Corey Haim, the victim of this allegation, is no longer alive to confirm or deny. Corey's mother stepped in. She was on the Dr. Oz show.

I thought Dr. Oz did a show about medical issues. I didn't know he was into the celebrity tabloid thing, but he's all over the topic of the two Corys. Cory's mother went on the Dr. Oz show and said, no, Charlie Sheen was not the culprit. In fact, it was the guy who talked to the inquirer who alleged that it was Charlie Sheen who was the one who assaulted Corey Haim. So this is all going on, of course, with the backdrop of all sorts of sexual assault issues in Hollywood, where you've got Corey Haim's mother fighting with Corey Feldman about what exactly happened to Corey Haim. Charlie Sheen turns around, launches a lawsuit against the National Inquirer, naturally claiming that he did nothing of the sort. But the Inquirer is sticking to its guns. Even a subsequent week, they published a story ridiculing Charlie Sheen.

What a wreck he looks like these days. So they're not giving up on this idea, this campaign, that in fact Charlie Sheen belongs in that Hollywood sexual misconduct hall of fame. It seems like in this Tale of Two Corys trailer that they don't try and indict Charlie Sheen, but just infer that all of this happened. So, you know, a great tragedy, which I take a little more personally by the fact that I took drama classes

in the same Thornhill basement as Corey Haim. I talked about that before. Absolutely, of course. And I as Corey Haim. I talked about that before. Absolutely, of course. And I love Corey Haim's stories. Like he was, for a short period there, he was huge, massive. The Corys were big. And yet through the 21st century in Toronto,

before he died, he was living around young in Eglinton. There were always sightings of him that people would see him around looking not in the best shape. And, of course, a real tragedy, right, for, you know, Toronto's 80s teen idol. The fact that he only made it to age 38. In fact, Corey Haim was born just two days before our prime minister, Justin Trudeau.

There is there's a bit of trivia. I love those fun facts. our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. There's a bit of trivia. I love those fun facts. I retained that while I was looking up the latest on the story, that they were both born that same time around Christmas, 1970. And I learned that Gary Newman was born just like a week before Gary Oldman. Well, I mean, you might be the only person here who finds that fascinating.

I think that's wonderful. Okay, moving along. I just watched The Crown Season 2. I watched the finale last night. So I've got royalty on the brain. So Meghan Markle, she lived, she rented a house here when she was filming Suits. And this house is for sale? Is that right?

The house was already sold. Yeah, in Seton Village, around the the dupont and christie area um and it was a big stakeout for the paparazzi uh around the fact that prince harry was visiting there a few times over the preceding year leading up to their engagement right uh and and after a year of of staking out the place, here it went up for sale. The people that own the house she was renting put it up for sale for a typical Toronto price, $1.3, $1.4 million. The British press, I don't think they knew what to make of it. The fact that this modest house in Toronto, right, not even in the middle of downtown, not an exceptional

neighborhood by any extent. The fact that a house around there would cost like a million and a half dollars, they figured this was some sort of premium, right? Yeah, because the prince stayed there. Yeah, Prince Harry used the toilet. And because of that, they were trying to charge like a million dollars more for this house. So the British tabloids had to be disabused of this notion. Yeah, they need an education. every effort to cool down the market, that a Toronto house, a totally unexceptional place to live, would go for a million and a half dollars. Wow. Let's move on to broadcasting. So let's leave Toronto News, and we go to broadcasting.

And can you tell me about the iHeartMedia, is it the iHeartMedia app that's been relaunched? The American app now, right? The iHeartRadio app. We talked about that again last year when it first launched. Trying to figure out why was Bell Media pushing this iHeartRadio app? It was sort of mediocre.

Not only did it have a pretty limited number of radio stations, only Bell Media ones, there was also the fact they were making you watch like an unskippable 30-second video commercial. I remember your rant about this. Absolutely.

Just to watch a radio station. So they upgraded it a bit. And I think one of the fascinating things for a real radio geek, all of a sudden you've got a whole bunch of American radio stations that were geo-blocked before in Canada. You couldn't hear

these stations, these American stations, the ones that used to be owned by Clear Channel, changed its name to iHeart Radio. The company is in a lot of financial distress, sort of over-leveraged, too much debt, whatever it is.

But if you're really into radio, all of a sudden, without much effort, you don't need a VPN or anything, you can hear all of this American radio, which previously wasn't accessible in Canada. which previously wasn't accessible in Canada. So these are American stations like Z100 out of New York. You've heard of Z100. Oh, yeah, because remind me, I have a little story about the Evanoff Group station that stole that name, sort of, the Z1035.

Yeah, yeah. Well, Z100 was the originator. And then Kiss FM from Los Angeles, the flagship station of Ryan Seacrest to access all of this American radio. It's become so homogenized now, right, that there's really nothing to hear. It's all coming out of the same branch plant. There is the same programming going on on every radio station. There's very little to distinguish one station from the other. One of the innovations that I think has happened on the American radio scene

is the whole concept of the syndicated morning show. So you've got like Ryan Seacrest, right? I mean, you can already hear that on Toronto Radio. He's been running on Virgin Radio. You've got Elvis Duran of Z100 in New York. There's a guy named Woody out of Los Angeles, The Woody Show, one from Washington, D.C., Elliot in the Morning. One thing I've observed in flipping around on the app is the fact that there's a different flavor of radio morning show than there used to be, right? They're de-emphasizing the music. I mean, this was foretold for decades. The fact that music formats were too polarizing,

that you had to find a way to reach a wider audience for radio in the morning, that the way to do it was to have a lot of talk. Now, Howard Stern, of course, was the frontrunner as far as this was concerned. And now we've got iHeartRadio, iHeartMedia in the United States investing in these shows, making them national. And it's a different flavor of radio than I think that we've been used to. It's not so much about celebrity gossip as it used to be. It seems more about people just sitting around a studio chatting about lifestyle topics and a lot of empty calories and what you listen to. Like you'll listen to one of these morning shows and have no memory, no recollection of what they were talking about.

And yet it's all very amiable. It's entertaining chatter that you can have on in the background. So I think that's a bit of an evolution from the medium, right? I mean, Howard Stern brought on that shock jock thing, very much about like interviewing porn stars or insulting the interns. We listened to all of this, some different wannabes that showed up in Toronto. So there's a different style that's taking hold, right, in the United States. I wonder if we'll be seeing more of it here. Roz and Mocha, Kiss 92.5. I think they have been moving in that direction, right, where they don't want to be seen as a teeny bopper station. It's more people sitting around just chatting, not unlike what we've seen with podcasts. So I think through this iHeartRadio app, the one thing you can access if you're up early enough is the future of radio and see where it all goes in these morning shows.

But again, I don't remember anything that I've heard. There were no moments that stick out for me as memorable. moments that stick out for me as memorable. There's nothing, you know, when Howard Stern was on FM radio, right, at the height of his power, you would want to talk to other people about what you heard on the air, right? Did this actually happen? I'm not imagining this. Like, you would have conversations about what you heard on the radio morning show? Absolutely, yeah. about what you heard on the Radio Morning Show? Absolutely, yeah. This is a different style going on now,

and it's been interesting to access it and to see where it's all going. Somebody on Twitter was replying to you at Toronto Mike, wondering why does anybody listen to FM radio, right? Yeah, I saw that. He seems surprised that people still listen to radio. And you mentioned radio's never made more money than it does right now. Is that right?

Yeah, but what's going to keep people tuned in? I mean, it's a sort of kinetic energy. All right, well, let's bring this back to Toronto. I recently had Meredith Shaw on the show. She's with Chum FM. She's multi-talented. I actually really enjoyed that chat because she was just so lovely. But she's at Chum fm and we talked

we talked about uh how long will roger ashby go you know he's been there since the mid 80s and uh and if he goes do you slide in like a mad dog or does do they both go marilyn and roger together which i don't think they like to do but you noted in the recent radio ratings that came out that Chum FM has slid significantly. And yet at the same time, the way the ratings book works now, the fact that all these companies are very well consolidated, they can spin anything as a victory, right? The fact that they're winning in certain demographics if you combine different stations that they own and put them together and limit it to a certain age cohort. But definitely somewhere in there was the fact that Chum FM, which used to be the runaway winner among Toronto radio stations at one point, right? Even when Rogers came in with CHFI and they were going head to head, Chum FM always had this advantage. They always had numbers that

were more impressive. From what I can tell, that has started to erode a bit. I think that might be due to CHFI. That over at CHFI, they've gone for a more populist sound, right? It's not a specific kind of music format, playing stuff from 80s, 90s, maybe even 70s. Being the closest thing to the full-service radio station that CFRB used to be,

something that people can tune in, that everybody can agree on, mom and dad and the kids can all tolerate this station. They seem to have found some sort of formula with the Darren and Mo morning show enough to kick Chum FM to the curb, that it ain't what it used to be as far as ratings are concerned. Now, what's interesting to a guy like me

who knows just enough to be as far as ratings are concerned. Now, what's interesting to a guy like me who knows just enough to be dangerous is that, sure, it seems to me like Chum FM and CHFI are gunning for female listeners and CHFI is winning that battle now. But it seems like, and you're right, you can spin it any way you want, but it looks like CHFI is also doing well with male listeners.

Like, this is interesting to see. Both male and females seem to be choosing CHFI more than any other. And then Chum FM turns around and says, well, we're strong with the female demographic, right? We don't need the guys. Because they focused on this contemporary sound that, to me, is very narrow. There's no more room for rock music in what they're doing at 104.5, which is... It's very safe, right?

It's kind of strange. You don't hear Drake on 104.5, for example. Well, a little bit now, but yeah. But it's very safe, very strategic. It's a narrow sliver of music that's out there. It's a world of Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, whoever else is out there. All songs that are all glossed up by these Swedish music producers. Not a lot of diversity in that regard.

I don't know. Maybe it's working for them that there's a certain sort of audience, but maybe we're seeing a bit of a tune-out factor by going for the sound of Sam Smith, this young crooner, people mentioning that that's what they hear all the time, every hour, all the time they tune in. It's Sam Smith, whoever this guy is. And, yeah, they sacrificed anything with a guitar, no longer on Chum FM. One of the things that the station had going for it was the idea that they had this legacy, right? It's a progressive rock radio station in the 70s into the 80s with more of the album-oriented rock. So even when they switched to more of the adult contemporary thing, it still had the sound of a rock radio station. A lot of that has fallen by the wayside.

We've still got our friend Roger Ashby in the morning, Roger in Maryland. Ashby in the morning, Roger in Maryland, and yeah, based on what you're saying, you're wondering whether he'll be sticking around, whether Roger will make it to 50 years working at Chump. What's he at now? I think he's at 48. Ooh, it's going to be close. Put me down.

You know, the first, I met Roger in 1999. I was writing these articles for a website, radiodigest.com, getting paid an inflated amount of money to work for some Silicon Valley startup that thought they convinced somebody to invest

in journalism about radio. Now, I met Roger at a second cup. I think he was 50 years old at the time. Now, here are my mid-40s. I'm turning the corner to that. I remember talking to him, sort of condescending, right? How can you be 50 years old

and follow the pop charts and play this stuff on the radio? I talked to him a decade later. I wrote another story. That was in iWeekly about Chum and the Chum sign. You're 60 years old now, Roger. Don't you think it's time to hang it up?

Don't you think you're a little too aged to play a teeny bopper radio DJ now? Ariel Grande? Ariana Grande. Look, I mean, the older I get, the more ridiculous this is. Whatever. You should

be 70 years old and think young. Still be into what's happening on the pop charts. What's wrong with that, right? With your Kick Out the Jams podcast, I remember seeing a comment or two. People were wondering, how can some guy in his 40s have an opinion about popular music? Yeah, I remember this too. Yeah, and I retweeted it because it was so absurd to me that if you're over 30, you don't get an opinion on popular music.

And yet if you're under 30, naturally you think this because you don't imagine the day is going to come when you're over 32. Okay, so Chum FM, just to close Chum FM, then we're going to move to the move. But if I don't remember to share this Z1035 thing, I'm never going to remember. But on Chum FM note, do they need to adjust that playlist? They need to make a change. I don't know what they need to do. This is Bell Media, a big conglomerate. They can do whatever they want. Yeah, this isn't just some rinky-dink independent radio station like an Indy 88.

Is this because they fired Ingrid Schumacher? Is this the curse of Ingrid? Is that what's happening to Chum FM? I mean, look, TSN 1050 in Toronto has, what, a 0.3 share? Right. And yet they carry on. They persevere. I guess at some point they'll be rebooting their morning show with Michael Landsberg

or maybe without Michael Landsberg. So when you're inside the matrix of big media, right, when it's all over the place, I don't think any specific measurement of ratings is really all that important. You just find a way to make it part of the larger strategy. Okay, Z1035 is doing like a top 40 dance kind of thing. They broadcast not far from here. The Evanoff Group has a building on Dundas near Kipling. And they're also very loyal to Frank D'Angelo,

the Evanoff Group. It all comes in full circle. Jewel 88.5, the only place in Toronto where you can hear Frank D'Angelo on the airwaves. The Jewel, one of Toronto's lesser-known stations. There's a Jewel, people. But what I read, actually, I think I read it on that South Ontario board. I think I read about it.

But there's a CRTC decision that came down. And essentially, because they're licensed for Orangeville, Indy, who did I call him? Z1035 is licensed to Orangeville. And if they don't start being more Orangeville, they're going to lose their license. This is the CRTC really flexing their muscles, right? In a previous era, they didn't care about this stuff.

I mean, a lot of different municipalities had radio stations. AM-640 used to be a Richmond Hill radio station. Well, the biggest example I always think of is Edge 102, which is Brampton. Yeah, CFNY, they had to serve Brampton. The whole idea, it was part of their promise of performance that they serve the community, that they made reference to what was happening in Peel region. A lot of these radio stations got off from these requirements. They managed to make whatever sort of argument they needed to make that the CRTC got off their backs.

Now, Z103.5, they were making all sorts of requests that involved changing the frequency of Proud FM, which was supposed to be Canada's first LGBT commercial radio station. I don't even know if they have any more live voices on the air. That was at 103.9. They wanted to change that license, make the signal stronger. They had a big ask at the CRTC. Somewhere in the process, the commissioners noted the fact that even though Z103.5 is licensed to Orangeville, they never mention anything about that city. There's no Orangeville traffic updates. There's no talk of Orangeville Council.

Yes, if you listen to it, it would be a Toronto station. And they were based in Etobicoke for over 20 years. Now, in a very unusual ruling, although maybe it's the shape of things to come, the CRTC came down on them and said, you now have to say that you're from Orangeville. You're no longer

allowed to identify yourself as a Toronto station. This is sort of unusual with the way the wind has blown, but I guess they fell on the wrong side of the commissioners. I mean, the CRTC has not been known for getting into the creative side

of broadcasting with whatever power they have left to regulate the media. And yet, here we have the first time in a while, as far as I can recall, that a Toronto station has been told, you can no longer pretend that you're from Toronto anymore. You've got to start

serving Orangeville. Orangeville up, Z1035. Through drought and famine, natural disasters, Now I'm feeling the groove. I love it. This is Daniel Caesar. Get you. He's from Toronto. And tell me how his secret success helped motivate the big change for 93.5 The Move.

Yeah, well, when they changed the format of 93.5 The Move, away from the throwbacks, on the last day they were doing throwbacks on 93.5, they were still playing the band B4.4, right? Remember B4.4, the boy band? Yes, I do. Turned into a meme for that video, Get Down, over the years. People wondering how exactly could this pass

for a major label Sony music artist into the 21st century. But, hey, it was the boy bands. It was a different era. So, yeah, B-4-4, Sugar Jones was another one, West End Girls. Let's face it, no one, if anyone wanted to hear this stuff, I think they had enough after 93.5 was spinning these songs for a year and a half. And they flipped the switch and put in more contemporary hip-hop into the station. Kendrick Lamar. One of the more compelling arguments they made for the format

change was the fact that no other FM station in Toronto was playing this guy Daniel Caesar. He just sold out five nights at the Danforth Music Hall. This is a kid from Toronto, 22 years old. He's got this slow burning, quiet storm sound. I think he mostly broke because of Apple Music, right? Their Beats 1 radio station, Zane Lowe. And a lot of fans out there, I mean, they bought tickets.

They seem to like his authenticity. It's a little different from The Weeknd or anything that Drake might have been responsible for, that this guy really means it, that he's not just in it for the money, that this is where we're at with indie music in Toronto circa 2017.

So there was a new cap, 93.5 The Move, stepping up saying this is the kind of artist that we want to play on the radio. I mean, tens of millions of online streams, and yet not too many people have heard of him. And he was brought up a Seventh Day Adventist, which is an interesting part of his story now as he moves into this baby-making music. Sounds good. There's another artist. So my wife happens to listen to a lot of the moves. So I also hear a lot of the move.

And in addition to like you get, in addition to like the Drake and the Kendrick Lamar and the Weeknd and stuff, the artist I have, the artist's name is Jesse Reyes is the artist's name. Fantastic.

She's from Toronto as well. Fantastic. Like just really Toronto as well. Fantastic. Like, just really cool, good stuff. Like, Toronto is much more than just The Weeknd and Drake and Lessa Cara, who's, I don't think she's technically Toronto, but we'll take her.

You know what I mean? But, well, she's from Brampton, I believe. But, or what's the dude's name from Ajax or Pick Green or Shawn Mendes? You know, there's so much interesting music coming out. And now you can support the new format on the move. The CanCon regulations can be satisfied because there's a lot of good stuff here. So this is them taking a gamble, right? This is where it's at.

It's no longer about CFNY, the 102.1 The Edge rock sound. That, in fact, is not all that popular anymore. And here we have a different kind of popular music for Toronto, mostly symbolized by this guy. At the same time, he's selling out Five Nights at the Danforth, right? You've got a story in the Globe and Mail. Wondering what's going to happen to all these rock clubs, all these music venues along Queen West, you know, all the way to Parkdale. What is the future of these places? It seemed unthinkable maybe when we were in our 20s into our 30s that there would be no more audience out there for rock and roll.

Yeah. But I think we're at that point. And yet you, Toronto Mike, you're always mentioning on the podcast on your website about all these shows you go to see. You're still the guy who goes to the Bare Naked Ladies concert. I was there, yes.

You go to see Rusty. I've seen Sky Diggers on Friday. Sky Diggers! So maybe, in fact, you've got to own up to the fact that you're in a whole different demographic. Oh, I know that. Yeah, for sure. We were wondering about Glass Tiger. Right, right.

Glass Tiger announced for Massey Hall. You said you saw Glass Tiger play what? It's a free outdoor thing? Just before Alan had a stroke, actually. It was just before that. He played a free concert, speaking of Sam Smith, at Sam Smith Park. It's a different Sam Smith, which is not far from me.

And I went and saw that on a Saturday night, I think it was, two summers ago. So Glass Tiger at Massey Hall? What's happening here? They couldn't even fill the place in their heyday. And yet, I think that the audience for that 80s stuff, maybe they're moving into their 50s, right? Their kids are a little bit grown. No need to pay a babysitter any longer. And that 80s nostalgia thing,

before Massey Hall closes down for a couple years, Glass Tiger will be playing there. Peter Mansbridge was going to play Massey Hall. down for a couple years, Glass Tiger will be playing there. Peter Mansbridge was going to play Massey Hall. Ended up being canceled, as far as I can tell. Although it wasn't confirmed, it was because he didn't sell enough tickets. I bet that's true. But Glass Tiger are considered good enough to break out.

They don't forget me when I'm gone. What other songs did they have? Sing My Song. Sing My Song. did they have? Sing My Song. Sing My Song. I think it's called My Song. And there was a big hit after Don't Forget Me When I'm Gone. Someday. Someday, yes.

You're right. That's right. The Thin Red Line. In fact, because I saw them for free down the street, I was there and I enjoyed it. I think I counted. I think you'd be surprised. There was at least six radio songs. And he also will play, this is what Alan Frew will play,

the 2010 Olympics theme song that he helped write. Okay, Glass Tiger, finally, big enough for Massey Hall. It only took, what, 32, 33 years? That's right. You mentioned when you were talking about the move, you used the word indie. And then I've got to ask, what to do about Indie 88? Yeah, what to do about Indie 88? I mentioned on here that I usually am working around 10, 11 a.m., putting 12.36 together. And I can't do it now without my friend Dave Bookman, Bookie on Indie 88. I love Bookie. Because it's not—I can take or leave the music. Most of it sucks. But here they've got this old friend on the air, and I think he's filling some sort of requirement that they have to a certain amount of talk.

And he just rolls with it. I mean, between every single song, you know, it comes up with some sort of tidbit. It's the closest thing to listening to Twitter on the radio. So yeah, Bookie, highly recommended. It's the 1236 soundtrack. The stream on the station was sort of spotty this week.

I resented not being able to hear it. Dave Bookman, he's one of the ones that got away from the Toronto Mic'd podcast because very early in this venture I reached out to Bookie because he was a natural. I had a lot of CFNY personalities on and I said, Bookie, you've got

to come on. We need to talk. I love Bookie. And Bookie said, thanks but no thanks i don't i don't wish to do that and i never bothered him again okay well well last time i was here i talked about that song by logic right the the song whose title is the american suicide prevention hotline remember the name of course remember the title no at 1-800 something i can't remember. 8675309? Yes, I think that's Jenny's number. I predicted correctly that it would

be a bigger hit through the fall, though it didn't make it to Billboard Hot 100 number one. I think that Post Malone song got in the way. Rockstar. They fudged the numbers. They forced Billboard to make a change about how it ranks songs because they were driving people to a fake YouTube stream of it,

all a little bit nefarious. Anyway, that Logic song was an interesting pick, a unique ad. I thought it added a bit of spice to Indie 88 in Toronto. And now we have this song in the background, which they put on the playlist. You've got your, your mother's eyes. You've got your grandmother's ring. You've got your daddy's discernment. Girl, you did your thing.

Oh, give me one more. One, two, three. Now, that is the voice of your buddy, right? Chance the Rapper. Chance the Rapper, who you went to see with your daughter. It was great. Fantastic. So, Francis and the Lights, may I have this dance?

I heard this song once or twice before, I think. But hearing it on Indie 88, 88.1 illuminated the song. It's all about the context. Hearing the song on there made me fall in love with it. Isn't it interesting how that works?

You can hear stuff on Spotify, different radio streams out there, but I think there's something to be said for the power of a radio station. Even a radio station that generally, I don't find all that great as far as the playlist is concerned.

Well, they're looking for a boost in frequency, right? In D88? A boost in power? Power or something. Some boost. And this is the game these radio stations play with the CRTC. They get a license and they say, we're happy to have this. Everything will be fine. Come back a couple years later and say, this isn't what we expected.

We can't compete in the market. The owners of Indy 88, Central Ontario Broadcasting, based out of Barrie, Ontario. They own a station there, Rock 95. I don't know that they fully expected to win this license. They thought somebody else would get it, but they've made the most of it. They've got a station there. And they said in their filing to the CRTC, if we don't get this power increase, we cannot compete in the Toronto market. You know, the Bell and the Rogers and the chorus stations are too overwhelming.

Now, I think that's a bit of a cop-out that they could be doing a lot more to get there, but they've got some staff changes happening behind the scenes, and I wish them the best, mostly because I want to hear my buddy Bookman on the radio between 10 and 2. How's Josie Dye doing there? Like, is that, you don't have the full book. You don't get to crunch the numbers.

I don't know. As far as ratings are concerned, I mean, they're under a 1 overall. Yeah, because you erroneously, a 1.0 percentage, 0.9% of the ratings? I was confused looking at this thing. No, I think you read the wrong line.

You read the fan numbers, and you accidentally tweeted the fan numbers. Are you going to hold against me the fact that I'm trying to figure things out on Twitter while lying in bed in the middle of the night looking at some small print? That Francis and the Lights song, do you find Francis and the Lights

sounds like Peter Gabriel? Oh, definitely. It's that Peter Gabriel sound, right? I'm listening to them and I'm thinking... In your eyes. Yes, in... That's right. Yusu, Endure, and of course around the same time as Paul Simon and his Graceland album. So yeah, it's a real

throwback aimed at people like me who remembered when it happened the first time. And yet, here we're seeing some validation for more rhythmic modern rock sound, which I think the folks at CFNY gave up on a long time ago. I don't pay that much attention to what goes on there. Do you anymore? No, no, no, no. It was such a source of fascination.

I know, for a long time, for a long time. And it's been years since I just tuned in. I don't listen to much radio at all. If I'm going to listen to the radio, I typically tune into, please don't snicker, CBC Radio 1, and I'll listen to that. But if I'm in a sporting mood and there's something happening in the world of sports,

I could tune in 590 to hear what they're talking about. But that's it. That's really it. Okay, well, David Marsden, right? The architect behind the CFNY Sound that's in our aging memories forever. The spirit of radio. He's still at nythespirit.com.

Why not mention here that he's got his annual Christmas Eve radio spectacular? He's been doing it since he was at Chum FM, 1973. So as far as I can tell, this is now the 45th year that Marsden has done radio on Christmas Eve. He might have missed one or two in there. I'm a little bit miffed by the fact that even he has stopped counting, right? He sent me a press release. He calls it the 97th annual Marsden Christmas Eve. Now, come on,

it's not the 97th year, but it's somewhere halfway to 97, which is quite a thing, right? For a guy who's alive and well on the radio in Toronto, even if you have to access that digitally. So he sent me a press release, and if anyone is into it, nythespirit.com on Christmas Eve, where Marsden has been just about every year along the way. You mentioned 102.1, a chorus station. Well, their sister station, 640, rebranded as Global News Radio. So I thought, Global News Radio, oh, it's GNR, it's GNR Radio.

GNR, I thought that was funny. So I issued a challenge to the personalities I know there. I'm surprisingly friendly with a lot of 640 talent. And I said, hey, the first one to call it GNR gets a six-pack of Great Lakes beer. Of course, I should have known, Stafford was quick on the draw, like a horse named McGraw,

and he did the intro calling it GNR, and he earned himself a six-pack. They haven't been that excited about GNR since the station was the hog, right? AM 640 when they were trying the AM radio rock thing in 1990. I remember the hog had a booth at the CNE one summer when I was working there. So that must have been during the, it must have been 89 or 90?

Yeah, 1990. There you go. That the hog came along. A lot of attention for being over the top. Not so many listeners. But look, the AM640 frequency is still around. It's now owned by Chorus Entertainment, which put global TV into the fold, right? Right. TV into the fold, right? It's all one big machine. Before Shaw Communications had a separate ownership structure, but now Global is part

of Chorus, so it seemed inevitable. Just like Bell and Rogers are represented on talk radio, Global has taken the extra step, actually called the radio stations, the talk radio stations, Global News Radio. The other news is former Toronto Mic'd guest Alex Pearson now has a program going up against former Toronto Mic'd guest Barb DiGiulio. Once upon a time, just a few weeks ago, they would run Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. And not only would they run that live, which is overnight, 1 to 5 AM, but they would run the one from the night before at 9 PM. So that went on for years and years. It's a big breakthrough for them to have live radio on 640 at night. And Charles Adler is in the mix.

Charles Adler. He's been around Canadian talk radio forever. It's been a long time, I think, since there's been a late-night live Canadian talk radio host. You probably have to go back to this guy, Pat Burns. I don't know if you remember that name. Pat Burns, no. Not the coach of the Leafs. No, of course not.

Of course not. And I don't know Pat Burns. A name. Not the coach of the Leafs. No, of course not. He was on CKO. Long time talk radio guy in the 1980s. They probably talked about the most boilerplate topics. It was a lot of, I don't know, debating abortion, capital punishment,

whatever they talked about on talk radio in the 1980s. Totally pointless. It's not like you were able to solve any issues. So Charles Adler, rekindling the flame. He's a late-night Canadian political talk radio guy, 10 o'clock on global news radio. GNR. Best enjoyed in small doses.

This is a live recording of Dwayne Gretzky performing the People Don't Realize. Of course, this is a Bruce Springsteen song. People think it's Manfred Mann or whoever. Who's that Manfred Mann who had the big hit with Blinded by the Light? Yeah, Manfred Mann's Earth Band. But it's actually originally by Bruce Springsteen, Blinded by the Light. Tell me, because Dwayne Gretzky is going to play a New Year's Eve concert.

Tell me what they say about the state of rock music. I managed to catch this band, Dwayne Gretzky, at Nathan Phillips Square at the end of September. It was one of those concerts tied into the Invictus Games. Speaking of Harry. Even though I don't know what was going on there that related to the competition, but, you know, there's a lot of money flying around,

government money for live music. I know Sloan did a show there as well. Not a lot of people showed up for this thing, so it was a little bit surreal to be in an audience of dozens watching this band, Dwayne Gretzky, do a whole bunch of cover versions, mostly like dad rock stuff, I guess is the category that it would fall into. And I gotta say, despite my skepticism, seeing this thing from afar, reading about it in different articles, I was really impressed with how they pulled this thing off. Like, here we had what was essentially a performance

of rock music designed for an audience that has, like, no acquaintance with the concept of a rock band, right? You could see how younger people who have never seen rock music performed before would think it was pretty exciting to see it for like the first and only time in their lives. Yeah. They're playing their instruments

and it's... I was watching Saturday Night Live with my teenage daughter, the one that just aired, and the Foo Fighters were the musical guests. And I realized, like, the Foo Fighters, like a band, like, I've known the Foo Fighters forever. Like, you know, we used to be a drummer in Nirvana. There's a fun fact for you. But my daughter, like, this is not music she ever hears anywhere, and she sure doesn't see it.

Like, this is a completely foreign entity to her, the Foo Fighters. Yeah, so in watching them, I feel like I unlocked a secret code, even though they've got lots of fans. But if you wonder how this Dwayne Gretzky is filling up what's now the Entercare Center at the CNE in Toronto on New Year's Eve. Yeah, I got it. I understood why this is happening what is it before a football game when you drink what's that called

a tailgate party obviously I don't go to too many when I was at an Argos game recently these guys were playing the tailgate party at Ontario Place's parking lot there I think Dwayne Gretzky I believe so what is the future for rock music Mike what do you think? Beyond a source of...

It's cyclical, right? It's cyclical. It's got to make a comeback at some point. Do you think there'll be some sort of rock band that comes along playing their guitars to the teenagers born in the 21st century will be into? I think that we're experiencing this extended period where you can't hear much rock music on new rock music on the radio and I feel

it's cyclical at some point you will have some garage band will come and capture everyone's attention there'll be a new wave it'll come back I noticed on Twitter you were pretty excited watching the Foo Fighters on SNL because I like their yes the second song they do a acoustic everlong

which is my favorite Foo Fighters song. And it's like, oh my God, it's so great. It's color and the shape and back in the mid-90s or whatever. But then they segue into a couple of Christmas jams. You mean Christmas Please Come Home by Darlene Love. Baby Please Come Home. Baby Please Come Home. Now, David Letterman on his show every year would have Darlene Love come on the Christmas

episode, do this song. I found myself on YouTube looking around at the history of Darlene Love on Letterman. You see her back in 1986. She comes out doing the song, dressed casually playing with Paul Schaefer, the three other guys, right? It's like

very late night with David Letterman, NBC, 1986, a casual thing. And also on there, you find her on the last Letterman episode, the last time he did a Christmas episode, which was 2014. And there's Darlene Love, the same woman doing this song. There were like 100 musicians on stage.

Maybe more, right? With Paul Schaefer and the same world's most dangerous band. Yeah, I found it really emotional to see this thing, how it evolved over the years, over three decades. How, you know, hear this tradition that she did from the Phil Spector Christmas album from 1963, which never got properly heard. Do you know that about the Phil Spector Christmas album?

No, I don't. It came out the day that JFK was killed, November 22nd, 1963. So it was a stuff of legend. That's like we call that being Farrah Fawceted. I think that's the term we use. Yeah, pretty much. So Phil Spector never got the audience he was

hoping for for this Christmas album. When he hooked up with the Beatles, they reissued it in 1969. It became something of a cult classic, but really resurrected by darling love on Letterman. So yeah, if you want to take a bit of a trip into

YouTube and watch how this song evolved over the years from the early days of Letterman to the very end, you know, when it became this big majestic thing. This is all going to tie in nicely. So because we're listening to a song that was originally by Bruce Springsteen. And there was an album and I want I don't know what year it was, 85 or 86. In the mid-80s, an album comes out full of modern, at the time,

modern musicians recording Christmas standards or whatnot. And Baby, Please Come Home, I believe, is on that album by U2, as I recall. So I remember hearing,

I believe, I hope I don't got my facts wrong here. I remember that was U2 doing Baby, Please Come Home, I think. And I remember that's the same album that has the famous Santa Claus is Coming to Town by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Okay, well, Christmas music. And Christmas in Hollis by Run DMC.

All over the place. So we're not discriminating against Christmas here. No, there's no war on Christmas. No war on Christmas. I'm going to skip a few topics for time. I hope you're not upset that I'm going to skip the whole transgender kids doc from CBC. If it's something

you even want to talk about. But Stephen LeDrew, we can do that in 30 seconds, which is to say Stephen LeDrew was let go by Bell Media and I don't know they never tell you the exact reasons but it's probably because after his suspension he went off to the Toronto Sun and started bitching about his employers. That's probably why it happened. Well, LeDrew, who's been a fixture on CP24 for a while,

about a decade, he ran for mayor of Toronto in 2006. Before that, he was like the flamboyant head of the Liberal Party of Canada, always getting into fights about something or another. Decided to launch a media career and he did it in the best way possible. He registered to run for mayor. All of

a sudden, he was being invited to all these debates because it was David Miller, the incumbent. It was clear he was going to win. This is 06, right? Yeah, Jane Pitfield was running against him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And sort of kiboshing her own city council career.

And there was this third guy with the bow tie, the glasses, the bald head, Stephen LeDrew. Where did he come from? Yet he managed to muscle his way into all these debates. And you wondered what he was doing there, right? He ended up with 1.3% of the vote in the mayoral election 2006. What LeDrew was doing there was essentially auditioning for a media career. So first started doing a show on CFRB 1010. It was two bald guys with strong opinions, a show that he did with Michael Corrin.

Could you imagine that? Back then, Michael Corrin was the right-wing guy. Yep. And Stephen LeDrew representing the left, liberal center left. Something like that. LeDrew ended up on CB24. They gave him this noon hour show. And I think he was by far the biggest personality on the channel.

With all due respect to our friend Ann Romer, if she ever gets down here to the basement. She claims it's happening in March or so, maybe March. In the last seven, eight years, it was LeDrew that was making the station. He seized upon everything, anything related to Rob Ford, Doug Ford, Toronto City Hall, whatever was happening there. There was LeDrew putting himself in the thick of it. There was LeDrew putting himself in the thick of it and I think discuss this pamphlet that was put out like earlier in the year, at least six months ago

by the Ontario Teachers Federation. It was in Durham, the Durham chapter. It was their way of inviting people to a meeting. It was, yes, to get your attention, right? It was 15 letters as opposed to the LGBTQ2. So it was 15 letters, and it was meant to create a conversation, right? It meant to create a conversation, be over the top about the acronym, asking teachers if they were confused, right?

But there was a bit of sarcasm in the original flyer. It was not supposed to be entirely sincere. No. Nonetheless, social media working the way that it does. This flyer made the rounds and it was presented as an example of of like Canadian indra indoctrination. indoctrination, right, where you were supposed to believe that educators were being made to memorize this 15, 16, 17, 18-letter acronym to refer to people who represented different sexualities beyond something straight. So the flyer circulated online for months and months. So the flyer circulated online for months and months. Tucker Carlson decided to do a topic on it.

Stephen LeDrew was announced as the guest side of the argument, who was there to defend the flyer and the progressive sensibilities represented by his party. Somewhere lost in translation, LeDrew got around to talking about the flyer as something that was completely ridiculous. Talking about two spirited people, right? Oh, this is the frickin' frack comment. They don't know whether they're fish or fowl, whether they're frick or frack. And delivering this line got a fair bit of

attention, got a story on BuzzFeed, right? This was out of line for him to make such a glib comment like that. Bell Media ended up suspending him. He got a week off the job. What they explained, not because of the comments, not because of anything he said, but because he didn't ask permission to be on Fox News. Seems a little fishy, maybe, perhaps. No? Is Fox News really a competition for CP24 noon hour show?

It is fishy. In fact, I tweeted that, yes. So the suspension they claimed, right, was not for following their procedures or whatever. I guess you have to get permission before you can go on a show like that. And he did not. And so they suspend him.

And then while he's suspended, he does the, I think it's Toronto Sun, he does the article in which he sort of like, sort of goes at Bell Media for suspending him and then he's told he's actually terminated. He's no longer employed

with Bell Media, which it could be just that Stephen made it easy for Bell Media to part ways. He said he was on like a short-term contract or working month-to- month or something like that. I mean, sorry for Steven.

I don't like anyone to lose their job. But every time I saw him on CP24, I thought he was pretty mediocre. Like it seemed like never somebody came on. The interviews were so softball. I just remember like maybe a Rob Ford would come in and you'd be like, okay, somebody can, you know, challenge Rob Ford and some of the ridiculous things

he's said and done lately. And Steven LeGue would just sort of do some softball, fluffy thing. And yet, that's entertainment. He was the closest thing to a Fox News personality on Toronto television. In fact, just to clarify, he said he didn't have a contract at all. Right. That he was, I don't know, working like on a day-to-day basis with Bell Media.

But in fact, if they turfed him for some sort of ideological reasons, then we go down a different sort of road, maybe a little too complicated here for Toronto Mike, whether or not it was appropriate to get rid of somebody for that reason. But it seems they had the right to.

I don't think we've seen the last of Stephen LeDrew, and yet there he was. Is he with the Rebel yet? Has that been— More likely Global, I'm going to guess, that they'll hire him. But there he was, back on Tucker Carlson's show, begging for a guest spot that he could come on regularly and debate the state of the nation. Well, Tucker stopped wearing the bow tie. Is that right? So they need a bow tie.

They need some bow tie representation on Fox News. Let's close the broadcast. Now, here's what we're going to have to do. We're going to talk briefly about Greg Zahn because I'm a big Blue Jay fan. We'll talk about Greg Zahn very briefly. And then I'm going to skip ahead and do some print media stuff. And then I'm going to be really selective in what I cherry pick from the digital media politics stuff. I don't have a of like interest in the politics stuff anyway but we're

almost going to be out of time so this is this is all going to work out but greg's on uh you know in this there's a lot of you know whether it be kevin spacey or of course harvey weinstein is the big one but we're greg's on was dismissed outright outright by Rogers Sportsnet for, I can't remember the terminology that they used, but inappropriate conduct, something to that nature. Okay, well, first of all, when you call yourself the manalist and you make that part of your persona on the air, you're setting yourself up for a situation where your behavior off camera is going to be scrutinized, I think. And it seems like based on the reports with Greg Zahn, even though they didn't specify what he did wrong, the best guess you could put together, you know, based on what people were talking about, was the fact that he behaved off camera in a way that was inappropriate because maybe he was acting like he was still on. And the stuff that he could get away with in his persona, right, as a Blue Jays manalist, as the baseball version of Don Cherry.

Don Cherry, we call him. It wasn't an appropriate way to behave in the workplace. Is that a fair way to process what they were putting out there, do you think? Yeah, absolutely. Because he did apologize, right, for his behavior. He did admit that maybe there was some wrongdoing involved. It's not like he was pleading innocence, like he might not have acted in a way that you shouldn't, right, when the cameras are off. Yeah, and by the way, you tweeted something last night.

I'm going to ask you briefly, but just use the word allegedly a lot when you speak about this. But you tweeted the John Gallagher Facebook post in which he talked about the media from one of the big newspapers has been asking him a lot of questions about the environment at City TV he worked in and in particular Moses Znamer? Moses Znamer. You're showing your Gentile side here in not getting that right.

Moses Znamer. Look. A lot of stories out there about City TV. That it was a debauched workplace in the 1970s and 80s. I don't know if this is true or not. People would always reference the fact that Moses had a bed in his office. That there was something salacious about this. I don't know.

Maybe he's a workaholic. He likes to sleep on the job. But what we don't know, what we do know, because I saw the comments on the John Gallagher, I'm his Facebook friend. Gallagher and I have been hanging out recently. But we do know that I think one of the big papers by process

of elimination, I think I know which paper, but one of the papers has been calling a lot of people from that who work there. I saw Glenn Baxter said he's been getting the calls. I'm just saying that there's a lot of smoke there. That's all. A lot of smoke and, I think, desire by media outlets to write a different kind of story. After the Harvey Weinstein allegations surfaced back in September, October, we're seeing a different kind of article

that's showing up in different places, right? Louis C.K. got this treatment and at least for now doesn't have very much of a career. And we saw a similar thing with Charlie Rose where publications, you know, will put together a story that represents a pattern of behavior with a whole lot of sexual misconduct involved. And the fact that the allegations are coming from more than one person

gives greater validity to the portrait that's being painted about the person. Based on what John Gallagher put on Facebook, somebody is trying to construct a similar article about Moses Nimer. Stay tuned. I don't know. I mean, it depends whether they can pull it off or not. What do you think? Well, I think it's going to ruin my chances to get Moses on my show

because I've been working on that for a while. I've had some hayway there recently. I think he'll avoid this place like the plague if it's... Okay, but look, in the media game, especially when it comes to tabloids and celebrity topics, this has been the story of fall 2017, right? Me Too, sexual misconduct, wherever it happens, mostly related to Hollywood and the media and other celebrity places,

even though there's a whole world out there, right? Not everybody is in show business. And yet these are the stories that have made it out there, and we'll see where it all goes. I mean, are a lot of people speculating that maybe this sort of story has peaked, and no matter how valid the stories are, that people will stop reading another story about another Harvey Weinstein? Yeah, what you don't want is for people to go ho-hum and just sort of gloss over it.

Oh, another one of those. It'll lose its impact. In Canada, we've seen some examples in Quebec. The founder of the Just for Laughs Festival, Gilbert Rozon, he stepped down from everything after allegations against him. That's probably the one that trickled the most over here. Do you think in five minutes you could nicely surmise the

I want to say the decline of print media? The disappearance of print media? Five minutes! You're only giving me five minutes! Well, I put on our playlist You're So Vain by Carly Simon, a song that is 45 years old this month.

Remember hearing this song on AM radio growing up? Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. All the time in the history about it, that it was allegedly about Warren Beatty. I always thought it was James Taylor. James Taylor, no Mick Jagger, even though he's singing backing vocals. James Taylor, no Mick Jagger, even though he's singing backing vocals. Through October, November, I just devoured this book about the history of Rolling Stone magazine called Sticky Fingers by Joe Hagan. If you're into the media, this was really the book to read through the fall.

At the same time that Rolling Stone magazine was put up for sale, right? Jan Wenner just celebrated his 50th anniversary in publishing, November 1967, first issue of Rolling Stone. And there was this big fat book all about him and his history in creating this dynasty. It is an American media story like no other. I mean, the book has gotten a lot of good reviews, some other people picking it apart, saying it's a lot of gossip, a fair bit of nonsense. I was just riveted with it from start to finish. So, you know, this was the era of your Sovane.

This was like the soundtrack that goes through your head while you're reading this. How this guy created a media empire entirely centered around his ego, right? Got every rock star in the world to bow before him, right? The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, later Bruce Springsteen and U2, the whole Rock and Roll Hall of Fame beholden to Jan Wenner and everything he represented. And when you read this book, you just can't help but be amazed at the fact that the guy pulled it off. The fact that he used print media as the conduit to make it all happen. The fact that a magazine could be so powerful.

And yet we all knew about Rolling Stone. It was something that everybody read. I don't know if you were ever a subscriber. I was. I was. And, you know, with this book, even though Rolling Stone magazine, as of right now, they have yet to announce a buyer. It is on the block. Somebody else is going to own it without the last name Wenner. And what an accomplishment, right, to spend 50 years running this thing, an even half century,

to spend 50 years running this thing, an even half century, and decide the time is up, leaving it behind. And I think with that, one of the great magazines will ride off to the sunset because this whole business model, publishing it every two weeks, whoever takes it over is not going to do that. Maybe they'll do a monthly, but whatever happens at Rolling Stone, it will mostly be online. That is happening at the same time that Time, Inc., the Coca-Cola of American publishing, Time Magazine, People, Sports Illustrated, all these big brands, right? I mean, everything that represented the authority of American media, now owned by a company from, I think, lot more conservative, a lot more sympathetic to the ideals of Donald Trump.

This seems to be the way the newsstand is going. The National Enquirer, you might notice, I don't know, supermarket tabloids. Mike, do you still look at them when you're out shopping?

Just momentarily, as I'm in line. Do you see the headlines? Have you noticed that the National Enquirer almost always has a cover story about how great Donald Trump is, how he's making America great again,

how this company, American Media, run by this guy David Pecker, is taking over the newsstand and all of these magazines. So the whole idea of print media, something that belongs to liberal sensibilities, the coastal elites, we're now seeing that riding off into the sunset. And it's really fascinating how Donald Trump, who above all is just a guy who wanted to be in the media, wants attention, wants people in the media to like him, right? If you don't like Donald Trump, you're fake news.

How the influence of Donald Trump might ultimately be reflected in everything we see at the newsstand. So we have what you've mentioned there, Time, Inc. and Rolling Stone, and now we also have a downsized Globe and Mail, and there was a post-media tour star deal. I talked to Ed Keenan at great lengths about this, a post-media tour star deal

where each side swapped papers and shut down a whole bunch of papers. Yeah, at the same time this, a post-media tour star deal where each side swapped papers and shut down a whole bunch of papers. Yeah, at the same time, everybody at post-media, all the executives were getting their retention bonuses rewarded for their performances. So we've got a bit of a scandal there, right? In Canada, I think what constitutes local media will have to change shape. I think what constitutes local media will have to change shape. And if there's an appetite out there for these different stories on a local level, there's going to have to be different players who approach it in a different way. Here we're seeing the sunset of everything that these big companies represented.

Man, yeah, not a lot of good news in the whole print media section here. We also can, and I spoke to Ed Keenan about this as well, but the death of the alt-weeklies. What are your thoughts on that? Oh, my thoughts are all over the place. Look, I... Because you worked for an alt-weekly for quite a long time, right? Yeah, iWeekly in Toronto. Of course. Through the 1990s and a bit of a renaissance around 2008, 2009. Although it turned out they were winding it down around that time.

Look, the legacy of the alt-weeklies, I don't know what's going to happen. The Village Voice stopped printing somewhere around September. They said it was going to be online only. They've got this billionaire behind it, a guy who's made all sorts of money in the apparel industry. And I'm not sure if it's long for this world. Even as a website, the LA Weekly was put up for sale. The owners couldn't make any money off of it.

It ended up being bought by these people. Turned out, again, they had conservative political ties. All the people laid off by the LA Weekly are trying to find a way to kill it. And it seems like the model, everything that the Alt Weekly represented, the idea that you would have this package, mostly anchored by arts journalism, although have some politics in there as well, that this is a thing of the past. And yet, at the same time, we've still got Now Magazine in Toronto. They have come right out and telling people that they need donations, that they're not going to survive if people don't open their wallets and toss them a couple of bucks.

They're not saying exactly what for, but that's where things are at. Going into 2018, we will see if there are any old weeklies left, any more printed copies anywhere of this format that I think was once so influential. Now, as print dries up and then everything, all the content moves to digital, what's this about the coming digital content crash? And we should really start all over because we could just do two hours on this. This is my thing. We can't, yes, we're going to have to bump this up from every quarter to every month, I think.

Look, you had a few guests on here who were talking trash about the athletic, right? Who was most emotional about that? Oh, Steve Simmons. Steve Simmons, for sure. And David Schultz. David Schultz, yes. And they bring up the example, the fact that there are venture capitalists behind this venture, right? These are investors. They make statements about the fact how they want to see all the

newspapers bleed dry. That's their agenda. They think by doing a different type of digital sports media that there will no longer be any such thing as a newspaper sports section. Well, as these newspaper sports guys have been warning, the problem with taking that venture capital is the fact that they want to see a return. So here we've started to see some players have to deal with the reality of the fact that this never lasts forever. And if you aren't delivering the goods, eventually you're going to wind down and disappear. So here we've had through this fall the first wave of what's expected to be a lot of layoffs, where a website like Mashable, once valued at $250 million,

ends up being sold for a fire sale price that's 20% of what it was valued for. And perhaps that's the shape of things to come. A lot of the investment that we saw out there, whether it was for BuzzFeed, for Vice, outlets like the Gizmodo Media Group, that's the old Gawker websites, Vox,

which owns a lot of websites out there that, in fact, this is where the chickens are coming home to roost, and there'll be a different approach taken because there won't be as much money flying around for these websites. The people who invested expecting a big return realized that they might never be seeing it. Did you, like myself, were you able to resist the urge to pivot to video in 2017? Was that the big thing

earlier this year? Yeah, I think anybody who manages to stick around will be resisting pivot to video. It was a concept that lasted a few months largely based on the idea that you could build a big audience by feeding these videos

into people's Facebooks that they would somehow be enraptured by what you were doing visually, and they would follow your page, and there would be some sort of goldmine beyond there. If they could only build up the amount of audience for these videos, ain't going to happen. The pivot to video, now a thing of the past, it's going to die along with the rest of 2017.

Now, don't shoot the piano player here, but if I said we had two minutes left and we were going to tackle the politics section, what would be the Jordan Peterson, Lindsay Shepard story at Laurier and there's Jugmeet? Am I saying it right? Jugmeet? Jugmeet Singh, yeah. What that says about how people respond to a federal leader who wears a turban.

And he just had an engagement? No, not an engagement party. Not a wedding. The families were meeting each other. No, a Sikh ceremony. Okay. Essentially, it's about meeting the parents of the person that you're dating. So I think in that we had one more example maybe of where the media that claims to be obsessed with diversity and making a point of hiring as many different people from as many different backgrounds as possible can't quite understand something that happens

when it's related to a religion that they're not familiar with. They don't know where to turn. It turns out the ceremony was called a roka. This is new to me, but look, this is what multiculturalism is all about, learning about what different people experience. And at a point where we're seeing

a lot of these different columns, articles, they're aimed at saying, like, dear white people, you're all a bunch of racists. You know, a lot of that stuff, especially from the Toronto Star this year, I think that will turn out to have been a passing fad. I think in this society, we want to learn more about one another and this whole arena of accusation and telling people that they're thinking the wrong things. Everyone's wish for 2018 is that we get beyond it, even though there are a lot of people on Twitter who will have to get a new hobby if they don't end up hospitalized first. When you mentioned Corrin, you mentioned Michael Corrin in the last section or maybe two sections ago, and I saw that you had a little Twitter spat with the man. Yeah, where to begin? I mean, look, if you're going to repudiate everything you ever believed in,

you should at least do it with a little humility. Emotivate everything you ever believed in. You should at least do it with a little humility. But yeah, Michael Korn, some of his Twitter antics trying to get attention, basically asking to be bullied by all these people who are disparaging him. But the fact that he used to be this Catholic conservative and now he's an Anglican liberal, he blocked me for calling him out for some of his stunts. And that makes it difficult for us who follow you on Twitter, because if you retweet, no, subtweet, what's that called, whenever you quote retweet something, it doesn't actually display if they're blocking you. So we don't see the tweet. Look, Michael Korn, I have been a fan of Michael Korn all along, even to this day. When you see his byline on a column, you know that his argument is going to be clear and concise, which is better than most of the columnists out there.

So I'm fine with it. I'll always read what Michael Korn has to say. But go back 20, 25 years. Michael Korn was like the Milo Yiannopoulos of Toronto, right? If you admitted that you were a reader of Michael Korn, if you agreed with anything he had to say, you were a pariah. But I think that's been the same for anything unique in the media. Remember when you would be ashamed to say you liked Howard Stern or read Vice magazine or listen to Eminem or any number of examples like that. You know, it's not that long ago, you know, that these people represented something dangerous.

And I don't think that's really changed. So you mentioned Jordan Peterson. I think he's like the current example of that. But then we live in an age of Twitter where every time Peterson tweets something, it turns into like a 4chan thread. And I've been mentioned by him. You don't want to get mixed up in this stuff. Now this is essentially he's the one who refuses to, he only

will refer to you by two pronouns for gender. Is this his? It's a long, long, long story. I try not to dive too deep into that one. I just read a little bit of the Lindsay Shepard thing at Laurier and it's just like, I don't I'll just leave this. Without a doubt, the newsmaker of the year for 2017, Dr. Jordan Peterson.

With a book coming out in a few weeks, we'll be hearing a lot more about him. You know, that's over two hours, but really tip of the iceberg stuff here. There's a lot left here, but what can we do? You might listen at three times the speed, but we can't record at three times the speed. That's what we should do in 2018. Merry Christmas, Mike. Happy Hanukkah to you.

What's left of it anyway. I will see you next quarter. And that brings us to the end of our 294th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike and Mark is at 1, 2, 3, 6,

12, 36. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Propertyinthe6.com is at Brian Gerstein and Paytm is at Paytm.ca. Actually, sorry, on Twitter is at Paytm Canada. paytm.ca. Actually, sorry, on Twitter, it's at Paytm Canada. Mike, get that right.

See you all next week when my guest will be Canadian comedian Ron James. And what about Elvis? Don't forget Elvis! And, of course, the Festivus spectacular for the rest of us with Elvis. That records on Festivus, December 23rd. Don't say I wasn't thinking of Elvis. Don't say I wasn't thinking of Elvis.