Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - 12:36: Toronto Mike'd #317

Episode Date: March 22, 2018

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

Welcome to episode 317 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery located here in Etobicoke. Did you know that 99.999% of all Great Lakes beer remains here in Ontario? GLB. Brewed for you, Ontario. 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. And our newest sponsor, Camp Tournesol, the leading French summer camp provider in Ontario. I'm Mike from torontomike.com, and joining me from 1236 is mark wise blot 1236 1237 1238 it's been harder yeah it's been harder to get it out on time for some reason uh technical difficulties me not watching the clock uh some little bug fix that i have to do at the last second that throws me off. And I like the time the newsletter goes out to have some sort of rhythm.

So I've actually held back, if I'm a little late on sending it out. I don't like 1237, 1239. Really? Not into the odd numbers. I can deal with 12— Is that a bit of an OCD thing? Well, 1241 seems to work. Okay.

And 1242 has a nice rhythm to it. This attention to detail impresses me. I don't think the recipient of your fine newsletter, which everybody should subscribe to at 1236.ca, I don't think they're going to be passionate about whether it's 1236 or 1237 or 1238. They're just happy to get it in that general time range. Yeah, yeah. That's great for them, but I want it to come out on time.

And if I miss hitting the right second, if I can't get in on the minute, then I try and aim for something that satisfies me. Hey, before we say another word, I need to know about the 1236 podcast that you threatened to unleash upon us last time. You mean the podcast that I come in here every quarter and talk about how I'm going to get around to do and still hasn't happened. No, there was not a 1236 podcast in the first quarter of 2018. We'll see how it goes. But I'm working with St. Joseph Media on some different directions

and other platforms, approaches to how this all can work. So I would have to say we're still figuring it out. Well, you're just building anticipation. I think this is by design. Get us all just chomping at the bit here for some 1236 podcast.

I don't know if I can do what you do, the discipline. You're putting out the TMI, Toronto Mic Insider. Do you listen to TMI? Yeah, I listen every morning at 8am. What, on double, triple speed? It only takes a minute. That's right.

So I got to do this newsletter on deadline, and that is pretty self-directed. It's dependent on me to roll out of bed and make it happen. So doing this second project will require other inputs and I haven't quite gotten around to figuring out how it will all come together. So, yeah, there's only so much media I can do independently. While you roll out of bed, the Beatles are going to roll over Beethoven. Tell me about Paul White. Yeah, to start here, I wanted to mention the fact that Paul White, the man credited with bringing the Beatles to Canada, the Canadian version of a fifth Beatle.

He died a week or so ago at age 85. And the thing that he's able to take credit for is the fact that Capitol Records in the United States would not be bothered to put out those first few Beatles records, but he heard something there that could work in the Canadian market, right? So at the same time that the Capitol Tower in Los Angeles was ignoring this group, pawned them off to smaller record labels, VJ Records put out these Beatles albums. Nobody cared.

Nobody was paying any attention. 1963 in Canada, soon enough by the time She Loves You came out, the Beatles were a big deal. And that was something that was exclusive to Canada at the time, right? Hadn't permeated yet across the border. He had initially a lot of license to do what he wanted with the Beatles records. He could put out his own different versions of the albums. I don't know if you knew there were different Canadian versions. Yeah, those early Beatles days, there's lots of different albums and some have songs on

other albums. It seems to be like a hodgepodge thing going on there. And that's why, I guess, that explains it. He had the license to kind of mix and match those early Beatles singles. Until it got to the point that the Beatles were popular enough after the Ed Sullivan show and Beatlemania across the USA. What happened was the American office, Capitol Records, they read the riot act. They told him you can no longer make your own Beatle records anymore. So that was the end of that.

If I had a time machine and I could go back, and we just heard the Roll Over Beethoven cover by the Beatles, and if you listened to that at the time, who could have saw it coming? It's a nice cover, kind of a nice pop song or whatever, by these four mop tops from

England, but who could have ever envisioned what the Beatles would become seven years later? That's amazing. But who could have ever envisioned what the Beatles would become like seven years later? That's amazing. And who would have imagined they would go in a different direction, right? Within a year or two or three, they're into Rubber Soul, Revolver,

so far away from that sound. If history went in a different direction, that's all the Beatles might have ever done, right? It would have been year after year of doing that sort of song and in that sort of style. But you had Gord Depp of The Spoons just in here. I just moved, so no one can see this, but I just moved the middle microphone up and I realized because it was down because I had it positioned in front of Gord Depp's acoustic guitar yesterday because he was kicking out jams he was

playing spoon songs and flock of seagulls and personally it was just my mind was blowing at how uh how much fun that was to have gord depp down here uh playing tunes for me what what is amazing to me when i when i listen to someone with his history or or read a memoir from them. When they talk about a period in time when they were so prolific, right, like hit after hit after hit. These were only Canadian hits, but it didn't matter. We still remember them. They stuck with us. And, you know, here was somebody in their early to mid-20s,

just like the Beatles, like so many others out there, right? And he managed to just do song after song after song through a certain specific period of time, right? Had that energy of being that age. And then eventually it fizzled out, like it seems to happen with everybody in that situation, right? They leave behind a legacy of like three or four or five years. Right.

Leave behind like this incredible collection of songs. And what ends up happening, it trickles off, right? They try and recapture the glory days. They never quite get there. And so you end up like Gord and the Spoons, Flock of Seagulls, whatever, right? Spending decades afterwards just regurgitating the glory days. Did you listen? If you listened, what did you think of 316, episode 316 of Gord Depp that just was recorded yesterday?

What was I supposed to think? I don't know. Because in the room, it was magical. But I want to know, like, somebody like yourself, I know you listen at, whatever, three times the speed to get through the large number of subscriptions you have. But did it sound as good as I thought it sounded? Or have I deluded myself? Oh, no. Look, to get people down in your basement and talk about their career and go through all their different songs, or as you like to call them, jams.

I know. I'm now overusing the word jams. I'm going to have to rein that in a little bit. So, yeah, the opportunity to stretch out and talk about this stuff for an hour and a half, two hours. I think you're only going to get more guests like that. Do you consider yourself, I'm looking at you now. Let's talk race for a moment here. I see a white guy here.

I know you're a white guy. Is that how you identify? No, no here. I see a white guy here. I know you're a white guy. Is that how you identify? No, no. You're not a white guy? I don't identify myself as a white guy. Help me as a Gentile here. Do you consider yourself a... You see, you're already identifying yourself as something else besides a white guy.

You're a Gentile. Tell me what Gentile means, first of all. Isn't Gentile like a non-Jew? Yeah, as far as I know. Unless there's something more complicated about it. No, anyway. So, you consider yourself white or not? Help me here.

How do you identify if you get one of those forms and you've got to put down your race? Ashkenazi Jew? Have you ever heard that before? Does that term mean anything? Ethnically, is that... it doesn't mean anything to me. A Jewish person with pasty skin of Eastern European origin? Because Judaism is a religion, but some people identify...

I'm going to be walking on some eggshells here, but ethnically you can identify, is it a race? Is Jewish Judaism, is this a race or a religion or both? I think that if you're into it, if you recognize yourself as part of that, it's the embodiment of everything.

Which is maybe a difficult idea to explain outside of it. You don't want to other people and make it sound like they're missing out on something or that I hold some sort of superiority to them because that's not what it is.

These issues are surrounding us more and more. I don't know how this happened, where it all started. This is the story that's unfolding here in the 21st century, right, where we can't avoid talking about identity politics. So, you know, if I have to be categorized, then yeah, that's a category that I'm going for. So I'm a hockey fan, and I was reading with interest a CBC article. And in the subject line, the headline of this article, it was basically that Larry Kwong had passed away, and he was the first person of color to play in the NHL.

Yeah, yeah, I saw on Twitter. You commented on that, right? You found this ridiculous somehow? No, I won't say they were ridiculous. You were outraged by the way he was categorized? I was not outraged. I simply stated that I did not

know, because I did not know. I was ignorant. I did not know that somebody, because he is of Asian descent, Larry Kwong. I did not know people of Asian descent were considered people of color. Where have you been for the past few years? With great interest, because two of my four children are of Asian descent.

So I'm thinking, oh, two of my four children are persons of color? Like, can I extrapolate this? Like, I had no idea. And this is where I think we're in the midst of a fad that's eventually going to pass, right? I think we're in the midst of a fad that's eventually going to pass, right? Because in reality, people, a lot of people don't walk around talking about themselves this way. But they see it reflected in the news media, in the social media headlines out there, right? That here we have, you know, somebody who fits that category. They're a person of color.

you know, somebody who fits that category. They're a person of color. They can't be defined any other way as if that's some sort of amorphous group unto itself out there, right? We've got the whites on one side and the people of color on the other. Yeah, we're all segregating ourselves. So how did you end up feeling after the fact?

I mean, you're wondering what does the future hold, right, for a couple of kids of yours? There's absolutely, like, never have I heard before about, you know, the first person of color in the NHL. I've always heard the first black player in the NHL. And so, firstly, it was, oh, I didn't know Larry Kwong was the first person of color in the NHL. I didn't realize people of Asian descent were people of color. And it's a little bit curious because CBC and I checked a lot of different publications that wrote about the passing of Larry Kwong. CBC is the only one that actually uses that term person of color. so I suppose it's in their style guide but in their whatever their

book is called that Asian is person of color and I to be quite honest I've talked to people about the lack of people of color covering Jay's games and stuff without realizing that Hazel May would qualify as a person of color. Do I

as a Jewish person do I get to walk around calling myself a person of color? Someone remarked calling myself a person of color? Someone remarked on Twitter that, you know, person of color is just a catch-all term for non-white person, okay? And I was thinking, well, it seems to be that way. But now in your example, you identify as—what's the term you used? What type of Jew? Ashkenazi Jew, right? Separate from a Sephardic Jew, who would be generally more from a Southern European background,

or more Mediterranean. So yeah, my people are the ones that you associate the most with. So now I need to ask the big question. Are you a person of color? I'll be whatever you want to be, Mike. Whatever works down here. And it's not for me to say

who does or who doesn't want to be, Mike. Okay, let's prove it. Whatever works down here. And it's not for me to say who does or who doesn't want to be categorized this way. Yeah, a person of color. Well, then, so when I read column after column condemning the whites about how, you know, whiteness and white supremacy is all around us, a lot of times I got to wonder, where do I fit in, right? Because a lot of the bad guys in these articles turn out to be Jews. Interesting, interesting. And I have my doctor, my dentist.

Just kidding. That's a Doug Ford joke. But I know a lot of my Jewish friends would call themselves white. So I guess it's up to the person, I suppose, how you identify. But it's all very interesting food for thought in 2018 when you speak of people of color. Yeah, I think eventually we're all going to get over it because a new generation comes up

that doesn't see things defined this way, right? And then you start to sound like an old person when you're using terminology that belongs to the past. Well, speaking of new generations, so our generation, so, you know, you and I, we remember the 70s. We grew up in the 70s. And interesting that there is a story about two six-year-olds playing hooky. Can you share this story that came to light this week about the six-year-old. A school, I think a Sinclair West Regal Road Public School, if I'm remembering correctly.

Some stories came out about what's been going on in the lunchroom there. Absolute chaos, right? The analogy they used, I mean, it's a timeless one. Lord of the Flies taking place in real time with a bunch of grade one students in Toronto where there were nowhere near enough supervisors relative to the number of kids. We're going through in Toronto something of an urban baby boom. There are more kids being born, being raised in areas like St. Clair West than there was a generation or two ago.

The schools are overcrowded and the supervision isn't at the numbers that it needs to be. So a story reported, front page of the Toronto Star, also the free Metro newspaper, right? A couple of six-year-olds having the media moment of their lives, right? Something for their parents to put in a frame and remember forever about the day they made it on the front page of the newspaper. What was the problem? What did they do? There was so much chaos, so much commotion going on in the lunchroom that these kids disappeared for half an hour after lunch. Nobody knew where they were. And I think by the time they came back, nobody even noticed that they were gone. Oh, man. And it is cute to kind of hear this becoming like front page news

in 2018 when that was sort of commonplace back in, you know, back in the 70s for a couple of six-year-olds to maybe play hooky for a half an hour after lunch. Yeah, yeah, just like disappear for the day. I don't know. They'd be found on the other side of town. A cop would pick them up wandering around. Nobody would think anything of it. I remember being, I don't know, maybe a little older than six,

seven or eight years old. We'd go on these day camp trips roaming around the CNE with other kids who were seven, eight years old. Nobody thought anything of it. Yeah, different times, man. So real free-range kids. I think these two six-year-olds are heroes, right? They're libertarian models about how if you let kids roam on their own, in the end, most

of the time, nothing bad is going to happen to them. I realize that's not a case you could make with a lot of parents today. I don't imagine, Mike, that when your kids are around that age, you'll be too excited to hear that they were skipping school. Six is young. Six is young. But if you change that to eight, it's like, okay. But it wasn't

young when we were six. You're right. Times have changed. For sure. I mean, we came home when the lights in the park came on. That was like, okay, go bike home now. And today, if you did that,

I think the cops would be at your door for being a negligent parent if you let your kids bike to the park and just come home on their own when the lights came on.

You know what I mean? It's just a different time. I'm playing. This is the Persuasions. Who are the Persuasions? They're covering the Barenaked Ladies, the old apartment. With the Barenaked Ladies, right? This was a collaboration. The vocal group, the

Persuasions, the Barenaked Ladies. Yeah, you're talking about the passage of time and what we've been through over the decades. This weekend coming up, the Barenaked Ladies being entered into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. And I think, Mike,

this means we are officially old. Man, I got to dig up my yellow tape. I got it somewhere. That's great. Of course, the big news for everybody who loves, you know, 90s CanCon, the big news is that

Stephen Page is going to join them. And Stephen Page hasn't played with this band in a long time. I just read a note from Stephen Page where he said he has no idea what the Barenaked Ladies have been up to since he left the band. He says that would be like watching your

ex-girlfriend's sex tape. Yeah, you must have read that in the 1236 newsletter because I pulled that quote out of CBC. Oh, you know what? I'm going to give you full credit then. Part of my daily routine is after my lunchtime bike ride, I read my 1236. So that's probably where I got it. So here's Stephen Page, a guy that I've gotten to know over the years, not personally, more just as a public figure and being in journalism.

And Stephen Simmons, we should point out quickly, friend of Toronto Mike to Steve Simmons. It's his cousin. being in journalism. And Stephen Simmons, we should point out quickly, friend of Toronto Mike to Steve Simmons, it's his cousin. Through the years, I've seen the whole bare-naked lady story evolved, right? It reached some sort of

peak in 2008. Stephen Page got arrested. He was charged with cocaine possession. There was a whole drama involving him on the front lawn of a house somewhere in western New York where he now lives.

At the time, people didn't know that he was divorced. He was into a new relationship. He was sort of hiding out, being an elusive artist. You remember, though, there was a mugshot of Stephen Page. I remember very well, because I think it came at the same time as Bare Naked Ladies were about to do this Disney kids music thing.

It was bad timing. Yeah, a kids album, a tour called Snack Time. Right. They had just scored the Big Bang Theory theme song. So they were on some sort of comeback about 10 years ago. But then this misfortune befell Stephen Page, and a few months later he announced he was leaving the band. This was really confusing because most people figured he was the one behind it.

He was the face of the entire enterprise. He was definitely the premier voice, even though on one week and stuff you'd hear Ed Robertson, but the key voice for all the big early hits was Stephen Page. So here we are 10 years later. Page has tried to develop a

sort of solo career. He's done things that are a little more highbrow, musically speaking, and the Barenaked Ladies, they continued on, putting out different albums, going on tour. I guess there's some sort of 90s nostalgia circuit, especially across middle America. I was at their most recent tour.

I saw them at Massey Hall, and they're still great. They're still funny. There were a couple of cracks about Stephen Page made, and everyone in the band kind of snickered and rolled with it, and I had great seats. I'm staring at Ed Robertson. He didn't, not even a little smirk.

He wouldn't react, wouldn't engage. It really felt like there was still bad blood between Ed and Steven. This coming weekend at the Juno Awards, all that bad blood is going to be drained and they're going to perform together for the first time in a decade. And I suspect there will be some other activity that lies beyond.

You want to put some odds on this one, Mike? We can listen to this in the future and wonder if there would be a BNL reunion. I say no. I say this is a one-off. And I actually hope I'm wrong, but my prediction is that this is a one-off and there is no future collaboration. Okay, and I'm going to say that there's a lot of money that would

be left on the table if they don't make it happen. I think the reception will be great about seeing these guys together. If people aren't watching the Junos on TV, they'll see it online after the fact, and I think it'll be a great sentimental

moment for the history of Canadian music. And they'll find it within themselves to want to recapture that glory going forward. And I think make a couple of bucks, right? Because this road can't go on forever.

And I think at some point they'll want to go out with the Big Bang. I hope you're right. I hope you're right. And we will pull this cord. You hope I'm right, but you don't think I'm right. I don't think you're right. No, I don't think so. If I were putting a couple of bucks on it, I'd say nope.

But you're right. Sometimes it's like, what was I listening to? I think it might have been Age of Persuasion or something. But they were talking about... Actually, I can't remember. ABBA. Somebody was talking about ABBA. There was a billion dollars.

They could have made a billion dollars if ABBA had reunited. And they said, nope. I think this is Berenice and Ladies is Canada's ABBA. Yeah, but the men and women in ABBA were once married to one another, right? That is true. That is, the men married the women, not the men marrying the men and women in ABBA were once married to one another, right? That is true. That is, the men married the women, not the men marrying the men. No, yeah, there were heterosexual couplings there. So I think it was a little more loaded, right, as a result.

I mean, here's Stephen Page talking about watching an ex-girlfriend's sex tape. In the case of ABBA, that was a little closer to the truth. A billion dollars is a billion dollars. Yeah, okay, but they made money in other ways. They had the Mamma Mia stage musical and all sorts of licensing. I think the economics are a bit different for a Canadian band.

And look, it's not like they haven't been successful, right? I don't think these guys need to start a fundraising drive to continue into the future. But how many celebrities on that level reaching that audience with that sort of appeal are we ever going to see again, right? They belong to a certain place and time. Here these guys came along. They were, I don't know, 20, 21, 22 years old, you know, able to to to assert a certain kind of confidence. Once again, I mean, just like the Beatles, maybe like the spoons. Right. Right.

They found that lightning, captured it in a in a bottle. They were they were able to make it happen. And and yeah, I think there's a lot there to exploit and a lot of fans that will be excited to see them get back together because what did you think of those newer Barenaked Ladies songs? Catchy, but nothing I stick on my biking playlist. They're catchy and fun.

Canada Dry was one recent one I remember, but yeah, nothing. On my old playlist, I still have the old Barenaked Ladies. Look, here we are talking about this stuff, and I know there are people listening that cannot fathom that anyone was ever interested in this

music, right? I mean, this represented like a low point in the history of musical evolution that this sort of busker stuff was being passed off as alternative rock. But look, now there's a long legacy there. A lot of people are sentimental about it. And who knows what these guys can do creatively in the future. But that album they made with

The Persuasions, the R&B singing group, that one sort of sank without a trace. Didn't get very far. And I think that was an example of them trying to be a bit more avant-garde, working with these singers who had worked decades before with Frank Zappa. They were the real deal. They made

this Barenaked Ladies Persuasions album and I don't think too many out there really even heard about it. You realize this opening intro, we went from ABBA to Zappa, just like we planned. When I first tweeted about the new sponsor, Camp Tournesol,

you sent me a song that you remembered. You remember this song from, I guess, the late 70s or whatever. Camp, sorry, the camp is called Camp Tournesol. The song by Nana Muscuri, let me play it, Mike, come on, is called Le Tournesol. Did you have any flashbacks

listening to this song? I looked this song up, I don't know, maybe even just a few months ago. It was one that stuck in my head, yeah, for decades. Everybody comes on here now, now that you have this new camp sponsor, and you're talking to them about their history with the French language, right? So far, has anybody come in here who was fluent in French?

Not yet. Who got any sort of good education in the school system who was able to speak the language after years of being taught all the conjugations. Not yet. I'm trying to remember. I'm hoping you're the first one. Please tell me. No, not even close. I don't think

I ever had a French teacher who actually enjoyed speaking French. That's the problem, right? I think I have the same experience where I have grade 9 French and I hated it. Really, this is why, I believe this is why Camp Tournesol is important because you send your child to the French camp and the overnight camps or the day camps

and whether they're Francophone or French immersion or even if they have no French experience and it becomes fun. For us, it was like some kind of torture mechanism. I hated that mandatory French period every day, and the teachers hated teaching it. Okay, I remember enough about being played this song in my French class.

The teacher, as far as I could recall, had a sort of European background. I'm not sure where she was originally from, but given the time and place and context, it's possible that she survived the Holocaust and maybe didn't have the best feelings about the French people, but knew enough about the language

to be able to teach it. So she gritted her teeth and she fulfilled whatever obligations she had to do to explain how French was spoken. But what was the takeaway? What was I left with? No French at all. I think I learned more French from Sol, the clown on TV Ontario, the Parlez-Moi clown. He might have taught me more French

than the education system. See, look, I wish, again, if we could go back in time and send you to one of these Camp Tournesol camps because they have these programs. Like, I read this and I'm like, I want to go.

Okay, you enjoy weeks of jam-packed activities designed to support and enrich French learning in Ontario beyond the school walls. That's what you need. You got to send your kids to French camp. I think Gore Depp, he sold on the 13-day trip to Quebec, which I think I'm going to go with him. But here's the promotion I want to make sure I tell everybody about while

we still have Nana Muscuri here. Oh, there she goes. You got to use the promo code Mike, just Mike, M-I-K-E, when you go to campt.ca and you sign up for either one of these day camps or one of the programs or one of the overnight camps or that trip to Quebec, use the promo code Mike and you'll save $20 and you'll help out the show. So send, this is the plea, we're doing this for three months, the

Camp Tournesol sponsorship because this is the time of year where you sign up your kids for summer programs and everything. The largest French camps in Ontario, Camp Tournesol. Do it. Children 4 to 14. And better luck next time getting a guest in here who can actually speak French.

I wonder if Ken Daniels comes in tomorrow. I think we're going to be in for a similar experience. I was reading his book. He was raised in Forest Hill. So unless he went to a French immersion program, I'm going to find out tomorrow, but I'm not sure. And I think he's a lot older than Drake, so I don't think he went to a French immersion program, I'm going to find out tomorrow, but I'm not sure. And I think he's a lot older than Drake, so I don't think he went to school with Drake.

Chum FM. Hey, let's... I'm shuffling the deck a bit, and I want to keep this around two hours, so I have to start, if you don't mind, if I start with broadcasting. I guess it's my decision. I'm the boss. I'm going to steer us. Yeah, you're the DJ. I'm the rapper. That's right. Chum FM. Okay. I'm the boss. I'm going to steer us. Yeah, you're the DJ. I'm the rapper. That's right.

Chum FM, okay? The ratings come out. Chum FM appears that within their... Well, you tell me. I believe their ratings are down. That's the perception. Is that correct? Their overall ratings were down, right? I mean, we come in here, we talk about radio ratings,

which after like 20 years online, chatting with people about the radio industry, this is like a safe space for me, right? Because we go on Twitter and we mention something about what's going on with local radio in Toronto, the comings and goings in that business. There's almost always a tweet from somebody wondering, who listens to this stuff, right? Why are you paying attention to any of this? And it harkens back, I think, to growing up in Toronto, 70s, 80s, even into the 90s. This was where you would find the most homegrown media, right? to to local radio stations. This is what what passed for a celebrity on the time when when there wasn't as much going on around the city. Of course, we had we had local TV stars. But, you know, by comparison, the radio was there for you all the time.

Roger Ashby was a big deal in this city. There were morning shows that, you know, had to produce a certain amount of content every week. And while it might belong to a whole different era when it was able to reach a critical mass, when you could be on the radio and pretty much guarantee that a lot of people were going to hear it, things might be more fragmented now. But yeah, I think what happens in this business is still an interesting topic. So the future of a station like Chum FM, the ratings come out. They show the fact that the numbers are a lot lower than they used to be as far as the overall share was concerned. At the same time, seems to be relatively strong with the target audience they're going for, which is females skewing on the younger side. But the question comes up, right? What lies ahead for this sort of station? How can something like this adapt to the future?

And in a lot of cases with radio, you know, we've seen stations just reaching a finish line and deciding now it's time to cash in on that legacy and look to the past and just play the music that worked before and get that audiences out there rather than try and reach younger people who don't know one radio station from another. Now, Roger Ashby's been over here and I asked him, you know, I asked him a bunch of questions, but one of the questions, because I recently pulled this clip to put it on the new Toronto Mike YouTube channel. I asked Roger, basically, is there any pressure for him to, you know, gracefully retire like the Mike Cooper package where you get celebrated out after so many years of great service. And he says no. And he told me that he'll go as long as they'll let him go. He'd like to continue doing the show. Do you have any thoughts on the future of Roger Ashby at Chum FM? Any predictions, maybe? I think if there's anything that I would like to see, it would be for Bell Media to trade on that magical chum brand and decide to start playing the older stuff that people remember it by.

Be that kind of station like in New York, right? The number one radio station in New York is WCBS-FM. The number one radio station in New York is WCBS-FM. It started off as an oldies radio station through the 70s, 80s, 90s. I mean, they were still playing doo-wop records, let alone stuff from the 50s, 60s. No, FM. Really? FM radio station.

I didn't know this. In 2005, they decided the time for this type of radio had passed, and they flipped the format to Jack FM. Remember when that was a big fad? Introduce that to New York without any DJs playing what we want. It turned out to be a huge flop. And what happened was they resurrected CBS FM. They brought it back, and that's a station now where you can hear these DJs that are synonymous with these decades of New York radio. Scott Shannon is one of them. Broadway Bill Lee is another, an afternoon drive.

I can't pick up the station here. It's geo-blocked. I guess there's a way around it, but mostly through Broadway Bill Lee. blocked. I guess there's a way around it, but mostly through Broadway. Bill Lee, you watch his YouTube clips of him trying to hit the post, I guess, on Facebook, on Twitter. Always magical. So yeah, I would like to see a

Toronto version of that show up, and Chum FM would be the place to do it for our friend Roger Ashby. It would be quite a way to go out on a 50-year career, to at least have a year or two of doing this type of radio again. But at the same time, because the argument always comes up, who actually cares about this stuff? Is it really just the province of a few radio geeks out there?

Can you really turn nostalgia for radio into something that people care about. I don't know. It's a big topic here in your basement. How does this play out in the bigger world out there? And next week, a timely visit by Mad Dog, Jay Michaels. He's coming in. I think he's bringing Ryan

Doyle with him. They have a show on 1010, News Talk 1010. But, you know, we've been hearing Mad Dog substitute for Roger, and so it would be Mad Dog and Marilyn doing mornings on 104.5. And I have a feeling, no, this is completely a guess. I don't have

any inside information here, but it feels like it might be time at the end of this year or so for them to have Roger retire or to do other things and to slide Mad Dog into that slot beside Marilyn. Yeah, but how would you feel if you were alive and well, maybe even pushing 70, but able to do your job as well as ever,

and you knew that there were a couple of guys sitting in a basement, right, in West Toronto here. I don't want this to happen. I'm just speculating. You're talking about the day that you'll be put out to pasture, right, in West Toronto here. I don't want this to happen. I'm just speculating. Talking about the day that you'll be put out to pasture, right? Imagine how you would feel if it came down to that. Well, you know what? This new YouTube, and I urge people

to subscribe to the Toronto Mic YouTube channel, because I've been going through some old episodes to pull clips, and I just went through the Kate Wheeler, Christine Bentley episode. By the way, I'm a lot super biased here as the guy who owns the episode. By the way, I'm super biased here as the guy who owns the show and hosted the show. But again, I hadn't listened to it since I recorded it.

Very, very, very interesting. And to hear them talk about the ageism in the broadcasting world. I mean, we talk about this, but let's face it, this is happening. Good people like Roger Ashby are being told time is up all the time. And yet there is so much going on right now.

Maybe we access it in different ways, right? It's not on radio. It's not on television. It requires being very online. But if you are, you constantly see different people, different personalities, different ideas, different attitudes that are surfacing just from people plugging away, trying to get noticed. And, of course, you have to w just like a style, an approach to communication that's different from what we've ever seen before. Here we are reaching a crossroads right now when

it comes to Facebook, for example, and what people feel about that. And put a pin in that because we're going to get to that when Brian's got a question for you. And put a pin in that because we're going to get to that when Brian's got a question for you. And yeah, anything could happen right past this point. I mean, if Facebook disappears, if less people are interested in it, what will happen? What will we be able to notice that we haven't noticed before, right, if people aren't glued to Facebook all day? That's the way I'm seeing it. All right. And just looking at the clock.

If every single item gets this amount of attention, we're going to be well into the fourth hour. So we're going to have to do it three times the speed because I have so many things I want to say. One thing is when I had Steve Anthony over here, I asked him about the Moses story that the Globe and Mail is working on. Yeah, Moses Nimer. Say it again. Znimer. Say it again.

Znimer. Znimer. Znimer. I don't know how to roll the Z into the N. Znimer. This might be your Gentile side. I really struggle with that one because I do the Z and I kind of, Znimer, which is wrong. Znimer.

Znimer. I'm working on it. Yeah, it's sort of endearing that you could never get it right. I'm not very good at pronouncing words. FYI. But, you know, at Classical 96.3, he owns that station. And that's doing quite well, right? Yeah, he doesn't own it.

I mean, he's the head of the company that owns it. Okay, yeah. So that station's doing well. Good news. But this story that, you know, has been teased and is the most open secret, I think, in Toronto Not Me circles. Not not-me circles. Not-me-too circles. Not-me-another-circle.

Moses, is this story going to break? Frank Magazine said it was going to break. Look, I think you brought it to some new level here when you had Steve Anthony down here talking about it. Before that, it was stuff, a rumor. I'd known about it a little bit. Well, John Gallagher was the first guy I noticed put something in public. Before that, we were stuff, a rumor. I'd known about it a little bit. Well, John Gallagher was the first guy I noticed put something in public. Before that, we were all talking about it.

Out of some sense of professional courtesy, I wasn't going to blab that I heard that a writer was working on something. But in this case, I did. It wasn't much of a secret because the Globe and Mail was calling around to people that had a history with Moses Neimer, people who'd worked under him. And as far as I can tell, a lot of these people are still in touch with one another, right? They're all still pretty tight. They work there in the trenches of 299 Queen West, maybe even all the way back to 99 Queen East. When a reporter starts calling, asking around for stories and presenting examples of something, they're eventually going to start to tell one another. It would be really hard to keep a lid on this sort of research. So eventually it got out there.

some sort of Moses Nimer story involving his role as a media manager and his professional history. But outside of what Steve Anthony alluded to, what did he say? That there's probably going to be stuff that comes out. It's going to maybe cause some problems. He had one of those great money quotes, and I can't remember what it was,

but something about... I've got to dig that up again. Okay, but I don't believe this. A lot of shit's going to go down. I'll believe it when I see it. I don't know what's going on with this story. We've been waiting all winter for this thing to come out in Globe and Mail.

So yeah, towards every weekend, wondering, is this the time that we're finally going to read this Globe and Mail story about Moses Nimer? We're not there yet. Just like Anne Romer coming on your podcast. She says she's coming on this spring. These are the two things that

we're perennially waiting for. When's it going to happen? So maybe by the time you hear this, in fact, there's been this Moses Nimer story, maybe it was published and maybe it didn't say anything that was all that bad. We will see. We will see. Speaking of that YouTube channel where I pulled the clips,

the most watched YouTube clip so far is the one where Mike Stafford is on my show telling me that basically he doesn't want to work mornings. He likes where he is and he doesn't want to work mornings. And the big news in what we call GNR 640 is that Stafford is the new morning show host. So Stafford joins Supriya Dwivedi mornings on 640, and they moved Matt Gurney to the spot after mornings.

Yeah, and it was a bit of an experiment, I think, to put Matt Gurney in there. So there's Mike Stafford in the mornings making it considerably more listenable. I have to say that I've tuned in enough to know what's going on there. And yet it's rolling along. There's a good energy as far as I can tell. A lot of people in the Toronto Mike comments were speculating that this Mike Stafford with Supriya Dwivetti combination was not going to work. That there were factors involved with listening to her, that she shouldn't be with him, that he was best working on his own. But I don't hear anything that bears that out.

I'm not sure what they were yapping about. And I guess that's the reason Stafford jumped into your comment section. Yeah. And wondered, what's all this conspiratorial talk for? And wondered, what's all this conspiratorial talk for that if you like what he's doing, he was just going to bring it to a different time slot. As far as I can tell, that's happening. The bigger battle there at 640, as it has been now for decades, is how exactly are they going to get more people to listen to this? So it's now tethered to global, global television, global news radio.

That's the branding. I don't know what status global has as far as being seen as a trusted, important news organization. But look, I mean, it's mass media. They reach people. There's enough viewers out there that maybe they tune into a global radio station, too. I should tell people listening that I did invite Supriya to come on Toronto Mic'd, and she politely declined. But I did extend the invitation. I wanted to have her in here. Eventually, they all come around. Well, I'll be patient. All right.

Eventually they all come around. Well, I'll be patient. All right. Now, Indy 88, you've previously confessed that you love, like you should, listening to Bookie. Bookie, they moved his time slot? Well, I previously confessed, and before that I previously condemned Indy 88, that I didn't think much of it. But, yeah, it's been spruced up. I think they've moved away. There's a market differential now that wasn't there a year or two ago from 102.1 The Edge. You can hear a different sound to the station left of the dial that it's closer to living up to the ideals that people had.

You know, commercial radio station that was adopting a lot of sensibilities that aren't associated with commercial radio, right? Most stations that do this format in the United States are listener-supported ones. They don't sell advertising. So it's a different thing that Toronto has as a station, you know, playing this eclectic sound with at the same time looking for advertisers. And I think it's getting better. And I think our friend Bookie there in midday, they moved him up from 10 a.m. to 9 a.m. And for me, as I need something in the background that doesn't make me think too hard, the soundtrack every morning to writing the 1236 newsletter is Bookie on Indie 88.1.

As long as he's there, as long as their stream is working, I'm able to listen. Much like Supriya, Dave Bookman politely declined my invitation, although I haven't asked him in five years. I don't know, maybe every five years I'm allowed to bother him again. Yeah, but at some point, these people might need you more than you need them, so don't count that out. We'd love to have Bookie in here, that's for sure.

I am playing a song by Hedley, Love Again. Yeah, are we going to get arrested here for having this on? Is something now going to happen to us? Is your podcast going to be banished? We've heard all this talk about this rock band, Headley. I don't know

that they're really rock music anymore, but initially... Well, this song is as rock music as... I suppose it's got a Maroon 5 thing going on, but it's barely rock. I'm sorry. They started off being positioned as like this corporate punk band, right? That was a look, that was the image, and they still have that image. But they went down this other

road sonically. Here's this song, Love Again. I don't think before this Headley scandal broke out, I even knew this was them, that I'd heard the song and I didn't put it together. I didn't really care. This didn't sound interesting enough to care about. But here we have Headley and Jacob Hogard, frontman, subject of all sorts of allegations of sexual misconduct that are really serious. of sexual misconduct that are really serious. And he's denying that any of this activity was ever without consent. So here they have booked a cross-Canada tour when we have this out-headly 2018 hashtag starting to spread around, different stories coming out against them, different claims being made, none of which were ever proven in court.

And the surreal scenario of, here's this band that booked this cross-Canada arena tour. People didn't even know, I think, for the most part, that they were famous enough to draw those kinds of crowds. But that's what years and years of Canadian radio airplay will get you. And they followed through with that tour. It's coming to an end. It was ending coinciding with the Juno Awards that they were scheduled to be on. They were nominated. They pulled out of that.

And as far as anyone could tell, it's the end of the road for Headley that they're going to go on some sort of indefinite hiatus. And who knows? We might never hear from them again if only the media stopped covering them. They've gotten more attention in the past few weeks than they ever did before. I think this was a failure on behalf of Canadian arts journalism or whatever passes for it these days. If a band was popular enough to play to these kinds of crowds, doesn't it say something that no one ever wrote an article explaining how they got there? how they got there. So you hear all this stuff about Hedley and very little explanation

about how they got enough attention to get to this point. I don't know what you ever knew about them, if you ever gave them any thought. The kids started as a Canadian Idol. This is what I remember. This was the first season, right? I remember that I did tune into that first season.

The first or second season? Yeah, when it was being watched by a lot of people. Right. And so I definitely remember sort of the birth of Jacob Hogart? Is that how you say it? Hogart? Yeah, Jacob Hogart. And then, yeah, I remember. Never my cup

of tea, but I knew they were always around. And I guess now they've been banned from the Chum FM charts. You won't hear Love Again. Yeah, they were banned banned from every corporate radio station in Canada. That was part of it. There's a petition out there to reinstate Airplay. But we were talking before about Chum FM. Nobody else but me would have noticed.

They were at number 11 on the Chum FM charts with that song we just heard, Love Again, and then the week after it, it disappeared from the chart. It sank like a stone. What's the opposite of rising with a bullet? Well, you know, my new friend Tom Cochran, who's going to come on this program, I believe it was sinking like a sunset, I believe was one of his hits.

So as much as anybody has paid any attention to the Chum Charts, I guess it's a point of pride that I've been paying attention to radio station music charts for long enough. I can say I was there when Thriller debuted at number one on the 1050 Chum chart, 1984. Did you remember that? That was a big deal when Michael Jackson's Thriller single came out. I remember 1984, and I remember Thriller, and I remember how big the video was next level. We had never seen anything like that.

They broke all the rules on the chart. Never before had a single entered at number one. Although, I think the station gave up hope of living up to its legacy by then. So I was there for that. And I was there to see Hedley disappear from the Chum FM

Top 40 chart 34 years later. So there you go. You can just put that on my headstone, a life well lived. I got to see both those things happen. CBC Radio 2 is now known as CBC Music. Are you listening? Do you care? I know you're enough of a CBC fan.

You've got that CBC shirt. Did you know I'm wearing my CBC? Honestly, you can't tell. For people at home, I'm wearing a hoodie right now. But look, I have the exploding pizza, or as Vic Router would call it, the exploding asshole. Yeah, I am not listening. I don't have time to listen to CBC. And yet you don't have time just to have some music radio station on in the background.

I guess maybe that's a little more demanding, right? music radio station on in the background, I guess maybe that's a little more demanding, right? Because you don't know all the songs, and you don't really care that much about what they're doing. But they're now like 10 years into this idea of trying to reframe CBC's music radio

station, going for different sounds. But is this just a name change, or is there any more to this rebrand? Well, maybe they should have changed the name 10 years ago. They were trying to move away from classical music. That was the identity of the station before. There was a big outcry. I don't know if you remember. Yeah, I do. 2007, 2008.

I remember, yeah. They were moving the format away from that and relaunched the whole thing. Summer 2008. Adult alternative radio sound of CBC Radio 2. And while it seemed to have a lot of listeners, if you add them all up in all the cities across Canada, right?

Strombo has a Sunday night show on there, which seems to have some sort of following. But from market to market, individually, this has been pretty close to a last place radio station. Now it's known as CBC Music. They try to brighten up the marketing, right? You've got Raina, who was down here, what, a few hundred episodes ago. Yep.

Now she's on in the morning, so they're presenting her as a face of the station. Hardly a reflection on her, any individual work in there. Yeah, it's still a little too sterile, right? We listen to radio. We want those found moments, those sparks of spontaneity. And what they're doing there is so processed. It's so far away from the live radio experience. I think it's a little difficult to feel it for a lot of people out there who are used to hearing radio done a certain way. It just seems a little bit removed, that the connection isn't there with the audience.

There needs to be, and maybe that's a symptom of being the CBC, but they've got CBC music. They've got this branding, they've got this idea that everybody will tune into their portal, that they can bring a new approach to public broadcasting, and we'll see if that does anything at all, or if it's just another great Canadian public broadcasting initiative that we paid attention to for a few seconds and then forgot about.

Primetime Sports, hosted by Bob McCowan on the Fan 590, made a bunch of announcements. The big two would be that they were bringing back Stephen Brunt. So Damien Cox, you know, friend of the show, he is going to do other things. Yeah, just a selfie from right now is good. Maybe I've never shared this

on the podcast, but me and him had a conversation, a private conversation, where he felt that question was... He didn't think that was a fair question. He thought it was too gossipy. I don't know how I recorded an episode and not ask it. Given the fact that

he managed to brush the whole thing off when he was on here. But what I ask myself is, I feel it's fair to ask that question, and he can address it any way he wants, but how do I record that episode and not? Wouldn't it be glaring by omission? How much did I have to do with forcing you to ask that question? Well, I didn't throw you under any bun like, oh, you know, 1236 made me do it. Okay, but look, Damien Cox had this tweet. A lot of people were suspicious about what he was getting at there, right?

You know, okay, if you'd rather not, that's cool. Just a selfie from right now is good. People wondered if it was some sort of misdirected direct message that he put out there. I mean, in reality, I don't know. He was asking some player on the ice to take a shot of himself. I wish he had told us, like, okay, this is what it was. And then we'd all just shut up and go away. But he kind of stoked the fire by being so, like, mysterious about it.

Like, oh, you're going to think what you want to think. Like, to me, he didn't do himself. If he wanted this story to go away, he should have just said what it was. Yeah, really stepped in it, I think, because he developed this reputation on Twitter. How would you explain his Twitter reputation?

How did people regard him? That he was maybe a bit of a bully to people? That he was big on blocking people that disagreed with them. An antagonist on Twitter, he still is. Yeah, having objectionable opinions about what was going on in the world of hockey.

Right, and you know, in this, by the way, I should point out, after this conversation, he did tell me that he would be happy to come on again, and I think I might have him on again just to talk about what happened with Bob. Yeah, people have a whole podcast here dissecting what happened with the tweet,

if you didn't get to the bottom of it. Yeah, so they moved him off primetime sports. What happened with Bob? People have a whole podcast here dissecting what happened with the tweet, if you didn't get to the bottom of it. Yeah, so they moved him off primetime sports with Bob McCallum, who's not going anywhere. He's got these new co-hosts, as you mentioned. So old is new. So Stephen Brunt is an old co-host who's back again. Funnily enough, when he was here recently for the Pulitzer Prize winning episode of Stephen Brunt of Toronto Mic'd,

I asked him straight out, would he ever work Prime? That's another clip. That's the second most watched YouTube clip on that news station. He basically said, I don't think so. He thinks his days on Primetime are done for good because him and Bob just were not seeing eye to eye or whatnot. But there you go. He's back as co-host.

But here's the interesting story. They hired a guy out of, I think he was in New York, I think, but an American. And I hope I say this last name right, but Richard Deitch. Richard Deitch. So get the T in there. Yeah, he was doing a Sports Illustrated media podcast. So, yeah, even though I'm not the biggest sports media consumer, like the guests you have on here, when it's people talking about their experiences behind the scenes in the media industry. That's something that I can easily get into.

So yeah, I was often listening, including the time he had Bob McCowan on. That's the episode I listened to, and I tweeted at him back then and then thought he did a great job because I'm trying to get Bob on this show. But he's now moving his family to Toronto, Richard, so that he can be the other co-host.

So there's two co-hosts, and they each do, I don't know how many weeks, but they split the year up. Yeah, good move too, because before he was working with Sports Illustrated. Now, Sports Illustrated was sold just a few weeks ago, right, to the Meredith Corporation, a publisher specializing in women's magazines. So they have no business owning Sports Illustrated. They don't want Sports Illustrated. They don't want Time, Fortune magazine. They're selling these off looking for a buyer.

The thing they wanted was People magazine. That was a big prize in the deal. Selling these others off. So if Sports Illustrated is still around in the future, whether like Rolling Stone or any number of others out there, won't be what it used to be as far as having the amount of staff and the frequency of publishing. So good move for him

to jump from Sports Illustrated over to Rogers Sportsnet. That's a little unusual. He's also going to write for The Athletic, the subscription-based, digital only collective we've had those guys on. Working for The Athletic, the subscription-based, digital-only collective we've had those guys on.

Yeah, we're working for The Athletic, so now you can... Even more sports writers come down here. People from The Globe, The Star, The Sun talk about the fact

that they wish The Athletic well. I like the people there. Right. They've got some good writers. I even have a subscription. Yep. But if you ask me at the end of the day, I don't think they're going to last. They all read from the same handbook. You're absolutely right. That's too funny. I saw that tweet from you.

So if you've got this main voice in the world of sports media jumping to the athletic, that is some validation for what they're doing there don't you think i mean this guy's whole thing was analyzing sports media and determining that that sports illustrated is on the way out the athletic is where it's at yep good for him uh welcome to toronto richard i gotta get him in here now now this song i'm playing is called ain't easy by elijah woods that s is important. This is Elijah Woods with an S. And Jamie Fine, can you tell me why should I know this song? Well, did you pay any attention to the launch? No, I did not. I saw many, many promos for the launch, but I did not pay any attention.

And that's how far we've come from the days of Canadian Idol, right? We weren't so distracted 2003, 2004. A music reality show could come on, hosted by Ben Mulroney. It could be Canadian Idol, a knockoff of a formula that worked in other countries, and you could count on a certain number of people paying attention to it.

Well, here in 2018, Bell Media was trying to revive the whole idea, and their concept was a launch. So they would have these different music industry professionals they would come up with a song and then they would find the perfect artist to interpret it.

So that was the nature of the show as far as I can tell. I can't say that I watched it. I didn't see any of it. Oh you didn't see any but this might be, you didn't see any, but this might be probably the one good song that came from the lunch. Yeah, I think this was the only keeper. They had six songs, and this was the only one that stuck

with me, and it seems to be getting the airplay they were looking for. I mean, it's Bell Media. Sure, like some FM and all. Yeah, they own the TV network, they own the radio stations. Here was the vertical integration at work. This is what people thought 21st century media would be all about. A lot of people tried this before. This is what the whole pop idol thing was. Canadian idol, American idol, right? a celebrity that you could get them to sing a song. They would become famous. There have been diminishing returns in that regard. But out of everything from the launch, this seemed like one to remember.

And the duo doing this song, they seem really likable, sort of geeky, seem to have an aesthetic that reminds me of indie punk hardcore music from 30 years ago. Instead, the kids today are working off computers in their rec rooms. And yeah, I think that's where the pop stardom thing is going. So it would be interesting to see that song catch on over the course of the year. And that would, of course, include getting some sort

of American success because the people involved with the launch were American music industry people. That was the whole idea, right? That they would find Canadians who could then be attached to the American music industry. We'll see if it happens

for that one. Now, before we leave broadcasting, because I have gifts to give you. This might be the latest in an episode I've ever given the gifts to the guests. So it's coming very soon. Don't worry. I haven't forgotten. But I do want to just talk about my BFF, Steve Anthony, again, because, oh my gosh, we almost buried the lead here. Steve Anthony, after his visit to the Toronto Mike Studios, he announces on CP24 Breakfast that he is leaving not only the station, but the industry. I think his last day is March 29 or something like that, which is coming up. Yeah, Good Friday, just before Good Friday.

So that's it for Steve. He's signing off with the number one, what did he brag about on my show? The number one television morning show in the country, he said. And when news breaks like that, people have some natural suspicions. Did he do something wrong?

Are there some stories about him that haven't come out yet? Is he trying to sneak out the back door before Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer are joined by him in some sort of hall of shame and then people wonder if it was some kind of constructive

dismissal whether this was a guy making too much money as we presume was the case with Gord Martineau, even though that has never been confirmed. I'm still working on Gord. And then on top of it all, just speculation in general, right, that the big broadcasting industry isn't what it used to be, and that a guy like that doesn't have a place in it anymore. But no, it seems like none of those things apply. So let me hear.

So here's some insider stuff, I suppose. So after he announced this on CP24, I reached out to Steve. He takes my calls, you know. And I asked him straight out. I asked him straight out, like, is this 100% your decision, or is this something like you're spinning it as you quitting, but really they told you to leave like uh were you pushed out at all he tells me and i honestly i only had him he's

been over twice so i can't say he's my best friend for that's a joke of course but he's been over twice and he seems ridiculously honest like he just seems forthcoming and honest so i believe him for what it's worth i believe him when he tells me that this is 100% his decision to leave, he's been working on it since October, and quite simply, him and his wife want to do other things, and he doesn't want to wake up at 3 a.m. and continue to do the CP24 broadcast.

And based on the last appearance he had with you here, that was a K-O-T-J, right? Kick out the jams. Yes, he kicked out the jams. Yeah, I'd like to hear more from him in that context to maybe do something on his own. Come by your basement a little more regularly. Maybe the quarterly visit with Steve Anthony

is something you can get into. Oh, I'd eat that up. I'd eat that up like the cake that he should be getting on the 29th. There should be cake and gift cards for Steve Anthony. Gift cards, yeah. From the keg and the bay. You better remember this stuff by the time Ann Romer gets down here.

Coming this spring, coming this spring. Mark, there's a six-pack of beer in front of you. I think you visit me free. I heard it, wonderful timing, too. You cracked it open on mic. I love it. Elvis forgets to crack it on mic. Look at this. Another one. Enjoy. That's courtesy of

Great Lakes Brewery. Of course, they're a local craft brewery. I think I said 99.99% of the beer that they brew and can at the location. I call it right by the Costco near Royal York and Queensway here in the southwest corner of Toronto.

Most of it stays in Ontario. It's always ridiculously fresh. It's tasty. They're fiercely independent. If you're going to drink beer, and why wouldn't you, you should drink Great Lakes beer. Enjoy, my friend. Yeah, well, I mean, look, the most beer that I ever drink in one sitting

is when I come over to Toronto Mic'd. And you are the person who has received the most free beer. The only beer that I ever drink in one sitting is when I come over to Toronto Mic'd. And you are the person who has received the most free beer through this wonderful sponsorship by Great Lakes Beer. Okay, yeah, keep it coming. I've got no complaints. Now, on top of that, nobody leaves here without a glass. So I'm building up a whole collection. All of a sudden, I've got, like, for the first time in years that's a new bunch of new glasses this is important he redesigned the glass so it has a splash of color in there it's even better than it was before so you've got the new and improved pint glass from

brian gerstein brian gerstein of course is a sales real estate sales representative with psr brokerage and he was kind enough to record a special message for you, Mr. Weisblot. Hey, Mark. Brian Gerstein here, sales representative with PSR Brokerage and proud sponsor of Toronto Mic'd. Happy Pesach. By the way, Mike, when Mark was in last time, Hanukkah and Christmas coincided, as does Passover and Easter next weekend. Just an FYI. Hope you enjoy my new and improved pint glass, Mark, because it's now in color, because Mike's guests deserve the best a pint glass can offer. I also have a limited supply left over exclusively for Toronto Mike's listeners.

In order to get one, just give me a call at 416-873-0292 to meet and discuss any real estate needs you have as spring has sprung and now is the best time with the busiest market of the year to list. Mark, I'm a bit freaked out on the Facebook breach, and this morning deleted tons of apps that had access to my personal information and to my friends. As a media expert, should I be concerned, or is this just to be expected, as expecting privacy is a ship that sailed a long time ago? Okay, now Brian there might be freaked out by Facebook, but you were freaked out by what Brian was talking about. What didn't you understand? I never heard the term. I hope I'm going to butcher this. Pais?

Whatever. Yeah, close enough. Because Passover I know. Yeah, he was referring to Passover by the Hebrew word for it. Okay, Passover I do know of. I do, and thank you, Brian. I like to know that Passover and Easter are going to collide. It's good to know, just like Hanukkah and Christmas does sometimes.

I didn't realize that Pes was actually just a Hebrew term for Passover. Close enough. Pesach. I thought there was a, I missed a holiday. If you're going to abide by the Jewish rules, and I don't really care if you don't. But one thing that you're not supposed to have during that week is beer. But is that this week?

Or no, that's coming. Like, when is this week that you're not allowed to drink beer? Well, wouldn't it be great if I thought that I wasn't allowed and I made an exemption for your podcast? Well, that's where I'm going here. I want to know how many religious laws

you're breaking here. Because, you know, you're speaking to somebody who lives by no religious laws, but I respect you and your beliefs and your practices, and I enjoy being informed when there's a holiday going on for a particular religion. No, like you were saying before, it coincides with the Easter weekend most of the time. That's when Easter weekend fluctuates all the time. A lot of people don't even remember and notice. It's a different week almost every year. And it's like April Fool's Day this year.

Something's April Fool's. Is Easter Sunday April Fool's Day this year? Yeah, this year, something. I don't know. April Fool's weekend. I got a four-year-old and... Oh, he's almost four. He's four next week. But four-year-old and a two-year-old,

and they're expecting an Easter bunny to come here and hide chocolate eggs for them. This is what I know. And I know that I have to know when this is going down because the Easter bunny needs some assistance. So yeah, April 1st, definitely. That is Easter Sunday this year. But Facebook...

So get your Easter eggs ready. So now has a translation been sufficient for you about what's happening there as far as the Jewish stuff is concerned? I mean, are you satisfied that you're walking away understanding a little more than you did before? Yes. Don't give Mark Wiseblood beer the week of Passover because he can't drink it. Yeah, that's all you needed to know. That's the only thing I get from you. But Facebook. I personally, my thoughts, not that he asked me, but my thoughts are, you know the deal when you go in. Like when something is free like Facebook, your data is the price.

like Facebook, your data is the price. And whatever you put into this, expect them to, you know, expect that, you know, if you were really worried about them using your data, whatnot, you would not be pumping that data into this free program or software, whatnot.

So I just feel like you knew the deal going in. None of this is really surprising to me. I know people are freaking out and deleting it, but none of this is really shocking to me. I'm not sure a lot of people are deleting it. I think that they're talking about deleting it, like they're imagining now. They're starting to think for the first time in a decade,

do I really need this in my life? Now, what was the problem here? What was the culprit? It was a guy named Christopher Wiley, originally from British Columbia, a guy who had a history as a teenager who was working for the Liberal Party of Canada. Facebook was new on the scene at the time that Stéphane Dion was the leader of the Liberals. I mean, everybody forgets. Nobody remembers that the Liberals were in the political wilderness. Justin Trudeau was just like a newbie MP from Montreal. He didn't have any influence, any impact. It was a whole different regime at the head of the party.

You know, they wanted to figure out how they could connect to the young people, how they could, you know, get a wider audience of support. You know, the voters in that 2008 election where they saw signs of just being obliterated by the conservatives took a few more years for that majority government to kick in. But it was all in the cards. So this guy, Christopher Wiley, turned out he got a contract from the liberals, right, to explore how they could exploit Facebook, what tactics they could use to get personal information from would-be voters, where they could then turn around and target them. Now, I don't know if you find this scandalous,

that this sort of thing was going on. Well, I'm a digital marketing professional by trade, to pay my mortgage, etc. And it's all about targeting. Like, to me, you know, you're targeted. You know, Gmail's not free because the bots will scan and target the ads accordingly. I don't know.

Yeah, okay, but what if you... This is the way of the world if you're going to use the web of your services. But what if you target people by giving them quizzes, right? These benign things that would ask people questions, right? Who's the ignorant fool, I mean, other than, I guess, my mom and everybody of that ilk, that felt they were benign in the first place? Whatever you pump in, you've got to expect that to be, I think there's an expectation.

But would you have expected it then to be steered towards a political targeting group? Would you have expected that if you answered some kind of question, right, about your personality type or I don't know, what is your real age? How stupid would these things get? You would not have imagined that that would be turned around and they would be farming that data for a political party. That would be the last thing anyone would have imagined. But anyone with these concerns, these privacy concerns, which are fair concerns, but in 2018, if you really did

have concerns about privacy, you would not be using Gmail, you would not be using Facebook, you wouldn't be using any of these supposed so-called free social media online properties. You would opt out of all of these if you were legitimately concerned about privacy. Okay, but then look, we've got Mark Zuckerberg being contrite.

He's admitting fault here, that they dropped the ball, that they did something wrong, right? That they failed to protect their users from this sort of thing. So even if it was in the terms of service for whatever app you were signing up for, there was still the factor that you were doing it all through Facebook. That Facebook endorsed and approved and condoned this sort of thing going on. And eventually they patched it up. But there was a period of time in which any of these developers could mine this information. So not only do we have Cambridge Analytica now being synonymous with these sorts

of activities, what we don't know is how many others were engaged in it, and that there might have been hundreds or thousands, even like tens of thousands of companies who were trading secrets on some sort of dark web about what you could do with people's data on Facebook. So yeah, I think this is a big deal, but I think it's also a potential turning point that we'll get a little bit beyond it and that there won't be that reliance, especially within the media industry. A lot of marketing, a lot of people who are trying to promote things. They've been dependent on Facebook to be the vehicle. And we've seen year after year, more and more people annoyed by it. And they follow all these pages and friends and photos and starting to complain that their

news feed is being censored, that there's some sort of editing going on that's preventing them from seeing things that they actually want to see. How useful is Facebook if it gives you information that's been editorially selected for you, right? People have complained that they didn't know about their friends dying because people would post it on Facebook and figure that was good enough. Now maybe

we're going to find out what lies beyond it. There's better ways to be doing this. Do you think we could... I have three more categories, if you will. I want to cover the city of Toronto, I want to cover internet, and I want to cover print. Can we do each category in 15 minutes?

We can do them as quickly as you want. You're the one who has to cut me off when I start getting into a soliloquy here. Let's go. Let's talk about our city of Toronto, the 6th. Where will we begin? The Ashley Simpson McDonald's is coming back?

I had that as a subject line on a 1236 newsletter because it was actually Adam Radwanski, a Globe and Mail political columnist, who brought this up. But yeah, I always remembered. Ashley Simpson was once filmed intoxicated in a McDonald's, and she was hurling these epithets to the fast food workers behind the counter at the height of her fame. This was like one of the first viral videos of a celebrity gone wild, right? I remember. This was a certain period of time before it was assumed that everybody had some kind of camera in their phone. had some kind of camera in their phone. But just enough people did that some celebrities could be caught doing something that they weren't supposed to be doing.

And in this case, it was Ashley Simpson making this McDonald's across from the Royal Ontario Museum, forever synonymous with her name by the fact that she was filmed in an inebriated state or something while she was trying to get some sort of late night order there. I think that along with lip syncing on Saturday Night Live sort of did in Ashley Simpson's career. I remember that too. Although the New York Times just had a two-part podcast analyzing Ashley Simpson as a pop phenomenon, whether she got a raw deal.

The McDonald's there at Bloor and Avenue Road, it originally was expropriated by the city to build the subway, and they weren't doing anything with the space once the subway was built, right, the Bloor-Danforth line. And they struck a deal with McDonald's. It was something like a 99-year lease for $1,200 a month. Wow. For a whole century of McDonald's being able to operate there. So this came to light somewhere around the mid-2000s and something of a scandal at City Hall that a landlord, the city, was charging McDonald's, I mean of all companies, charging them this little money.

McDonald's then struck a deal with the city. They bought the site, something like $3.4 million, whatever it was. It was a real deal. Then they turned around. They sold it to a condo developer to build a luxury high-rise right on top of it, incumbent upon the idea that the McDonald's would return. So we are getting ready now for the return of the Ashley Simpson McDonald's. And for all the money that the McDonald's Corporation made off this place, they should maybe give away the food for free, right?

They should put everything on a dollar menu. They got such a good deal to be there. And just down the street at Bloor and St. George, there's this Kempton Hotel replacing the Holiday Inn. A bunch of U of T students seemed to get emotional about the fact that Holiday Inn that was there for, I don't know, 30 years, might have been a comfort inn branding before that, owned by the company Intercontinental Hotels. So, you know, they've got some prime real estate there. The Annex, University of Toronto, Yorkville all nearby.

And, you know, the Holiday Inn, that doesn't seem like something – the neighborhood could do better than that, right? So they've got a luxury hotel brand. It's called Kimpton. And the building, Bloor and St. George Holiday Inn, being renovated, right, into this higher-end boutique hotel. And, you know, right on time, like clockwork, you've got a story in the University of Toronto newspaper, in the Varsity, lamenting the fact that here's another building lost to gentrification, that they've got this pub in there.

What is it? The Fox and Fiddle? You know, one of those real, like, beer-soaked student atmospheres, you know, selling cheap pints on a Thursday night. That's going to disappear in favor of a boutique hotel. But, hey, that's the way of the world, right? I mean, that's progress. But there's always going to be a student out there, right? Someone who fashions themselves some sort of boulevardier who, you know, doesn't remember much as far as history is concerned because they're still pretty young, lamenting the fact that, you know, gentrification is coming to my neighborhood and chasing everybody away, right? That suddenly it's going to be replaced by this boutique hotel bar

selling $18 martinis and things will never be the same. So there you go. That's just the ever-evolving evolution of everything. And restaurant owners on King Street felt like people were being chased away by the King Street pilot. And we were all inundated with the news of the ice sculptures flipping the bird. It looked like they were flipping a bird to people on the streetcars rolling by. Tie a nice bow around this King Street pilot situation.

Well, it was the most money that this ice sculpture guy ever made. The orders kept coming in to have these middle finger ice sculptures through the winter. Before he turned to running for the provincial PC party, this was going to be Doug Ford's big issue. Right. He was advocating for the restaurant owners on King West. Oh, and I think Mammaliti was there, too, I think. Yeah, they had like a council meeting in a Kit Kat restaurant. Mammaliti, you know, can't show up to the actual city council half the time. Right, right, right. there too i think yeah they had like a a council meeting in a kit kat restaurant mammal lady you

know uh can't show up to the actual city council half the time right right right uh but there he was you know with al carbone in the in the kit kat restaurant you know conspiring how they would get the revenge upon john tory for for driving uh all the cars off king street the fact the fact that they now right they have to turn at every intersection to make the streetcar a priority. So that's applied some laughs through the winter, watching these restaurant owners on King Street up to this buffoonery. But I think above everything else, they legitimize the middle finger as no longer being seen as obscene. It doesn't need to be censored anymore when it's on the news. When we were growing up, they would have pixelated out any display of a middle finger.

So if we can give them credit for anything, it's the fact that a middle finger is no longer something that has to be censored, finger is no longer something that that that has to be censored uh that future uh generations will no longer have to be shielded by the concept of of raising your middle finger in the air and they also uh one afternoon they had a a street hockey game uh do you remember that they were they were uh trying to show that you know you could just play hockey in the middle of of king street this uh downtown uh intersection in in the middle of a weekday afternoon because there were no cars around. This was emblematic about the fact that they weren't getting any customers. Well, I was going to say, I know their point there.

I always felt that's kind of neat. Like, oh, that's like a livable city, a nice walkable public transit first, cycling first city. I liked the idea. You could have a ball hockey game on King Street. So Doug Ford doesn't care about this anymore, I don't think. No, he does not. He's trying to run for premier,

and Giorgio Mammoliti trying to hitch himself to the Doug Ford wagon if he can get nominated. But I notice he's nicely hedging his bets and that he's not going to step down from his current gig. And if he does not win in Brampton, he may either run for mayor or just go run again for his slam dunk counselor seat. Yeah, I mean, he's got no other plan in his life except to be a politician. That's been his whole life.

He was at Queen's Park. He was an NDP MPB, which in hindsight is sort of bizarre. Here's this guy associated with conservative politics. He was an NDP MPB who was ranting against gay marriage. Very, very interesting. But yeah, that was a tenor of the times. And we'll see if the action returns to King Street and whether the mayor has to hang his head in shame

that this thing didn't work out. But any rational person thinks it's a good idea. Right. And coming soon to a corner store near you, I suppose, the Ontario cannabis stores are coming to Toronto. Yeah, do you think one will open around here down in New Toronto? There's a lot of places for rent down here. And I think there's a lot of enthusiasm for cannabis in this neighborhood.

Yes. Not in this house, but I suspect you won't be able to avoid the smell amongst your neighbors. I can't avoid it now, so I'm sure it'll be more so. But yeah, there's a lot of cannabis shops on Lakeshore in this neck of the woods. Well, the idea is to drive them out and have a a legitimate government retailer right that will set up shop they're they're hiring for jobs uh they released uh uh the graphic of of what the store will look like right it amused a lot of people the fact that they paid 650 000 for this branding that was like absolute banality. But that's part of the plan.

That's the idea here. That's what Bill Blair, he's in the role of pot czar. And the agenda is to make recreational cannabis legal, but to make it as unenticing as possible for young people to get a hold of it. Yeah, don't make it too sexy, for sure. And they seem to be succeeding. But this product, you know, it should sell itself to people of age. The Sam the Record Man sign,

we talk a lot about the sign. And there's a, I don't know, did we cover this last time? The backlash, the Dundas Square backlash? Yeah, speaking of like big six-figure price tags, it came out through Ryerson that they paid somewhere close to a million dollars. That was the price of putting up the Sam the Record Man sign. The initial outrage surrounded the fact that the sign was reconstituted. What they put up there behind Dundas Square didn't look all that much like

the original same sign. It's more like a night time, I noticed. But yeah, during the day, forget about it. Yeah, you're looking at this thing thinking like, is this a floor fan? Is this some sort of... Like an underground parking lot ventilation. Yeah, something here related to the air conditioning of the building. But look, I mean, now that it's up there and will be up there presumably forever,

we've got this monument to the Young and Dundas that used to be. But when it came to revealing how much this thing cost, right, it was a deal that Ryerson made to get that building, 347 Yonge Street, the real estate where they could build like a front entrance to Ryerson made to get that building, 347 Yonge Street, the real estate where they could build like a front entrance to Ryerson. Ryerson was always there, right, for decades. But nobody saw its front door from the street that it was off to the side. They really wanted that building.

And they made a deal, right, to appease all the preservationists who were going to keep the legacy of Sam the Record Man alive. When it turned out that they couldn't put the sign on the building where it used to be, I mean, there wouldn't really have been a place for it there in terms of what they built. They came up with that compromise, done that square, and, yeah, we found out how much that whole thing cost. But as far as the school is concerned, the whole thing was worth it because they got the building, they got the corner, was worth it because uh they got the building they got

the corner they wanted to go before we uh move to internet uh new internet news uh let's talk about this anarchy in hamilton like i was watching this closely because it's just one of those sounds very interesting all these these men dressed in black in the middle of the night like looting and and breaking windows in this neighborhood in Hamilton. Do we know what the ungovernables, I think is what they call themselves. Do we know what that was about? And have they done anything since? And has anyone been arrested?

Do you have any updates on this? The ungovernables? Well, it was an anarchist book fair. And I think we flash back to the show Quincy. You remember Quincy, right? Barely. Quincy M.E., Jack Klugman. Yes.

Quincy the Coroner. There was a legendary episode of Quincy where Quincy went to meet a bunch of punk rockers. like the ultimate validation of the whole L.A. punk movement, that they reached the point where the show Quincy was covering them and talking about them. And I think to some degree, like that was the end of punk rock. That was the end of people, you know, walking around wearing these anarchy jackets with the A symbol, right, with the cross on it. You know it well.

The show Quincy turned this whole thing into a cartoon. So decades went by when I don't think it was considered credible to pass yourself off as a punk. You know, these guys, gals you would still see walking around with mohawks, all the punk regalia, the Doc Martens. The safety pins? The idea of being a punk went, I don't know, a good 30, 35 years without being something you would see often enough. So I think when you'd hear about an anarchist book fair in Hamilton bringing back all these symbols associated with old-timey punk rock,

it was certainly something to laugh at, to imagine that these people would still find one another, that this was a subculture that still existed. Where the whole thing turned sour was the idea that they had to somehow live up to their image and have a rampage through the streets of Hamilton on a Saturday night, breaking windows. Yeah, like independent businesses. I saw an interview with the guy who owns

the donut shop, and he's like, you know, our guys couldn't bake all night because of this. Yeah, the donut shop was the hardest hit. So here we had this bizarre confrontation, right? The artisanal hipsters who are setting up shop in Hamilton. It's now, what, like the Brooklyn of Toronto.

Ralph Ben-Murray said that, didn't he? They're all very well-meaning about being there. They believe that they can create their own aesthetic, a different sensibility that's outside of the big business corporate establishment. And then it turns out on a Saturday night, without any warning, they've got a bunch of punks smashing their windows. What was going on here? What were they trying to prove? If the ungovernables are listening, and they probably are,

you're supposed to mess up the Starbucks. This is how it works. Go after the Starbucks. Don't go after the independent donut shop, okay? You've got this all ass backwards. I think the great Southern Ontario anarchy menace of 2018 will be something that we look back on fondly. I hope there's not a resurrection of it

through the summer. Just make that marijuana legal and everybody will be too distracted. We'll be chill. Paytm.ca. Paytm. I love this online bill payment service. I've been using it since the gentleman there contacted me and said, hey, we love your podcast.

Would you give this app a shot? I'm like, okay. I dove in. I've been using it ever since. I manage all of my bills in Paytm. I pay my utility bills, my mobile, my phone, my internet, my gas, my property taxes, credit cards, insurance, everything goes through my credit card using Paytm. And they even send me bill reminders and they say, hey, Mike, your property taxes are due soon. You want to pay it now? I love it. I don't have to pay late fees. Everything in one spot.

No restrictions. You just pay a bill. It costs me nothing to use the service. I get points on the MasterCard. It's just win, win, win, win. I get Paytm cash. I love it. And I used my own promo code. OK, so when I paid my first bill, I used the promo code Toronto Mike, one word, and I got $10 in Paytm cash that I could put towards another bill. It's just like, it's free money, $10. So go to paytm.ca, download the app, use the promo code Toronto Mike, all one word,

and you can thank me later. And also a supporter of podcasts, right? Not just yours, a whole bunch out there. So if you're into podcasts and you want to keep the podcast industry strong. I love the fact that these are guys

or you're right, they're helping podcasts. And I take great pride as far as I can tell Paytm Canada's first sponsorship of a podcast as far as I can tell, Paytm Canada's first sponsorship of a podcast, as far as I can tell, is Toronto Mic'd. And now you're right. I'll be listening to other podcasts. I know they're now sponsoring Humble and Fred, for example.

And has Jesse Brown got the Paytm stuff yet? Yeah, I think so. So look, I mean, everything you do in life should be based on products endorsed on Toronto Mic'd. Thank you, yes. Drink your beer, buy you drink another beer. Buy your houses. Learn your French if you're young enough.

Yeah, if you're listening now between the ages of 4 and 14, I'm impressed. Also, get your parents to send you to Camp Ternus, the old French camp. Internet, let's talk about, where do I go here? I don't want to spend too much time because you could do hours on this, but where do we talk about...

Can you talk about Jordan Peterson, Lindsay Shepard, all this fighting amongst these academics? Do you even want to hear about it? If you can do it in 30 seconds, I have a minimal interest in this topic. You ask for 30 seconds, then I do like 14 minutes. It gets out of control here. We've got a situation. Look, I mean, Jordan Peterson put out his book late January,

12 Rules for Life, An Antidote to Chaos. How much attention were you paying to Jordan Peterson prior to January? Oh, nothing. Nothing. But you know who he is. Yes, I do. You see his name a lot. I saw it one of my musical heroes, Jack White,

was raving about him the other day. And then when he was reminded that Jordan Peterson might be a bit of a controversial figure, right? He backpedaled and said, oh, let's talk about something else. What is Jordan Peterson selling? A lot of his critics out there would say that he's some sort of snake oil salesman, right, that he's hypnotizing people into sending him money via Patreon for absolutely nothing. This is total claptrap that he's giving these young men advice that's turning them alt-right, which is an allegation that he has to dispute all the time, every day, over and over. But, you know, I don't think anything can bruise you more than the suggestion that what you're saying is breeding people to become neo-Nazis. So he's trying to deflect that criticism at the same time, I think, with this book.

He's reaching an audience that's far wider than anything we've seen before. All these people who are on the ground floor with Jordan Peterson, when it was mostly about him ranting about compelled speech, that he was taking a stand against being forced to use alternate gender

pronouns. The phenomenon of J.B.P. has reached a point now where I don't think they can shout. They cannot shout loud enough to be heard because he's going to keep getting this level of attention. Why is he able to attract this sort of media? It comes down to the fact that what he has to offer is the most basic thing of all. It's a recipe for improving your life. Now, whether his ideas are effective or not, it really comes down to the people that are

buying into them. And you cannot say, looking at this society, that there was not a niche to be filled of someone to be this male version of Oprah Winfrey, to step in and be like America's dad, except not Bill Cosby. Right. There's an opening. Yeah, a new iteration. Somebody that could communicate to you via YouTube and Twitter and doing these live speeches. So as the attention has started rolling in for Jordan Peterson, as his book has been selling, I don't know. Is this going to be the most successful Canadian book of all time? going to be the most successful Canadian book of all time. As far as anyone could tell, it looks like it's on the road to that happening because it's the sort of thing that will sell year after year after year, and then he'll be able to write sequels and stuff like that.

It's an incredible phenomenon to deconstruct and look at how it happened and figure out exactly why this guy is getting as much attention as he is. But I think ultimately the appeal is pretty basic. A lot of fascination has been there with his Patreon account because he has a certain number of supporters every month, but not as much attention to what he's offering, which is online programs that are designed to help people improve their lives by writing autobiographically about themselves. So he found or at least what fell into his lap was a whole audience, a whole demographic for what he has to offer. And it seems to be working. Some of the criticisms of his work, of his research, of his book, you know, has been completely ignorant of what he actually has to say. You know, it's just the whole idea of going

after this character, this personality, and the sort of audience he appears to attract, even if he denounces them. And yet, at the same time, there are a lot of people out there who need that help,

who need that father figure. He's the one filling that role. And his Patreon account is full. So if you have an itch to contribute to a Patreon account, it's patreon.com slash Toronto Mike. That's where you should be contributing. Okay, so the sideshow to that was Lindsay Shepard, a student, graduate student from Wilfrid Laurier University.

She got in trouble. She got called into a meeting with her supervisors over the fact that she showed a clip in class of Jordan Peterson. And they ended up apologizing for the way that they interrogated her, you know, that they did it under some false pretenses. It's all very complicated. Anybody can read all about it. But, you know, she might have just vanished into the background here and just gone about her life, some sort of quiet academic on the road to being, you know, some sort of part-time professor somewhere. Whatever people do who graduate from communications programs, I don't know, on the road to a PhD or something.

Instead, she's gone down a different road, and she started to position herself as a free speech fighter. And just the other day here, announced the first speaker in a club that she started at Wilfrid Laurier University. In a club that she started at Wilfrid Laurier University, she wants to present speakers talking about unpopular opinions. Who did she book as her first guest? The kind of person you can get on like a few days' notice who's willing to come to Waterloo and talk to a room of, I don't know, 20 or 30 people. Faith Goldie. You might remember Faith from last summer. and we talked about it on here.

I do. She got fired from the rebel media for hanging out in Charlottesville and going on a podcast with neo-Nazis. Maybe not the best idea of who to have as a speaker. Someone pulled the fire alarm, and everything erupted into the kind of chaos that have as a speaker. Someone pulled the fire alarm and everything erupted into the kind of chaos that money couldn't buy. We've had these incensed articles about people, you know, advocating for the idea of disrupting this sort of speech. Another piece shows up at McLean's from Lindsay Shepard telling her side of the story, trying to explain why she booked this infamous figure to speak there. It's all sort of a mess. And I think ultimately what it is, it amounts to like an indictment on the entire university business that this is what

post-secondary learning has become in the public eye. How did this happen? How did this get there? Because most students are not so obsessed over these issues. How did university become something that older newspaper pundits and people in the media would always focus on and fixate upon? People always said stupid things on campus. I don't know if you remember. I don't know if you paid any attention. Or were you too busy trying to get your degree? I mean, did it matter to you?

No, I wasn't much to hang around. Like, I did my class and left. I don't remember, but I think it's been like this since Vietnam, man. This is just what happens on campus. Okay, but what we didn't have before was people tweeting day and night about how they objected to

what was happening here. I've gotten to know, in the way that you know people on Twitter, a whole bunch of people who don't seem to think about anything else. All they do, day and night, Jordan Peterson, Lindsay Shepard, Faith Goldie.

You know what, with me, and I'm on Twitter, I follow different people, but those are the topics where I just have so little interest, and I don't take it in, I don't drill in, I don't click in. If you have a thing about Jordan Peterson, I move on. I just have so little interest in this right now. Okay, good to know, right? That's 14 minutes later I mentioned that. If it really bubbles up, you'll read about it in 1236.

And I read 1236 religiously. Is Jesse Brown, is there more Jesse Brown, speaking of Patreon, Jesse Brown backlash? I see, well, I see it probably because you're retweeting it, but I see him having fights with, I don't know if he's with the CBC anymore. I know he still does some work with them. But Terry Malewski and Jesse Brown.

Terry Malewski. I butchered that one too. It's okay. I've seen him on the National many, many times. The issue there was whether it was appropriate to ask Jagmeet Singh, new leader of the NDP, whether he was a terrorist sympathizer, which was presented as a confrontational question. It was it came down to the issue of Sikh separatism, which is a very complicated topic. And and like six months later, Jagmeet Singh finally came out and said, no, I don't support terrorism.

And it would have been just easier to say that off the top. So, Jesse, we're getting into this epic Twitter war, right, with a veteran CBC correspondent. So that seems to preoccupy a lot of his time. He talks about that on one of his podcasts. On the other end, he was fielding all sorts of grief from people that used to work for him. And the issue that they had was the fact that Canada land, as it's been growing, now has more of a commercial component, more money is coming in, and that he put out a transparency report in which he perhaps wasn't as transparent as he could have been, right? If you're trying to say to people

that are sending you money every month that we're going to be open, we're going to let you see inside of our books, and then you put out a transparency report where you say certain of our revenue streams are none of your business, you might get some sort of backlash. But you know what? The only people who were annoyed with it were the people who used to work for him because their experiences didn't end well. So here we had a situation where the man who presents himself as Canada's only media critic was getting all sorts of grief from these people who he thought were his friends, or at least professionally. He gave them some sort of break, and there was a very delightful day on Twitter where he was just being hammered that people felt that he had done everything wrong. But I think it ran at a gasp by the time people were accusing him

of hiring his cousin at some sort of inflated salary, doing it as a secret, except it wasn't a secret, and the guy wasn't his cousin, and it's his company. He can do whatever he wants. So I wish only the best for Jesse Brown. Poor Jesse.

Who continues to be a fascinating figure, and at the end of the day, I'm just another fan. Jesse Brown, who continues to be a fascinating figure. And at the end of the day, I'm just another fan. The current Blue Jays starting third baseman, former MVP, still one of the best hitters in baseball, Josh Donaldson. Is this a tweet on International Women's Day? Is this a tweet or another social media? It was another tweet that was deleted somewhere in there.

It was with Josh Donaldson. What's he making this season? $23 million? Sounds about right. Last year of his deal, by the way, if we do not, you know, if we don't re-up him, he will be an unrestricted free agent. Well, they're not paying him $23 million to be on Twitter. You can tell because the most cerebral thing that he had to share, will be an unrestricted free agent. Well, they're not paying him $23 million to be on Twitter.

You can tell because the most cerebral thing that he had to share, it came on International Women's Day, March 8th. He put something out about Saturdays are for the boys. It's a slogan of a bleacher report, which is a website of some infamy, right? Sports website. Is this for the bros? I can't say I'm a regular reader of Bleacher Report. It's the sort of thing that's putting Sports Illustrated out of business

as far as mastering the whole game of just being free internet sports coverage, highlights on Instagram. Incredibly successful. I mean, successful enough that the catchphrase is what Josh Donaldson thinks about when he hears of International Women's Day. So what he had to offer in terms of a thought was, paraphrasing here, if Saturdays are for the boys,

what happens when march 8th international women's day falls on a saturday i i don't know i don't know what has to be going through your mind that you feel you have to broadcast this thought in public uh but he managed to get the day of the week wrong because it's a leap year and march 8th goes to a sunday i don't know what he was talking about and then you know we heard from all sorts of people uh wondering like what's your problem bro right what what are you trying to say here um and then he uh said he's not being sexist except he spelled it sexiest not surprised again but he can hit you can sure hit that's what 23 million dollars Sexiest. Not surprised. Again, this is what $23 million buys you.

And he didn't mean any offense. He was just thinking out loud. I'm not sure that most professional athletes should be doing their own Twitter. Tell that to Marcus Stroman. That can come out of it. So Josh Donaldson having some activity on Twitter that could come back to haunt So, Josh Donaldson having some activity on Twitter that could come back to haunt him, I think,

if he doesn't have a good season. It could be like Damien Cox, where people are always referencing some regrettable tweet back to him. Right. Let's move on to print. I'm going to try to do the print section, which

there's lots of here to cover, but I'm going to try to do the print section, which there's lots of here to cover, but I'm going to try to do it in 10 minutes if that's possible. But let's start with the tour star trauma. Like, tell me about the tour star trauma first. Well, they actually had a name for it, Project LeBron. I saw that in my issue of 1236 today. That came out through the competition bureau internally. That's what they were calling it, Project LeBron.

Who was fantastic last night in Cleveland against the Raptors, but please go on. Last November, two newspaper companies, Post Media and Torstar, they made a deal where 41 newspapers were traded between the two of them. And as soon as they announced the deal, they also mentioned, oh, by the way, we're shutting almost all of these down. Now, a lot of them were in cities where as a result of the deal,

cities like Barrie and Peterborough, cities of that size, which had two newspapers, suddenly the same company took ownership of both and they only felt the need to run one. But then there were some other markets that size, which had two newspapers. Suddenly, the same company took ownership of both, and they only felt the need to run one. But then there were some other markets that were left without any newspaper at all, that they were smaller markets, especially in the Ottawa area, where Post Media decided that it was better for them to focus on getting ads

for the Ottawa Citizen, the Ottawa Sun, that the smaller free newspapers were getting in their way. And, you know, the best thing to do was to take them over and get rid of them. So this deal caught a lot of attention and a fair bit of outrage. And it seemed ridiculous, given, you know given the state of the newspaper industry, that this kind of thing would be allowed to happen. Enter the Competition Bureau, which showed up at the offices of Torstar and Postmedia wearing Competition Bureau jackets. It seemed like no one at the newspaper had ever seen this before. The fact that if you join the competition bureau, if you work as a

special computer cop for the competition bureau, that they give you a jacket emblazoned with the name of it on the back. They moved into the offices. They were looking over files, whatever they could find. You know, some sort of warning

went out. Don't delete anything now. We're under investigation. What could happen, theoretically, is that these companies get some sort of fine, that there's even a prison term for these executives who are responsible? What are the odds of that happening? Do you actually think— Slim to none, I'd say. Yeah, we'll be seeing Paul Godfrey doing a perp walk, right, with cuffs around his ankles,

like walking into jail just for trying to keep the newspaper industry sustainable. This is going on at the same time that we've got these very same companies who are real disappointed in the federal government because they wanted a bailout. They thought the federal budget would give them like $350 million to support journalism and keep their newspaper business models afloat. They did not get the deal that they were looking for. And Melanie Jolie, the heritage minister, right, she was very outspoken. We're not going to support dying business models, that your time is up, that things have expired here. We're not here, you know, to prop this up and keep this going if you can't make it work.

And, you know, the result from the boardrooms of the newspaper industry, the guardians of print media, has just been a complete meltdown. Like they can't deal with the idea that they wouldn't be supported in this way from the federal government. Now, this is a very complicated issue because there are publishers that get money through the government. are publishers that get money through the government. There is a Canadian periodical fund that directly or indirectly actually supports what I am currently doing. So to rant and rave about the idea that these newspapers shouldn't be supported or sustained in some way through government at the

same time that Facebook and Google are siphoning off all this advertising money. You know, I'm not completely opposed to it, but the issue here, the thorn in the side of the whole thing, you know, it's the fact that these companies have not been successful in developing new products, right? We saw the debacle of StarTouch, the iPad app that they threw like $45 million into, the smell of burning cash, right? A tourist star trying to save themselves. That would not be the situation that you want to come out of a government handout of any sort of benefit. That would not be the ideal, to let a corporation come up with another terrible idea and sink tens of millions of dollars into it. But maybe there's a path.

Maybe I am part of it with what I'm currently doing with the email newsletter, right, where some sort of federal funding, tax breaks, whatever it is, can play a role in getting new brands off the ground. So that's where there's a bit of a conflict of interest where I cannot say direct – no journalist can say because everyone's tied in to something that they're getting a government benefit from. I mean that goes for pretty much everything in Canada as far as the arts and journalism and culture is concerned, right? Whether it's tax breaks, whatever, there's some kind of connection to what's happening in Ottawa and what they say, what they determine, what they decree. But in this case, you know, they felt like they got the short end of the stick and that the government let them down because they figured that the liberal government would be friendly and come through with the cash.

And meanwhile, the Globe and Mail has a new look? Yeah, well, you have to look at a print newspaper to really know about it. That's a case where they're moving towards more of an online paywall, right? So at the same time, and the Globe and Mail, despite being owned by a guy who's worth like $40 billion, David Thompson, they were also expecting to get this stimulus

from the government. Also disappointed about it. So here, the Globe and Mail trying to refresh itself as a more important newspaper, that they're not just going to be about that commodity news, that if you want to get the Globe and Mail, you're going to have to pay for it. So part of that was putting out a leaner print newspaper. Do you even see the print edition? Nope.

It doesn't come up. I do not see it. It's not in your life. Nope. Are you frustrated when you hit a paywall when you want to read an article? Yep, I am. And so what does that mean?

So here you have somewhere like the Globe and Mail, maybe the Toronto Star Next around the corner again trying to paywall once more with these companies that have been accustomed. Readers have come to expect that they're going to get their news for free when they click it online. And what lies ahead is being asked to pay up, right, that you cannot read this article unless you give us at least a dollar, right, that 99 cent for the first month deal, the way they try to bring people in. Are they asking for a loyalty that doesn't exist anymore, right? Are there people, if they were paying for a newspaper website, they would be inclined to look at it every day? The Athletic, which we mentioned before, seems to have some success, but I think that comes with a kind of loyalty baked in. You want to read

what The Athletic is doing because you have a relationship with The Athletic. Has The Globe and Mail established that kind of relationship with readers? I think to some degree, as a business newspaper. I don't think it's the same at the Toronto Star. I think it's associated with a more disposable approach to news. But hey, that's on them. They have to come up with better stuff. And a lot of the clickbait that they've been putting out over the past years doesn't make the grade. This is not material that you would want to pay for. Now, you played a role in the Toronto Star List of the 100 Greatest Toronto Songs.

Yes, I did. I helped with the revision where they did the 50 and the Overlooked. Number four is Ambulance Blues by Neil Young, and I'm credited with bringing that to their attention. Presented with a link for the 100 Toronto songs and then being asked to pay for it, would you actually follow through?

I don't know, but it would frustrate me and then I would shake my fist like this at the computer. And then they wouldn't get your input, right? So if the idea is that the publication has a relationship with the community, if they're trying to play to this wide audience, I mean, it used to take the form of dropping off a newspaper at every doorstep, right? Jobs that we all used to have, being the newspaper carrier after school,

making the Toronto Star show up on every doorstep. And in my neighborhood, when I delivered it, I don't remember too many houses that didn't get a star. So multiply that by every person in Toronto. That's the circulation that they're used to. How do you sustain that in a universe where you're asking people for money on the internet? And here's my final question for you. This has been fantastic, as always. I can't wait till next quarter to get you back in here for my final question for you. This has been fantastic as always. I can't wait till next quarter to get you back in here for another two hour episode. But I want to ask

you, how can we save the little paper that could? How do we save the Toronto sun? Can it be saved? Do you want it to be saved? Do you need it to be saved? I think you need Steve Simmons to have a job so that he can amuse you. He might be the guy who turns off the lights over there. Simmons to have a job so that he can amuse you every day. He might be the guy who turns off the lights over there. What was it that he got in trouble for during the Olympics? He was complaining about curling, right? Oh, the mixed curling, right. Mixed curling, that was it.

That was the word I was looking for here. And I guess Steve Simmons, he's a master troll because complaining about mixed curling. I guess Steve Simmons, he's a master troll because complaining about mixed curling. Have you ever in your life seen somebody getting ratioed, that's what they call it, on Twitter, where he gets more

replies than retweets or likes, where there's hundreds of people replying to a column that only three of them thought was any good. I've never seen somebody ratioed so much for writing about mixed curling.

So kudos to Steve Simmons. Not since his story about Phil Kessel and the hot dogs had Steve Simmons come on my radar. Oh, that's great. Long may he run. And I hope he is around to turn off the lights at the Toronto Sun.

Well, yeah, it's really running on fumes based on the fact that PostMedia owns it. But we've gotten this far with Toronto still having a tabloid newspaper. It's been a big influence on me. And I don't know if I could live without it. Well, maybe with Rob Ford as Premier of Ontario. Doug Ford.

Sorry, did I say Rob Ford? I'm the one drinking here, please. I've had a rough day. Doug Ford, maybe that'll help the Toronto Suns cause as their poster boy. Did you have a good time? Thank you so much for this. I'm only two beers in. I'm going to catch up to you have a good time? Thank you so much for this. I'm only two beers in. I'm going to catch up to you in a moment.

I'll have to drink the rest before Pesach. And that brings us to the end of our 317th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Mark is at 1236. That's 1, 2, 3, 6. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes

Beer. Property in the 6.com is at Raptors Devotee. Pay TM is at Pay TM Canada. And Camp Turnasol is at Camp Turnasol. See you all next week.