Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - 12:36: Toronto Mike'd #351

Episode Date: June 21, 2018

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

Welcome to episode 351 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% of all Great Lakes beer remains here in Ontario? GLB, brewed for you 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 Camp Tournesol, the leading French summer camp provider in Ontario. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week is 1236's Mark Weisblot. Hey Mike, I'm here with my Great Lakes Brewery six-pack.

Usually, when I come down to do your podcast, it's the only time that I drink beer in large quantities. I think after the last round or two, I realize that maybe I shouldn't drink too much while I'm sitting here because I start babbling incoherently, saying things that I'll go home and regret later, you know, making factual errors that we have no way to correct. Well, that's going to happen.

But I don't think any of your babble has ever been incoherent. It's always very coherent. Coherent babble, which is my favorite variety of babble. Yeah, just wait until the day comes when I try and get a job somewhere else. And before that, someone listens to, what, 24 hours of Toronto Mic'd episodes to scrutinize everything that's been said? Let's put it this way. Any job that disqualifies you because of what you say on Toronto Mic'd, that's not a job you'd be happy in anyway. That's what I would say. So this is all good. Now, last time I was here for the spring visit, it turned out to be a historical day in the life of Toronto Mike, right? Here I show up in New Toronto, and the first thing you tell

me is you just lost your job. Right. Last time you were here, that was the day I got noticed that there's restructuring and I was losing my job. And that was a rough day to be. It took me, I think it was, I spent two days kind of feeling bummed, like bummed out, I'd say. And then I quickly snapped out of it and decided to make lemons out of the lemonade. Oh, no, don't make, no, never make lemons out of your lemonade.

It doesn't work that way. I made lemonade out of the lemonade. Oh, no, don't make, no, never make lemons out of your lemonade. It doesn't work that way. I made lemonade out of the lemons. And it's been kind of a, you know, pretty good experience since as I try to build up my own digital services company that I will be, you know, relying on for, you know, paying, feeding my family, as Bill Brio would say, starting in September. So this has been kind of fun. Okay. So here I am along for the ride. That day, we didn't talk about it here, right? But you've mentioned it on, I think, every episode since then. So people, the podcast regulars have been along for this Toronto Mike journey. Well, there was a special episode,

for this Toronto Mike journey? Well, there was a special episode, episode 320, I believe, where I actually got somebody from LinkedIn to come on and discuss this. I don't know if you heard episode 320. That's when I disclosed everything. Okay, so I can knock off my bucket list,

that experience of coming over to some guy's house to tape a podcast, and before we get rolling, he tells me that he's lost his livelihood. I've lost. And yet we soldiered forth, right? We did that episode. You know, that was a good, that was a strong episode. That was a strong episode.

And you're right. I realized I was practically a professional because I got bad news. I was feeling bummed. And that two-hour episode, you was feeling bummed and that two-hour episode you wouldn't know from hearing that two-hour episode we were as strong as ever mark it was a great episode let's do it again but speaking of uh podcasts i need an update on the 1236 podcast oh you need an update yeah you've been threatening to have your own podcast for uh i'd say we're going on a good i don't know know, a year? I had a checkup this week at St. Joseph Media.

They're the publisher that's overseeing 1236. And here we are at the point now, three years into this project. Can you believe it? Three years! I don't believe it. It feels like you just launched this. We're going to figure out from here exactly what shape it's going to take. I mean, what is the level of opportunity when you've built up a Toronto media brand, have a significant audience to show for it, right?

There's been enough attention here created on a shoestring. And now going into the summer, the question is, where do we go from here? What what what shape is it going to take and how how do we best connect with with the consumers out there? Because, you know, in the end, this is a business of of getting people's attention and figuring out how it can be monetized. I've been riding on the coattails of this publisher, right, tethered to Toronto Life magazine, and there's been some advertising and promotion tied to Toronto Life through the spring. Where do we go from here? I mean, I come down here every quarter. We talk about all the changes in media and people getting hired and fired. I can't pretend like I'm somehow

absolved of this process, right? But the level that I'm working on gives me the optimism that we can make things work in one way or another. So the next little while with 1236 is figuring out how to get there and doing some sort of audio product is part of it. The reason that I just haven't gotten this thing going on my own is because St. Joseph wants to explore podcasting. They want to turn it into a network, make it part of the operation there, and that is what I signed up for. That's what I dedicated myself to. there, and that is what I signed up for. That's what I dedicated myself to. So while I'm waiting for that,

I can make all the appearances I want, wherever anybody wants me. But when St. Joseph's launches the 1236 podcast... Well, it may never happen! But when it does happen, will there be an edict from up high, from St. Joseph himself, will there be an edict that you can no longer

go on other podcasts? If people want to hear you, they got to listen to you and your podcast. Well, I still haven't received that second invitation from Jesse Brown. I've been waiting here like two years to get the guy to call me back. At least you got one. That's impressive in and of itself. I guess. I didn't get one.

Well, based on a lot of the guests he has, I don't think it was that much of a privilege. But yeah, I'd like think it was that much of a privilege. But yeah, I'd like to be on with him again. But no, there would actually be, I think, more expectation that I would be out there beating the drum for what I was doing in terms of audio. So that's where we want to go. We'll see if it happens. But yeah, in the meantime, since I'm down here, let's just rag on what everyone else is doing, right? Right, exactly. Now, did you listen to the last episode I did, 350, with Cam Gordon from Twitter Canada? Oh, that episode was tremendous. After you're finished with this

rewind back one episode, and really like the intersection of so many different things in the Toronto counterculture addressed by the media communications guy from Twitter. Canada Cam is on top of a whole lot of things, right? I mean he's like the ultimate lurker because his job is to watch what's happening on Twitter all day in order to remain informed and speak to people about it. So always getting a lot of intel from Cam, sliding into the DMs, sharing little trends that I might benefit from knowing about. And you must have heard, in fact, I saw your tweet, you counted 17 references.

I know that you made up that number, but there were a number of 1236 references in that episode. Yeah. Not just Corey Hames. So I'm glad to have my man at Twitter who's helping us stay connected with the platform there. And I know he has to do a lot of damage control, right? Because the public image of Twitter is not all that great. For most people who are on it all the time, it's like the ultimate anger machine, you know, constantly in a state of rage about what's going on in the world.

They've they've they've altered the policies at Twitter that it's a lot easier to get yourself suspended than it used to be. a lot easier to get yourself suspended than it used to be, right? They now have Twitter jail that they'll throw you in if somebody determines that you've said something offside. I spent 12 hours in Twitter jail for making fun of somebody. Can you tell us who? Well, I don't even remember his name. This is not Twitter. Oh, I see.

It was, okay. Interesting. I had no idea. Well, it wasn't personal. It wasn't malicious. No threat. It was a guy who put out a tweet looking for advice from academics about what he should do because a friend of his has decided that he's interested in Jordan Peterson

and that this was a matter of some distress. Jordan Peterson, and that this was a matter of some distress. It was upsetting to him that his pal had decided to pay attention to the advice from the professor. So I just quoted it, put some comment on it, JBP 911, which is a little meme that I don't know if it's caught on with anyone else. I think it's funny, right? But this is all you did and you got 12 hours? Getting into this hysterical state. Well, it doesn't matter. I think it might have had something to do with the fact that it was retweeted by Ezra Levant at The Rebel.

So that might have brought a certain level of attention that this guy wasn't looking And your relationship with Cam was not good enough to get you out of Twitter jail. Like, you couldn't lean on that and say, hey, pull some strings. Well, the guy filed some kind of complaint that I was enabling harassment. Oh, if the U.S. office took care of that, that's what happens. And all I was doing was, yeah, making fun of this little bit of, I think, overblown, unnecessary hysteria. But that's the role that Jordan B. Peterson has been playing in all our lives. And the show never stops, right? He just keeps on going. So I think a lot of what Twitter

has represented in the first half of 2018 owes a lot to Jordan Peterson fanning the flames about everything. I don't know. There isn't any specific topic that he and his acolytes don't seem to touch. And we're going to break this episode into nice compartments here. We're going to talk broadcasting, then we're going to talk internet,

then Toronto, the city we live in here, and then we're going to talk print and we're going to talk politics. But right off the top, a couple of timely things, just like teasers, if you will, to get people some appetizers before the main course uh we have uh just today i was reading about a big announcement that chum fm is making tomorrow afternoon and they're hyping this up so it's far more than it's got to be more than like some stupid contest by the time a lot of people listen to this the announcement would have already

happened so i don't know if we want to speculate on that see that's precisely the kind of thing i don't care about because that's like a professional broadcasting consideration uh for those who were smart enough to jump on this they'll be like sort of rewarded and those who got to it later will just have to uh know that we're recording on uh what is this, Thursday afternoon. Yeah, first day of summer, 21st of June. Chum FM, we've talked here at different intervals about the history of Chum and the fact that the branding is still on their FM station 104.5. The ratings for Chum have been okay. They seem to target that young female demographic,

but overall, they've landed somewhere in the middle of the pack of Toronto radio stations, so a lot of speculation about what they could do. But you say okay, but they had higher expectations over there. They're used to much bigger ratings. Well, it's Bell Media, right? I mean, they're trying to make as much money as possible and give that return to all the shareholders. So that seems to be central to every decision they make over there. Why not with Toronto Radio Station, right? It seems like they can't let that thing lapse. So we've guessed here about what they might do into the future, whatever this announcement

is tomorrow. The fact they're promoting it to all the listeners, it seems to be programming related. Right. Or maybe something about their brand. Yeah, okay. I have three. I'm working on three possibilities here. Let's go. So I think it's either rebranding.

So it's a rebrand. And then everyone can get sentimental about the chum call letters, right? Right. Because here we've lived with what these represent in Toronto for over 60 years. And it's always the old farts who don't listen. So Bell Media probably does not care about them. So it could be a rebranding. It could be a jig to the format, like a little bit of a tweak to the format, maybe.

Or the third possibility is it could be related to the legendary Roger Ashby and maybe this being his last year on the air, which we've been talking about for a while, that maybe he steps down at the end of this year. What do you think of those three possibilities? Well, Marilyn Dennis, who I know has been on your Toronto Mike wish list for a few years at this point,

and we came up with the notion that maybe if you invited her son, Adam Weil, that he would bring mom along and that would be a way to get her down here, even if she didn't want to do it on her own. So I saw on Twitter that she just got married to her high school sweetheart. I don't think I've seen a personal Canadian celebrity tweet that got more attention than when Marilyn made this public, right? Everybody loves a happy ending.

Right. And so of those three things, and I tweeted this, and I had at least one person say it might be a bit of all three. But in your expert opinion, if you had a crystal ball right now, which of those three do you guess it'll be? Because then it'll be fun to listen back and see if you got it right. Which of those three? You have no idea. I'm thinking about the fact that she's made a big transformation in her life by getting

married that it might be affecting Marilyn as well as Roger. How does that sound? That's huge. I can't wait to find out. We'll find out if I'm vindicated. Remember the time Q was making a big announcement and you were guessing big and it ended up being something really small. No, it ended up being that Jennifer Valentine from Breakfast Television was hired to be the sidekick on the Derringer Morning Show.

I thought it would be like a Rolling Stones concert at the El Macombo. I mean, it was John Derringer. He went on there. He said, this is the most exciting development in my entire life, working for this radio station. You know, like 35, 40 years I've been here, I've never been more thrilled about anything before what I'm going to tell you about. And it turned out to be Jennifer Valentine as a second voice on The Morning Show. How's that working out for them? I don't have a clue, but what I do is I get the angry people because they Google it

and they end up on my blog and they leave a comment. So what I see are all the people who are pissed off. So I don't think it's a fair assessment because all the people that are really happy, they don't Google it and leave comments. The comment leavers are the people who are angry as hell and they're not going to take it anymore. So it's a kind of a very biased skew of things. Okay. Well, there's been a lot of Q107 talk down here. Oh, yeah. So I'm sure that's on the agenda for a little bit.

Oh, yeah. We'll get to that in a bit. So let's, yeah, so the Chum announcements tomorrow. I'm waiting. I'm bated breath. Is that what we say? I get to count the seconds. Now, meanwhile, yesterday it came out that, you know, these like pitch talks and puck talks and these events that take place with kind of like former guests of Toronto.

Mike, Mike, do they all get together and people buy tickets and they hear them like a brunt will talk about baseball and people love it. OK, now, is this the event that Kelly Gruber was at? So if you heard the Cam Gordon episode, weidentally, we had an extensive chat about recent pitch talks because of the Gruber incident. And even that, and I watched the stream because I wanted to hear it. What did Gruber say? I was expecting far worse, by the way, but he was

inappropriate and insensitive. That goes without saying. But I expected worse. But I watched Dan Shulman do some talk in the beginning, and then later Kevin Barker. So with the news yesterday, the news yesterday was that Sportsnet personalities are no longer allowed at these events. So there's a blanket ban on Sportsnet talent being at these events. And you would think this is mostly because they're thinking of doing events on their

own right well maybe it's definitely because they view them as competition like without a doubt this has nothing to do in my opinion it has nothing to do with gruber what he said some people want to tie it to the gruber thing i think it's 100 about uh the fact that now rogers uh big wigs are seeing these pitch talks as competition in some regard maybe maybe because they're streaming it, so it's like a broadcast. They don't want to have their personalities on the competition's shows, essentially. Back in the day, I think that media consumers enjoyed the idea that if people were working for rival entities, different TV, radio stations, working for rival entities, different TV radio stations,

that by virtue of their employment, they were required to hate one another, right? Like, didn't you always get that sense when you were growing up? Okay. That if you worked for, you know, two radio stations going head-to-head, that there was a natural enmity. Well, like Q and CFNY, they seemed to hate each other for a while, and Q hated Chum for a while. Like, yes, without a doubt, there seemed like there was some real hatred going on between these rival stations. Yeah, sure.

Okay, now here in the age of social media, you get to see people that work for different companies bantering with one another, right? bantering with one another, right? Acknowledging one another as sources, reporters working for different newspapers, quoting one another on social media, crediting them for their scoops, giving them shout-outs and compliments. Let's not get carried away, Mark.

I never see a Rogers person, I rarely see a Rogers person, like a Sportsnet person will tweet out, like, as broken by Bob McKenzie, like they aren't doing that. No, no, no. They'll be, Kiprios will get credit for it.

Like somehow like they were close enough and they'll be like as broken by Kiprios because he's a Sportsnet guy. But meanwhile, McKenzie is a TSN guy. So I don't think they're going that cross like that. I don't think, I think they actually like respect each other and are probably friends when they're not on the air,

but there's definitely this sense of promoting your own brand and not promoting the other guy's brand, for sure. Okay, so then what's the objection

with Rogers actually laying it down, not allowing people to fraternize and be involved with other people's live event businesses? Well,

I'm interested in finding out, so I'm working on the hypothesis that they're viewed as competition somehow. And it was just a simple decision not to appear on a competitor's broadcast. Or this is where maybe the Kelly Gruber thing comes back into it. Is there a fear that people will get too candid? Oh, like a control thing. Yeah, you're talking in a bar where alcohol is being served. Oh, like this basement.

The lips will get a little bit loose, and somebody will say the wrong thing, and an advertiser will complain. Is there always that possibility? Sure. So yeah, that's the control thing. And here, I was actually interviewed today by the Canadian press on this very topic,

because the idea is if a company like Rogers is going to want to control their talent, like these personalities belong to Rogers and they will be controlled by only appearing on Rogers sanctioned things like Rogers properties. Well, that's going to hurt me, right? Because a lot of my great guests have come from Sportsnet. So like I'm trying to kind of read the tea leaves and see what's going on there.

I'm watching it very closely. But at the same time, when you have guests down here and they end up being a little bit more aloof, they don't want to talk about certain topics, right? You also usually get your back up and question why you'd even have them on, right? If they gave you some sort of directive or rules about what you couldn't talk about. Sure, but those are few and far between. You know, the vast majority, especially Sportsnet, the vast majority of Sportsnet guests from Shulman to Brunt to McLean,

you know, I've had a lot of them, and Medani, all of them, have been so open and honest and fantastic, to be quite honest. Dozens and dozens of Rogers Sportsnet personalities on this show providing just fantastic conversations that I think everybody leaves these episodes, like the Cox ones, for example. People leave these episodes liking the personality more than they did when they started.

Wilner is a good example. So I would love for that to continue. So I'll be very interested in the reasoning. You say that right now, but let's see where it goes, right? You might be flattered to be called by the Canadian press, but there might be some repercussions. You might be hearing a few more no's once people get a hang of what's going on down here.

I'll have guests, I'll change their voice, and I'll give them fake names, and then we'll talk. How's that? Okay, now, there was a recent episode with one Ann Romer. Did you listen to the Ann Romer episode? I was curious about the commenter on your website who expressed

disappointment in what they heard with Ann Romer, right? No, I think they said uh underwhelmed or is that a word uh i know it's not because i looked it up just one of those things i learned in my school and you replied asking what what the hell were they expecting now did they get back to you did that no no no of course not of course not there's always gonna be one hater out there uh i don't take that personally uh so i lived this, what was it? Was it 90 minutes, I think? I lived that 90 minutes with Anne,

and then I listened back later because I wanted to hear how it sounded. I thought it was fantastic. I thought she was great. I thought the content was great. She dropped a news bomb at the end of that episode. I couldn't have been happier. Maybe I would have liked it

if she was a little more on the microphone, but in terms of her and the content, I couldn't have been happier. Now, we got the record set straight about what happened with Anne Romer's two retirements from CP24. Does her most recent departure count as a third retirement? I didn't quite follow the chronology. She's not counting that. I think she's saying because she only came back to let people, as she said, she wanted to let people have their vacations. Her leaving again, so she's kind of got that as not as retirement.

She was already retired. She just came back to help out. I think that's how she's seeing that. We learned at the retirement party, there might have been cake. There was cake, but not gift cards right not from the keg not from the bay i learned that ann has a strict rule about accepting gifts so this kind of takes away a little bit of that uh sometimes they say they say don't don't meet your

heroes so i'm glad i met ann romer but sometimes the the story is better than the truth like i was really happy with this idea of of keg gift cards and stuff and people having to buy it a second time. I was really into that mythology. And now I've learned, of course, that she does not accept gifts. So she did not receive a bunch of keg gift cards. But there was cake. Now, it's about a month away from the deadline to register

to run for Toronto City Council in the election coming up this October. And your big scoop from Anne is that she was considering a run. Right. And that she was anticipating to have the support of Mayor John Tory, that that that he would endorse her candidacy wherever it happened to be. At the same time, we've got a situation where it's possible that this municipal election will have more open wards than ever, more counselors stepping aside, saying that, you know, they believe in some sort of term limit, even if that term limit, like John Fillion of Willowdale, is 36 years, right? After 36 years, a guy says, OK, I think I've done what I could around here. But, you know, at the same time, we've got Norm Kelly, Giorgio Mammoliti, other characters who never seem to leave City Hall expecting to run again.

seem to leave City Hall expecting to run again, once again for re-election, counting on the idea that name recognition will make them automatically voted in again. And they only stand to benefit by the fact that, as far as anyone can tell, that John Tory is going to be as close to acclaimed as a mayor could possibly be. That's where it stands, at least right now, on June 21st. So the turnout will be low. All this really helps the lifers who are expecting to be reelected again. For an Ann Romer, the main thing, I guess, is trading off whatever degree of celebrity status that she has in Toronto. And it will be fascinating to see where she decides to run. By the way, she describes it with John Tory behind her.

You know, she'll have a big machine to help out with her campaign, that it won't just be one of those small fringe outlier candidate bids. So if Anne is going for it, I look forward to the Toronto Mic'd episode where Anne comes on here, makes that her campaign stop, right? You'll know your podcast has made it when you've got a candidate running for city council who treats coming to your basement, right,

as an important part toward getting elected. On this note, it's time for Brian's question. And I get so nervous about Brian's question because I feel like at this point in my life, Brian's question is maybe the only thing that I don't have any control over. What about my question? But he records it in advance. I can wave you away. I can come up with a non-answer.

We can move on to the next thing, right? Whatever Brian says on this file makes it into the show. So let's hear what Brian has to say now. Hi, Mark. Brian Gerstein here, sales representative with PSR Brokerage and proud sponsor of Toronto Mic'd. 416-873-0292 is the number to call or text me for any of your real estate needs. If you are looking to get into any low-rise housing, there are some wonderful buying opportunities I can show you that won't last long. Mark, with Ann Romer's bombshell announcement exclusively on Toronto Mic'd that she is considering making a run for City Council, I fully expect the 1236 to be all over it like Winnie the Pooh is to a jar of honey. When I saw zero coverage on this newsworthy event by 1236, not to mention that Mike himself is being

targeted to be her social media manager, I did not know what to make of it. Will you though admit your massive faux pas by not giving Mike his Woodward and Bernstein moment. Okay, so that wasn't such a bad question because he didn't make it really about me. How did you feel, Mike, about the fact that the newsletter did not include reference to Ann Romer thinking about running for city. I was shocked. I was shocked because it comes at 1236 and I'm usually on a bike ride at that time. So I get back from my bike ride and I get myself a drink and I sit down at my laptop and I open up my issue of 1236 and I'm reading each. Oh, I guess he's doing it in the last segment. It's not there.

There's no reference to the Ann Romer episode of Toronto Mic'd in which she says, she's, how does that not, tell me how that does not make the 1236 newsletter. Brian, if you're listening, what a great question. Because she didn't actually announce anything. I don't know that Ann Romer on a podcast musing about the fact that she might be getting into politics. Right. Something which you speculated about before.

Right. As a reason for one of her retirements. And she denied that this was what was going on, that she wasn't trying to be Attorney General of Ontario. We have to go with her denial there, right? I guess. The absence of this news in your newsletter, your integrity took a big hit. That's all I'm going to say. I'm still happy to have you on every quarter, but this was a misstep. I hope we don't have a reoccurrence like this in the future. I i'm not gonna say that i didn't believe ann um but but i but i will say that the way that she referenced it and i i know we just talked about it but this is the this is the toronto mic to universe that i'm sitting in right not the 1236 one it it didn't

seem affirmative enough as something that would that would cross over into my emails. Okay. When she does announce, if and when she announces she's running, will you then reference the fact that she dropped this bomb on Toronto Mike way back when? Well, as we were saying, I expect her to come down here and make it official. Now, the way it works is you have to register at City Hall and your name pops up on the website and there's usually a City Hall reporter hitting refresh on that page

every few minutes. Someone will tweet this out right away. Absolutely. Yeah, looking for something newsworthy. So, what can I say? It might have been an oversight. I'll give you that. Okay, Brian? I might have missed the boat on breaking the news of

Ann Romer to a wider audience than Toronto Mike Taz. But look, things are building up down here. The numbers keep going up and I think that Ann Romer is in good company now, right? As someone who's been on the podcast,

we'll see what happens. I need a new white whale. That's'll see what happens. I need a new white whale. That's what I need now. I need a new target because I was chasing Anne. I was chasing Anne for years, and then she came over, and it was great, but then you have this day after where you realize, what next? What now?

Where do I go from here? Okay, now can I get some credit for introducing you to this song by Nana Muscuri? So tell me your memories of this song. We did that last time around, but I knew this one from when I was in grade school. It was a French class we would have every day with a woman who I'm not entirely sure if she herself actually knew how to speak French. She herself actually knew how to speak French. But, you know, I was taught French all the way through grades two, three, four. When did they used to start French classes? Oh, I remember starting grade one.

Right? I remember I went one to nine was mandatory French in my schooling. Maybe that's right. Either way, in the process of these French classes, we were played this song. We were taught it by the teacher in class, and it haunted me for all those years. It was an earworm.

But how do you now, because you listen to a lot of episodes of Toronto Mic'd, it must be you must be having like a NAMM flashbacks, right? You hear the song and you're back in the French class. Now, I will say, this is now June 21st, so I'm only going to get to play this for a couple more episodes because we're not running the Camp Ternussel ads in July. So people should fill their boots while they can. But let me tell everyone with children or grandchildren ages 4 to 14, go to campt.ca and take a look

at all the French camps available. They're the largest French camp provider in Ontario. Oh, I love this part of the jam right here. Nana Muscuri. Love it. I'm going to miss it. Maybe I'll play it anyway. Who knows? So, go to campt.ca. Check out what they have. They have overnight

camps, day camps. And then when you sign up your child or grandchild, use the promo code Mike, M-I-K-E, and do it quickly. Spots are, there's not many spots left. It's the end of June, and you need to send your child to French camp. Thank you, Mark, for introducing me to this wonderful song. My favorite comment on your website about Nana Miskuri, La Tour de Sol, was somebody likening it to the Camp Krusty theme song.

Hail to thee, Camp Krusty. That's a great episode. When they were making the wallets, that's a great episode. Mr. Black, that's a great episode. I will be really vindicated then if they're teaching the song La Tournesol. If they're blaring it on the loudspeakers at Camp Tournesol this summer, I don't see how they would not want to

make that happen after all these commercials that you've done here. Oh, they should definitely do that. Beer. You've already cracked one open. I'm sorry I didn't. You cracked it open just before I started recording, so I didn't capture that wonderful sound. But which one are you drinking again? Oh, what's this called?

Meanwhile Down in Moxie. It's an American IPA from Great Lakes Brewery. Once again, I think I need to limit my beer consumption while we're taping down here, but it's really tempting. Another six-pack. I'll have to take the rest down to the lake after we're finished here. We're taping down here, but it's really tempting. Another six-pack. Yeah, you have... I'll have to take the rest down to the lake after we're finished here.

They have sunscreen down there now, too. I don't know if you know that, but there's free sunscreen at that park you like to go to to drink your beer. Okay, I'll be slathering it all over my face before I pass out, right? I always say it's a joke to the kids because, you know, you've got to put these kids in their sunscreen. It's very important. I don't remember being, when I was a kid, they sent you out, maybe you got a burn,

maybe you had to treat the burn, but the whole, like, sunscreen wasn't pounded into my head like we're pounding into this next generation. Everything is more extreme now, though, right? The summer, the winter, the daylight saving time, the switch back to standard time. It seems like we're a lot more affected, right?

And this is what social media has done to us. Every trifling complaint is now amplified like never before. And we're dealing with these ailments that we never imagined existed. Here's a question for you. July 19th at the Great Lakes Brewery, the patio where they have the retail store and the brewery, not too far from here, will you be making an appearance on the Toronto Mike's Listener Experience? Again, I've been put on the spot. I'm going to be thinking about it. Just say you will, and then when you don't show up, people won't even—they'll think they just missed you.

Most people won't be there for the whole three hours. Whether it's that event or the calls you're doing with the Patreon supporters. Because you're a Patreon. Things keep building up. Here at the Toronto Mic'd podcast operation, I'm glad to have played a small part in making it happen, getting it to this point, right?

When we started here a couple of years ago, you didn't quite have that cachet. Oh, no. And I think it's only going to grow. So it's been exciting to see it happen. I think doing this party at GLB will bring things to a whole other level. And who knows, right? What kind of attention awaits here for this basement operation? I don't know.

What do you imagine? Like, what do you think will come out of hanging out with your audience? Oh, I think it'd be nice for some of the – to put a name to the face. Like, there's a bunch of people who I know them from Twitter or from the comments on Toronto Mic'd or from emails or from the Patreon. Like you mentioned the calls. So if you're a patron at patreon.com slash Toronto Mic'd, periodically I host these calls. And the magic link is only shared via email or through the Patreon with those who are patrons. You only know these exist.

You only know about these because you're getting these links because you're a patron. It would be great if I could finally meet some of these people. I'm hoping some previous guests will drop by. Soon I'll be sharing the poster for this event. This is happening.

It's just fun. July 19th. Great Lakes Brewery. With or without you, if you're not there, we'll toast your good health at the event. So you ready to jump in here? So let's begin with broadcasting.

And let's begin with the topic that I've been following very closely, which is what's happening at Q107. So since you were last here, they let go three people Q107. So since you were last here, they let go three people. I think this is since you were last here. Yeah. They let go the legendary Andy Frost,

John Scholes, and Al Joins. Al Joins. Sorry, Al. I'm not too drunk here yet. I'm sorry. Al Joins was here, what, 14 hours after he got laid off?

Because they walked him out. That's a big difference. He was walked out. Goodbye, Al. Thanks for the memories. Whereas John and Andy were allowed to stick around and then say goodbye on the air. Okay, so I made a point of tuning into the last episode of Psychedelic Sunday. And Andy Frost did not make a big advanced deal out of it. I wondered if they were going to give any mention to it, any promotion at all. But yeah, they ended up announcing on the air it would be Andy's final show. Knowing that there was that anticipation, I made a point of tuning in. And Elton John's Your Song was one of the first tunes that they played during that show. I've known this song my entire life.

As long as I've been conscious of the history of rock music, I remember hearing this thing. And when I caught it on Andy's final show, it was the first time in my life that I ever appreciated your song. If I was a sculptor, but then again, no more man. In that moment, in that sentiment, it finally clicked with you. The weight of this beautiful Elton John, Bernie Taupin composition. And look, why did it click with me? Because I had that palpable idea when I was tuning in that this was being played as a reflection of the DJ on the air,

that this was his last episode, and he was using this as a way to express what was in his heart. Psychedelic Sunday was a branding that a lot of people were snarky about, right? Because this is not psychedelic music. There is nothing psychedelic about what Elton John was doing in his early days. But, you know, the idea that there was a human behind the microphone, somebody behind the board that deliberately picked this song, it resonated with me in a way that it never had before. And that was it. The show was over.

That was the last day, the last time that I would ever hear it. The first time in the history of Psychedelic Sunday that hearing something on there actually moved me. And it took until the final episode. What does that tell you? I listened to that final episode too, by the way. I think there's something about final anything where I need to hear

it. So I was kind of close to the story, right? Because I had this story about Andy Frost getting it the day he got it, and I chose not to kind of close to the story right because i had this story about andy frost getting it the day he got it and i chose not to kind of go public with this story because i felt like he would want to potentially spin this as he's retiring or something so i was gonna because i've met him and i felt like give him a chance to go out on his own terms but then right away like you said 14 hours later al joins was on the show talking about how andy got it so then i realized after that episode was posted i need to like write about this so i wrote about this and i was the

only kind of place that had written about andy frost getting it and they didn't mention it and andy no one talked about it for weeks and weeks and weeks and i'm like i know i got my story right but this is weird no one no one's talking about this and somebody left a comment that said the last day would be whatever the last day was what was that whatever that was end of may end of may somebody put that in the comments andy's last day will be the anime that wasn't anywhere in public so this person seemed with confidence and you and i both kind of saw this comment and i think we well that's that that guy might might be right because we don't know what the last day is they haven't mentioned

it but it turned out he was right or whoever wrote that comment was right. Hold just a moment here, Mark. So yeah, and I wasn't sure if Q would make noise about it. I know I was making noise about it, but Q did make some noise and farewell Andy or good luck Andy or whatnot. And it seemed like Andy

the farewell was kind of like I don't know. I think it sounded like a man who didn't want to leave. That's how I heard it anyways. There was an excellent Toronto Star article by Peter Howell. How often do stories about radio make it to the front page of a newspaper nowadays?

And look, here was a guy, Andy Frost, who'd been through the world of corporate radio for decades. He was one of those people that came out of the FM radio scene as it was transforming into something that was a lot more commercial than where it started. something that was a lot more commercial than where it started, right? It was free-form, progressive FM, and there he was riding along with the corporatization of everything. So the idea of reaching the point where they don't want you around anymore, this was not a concept that he wasn't familiar with. It seemed like he knew that the day would come when he was costing the company too much money, that they were looking for a change of direction, a shift in how they were

approaching things, and seems to have accepted that this was his fate, that he did his time on the air. Psychedelic Sunday was on the air continuously for 20 years um and the reason that people think it was around for longer was because he started it going back to 1985 right did it for a while uh left the radio industry then he got into the record business uh for a number of years came back to the station did a national overnight show you covered a lot of this with him, didn't you? Yes, I did, yeah. And then Psychedelic Sunday was removed from Q. People wanted it back. And as I mentioned before, I mean, it wasn't psychedelic music.

It was more just a 1965, 1975 classic rock radio oldie show. So what can I say? I tuned in for most of Andy's last episode, and he moved me, and I don't know if there's any greater credit than that. Finally, I understand. Elton John's Your Song.

This is Josie's song, not The Glorious Sons. Josie. Is that the name of this band? The Glorious Sons is the name of the band. I couldn't even remember that if you asked me. Indie 88 were denied their request for... What did they ask for? A power increase?

They were at 4,000 watts. They were looking to get to 12,000. They were at 4,000 watts. They were looking to get to 12,000. So it was a matter of tripling the amount of space where the signal would reach. Now, 88.1 in Toronto was originally licensed as CKLN, right? The radio station out of Ryerson, where a lot of legendary stuff happened through the 1980s. I mean, this was like the pioneering college radio station for all of Canada. Part of the reason that it was able to build that reputation was the fact that it wasn't tethered to the school. So even though it was

stationed there, it wasn't leaning on the radio and television students to provide it with programming. In fact, if anything, it was a bunch of weird outsiders who made the thing tick for so many years. It was not an easy signal to receive. It started, I think, 50 watts, went up to 250. So things messed up over there, and they ended up having to abdicate the license, and it was up for applications for commercial frequency. This company, Central Ontario Broadcasting, won 88.1 to do a commercial station on there with this format. I think maybe they were a little surprised that they won it, who really needed another rock music station in Toronto? But the CRTC saw something there in what they were promising to do this format.

But after a couple of years, they were realizing maybe this was not the success that they were expecting. And the profit was not quite where they were hoping it would be. So they applied to the CRTC saying, give us more watts. We need a wider reach. We need to get to all those people in their cars all around the GTA. And the CRTC turned them down, which seemed to catch people by surprise. They pay attention to such things. You would think they would want to support a smaller player in the market, saturated with Bell and Rogers.

But there's an Aboriginal station that's launching that they were afraid, technically, this signal, if it was boosted, would interfere with that signal. Did I read that right? Yeah, the station is coming on 106.5. Now, this is the second try to do an aboriginal radio station. It was one that started in the very early 2000s, and they managed to screw that up in different ways, and that license ended up being taken away. So this is APTN, associated with the TV network, right? Aboriginal People's Television Network, that now they'll have a radio thing going over there. So there's a lot riding on

the ability to get this right and making sure that people are able to hear this because what they're aiming for, for a new station, Emergent FM, is the idea that they'll be able to package the programming in a way that it will appeal to the widest audience possible, right? So they'll be mixing in the indigenous Canadian music with like general pop stuff. So it's an intriguing idea. I don't know if it will catch on in the marketplace, but at least they've been given the license to give it a shot and get a certain amount of attention.

So there might be something a little bit political behind making that move. behind uh uh making that move but look it comes back to the fact that uh uh 88.1 in the 88 right uh crtc looked through their books discovered uh that their um that their revenues were going up um but they were they were spending a lot of money on advertising i see the billboards all over the place everywhere just you know trying to get people to to tune in to what's going on there. The slacker youth. Remember, there's one young woman who, she won't put special characters in her password. This is kind of on the billboard. These, they don't care.

This stuff just screams like hipster ad agency work. Somebody was given license to come up with what their idea of a radio ad should be who maybe never has tuned into a radio station in their entire lives, but maybe that's where they see the growth. So Indie88, and that song

we play, Josie, probably very popular with their morning show, Josie Die. They probably enjoy playing the Go Josie Go song. There's a good hip-hop thing going on with that tune as far as Canadian indie rock is concerned. It seems to be something of a standout. But the number of listeners who are drawn to a radio station where something like that is a signature song, I don't know how large the market is overall. I'm not sure how many people tuning into FM radio right now

are drawn to that sort of sound. My theory is that in order to compensate for the fact they were turned down by the CRDC, in order to acknowledge that they're stuck with a signal that doesn't go as far as they hoped it could, that Indy 88 will now have to get weirder. And somewhere on Twitter, right, the program director, Ian March, he responded to a tweet by telling us to stay tuned, that, in fact, they would be coming up with different ideas that, you know, were a little out of the box that they're operating in.

Because I don't know how easy it is to sit there and look at something like 102.1 The Edge run by Chorus, a radio station that doesn't seem to appeal to us very much anymore and doesn't seem to get the kind of attention that maybe it should be getting, doesn't seem to put the effort into getting that attention. What's it like to have to obsess over trying to hive off part of their audience? And maybe now reality will sink in and they have to look beyond that, right? Find a different type of listener that hasn't been inclined to tune in to a terrestrial radio station. The very same people, whenever we start chatting about radio stations online, and let's face it, we spend more time online chatting about radio stations, I think, in Toronto than we do listening to most of these radio stations. But people always wondering, who cares? Why would you pay any attention to this stuff? It's dead.

It's over. This is yesterday's style of media. But I think on every episode here, somewhere down the line, I managed to assert the fact that, look, this is where the local content is happening. This is the origin of a certain type of media.

It started with the radio. And as long as these stations are operating, they might as well make some sort of effort to reach out to people. Otherwise, just hand back the license. Tell the CRDC to give it to somebody else. So they'll have to now give it a shot in the 88, and we'll see where it goes over the summer into the fall. I want to know what's happening at Jazz FM.

So do I. So do a bunch of other people. They tend to not complain about it on Twitter, though. It doesn't seem like there's much overlap between social media and the CJRT audience. But not only I wrote about this Jazz FM situation on TorontoMic.com and I was surprised. Like if I had written about, I don't know, if I had written about almost any other station, I want to say there'd be many comments, but there weren't a lot of comments. many comments, but there weren't a lot of comments. I don't think a lot of people reading TorontoMic.com are sponsoring or, what do you call, pledging their money towards the public station Jazz FM. Well, back in the early 2000s, when things were changing up, a whole bunch of different things happened in radio around that time, as far as innovative ideas or, you know,

ways that people were imagining that radio would be able to function in cyberspace. They took CGRT, which was partly a jazz station, other forms of music that weren't rock. There was classical stuff on there and educational programming that was tied to Ryerson, BBC News, which they still air in the morning. that was tied to Ryerson, BBC News, which they still air in the morning. And they decided instead to steer it in a different direction and make it a jazz radio station for Toronto. But they had to do it within certain strictures because they had a license from the CRTC where they could run some commercials, like four minutes an hour.

They could run some commercials, like four minutes an hour. But the rest of the time, their budget would be depending on listener contributions. They would do these fundraising drives, just like they do on public television or community radio. Like Goldie used to do on WNED. And they would be able to find their way in the marketplace with this mixed model of doing things. Now, after a while, they brought on this guy named Ross Porter, who had a long history with the CBC. He was a CBC jazz guy out of Winnipeg. He went on to start up a jazz radio station for Izzy Asper right before Izzy died with the Canwest Global. He wanted to get into radio and started a thing that was in Winnipeg, and Ross Porter was his guy, got the

format going there, I guess, with those credentials behind him. He seemed like the right guy to bring something similar to Toronto, right? It would be this sort of upper-mid middle-brow jazz format, not quite like the 70s fusion, but also not particularly traditional, at the same time not really avant-garde in any way, just something that would be like an inoffensive portal to a sort of culture that no one else was addressing on the airwaves. As far as I could tell, he managed to steer it into some level of success. This thing chugged along for quite a while and seemed to hold its own when it came to

these fundraising drives. But because it's 2018, we ended up hearing about the departure of Ross Porter, that he was stepping down as a president and CEO for reasons related to sexual harassment and bullying allegations in the workplace. I can't remember. The problem with talking about this stuff off the top of my head is that if I get into specifics of what he was accused for, I'm going to end up conflating it with other stories about people being accused for things. There's a lot of me too things floating around. So let's – okay, he was accused – he stepped down after an investigation.

He stepped down, and he said it was to spend more time with his family, that much I remember. and he said it was to spend more time with his family, that much I remember. And people were wondering, well, did it have something to do with the fact that he was accused of doing these other things? It seemed a little bit too convenient, but no, he was saying one thing had nothing to do with the other and he was going to stay on the air. He was going to do a show, Music to Listen to Jazz By.

That's the name of his show on the station. And that show is still on. Okay, so his show was still on the air. The employees who were offended by him. And I don't mean to rush you, except I just checked the clock here. So once again, two minutes of topic. Danny Elwell, who was on CFNY,

and I've been talking to forever. Maybe she's the next one. I've been working on her for years to come over, and she says she'll come over in July. Dani Elwell last year, she had a big title there. I can't remember, but she had a show there, and she had an interesting title there. Creative director or something?

Anyway, she resigned, and it was kind of mysterious because I never did get a reason. I'm hoping to ask her when she comes on. So she steps down. And then earlier this year, the morning show host, Garvia Bailey, she stepped down. No, she was fired. I don't even know.

Well, she's not on the air anymore. She was let go somehow. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure what happened. The thing is, employees, it was in a Globe Mail article, employees were wondering, why is this Ross Porter still allowed to be on the air? We'd rather he not be here anymore. And instead of Ross Porter being removed from the station,

all these other employees were. A lot of people, like James B., who comes up a lot on this show. You know, Ben Mergey, I think James B. and the Look people, is that what they were called? Were like his house band on the Ben Mergey talk show on Friday nights with Ralph Ben Mergey. So James B. comes up a lot on this show. And he was there 16 years.

He got let go. So a lot of on-air personalities and off-air people were let go. And then the board changed. So you and I were left here wondering, what the hell is going on? What next for Jazz FM? They seem to be in disarray. Now, the part that

makes it a whole tragic comedy for us here is the fact they were running their morning show without a host. They got rid of the morning show host. Even the person who replaced Darvia. Three people that were on the morning show, James B. as well, Mark Wigmore was another,

all gone, all out of the station. They're running the morning show on some sort of autopilot, like just a playlist, having some kind of iTunes thing going on. The BBC News, their signature thing in the morning show, ended up being on the air 20 minutes late. People timed their entire morning routines

to hearing the BBC News on this radio station. If that happened on CBC, for example, we'd all freak out. That's something that's important to people. They expect at the top of the hour they're going to get their live news update. So the BBC News wasn't there. Any other radio station would have to give an explanation, an apology,

respond to people asking about it. Nothing going on there. We'll see what goes on with CGRT. Watching that one closely because I think people enjoy media drama and who would have thought Jazz FM 91 is now bringing it. Right.

Now, I just remembered we added an obituary section and I'm doing the math in my head real quick here. So for the rest of these broadcasting topics, I'm capping you at two minutes. So talk faster, like you're listening in your three times speed. Oh, okay.

So we're not going to try and break the Toronto Mike record. Dan O'Toole. Well, only because I have to pick up Kids at Daycare at some point. But we can go pretty long, but I don't know if we can go that long. Okay, let's go. Okay, so Bell Media cut staff. Do we know who was cut from the Bell Media?

Those Discovery shows, right? Who was cut? They had two new shows going back to the old chum television model where they had inner inner space was that what yes inner space inner space uh a sci-fi theme show although uh what i read about it uh was mostly turned out to be uh promos for the the programming they were doing on there the other one was was daily planet discovery channel right now which was discovery.ca right that was yeah they started the Discovery Channel and they named a show at the time, early 1995,

at discovery.ca. This was a time when the idea of having an email address was still somewhat exotic, right? It was something that you would only be into if you were a science-y person. Or a university student, because that's

the year that I got my utoronto.ca address. So at discovery.ca with Jay Ingram at the time, he was the primary host, went through some other co-hosts, right? Jill Deacon, who was down here. She was on that show. So that became Daily Planet News Magazine show, and they axed that as well.

And it might have been one of those things where you read more about it online than there were actually people left watching, only because of the nature of these shows and the whole impulse to tune in at a specific time on a cable channel that a diminishing number of people receive. So the aftermath of that was some rebranding of Bell Media. No longer are they using Bravo as the name of a channel. They've planted the CTV logo on that one. That one will be CTV Drama. Space will be CTV Sci-Fi.

And the comedy channel, Comedy Network, that will remain, but it will be CTV Comedy, and this is where we're at. So Bravo, Space, Comedy Network. There was one more in there somewhere. Oh, and Gusto. Yeah, Gusto. Much More Music, a channel that seems to come up here a lot. I don't know why.

I don't either. I never heard as much about Much More Music, a channel that seems to come up here a lot. I don't know why. I don't either. I never heard as much about Much More Music until I started listening to Toronto Mike. So they got rid of any music association with that. And so that's now CTV Life. So the shifting sands of the specialty cable business wants a cash cow for Canada. All these different channels, they send you money in the mail every month. You would hitch on to some of these cable packages, and it would just be automatic. Here we're at the point where that money is vanishing, slipping away here.

They've got to find new, different ways of doing it and harnessing the audiences that are out there. Another development was CBC News Network canceling its On the Money show. No longer a financial show on there. They're allocating the funds elsewhere. They said budget cuts at the CBC. It's like, budget cuts? Internal budget.

Yeah, we just went through a whole period where Justin Trudeau was saying that the CBC will be funded better than ever before. But the reality is that the CBC News Network audience is dying off. Do you ever watch his channel? I mean, the commercials on there are downright geriatric. It makes Zoomer media seem youthful. I've fallen and I can't get up kind of commercials going on there. Yeah, pretty much.

seem youthful. I've fallen and I can't get up kind of commercials going on there. Pretty much. So no longer can they allocate 12 people to work on a daily financial show. So here are torn, right, between the fact that it's the public broadcaster, the CBC, but they were

dependent on subscription revenue to this news channel and it's confusing people because there are different ways in which they operate, but yeah, less money flowing through CBC News Network, and part of that is, at least for this summer, they will be repeating newscasts, right? Like 30 minutes live and then repeating that 30 minutes,

and then 30 minutes live and then repeating that 30 minutes. That's kind of the formula, I think. When it comes to channels like these, they were sort of doing that anyway, just rehashing the same script from one half hour to the next. But now they really will be doing that. I mean, I think if there was actually breaking news that there would be the anchor hanging around

to do it live... Well, the anchor's got to go again in like, you know, half an hour or less, so they won't be too far. Maybe a quick smoke break. But I think what they're capitulating to, you know, a lot of the access for these channels, I mean, look at CP24, right? It's a whole idea

that you just have this thing on all day. And if you're seeing things repeated too close together, right, it might lose that appeal. You might feel like it's Groundhog Day, seeing the same half hour over and over again. On that note, since you were last here, Steve Anthony, I think this is since you were last here,

Steve Anthony resigned his post as the CP24 breakfast host. And you talked about that down here, right? He had already resigned when he was last in the basement? Yeah, he did tell me, though. He held those cards close to his chest, and I asked him, he said he didn't want you know the the the people who the crew the people who work on the show he didn't want them to hear about it from toronto mike's podcast and i understand that okay so steve anthony uh yeah he wound down his time uh doing the breakfast show right he cut down the number of days of the week

that he was on right eventually he was doing one day a week. Right. Two days a week. And his replacement, I believe, is George Lagogagiannis. George Lagogagiannis. Oh, I'm terrible. The guy's been hanging around that 299 Queen West for like 30 years. Since Electric Circus. At least 30 years.

Absolutely. I've seen George on there from time to time, and I was confused about who this guy was. What is George Lagogagianis' dad doing reading the news? Speaking of that, by the way, a little teaser. Monica Dior promises she's coming on. So I'm just throwing that out there, speaking of Electric Circus. Kevin Frankish.

This one's a bit mysterious. And yeah, a bit of a bombshell, too. I can't say personally I found it all that fascinating, but when you're doing this sort of breakfast television show on City TV for so many years, so many decades, 30 years is a long time. He's been on this show. He was great, by the way.

People should go back and listen to the Kevin Frankish episode. But this sounds to me like, again, similar to Andy Frost, in that he did not appear or sound like a man who wanted to leave. Well, he said he's still going to be involved with City TV. Oh, like Gord Martineau's involved? No, but Gord Martineau, eventually, I think the full Gord Martineau story will come out someday.

I don't think Gord wants to get to the end of his life and never have the details explained about what happened at City TV. Now, this might take, yeah, another 20 or 30 years, but hey, you've got time. You're patient. I've been trying to get him on since Ann Roszkowski was here. Did Kevin Frankish burn up the comment section? I mean, was there a lot of reaction?

Yeah, yeah, there was a lot. The Andy Frost, there was maybe Andy Frost entry and the Kevin Frankish entry, so they were both pretty popular. But here's what's interesting. If I go right now and look at which episodes of Toronto Mic have been listened to the most times in the year 2018,

so what, we're almost halfway done this year, and the two episodes that have been listened to the most are the Andy Frost and the Kevin Frankish episode. So I'm now wondering, I'm not a religious man, so it sounds strange to say heaven forbid, but should somebody who was a guest on Toronto Mic ever pass away? That's the episode that's going straight to the top. Okay. People, that's what people, people, when you're leaving or something like that's happening to you, that's when people want to hear, hear your episode the most. So there you go. Now, that was about two minutes, I think.

We did a lot more than two minutes. But Scott Lorre, did I say that? Lorre or Lorre? Scott Lorre. Oh, that was one of my favorite stories. So what happened to Scott Lorre? No one knows. No one's explaining what went down.

Scott Lorre, again, like someone that wasn't really on the radar. I knew who the guy was. He was at a CTV News Channel for years and years. He was one of the main anchors for whatever, at least a decade, maybe more. Scott Lorre was always around, and there seemed to be some people who were really suspicious about the fact that he was no longer on the air. Like, all of a sudden, Scott Lorre wasn't showing up for his shifts.

Now, when you see a buzz about something like that on Twitter, it means that somebody knows something and they're not in a position to disclose. There's a lot of that right now. There's a lot of that. I mean, be it... What's the... Ben and Carrie.

Who's the gentleman who just was on 108 in the morning? Ben McVie. Ben McVie. There's a lot going on right now, these stories, where it's out there, but it's not really out there. There's a whole whack of that going on. So with Scott Lorre, it's a similar situation, I take it. Now, one reporter from CTV went a little offside,

and he tweeted what he believed to be the reason that Scott Lorre was no longer on camera, that he was dismissed from the station. The official explanation was that they had no comment. But something was tweeted that it had something to do with his behavior while he was working there. Now, CTV had just gone through a whole situation with Kevin, sorry, with Paul Bliss, Paul Bliss, right, the Queens Park reporter for CTV News. He was reporting on Patrick Brown. And after he was reporting on the fall of Patrick Brown, the fact that, you know, CTV exposes women who accused him of inappropriate behavior.

There was Paul Bliss on CTV, you know, doing his job, talking about this. And a woman who had a professional association with him before, right? She came out with a story about Paul Bliss allegedly behaving badly. Except she did not name him. That was key. Like, I remember she wrote this entry about this person, describing the person and everything, but never actually named him. But gave enough details that it was easy to guess, right?

And it was widely reported that, in fact, it was Paul. Right, absolutely. And I think that's part of this lawsuit I read about, is that Bell Media made a statement where they acknowledged it was Paul, that it was about Paul Bliss or something. And then she didn't. Anyway, there's a lawsuit.

She didn't like it. It wasn't her intention to cause the harm to this guy who's now he's suing CTV and Bell Media for what they did to him. They never officially explained why he was gone, despite the fact that this story was out there. So we have no proof that any of this ever happened. So Scott Lorre, they managed to try and keep a lid on it until the CTV reporter put something on Twitter, which he ended up deleting, right? That there was a reason, but we don't know for sure if this happened. And then the reporter disappeared from Twitter. He went silent. Who knows if he was reprimanded. I mean, they don't want to be known as a network that's employing all these guys that are generating all these Me Too stories. It's not a good look. It's not something you want to be known for.

And once again, Scott Lorre, no official explanation. Don't know what happened there. But the nature of the discussions around it would suggest that possibly it had something to do with what was going on with him on the job, that there were professional reasons behind it, that he was dismissed. What those reasons are, if those were the reasons to begin with, we still don't know.

These are the perils of reporting, right? This is the way that your new sausage gets made. Humble and Fred are no longer live on SiriusXM. And you know anybody who cares about this? Have you heard? Where's the Toronto Mike blog entry? You don't care? Well, I'm waiting for this other domino

to fall. I was going to write about this, but then I realized there's another domino that might fall. I thought it might fall this week. It didn't fall, but it's still teetering. It could fall, and then that piece falls, and then I could write this proper piece or whatever. But the fact remains, regardless of whether this domino piece falls, Humble and Fred are no longer live on SiriusXM, and soon they'll be no longer on the station at all, even rerun form. So that's some new news from my friends. There's still, I should point out,

this is kind of a key detail, that they're still recording every day. They're just not going to be on satellite radio. So I don't know if anyone cares, but that's, someone cares. There are people who care. I care. They're good guys.

I bumped into Humble Howard during my anniversary dinner. He was there and he gave me a gift card that I could use towards our dessert. So, you know, I got to be nice to these guys. That's the way to my heart. And that was a sponsor gift card? Oh, yeah, of course.

But still, that was $50 I was able to apply to a nice dessert I had with my wife on our fifth-year wedding anniversary. You can do better than that. Oh, I hope she doesn't hear this. All right, now uh internet we're changing the station here uh so to speak uh let's talk about subway canada what are they doing with their uh speaking of twitter i just had the twitter guy on but there's uh they're

they're gaming twitter you should have talked about this i didn't know i would have wanted to learn what went down there and subway canada uh, they managed to pull what I think was a pretty subversive Twitter trick. They put a couple of Twitter polls out there looking for some kind of response or at least, you know, feigning the idea that they were anticipating a reaction. And they ended up getting no votes whatsoever, right? It's like, whatever the question was, right? What's your favorite type of sandwich bread at Subway? And nobody voted. Nobody voted.

Right. And somehow it managed to bubble up through certain jokesters on Twitter. The fact that Subway Canada did a Twitter poll, and isn't this sad that nobody paid any attention to them? As far as anyone could tell, what they actually did was set the poll in a way that no one would end up seeing it, so that Subway Canada, in turn, would get all sorts of press and promotion online, articles in BuzzFeed and Vice and Eater, whatever other websites, simply for the idea that they me to put out a poll that gets zero response. Like this would have, you're right, that's not a natural happening, even with an unpopular question from a brand. That's impossible.

But it is definitely possible on Twitter. It was evidence of this was shown to me by a digital marketer, a guy named Stephen Taylor, pointed it out. That in fact you could set the Twitter poll in a way that no one would see it, right? Essentially like writing something on your website and not hitting publish, right? So you could say, okay, this thing didn't get any hits. Well, it doesn't really matter. Of course it didn't get any hits because nobody saw it. So a savvy bit of promotion.

Give that person a raise, right? Whatever ad agency came up with the idea of Subway Canada running Twitter polls that on purpose no one was able to vote for. Subway Canada, they did a promotion a few months ago about asking people whether they had a feta fetish, right? And this choice of wording, the idea that they were into some kind of kink over there, right? That eating at Subway was a sort of perversion that should appeal to you if you swing that way.

That also seemed to get a sort of backlash online. But looking back, I wonder if that was deliberate and if, in fact, we're in an age where the only thing that companies can do, especially fast food restaurants, is essentially make it look like they're being owned, right? That you're smarter than them. That here they are, you know, trying to win over the millennials and they keep falling on their face like this isn't working, it can't happen. So give props to Subway for pulling something off.

I don't know if I'm doing it any justice in explaining it. Oh, but they managed to trick Twitter, which is kind of neat. Yeah, look at this poll that nobody voted in. Aren't they shameful? At the same time, in the process, you're reminding people that Subway is still around, even after Jared.

Well, yeah, I was going to say. Now, last night, I went to my daughter's final primary school concert. By the way, I took a picture on my way out because the most famous graduate for the school, he's in a photo of all the 2002 grade 8 classes in a photo in the hallway. And he's in this photo. That is P.K. Subban. So I bike home from this and then I throw on the television to watch,

just watch something for a little bit. And the NHL awards are on. And it was cheeseball awful. But then suddenly it became quite interesting because they brought out most of the survivors of the Humboldt bus crash tragedy. I think a few guys are still in the hospital and couldn't make their way to Vegas.

But everybody else that survived was there. And it was actually pretty touching, this celebration of the survivors, and they talked about the Humboldt Strong campaign and all that. And it was pretty touching. But you say that there was a bit of a Twitter controversy with regards to the Humboldt tragedy? Yeah, when you look back at it, it seems completely ridiculous, right?

Because here, I mean, these young hockey players were involved in this tragic bus crash. And you're thinking, how can anybody have a problem with that? But because this is Twitter, we managed to find somebody who did. And it was a writer and activist named Nora Loretto, who's based in Quebec. And she was into a Twitter thread, a common thing for her going off on everything that she finds wrong with the world. And in the course of ruminating about how much money the survivors of this crash raised, and I guess the families

of the victims, she remarked upon whether the whiteness and maleness of the victims managed to have anything to do with the fact that this thing was making, what, $13, $14, $15 million was being raised out of this. You know, it's not the most, I mean, it's a valid question. Isn't that a valid question? Like, sometimes I'll see, for example, I don't know, a young blonde blue-eyed girl might go missing, and then maybe a dark-skinned girl the same age

in a different neighborhood goes missing. And one will become, like, especially in America, but here too probably, will become this massive story. It's all people talk about. Where the other one almost gets relegated to, like, page two. Like, this is a real phenomenon that we experience in the media. Okay, well, if more people felt like you, then this Nora Loretto would have just been able to get on with her life. And I'm not suggesting, I mean, this was a tragedy. If this was a, what's, like, I mean, the fact is,

in Saskatchewan hockey players, I'm going to guess, I was married to a woman from Saskatchewan, so I could speak of authority. The vast majority of the hockey players in Saskatchewan are both male and white. And youthful, I guess. Yeah, I bet you they're youthful, too. It's in there as well.

Anyhow, what happened was the tweet managed to catch on in ways that nothing that Nora had ever tweeted before managed to catch on. Given how she was somebody who was constantly tweeting stuff,

looking for attention to get reactions to whatever she was saying. That context is important. Be careful what you wish for, though, because, you know, in this case, it was it was like an avalanche. I mean, it was overwhelming. And, you know, here we the aftermath of this tragedy. And it's like this tweet seemed to seize all of the attention. It took the entire spotlight away from what had happened here, at least for a certain segment of the media. story that she wrote, the only one that she ever contributed to the magazine, the fact that she had the byline, the fact that she bragged in her Twitter bio that she was a Maclean's writer, they started

being tweeted towards, right? They were getting all sorts of ink on it. Is she, can I ask, I don't know her at all, is she a person of color? Well, no. I mean, is that important? I don't know how people categorize themselves or explain things. No, she would not give that impression. In fact, if anything, I don't know how people categorize themselves or explain things. No, she would not give that impression.

In fact, if anything, I don't know, people were getting into anti-Semitism, right? Like getting into the Jew thing with her, maybe? That's closer to the way that she looked. I mean, if you're an angry man on Twitter and you're just looking for anything to vent at people about. It was insensitive timing regardless even if there's a valid point there somewhere which is possible uh that that's the wrong time to make such a point I think uh this was without a doubt regardless of the color of these the gender and the color of their skin this was an absolute tragedy I mean it was the saddest story and uh it didn't matter that they were white men. But to me, the timing was tone deaf.

Let's put it that way. Well, especially with the nature of how Twitter works, right? Because people get into these rants, and they do them in these Twitter threads. I don't know if people who are never on Twitter understand the universe. I mean, we're on there all the time. So we're familiar with the way that the thread works, right?

Like you get on a roll with stuff, and 280 characters are not enough, right? You need to say something else and something else and something else, and before you know it, like you're writing a whole essay. It's like a chapter of a book, and you're using this constrained platform in which to do it? What kind of world are we living in, in which this is what communication has been limited to? But I mean, look, look how much goes on with Twitter. Look how much of the news is driven by the interactions that go on there. So, you know, she tweeted a caveat that, you know, yes, she still felt it was a tragedy

anyway, but that wasn't enough because you could isolate that individual tweet. That's the problem with the threads. About the whiteness and the maleness and the youthfulness. Right. And that, you know, no one else in the world is given the respect of these humble Broncos players. I don't know. The end result is she's a whole lot more infamous than she used to be.

She has a podcast that I actually listen to. Is it good? If you're into socialist diatribes, I guess. If you don't have any interface with those in your real life and you want a 30, 40-minute dose of what the socialists are thinking, she brings it to you along with Sandy Hudson. Yeah, it's well produced as far as the things go. And did you only sample it after this controversial tweet? No, I knew about it before.

I mean, look, it's a necessary part of the media diet just because I don't concur with these things politically. It's good to know what everybody is thinking about everything. So, yeah, I would say it's an all right podcast. I don't want to ruin my career by saying that I'm consuming something that this woman does. I don't want anyone to think like I'm some sort of stan of hers. I think we've lost a little—we've lost a grasp of context sometimes. Context is everything.

But in this Twitter age, it seems like you're right. You can isolate something in its content. And I think what she tweeted was rather insensitive, particularly at that time. But I'd hate to see her, like for all eternity, her career in the toilet because of that one tweet,

which could have some degree of validity. The end. But yeah, she also got to go on the CBC and defend herself. And she had other people defending her and other people writing columns in her defense. And I think, you know, look, I remember this past winter, it went on a little later than winter usually should.

Of course, we had a nice storm in May. There were certain times of year in which these little Twitter things, right, flare up like out of nowhere. And it just seems like Canadians are restless, like we're looking for something to do, right, to keep us preoccupied, like we're snowed in, right, we're kept indoors, we need something to keep us busy. And it seems like specifically at those times of year when people get restless, that something flares up and all of a sudden you've got another great Canadian Twitter controversy. Often there's one in the summer, by the way. So I think something is going to happen in July.

Okay. And I hope it doesn't involve me. I'm going to start cherry picking here because I want to do the obituaries justice. So Rick Moranis did eventually appear at that SCTV reunion show that Martin Scorsese was filming for some kind of special. Yeah, there was a Eugene Levy interview on Deadline. It was a Schitt's Creek thing. Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, he talked about the Scorsese special that, in fact, because Scorsese doesn't have to do any interviews with people, right?

But he was a genuine SCTV fan. I mean, the aesthetic of SCTV appealed to him, and there were a lot of Scorsese references in the history of SCTV. So you could understand how what they were doing, right, in the hinterlands of Edmonton, late 70s, early 80s, how all that appealed to him. So he got the surviving members of the cast into the Elgin Theater back on Mother's Day. They filmed that for the show. But Eugene Levy said it's all in Scorsese's hands, whatever he's going to do with it. sazy's hands whatever he's going to do with it and there might be a sketch component that he is wondering if they're going to be called and asked to do some kind of uh some kind of revival of sctv

yeah like bob and doug or something like that as part of the show so so rick rick moranis who who has been uh uh for all these years people assumed that he was retired, that he was hiding out, that he was doing some sort of Garbo thing where he didn't want to be recognized. And in the meantime, he's put out a couple of comedy albums. He's written some op-ed stuff that showed up in the New York Times. He's been around. He's just been living a quieter life. A lot of speculation about whether he would show up or not. And then he did.

Rick Moranis was there. He was back into it with SCTV, where people expected him to be all along. And it sounds like it was a very emotional event, and it would have only made sense for him to be there. But I'm not sure. They had an embargo. They didn't want people reporting about what went down there. So I'm waiting to be surprised. This is a documentary for Netflix, but it's also running on CTV. And as far as I can tell, they're banking on it having like a world premiere in Canada for Canadian television, as it should be. Before it shows up on Netflix, that it will be beamed into everybody's home on CTV. I will be watching. I look forward to it.

I'm going to jump into print. Rogers laid off one third of its publishing staff, I guess, for their magazines. Yeah, another pivot to video, which didn't turn out as people were expecting it to. A few years ago, the magazine division of Rogers, it came out that they were looking to get rid of it, just close the whole thing down. Ted Rogers was fond of these magazines that he acquired as part of the cable deals. He managed to get this stable of print magazines.

Like Chatelaine and Maclean's. Maclean's, Chatelaine, Flair. Canadian Parent, I think, is in there. Today's Parent. Canadian Business. Anyway, so a few years after Ted passed away, came out at Rogers that, yeah,

there wasn't any money to be made from doing this anymore, especially after that NHL deal, when they splurged all that money on running hockey, on television. It's like, what are we doing here with this journalism in print? Why are we printing magazines? It's not a business that any other media conglomerates seem particularly interested in at this point in time, at least not when they're making money off telecom.

Well, that's the question. interested in at this point in time, at least not when they're making money off telecom. Well, that's the question. Is there a significant chunk of the Canadian magazine landscape not owned by Rogers? Like, I can't think of a magazine in Canada that's not owned by Rogers. They must exist, right? Well, the ones that I'm working with, St. Joseph Media, they own them. Is that a... Toronto Life magazine.

My apologies to St. Joseph, where I was born. Don't worry, I'm not going to storm out of here and discuss. But yeah, they're moving forward. I mean, publishing magazines that are on the newsstand, also magazines that are fully bankrolled by individual advertisers and accompanying websites. So that's a different business, because St. Joseph, the origins there

were that of a printing company, whereas Rogers went to a whole other world in which the whole idea of writing these long stories on paper, it seems like it's not compatible anymore, right, with what they're offering. Now, they already pared it down, right? Of course, they used to publish more often. And then I know the Sportsnet magazine, for example, they used to print it and they said, OK, now it's digital only. Sportsnet magazine, for example, they used to print it and they said, OK, now it's digital only. So they've already pared it down and now they've chopped one third, including previous Toronto Mike guest Sarah Boesvelt. She was amongst the cuts, but I was disappointed to hear that.

But so what next? What did Brunt say about newspapers? They were burning the furniture to heat the house, I think is what he said about newspapers. Is it a similar story here of the magazines? Well, the first move that they made came two years ago, and they said we're doubling down on digital. They had the theory that these brands were big enough that if they turned it into a digital content machine, they would get enough traffic to compensate for fewer print editions. And, you know, that was based on a logic, on a theory, of a notion of how the internet worked, which really doesn't exist anymore. Like, just getting a whole bunch of hits on a whole bunch

of articles really doesn't amount to anything, especially when people are only finding them through social media. There's no loyalty. There's no dedication, right? I do this newsletter. And the idea is that people sign up for the newsletter. They've opted in and they're getting it. They're reading it. They're coming back every day. If you click a random article, you're not going to remember where it was from. You're not going to see anything there that engenders any loyalty to what's coming out of there every day. I mean, they can try. They can put out a form that says, you know, subscribe to our newsletter, get updates this way, make us your home page.

That's an old one that some people are still trying. I'm so so, yeah, just just kind of lost in the abyss, not knowing where this was going to go, where it's at right now. As far as anyone could tell, they're winding things down toward the prospect of selling the magazines. And there was some authoritative source

that said that McLean's was being shopped around. Like they're trying to get rid of it. But I don't know, it was explained to me, the whole economics of it, like, it doesn't really work. There isn't anything in there. People imagine that there'll be some sort of billionaire, like, you know, a Jeff Bezos, Canadian version, how he came along and rescued the Washington Post

and pouring all sorts of money into resuscitating this elite thing. Could there be somebody like that for a McLean's or a Chatelaine? It doesn't seem likely, but it seems like Rogers is willing to hang in a bit longer and see if that happens. Or maybe they can extract some sort of value, come up with a strategy to make it worthwhile with what they're doing now. But where it's gone to this point is not too encouraging. And yeah, I don't want to dump on anyone who's in that situation, right, of still having to produce journalism, still, you know, wanting to work on this craft that they love, still wanting to make it happen, still wanting to get that paycheck.

There are still enough of them left that, you know, I look forward to whatever they do with it to keep it interesting. But they've got Lil Tay on the cover of the latest McLean's. You know Lil Tay, the nine-year-old rapper from Vancouver, the youngest flexer, this foul-mouthed nine-year-old. It was on Instagram. She was filmed by her older brother. And so, yeah, Lil Tay on the cover of Maclean's. This was someone's idea of what might sell

a couple more magazines. Seems a little out there, kind of unexpected, not what you would anticipate from Canada's national news magazine. And it turned out that the writer of that article, Joe Costaldo, was another one of the people who got laid off. Now, speaking of winding down, BuzzFeed and Vice, they're winding down in Canada. Jesse Brown on Canada Land had this assertion on an episode the other day, and I was wondering if he was right. Now, whenever Jesse Brown has something out there that turns out not to be true,

he gets slammed on Twitter about it, right? This has happened time and time again. Like, him as the self-appointed, only media critic in Canada, he's really not allowed to be wrong. There's enough people out there who will tell him when he's made a factual error. On the podcast, he said as far as he could tell, BuzzFeed Canada, as a dedicated Canadian thing, is no longer operating.

An office still exists in Toronto. There are people there who are doing stuff, but they're essentially doing it for BuzzFeed on a global scale. There's no longer that Canadian content. scale. There's no longer that Canadian content. When BuzzFeed came to Canada three years ago, part of the theory was that they were going to cover Canada, right? Canadian news, Canadian stories, Canadian listicles. And as far as Jesse knew, that's over. At the same time, we've got Vice, the subject of all sorts of speculation over the last year or two. You know, the stories just keep piling up. Most recently, a New York magazine writing about Shane Smith, kind of painting him as

a grifter over a period of like a quarter century from Weiss starting as a welfare magazine that was running in Montreal. You know, how he turned this into a global brand basically by making a bunch of stuff up and all sorts of inflated claims about how Vice was working and the idea that he was just being hyperbolic on his way to eventually selling the whole thing off. his way to eventually selling the whole thing off. The New York story concluded that now he's hit the wall, that reality is sinking in, and the only way for Vice to go, even if it continues as a company,

is a much more downsized version of itself. They started the Viceland Network on television. Didn't turn out to work the way that they were expecting. They had a Canadian version of Viceland, which Rogers poured all sorts of money and resources to. That doesn't exist anymore. That's off the air. So Vice is also in flux, and one of the suggestions there was we'll see changes at Vice Canada

that also they follow BuzzFeed into not covering Canadian news anymore. In the meantime, some interesting stuff that nobody else covers. There seems to be a lot about neo-Nazis on Vice Canada, a lot of coverage of weed. Maybe they're imagining that this new era, October 17th, legal marijuana in Canada, Vice will be the main voice of all that. We'll see where it goes.

So what do you think? Are you excited that we're only the second country ever to legalize marijuana? Not just decriminalize, but actually legalize marijuana. We're number two. Are people excited at St. Joseph's Media? Is this a big deal over at HQ? Well, were I to consume marijuana when it becomes legal in Canada, it would be the first time that I've ever consumed marijuana.

You've never passed the duchy. Maybe a literal duchy like Tim Hortons or whatever. Oh yeah, plenty of those. Dutchie, like Tim Hortons or whatever. Oh, yeah, plenty of those. The other day, as they were passing the bill that will lead to legal marijuana in Canada, leading up to the Royal Ascent, which has since taken place here on the first day of summer, getting ready for legal weed,

in the Canadian Senate, there was a shout-out to musical youth, Pass the Duchy, quoted on the Senate floor by Liberal Senator Jim Munson. I think I'm right about that. I think I got the name. Pass the Duchy. You remember when Pass the Duchy was a kid, right? It was musical youth.

These were kids around our age in a band. Yeah, absolutely. And this generation, that was sampled on a track on, I think it was on Fear of a Black Planet. Public Enemy sampled that. So I used to hear that all the time. One of the things about Pass the Dutchie that maybe not a lot of people know is the fact that it was co-written by a Canadian, Jackie Matu, a guy who came up through the ranks of Jamaican reggae, immigrated from Canada.

Did not know that. And a lot of lounge music albums that he produced in Canada in the mid-70s. That stuff is on YouTube. that he produced in Canada in the mid-'70s. That stuff is on YouTube. Also on Wikipedia, it credits Leroy Sibbles, another guy who's been around Toronto for decades as a co-writer. I'm not too sure about that. Now, part of this is because the heyday of reggae music in the 60s in Jamaica,

they never gave proper credit to any of the musicians. And I think it had a lot to do with the fact that they were high all the time and that nobody ever got the names right on the record labels I remember an interview of all people Paul McCartney even mentioned in an interview

people would show him these records and it would say the song was written by Paul McCartney and it's like he'd never heard this before in his life what is this? and it's like he'd never heard this before in his life. That's hilarious. What is this? And it's just because some guy was too stoned and he had to fill out the record label and I don't know, Lennon and McCartney, whatever.

That's hilarious. That is hilarious. Now, just to close up the print, did you hear the Jim Slotek episode of Toronto Mike? Yeah, one of the great ones this spring. Jim Slotek was down here talking about his career at the Toronto Sun. It was interesting to hear him talk about the Sun he worked for

and kind of comparing it to the Sun of today. Sun of today. We just had a provincial election. And it was, I mean, you tell me, but the Sun was sort of wearing their bias on their sleeve. I mean, they've always had the bias. Like, I don't think that's news to anybody. But it's, I mean, Jesse Brown, I believe, published internal memos that sort of put it in black and white, which I think is more, is less subtle than we're used to.

Well, the newspaper in its current form, I don't think it's making a whole lot of money, right? So what other purpose does it serve? Why would somebody need to keep running a newspaper that didn't have enough advertising anymore to keep it afloat? But, yeah, they've got a deal with PostMedia where they've got this backing from these American hedge funds and whatever their endgame is that they eventually want to sell these things. So they use the Otero provincial election as a way, I think, to show to like a potential future buyer of the newspaper how you can leverage a tabloid that not a whole lot of people are paying attention to anymore. And turn it into a way to to throw a government out of office. And what essentially do you—what can you do in the pages of the Toronto Sun to get more people to vote conservative?

Now, that's also conveniently, it aligns with the interests of the CEO, right? Also, conveniently, it aligns with the interests of the CEO, right? Paul Godfrey, longtime, lifelong Conservative Party member and booster and politician. So he was the one who would have signed off on this whole thing, as far as anyone can tell. And for all those weeks, right, leading up to the election, the Toronto Sun became your number one source to hear about embarrassing candidates. And as soon as the liberals were out of the running, they turned the attack on the NDP. And suddenly it became a game, right? What NDP candidate you've never heard of before will make it to the front page of The Sun to hear about some embarrassing thing that we found in the past.

Worse than that, I saw on Twitter, somebody shared the cover of The Sun that showed NDP candidate Gail Van Oxley was saying something or other. Gail did not run in this election. She was a critic of Doug Ford, but was definitely not an NDP candidate. Yeah, so they got so out of control, they couldn't even keep track of who the candidates were

anymore. The best Toronto Sun front page during that time was where they found the candidate that had a meme that she shared on Facebook, which was of Adolf Hitler, right? One of those motivational memes. But it just happened to be Hitler who they they were quoting um and uh you ended up with the front page headline right ndp haunted by hitler um and uh in response the joke seemed to be that you know here doug ford uh ontario pcs were like accused of harboring white supremacists or whatever whether or not that was true and it it's like, gee, will this cover of the sun

saying the NDP is haunted by Hitler, will all the neo-Nazis now want to vote NDP? That's right. That's a conflict. That's funny. I don't think it turned out that way. No. Mark, are you on the Paytm bandwagon here? You got to pay all your bills with Paytm's convenient app. I've asked you this before.

Are you an iPhone guy or an Android guy? iPhone. iPhone all the way. You're an iPhone. Okay. I'm an Android guy. They've got an app for both. No worries there.

But go to Paytm.ca, install the app from Paytm Canadaada and when you make your first bill payment and it's super easy to set up uh you know payees and and to pay all your bills either taking the money from your bank account or from your master card but when you make that first bill payment use the promo code toronto mike because you get ten dollars right away you get 10 bucks in paytm cash and you can use that towards either another bill, or there's a whole rewards section because they give you points just for paying bills. They've gamified bill payment. It costs you nothing. There's no surcharge. It just makes it easy to pay your bills, and you get paid basically to pay your bills. But that $10 for

using the promo code Toronto Mike, that's the best kept secret in this city. So don't be a fool and do it. Mark, I'm kind of, I don't know, you shouldn't be excited about something like this. I'm sorry we have to actually do this, but we've added an obituary section to your quarterly episodes here. Well, it reflects my own obsession. Look, I'm always into the idea of honoring the people who I don't think get a lot of

attention, yet managed to do something in their life, in their career, where they were sort of a secret celebrity. Now, I'm actually, so that's, Yes, that's what this list consists of, except this guy, right? So this is... I just didn't know where else to put this. But my daughter introduced me to this artist before this song.

My daughter was into this artist, and she was playing YouTube songs for this guy. Can you say his name? XXXTentacion. Very good. I'm so glad you're here to do that, because I Tentacion. Very good. I'm so glad you're here to do that because I couldn't have made it. He was shot dead the other day.

He was, what is he, 21? Something like that? You're a young man. Yeah, not even 21. I think he was 20. And this song was his, I guess, his biggest hit because it actually cracks the Billboard charts

sad. You've got a remix here, I think. Is this the remix? Yeah, this is the remix. The original version is a lot more sparse. I always screw that up and end up with a remix. Okay, but look. This kid was shot dead on uh monday what day is it this is thursday and it was about monday i think monday or tuesday he was coming out of a motorcycle shop and he just

bought a big mansion in florida um i think i think the story of this guy is going to be one of those great rock and roll legends that people talk about for decades to come. Like, you know, Richie Valens, La Bamba, you know, like the plane crash, Buddy Holly, the big blocker. If you die young, you will always have a legacy greater than it would have been otherwise. It's sort of like, yeah, like James Dean did three movies and he was great in three movies, but we speak of him sort of the way, you know, you talk of Jimmy Stewart or something like, you know, dying young is key

to being memorialized in that fashion. But from what anybody could tell, Richie Valens was an upstanding young man. I mean, was there anything he was ever accused of? No, I don't think so. And here we have XXXTentacion, possibly the most vile and vulgar and violent guy to ever have a hit record,

which makes things a little bit problematic. But yeah, I can't get enough of the story because here was somebody with all these odds stacked up against him and seemed to be like the most anti-social character around. I mean, you read about his life, and it seemed destined to end this way, right? And, well, it's a tragedy. People can't help but look at it as some kind of karma. Now, the most news he made came, I think, just a month ago. It turned out that Spotify announced that they were no longer going to promote his music. Between all the things that he was accused of and arrested for and all these things that he said publicly, situations that anybody can look up if you really want to know about it, right?

I mean, this was not somebody that you would want to be putting on Spotify front and center and saying is an artist you want to listen to, even though he got a record deal with Capitol. The label of the Beatles signed this guy, and they saw a lot of hope in him when the odds were stacked up against him in any other way, and it was real raw music that he put out. That was different from what we heard there in that remix.

Just like stark stuff that he put on SoundCloud. I don't know that there was any parallel in the history of rock and roll before this guy came along to get this level of attention. An analogy I saw in Rolling Stone that maybe was incisive, comparing him to Darby Crash. Do you know that guy, Darby Crash? I don't think so. He was in a band called The Germs. I've heard of The Germs, yeah. He died by suicide, and it turned out to be earlier in the day that John Lennon was shot.

Oh. So here was this guy in L.A. looking for a sort of immortality, and he picked the worst possible time to do it. You know who was in his band who you know? Pat Smear. Yeah, of course. From the Foo Fighters. Yeah, and from Meat Puppets. So people know the legend of the germs, but nobody expected Darby Crash to have a top ten hit with the extreme music he was putting out.

But XXXTentacion, he was right up there. Number one debut album on the Billboard charts just earlier this year. That song, Sad, even though Spotify wasn't promoting him in the aftermath of his murder, it was the most played song in one day in the history of Spotify. Broke the record above and beyond Taylor Swift when her last single came out. Suddenly, this guy's getting more attention than ever before. I was going to say, as we said earlier, dying is very good for your career. Very good for your career. And that's the way it seems to be going.

But yes, the behavior that this kid was responsible for is nothing that anyone would want to endorse. But the way he died, yeah, I think we're going to be hearing about him one way or the other for the rest of our lives. Yeah, I think we're going to be hearing about him one way or the other for the rest of our lives. Like I don't think this story is going to go away because it's so compelling, you know, how somebody can come from this position with this disposition and still at the same time be banked on as someone who would be a big star in the rap industry. And, you know, went through the two-pack, Biggie and two-pack. You know, when Snoop Dogg originally came on the scene, you remember he was the most dangerous rapper that you ever heard from, right? Murder is the case and all of that. Murder is the case that they gave me. XXXTentacion. X-X-X, Tansion, many different articles to come, I think, deconstructing the life of this guy who maybe would have been better on a different path. Now back to the 1236 obit file.

These are some more local people that may uh underreported uh deaths for example gary bell the spaceman passed away i almost forgot yeah gary bell uh he worked at uh talk 640 am 640 global news radio 640 for the past uh quarter century um prior to that he was a top 40 AM radio DJ. In fact, he ended up on 640 because he was one of the jocks that moved over. When 680 turned to all news, they hired everyone in a package deal. Everyone who wanted to come.

Jesse and Gene worked on that deal. That was the day that Macko was just here. Evelyn Macko was just here. If you were not a news person, you were let go because CFTR was going all news and a lot of them ended up at 640. Gary Bell was seen as like the ultimate overnight guy, right?

He was the kind of guy that wanted to work the late shift on the station. And he built up that reputation first in Montreal, then in Toronto, ended up on 640. When they changed the format from music to talk, he ended up that reputation first in Montreal, then in Toronto, ended up on 640. When they changed the format from music to talk, he ended up sticking around. He ended up being a technical producer at 640 for all those years.

Mike Stafford put a tribute to him on Twitter and all the years he worked for him, right? I mean, he would do what he felt was like the worst eight minutes of radio in his life and there would be Gary Bell, thumbs up behind the board, encouraging him along. This was the kind of guy that talk show hosts wanted in their corner. At the same time he was doing this production during the week, he had his own weekend radio

show. It was a conspiracy radio show in the vein of Art Bell, George Norrie. It was called A View from Space. He did it on Saturday nights, even when they were running the Leaf games, right? A View from Space would still come on after that, late into Saturday night on 640. He would get into all these conspiratorial rants. He was sponsored by the Conspiracy Culture Bookstore in Toronto. And, you know, while this is a subculture sort of removed from what I think most people are interested in,

there were enough of them who were fascinated by the spaceman that he did have something of a following. Now, where things went sour, it happened last year, 2017, when it turned out that while he was going on one of his rants on the air, he said some things that were presumed to be anti-Semitic and got some complaints to that effect. Now, I can't even I don't even think I went through the trouble to look up what he was talking about. Do you even know? I kept checking the forum for somebody to quote what he said because I wasn't about to go through the whole episode to find out. what he said because I wasn't about to go through the whole episode to find

out. So I still don't know what he said, but it sounds like some old anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that he repeated. Something involving the protocols of the elders of Zion. ZOG, that's a favorite acronym of these people going on about the Rothschilds.

Anything to do with the connection between the state of Israel and the United States of America, what's going on in the White House. This was late 2017 when this went down. I read online that he died of cancer,

so it must have been a quick battle there. Yeah, he didn't have the greatest conclusion to a long-time radio career. I mean, here he was. Somebody said he was 69 years old. So he was doing this show right through his mid to late 60s. And instead of making a big deal out of it, Chorus announced that he was retiring, right? After his suspension, I don't think it was a complete coincidence,

but he would no longer be doing this view from space show on the air. So we lost him quite soon after that. And, yeah, one of those people that was around in the media in Toronto on the airwave, 640, big signal. A lot of people heard him and tributes a few of them online. But I think in the end, one of those secret celebrities, and I think Spaceman wanted it that way, that in fact he wasn't interested in the high profile, right? Said no funeral, no memorial, nothing like that. Yeah, no obituary.

So I hope we're not in trouble with him here. Okay, well, that one did make the 1236 newsletter. Will Alsop. Will Alsop. Will Alsop. He was a British architect who died in the spring, age 70. And he was sick for some time before, although it didn't seem like a lot of people knew. Because just at the end of last year, he was in Toronto inaugurating the fact that he was involved in the building of the newest subway extension, right? The one that goes up to York University and into Vaughan, the subway that rides into the 905.

I rode the subway there. I had to go to York University. And how was it? It was spacious. It was space age. So I didn't get to check out each individual station, but the most prominent thing that Will Alsop was involved in is the Pioneer Village

subway station. Did you see pictures of it online, the renderings of it? I might have at the time. Black Creek, Pioneer Village. So it definitely has a quirky look to it that's sort of synonymous with his style because people would know him best from the Ontario College of Art and Design.

The tabletop, the flying tabletop. Of course. And the pencils or whatever, the colorful pencils or whatever, I always thought they were pencils. They're not pencils? Are they pencils? I don't know.

I don't know. It's a great looking building. It's supposed to be a tabletop. I thought they were, I don't know, because a thing even supposed to be a tabletop? I thought they were, I don't know, because it was art. I always thought they were like pencil crayons or something like that. No? Whatever his intention was, people stuck to this idea of calling it a tabletop. Okay, well, that must be right.

He might have called it a tabletop. So that is his greatest legacy in Toronto. He was involved in some condo projects as well. So that is his greatest legacy in Toronto. He's involved in some condo projects as well. And yeah, I think the fact that he had this link to Toronto in particular, he's seen as really one of those people who brought the look of Toronto into the 21st century, that this thing at OCAD is there forever.

And other projects at that time, they rebuilt the AGO, right? The ROM crystal, you know, these were all part of a new boom in how Toronto wanted to be seen. And I think it was the Oakhead tabletop that won that one. And yeah, there's a legacy of Will Alsop. Now, this gentleman, I know because we talked earlier about Humble and Fred, and they're not on SiriusXM anymore, and for a long time, they had their producer was a woman named Eileen Ross, who, she used to live near here, and now she

lives in Oshawa with her two young children. But this person, Frank Grosso, Grosso, right? Frank Grosso. So just to tie that up real quick though, so it doesn't linger there, is that Frank Grosso? Grosso, right? Frank Grosso. Frank Grosso. So just to tie that up real quick, though, so it doesn't linger there, is that Frank Grosso, I believe,

is Eileen's, sorry, was Eileen's brother-in-law. Oh, okay. You're telling me something I did not know. But now that we've established that, who was this guy? He was a lead singer of an Aerosmith tribute band in Toronto called Mama Kin. He ended up having to retire from all that because of ALS. He got struck with that. And

after a few years, it ended up killing him. Now, I had that one in the 1236 newsletter. It was something that I spotted in a newspaper obituary that here was this guy. You know, he came up as a Stephen Tyler impersonator, tribute act, you know, doing this thing only through the 90s at the time that Aerosmith made their big comeback. Right. Right. If a dude looks like a lady. Here was suddenly an interest in Toronto. Right. Southern Ontario. An Aerosmith tribute band could get a lot of work. And I think as far as that circuit was concerned, this thing did quite well. And he was really popular. The irony in all that, I think, is the fact that Steven Tyler is still alive and well, right?

And of all the people. The toxic twin. Yeah, who beat the odds, right? And of all the people— The toxic twin. Yeah, who beat the odds, right? Who, by their own admission, were pretty much left for dead due to the beating that his body had taken. There's something morbidly fascinating about the fact that Stephen Tyler still walks the earth through whatever synthetic parts are involved with all that. And a loss there that the foremost Toronto area Stephen Tyler impersonator died at 53.

Sad, sad. Maybe Stephen Tyler has the gene that Ozzy Osbourne has. The resistance gene. All right. What about Wayne McLean? Oh, another radio guy, right? Similar to Gary Bell, something that he was a voice. It was heard in Toronto for a few years.

A lot of people would have recognized the name, but no other media obituaries for him, at least around Toronto. Originally from Windsor, Wayne McLean was a guy that was recruited to CFRB 1010. This was in the late 80s when they were shifting towards doing talk radio. So there was Andy Berry, ended up later at the CBC, which seemed to be a more natural fit for him. Ed Needham

was the other host. And I remember Ed Needham, did you ever listen? Ed, he was a cranky, cantankerous old guy. Go on about how he was a reporter in the Vietnam War. And the third guy who was on the air back then, Wayne McLean. And this guy was an old time top 40 AM radio DJ who ended up doing a talk radio show instead in Toronto, right? He saw that as his calling. You know, that was a way to crank up the whole talk radio thing, records in Top 40 radio. So I remember listening to him fondly

and just being amazed by this wild man on the radio for however long he lasted there. Ended up going back to Windsor, bringing that style of talk radio over there. Once that thing ran out for him, he ended up being a script consultant and working on TV and film writing, something to that effect. So he also died earlier this year. So an obituary worth

noting in Toronto that no one else seemed to be paying attention to. This is David Bowie, a New Career in a New Town. Now, David Bowie, we all know he's gone. David Bowie did not die this year, though. Let's be clear on that. But look, I mean, people still talk about him as much as they talk about people who just died this week, right? Him and Prince seem to be two icons who stuck around as far as like constantly being discussed. And the David Bowie art exhibit was just in New York.

So that was another wave of attention for the legacy he left behind. So why are we playing this? It's because of the guy who's playing piano on this song. this song um another uh departure this year a guy named roy young uh a piano player british piano player who ended up working at the star club in hamburg germany and ended up running into the most famous act to ever play at that club the The Beatles. Hey, you guessed it right. So as the story goes, Roy ended up getting an offer from Brian Epstein to actually join the Beatles. Like, that there would actually be five Beatles

and he would be the legit fifth Beatle. A piano player who was a few years older than the other guys would look more out of place than Pete Best. Maybe they thought he wouldn't be in the photos or something, kind of like this guy in the Rolling Stones, Ian Stewart,

who was there for a few years. He was considered too ugly to be in the pictures with the band, if you could imagine that. So Roy Young offered to be in the Beatles, but he preferred to hang out in Hamburg instead. Eventually went back to England, rode along with that for a while,

and had enough of a reputation that David Bowie recruited him to be on this low album. So this song here is the instrumental. Might even be one of the best known songs from that era of David Bowie. Along with Roy Young, after he made this album, he ended up moving to Pickering, Ontario. So here in our midst, in Toronto. You never know who's in our midst, eh? So he lived in Pickering. He lived in Pickering, Ontario. So here in our midst, in Toronto. You never know who's in our midst, eh?

That's so he lived in Pickering. He lived in Pickering. When John Lennon was killed, he was even at the memorial in Nathan Phillips Square along with like Ronnie Hawkins,

Long John Baldry. They were like the John Lennon contingent in the Toronto area. So from there, he was based in Pickering and he was around making appearances, always referencing the fact that he had this Beatles Association.

Eventually, he moved back to Britain. But as far as Canadian Fifth Beatles are concerned, that guy who died this past spring at age 83, he might have been the closest we've ever come. Wow, wow, wow. What about Joseph Campanella? Joseph Campanella of the global television show What Will They Think of Next? Did you ever watch What Will They Think of Next?

It's very familiar to me. I believe I did. It sounds very familiar to me. The reason that people remember what will they think of next is it was one of the cheapest Canadian television shows ever produced. And that's saying something. It was still images, right? Like illustrations, caricatures that people drew representing scientific discoveries. Does this ring a bell at all?

representing scientific discoveries. Does this ring a bell at all? And there was Joseph Campanella, this American actor who was narrating all the scientific stories. They always had some sort of quirky twist, right? Somebody who was working on an invention, something that didn't get off the ground. And there was this face in the background

telling these stories while the camera panned over the picture. Can you imagine this? Does this sound Canadian TV enough for you? a global production, I guess, somewhere along the way after they let SCTV go. This is what they decided would be more successful. Ended up being picked up by Nickelodeon in the U.S. in the early days of cable TV, so it got attention there as well. So what will they think of next host? Joseph Campanella went back to the United States to continue his career, like as a soap opera actor. He was considered one of those go-to characters that you could put on a soap opera, right,

and memorizes his lines instantly that he had that level of training. So he made it to a really old age. What was it, into his 90s? Oh, good for him. 93, 92, 91, somewhere in there. So as far as Canadian TV legends were concerned, yeah, there was one that I also mentioned in 1236 that you would not have seen anywhere else.

So here I am plugging the newsletter, exploiting people who died. If you want to know, I try to stay newsletter, exploiting people. No, go nuts. 1236.ca. People who died. If you want to know, I try to stay on top of it all. Well, one more then in the 1236.obit file. Before I want to play a new Drake song

and just chat about the video and then we'll say goodbye. But one more for the obit file. Nick Michaels. Oh, Nick Michaels. Friday Night Videos. That was a show that NBC ran. They canceled SCTV in order to run Friday Night Videos.

So there's another SCTV connection. In 1983, when MTV started becoming a big deal, when everybody was talking about it, the reality was that not a lot of homes in America were able to receive it. Like the cable companies didn't carry it. There were a lot of people at the time that just didn't have cable. So NBC rides in and realizes they can make a whole lot of money because, look, this content is there for free.

The record companies make this stuff and they send it to us. We don't have to do anything. We just have to play these things and we can make a mint. So one of those involved with the production was Nick Michaels. He was a television radio commercial announcer that came up through the ranks in Toronto in the 1970s. Good enough to move to Madison Avenue and work there in New York City. And yeah, he was the voice of Friday Night Videos. He was also on Q107 into the 2000s, did a syndicated show called The Deep End, and they

ran that in tandem with Psychedelic Sunday. A lot of connections there with this guy whose name nobody knows, but hearing the Friday Night Videos intro on YouTube brings back memories for me. This is the new Drake single, I'm Upset. And the video features a Degrassi next generation reunion of sorts. I saw this video and I feel like I missed out on a whole era of Degrassi, the next generation. I was way too old to be paying attention to the show. Yes, but they do bring back, of course, Snake. Because Snake is the principal, I believe, of the new generation.

So there's a lot of... And when I noticed in the video, though, you get a lot of Snake and Jay and Silent Bob. But there's a whole... Because they're, of course... He had a heart attack recently, right? Kevin Smith had a heart attack recently and he's of course a legendary uh digrassy fanatic who even i believe uh directed episodes of digrassy or something to that effect those old gen xers just won't go away huh one thing that i heard on a kevin smith's podcast

hollywood babylon just one of the podcasts that he does, he got into talking about the making of the video. And he said he was inspired by the Twisted Sister video, We're Not Gonna Take It. You know how Niedermeyer from Animal House is in that video? Yeah, of course. He's the highlight. He's like, go to your room or something. He's like disciplining the kid.

What are you going to do with your life? Right, that's it. You're worthless and weak. So Kevin Smith cited that as the inspiration about why he accepted the invite to do the video from Drake

because it was like, here's this idea of this character that I know from a whole other cinematic universe. And here he is hanging around a Drake video all of a sudden. There might be a little too much of this Jay and Silent Bob in that Drake video. Might be a little bit of an overload. But this one is going down in history, I think, because it's the first Canadian music video of the era of legal recreational marijuana you notice in the video

right snake is in fact buying weed off of uh silent bob and jay right jason muse um and uh you know he's doing it without apology right i mean it's unrepentant. It's like, hey, this stuff is pretty much legal. And that there's no stigma attached to the idea of school principals smoking weed. The thing is, at the end of the video, smoking the weed leads to burning the whole school down. And there's some flack there, right? There was some flack for burning down a school? Oh, no. He said that it was the fifth time in the history of Degrassi that they burned down the school. So at this point, it's kind of like The Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, right?

You can burn down Degrassi over and over again, and it keeps popping back up. Was Drake in a wheelchair in that video? I don't think so, now that I look back. No, but the guy that shot him is in there. And then he's chased down the hallway, right? By the Ovo squad. I'm not as strong in my next generation. If it was the Degrassi Junior High or Degrassi High,

or even the kids of Degrassi, I can hold my own. But when it gets to the next generation, I just know Spike had a daughter, and then that was like the spin-off. But I have some catching up to do. It's a part of our heritage and yet you're playing us out. It's over already. Only because I have to pick up the wee little

ones at daycare and then I have to bust over to my oldest daughter's soccer game. We could do several hours a day if only you lived a little bit closer maybe. But it was always a pleasure this was Mark, this was amazing it's always amazing

1236.ca if you made it this far you can subscribe over there and that brings us to the end of our 351st show you can follow me on Twitter at Toronto Mike Mark is at 12362-3-6.

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see you all next week and I don't know what the future can hold or do for me and you but I'm a much better man for having known you oh you know that's true because