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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Where was 'local TV' on election night?
There's no question that the results of this week's civic election spoke volumes to Winnipeggers about the delicate balance between the need for change and the desire for stability, the importance of civic-government experience and the potential pitfalls of a federal-provincial background, the public's tolerance for dirty campaign tricks and the real significance of traffic-circle terror as an election issue.
But here's one that hasn't been discussed much: what does last Wednesday's vote, and the way it was covered locally, say about the relevance of television in 21st-century election-night coverage?
It's a worthy topic, if only because some of the same people who spent much of last year imploring Canadians that local TV must be saved -- and let's be clear, "local TV" these days pretty much means "local TV news" -- chose to make covering the civic election a secondary consideration in their prime-time programming.
Regular schedule
The polls closed at 8 p.m. Only one station, Global, altered its 7-to-10-p.m. block to include election coverage, taking to the air at 9 p.m. with a package that included continually updated results in the mayoral and council-ward votes, live interviews from various campaign headquarters around the city, and ongoing analysis of what the emerging numbers meant (it should be noted that Global's 9 p.m. slot on Wednesdays is occupied by the low-rated Canadian drama Shattered, so handing the hour over to the election team wasn't much of a ratings/revenue sacrifice).
CTV opted for its regularly scheduled simulcast of NBC's Law & Order: Los Angeles at 9 p.m. and began its hour-long election special at 10 p.m., well after Global's team had declared incumbent Sam Katz re-elected as Winnipeg's mayor.
And CBC, which for years has been the local leader when it comes to election-night coverage, didn't bother disrupting its schedule at all, cramming a very abbreviated -- and woefully after the fact -- election update into its regular 10-minute local news segment between The National and George Stroumboulopoulous Tonight.
In fairness to the way news operations do business in the current multi-media environment, the local TV stations were among many media outlets -- including, of course, the Free Press -- that carried continual coverage on their websites throughout the evening. If you really needed to know, on a minute-by-minute basis, how the vote count was evolving, online was the place to be.
(It's worth noting, in a moment of self-congratulatory smugness, that the only website featuring extensive streaming video -- 21st-century-style teevee, one might say -- on election night was the Free Press's). Editor's note: ChrisD.ca had a team live from Sam Katz's headquarters from 8-10 p.m. on the 27th with uninterrupted streaming, which brought in almost 900 viewers.
Fuss and bother
And in that context, news directors at the local TV stations might reasonably argue that their viewers had access to election information throughout the evening and that their actual televised election-night shows were merely the icing on the cake.
But all that fuss and bother between the broadcasters and the cable companies last year wasn't about saving local multi-platform media initiatives. It was about saving local TV. And there aren't many events more local and relevant than a civic election, but Winnipeg's vote wasn't a top priority on two of the three stations in this city that seek to maintain a local news presence.
Global's effort deserves credit. CTV's attempt was, at least, notable. CBC's lacklustre performance, on the other hand, was best summed up by a "live" update from mayoral runner-up Judy Wasylycia-Leis' campaign headquarters, which was so laughably beyond too late that the reporter was shown standing in an empty room because hundreds of Judy supporters had already finished drowning their sorrows and headed home.
Whether this civic-election night signals a shift in priorities that will see local TV-news outlets redirecting their emphasis to their websites, and away from traditional TV, while trumpeting a multi-platform approach remains to be seen. There's a provincial election next year, and those are the votes that really tend to get local TV stations revved up.
Maybe, too, that'll be a night that helps Winnipeg TV viewers decide what's worth saving.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 30, 2010 C6
History
Updated on Saturday, October 30, 2010 at 3:48 PM CDT: Adds that Chris D. was also live-streaming
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