Global launches national newscast from Ottawa
First broadcast from capital in 40 years
coincides with kickoff of news service
  
Chris Cobb
Canwest News Service
Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Global News anchor Kevin Newman, in his Ottawa studio with a remote-controlled high definition camera, is preparing to anchor his evening newscast from the capital beginning this week.
Photograph by : Wayne Cuddington, the Ottawa Citizen


OTTAWA -- Canada's largest media company opened a new era in Canadian journalism last night with the official launch of the first national network newscast out of Ottawa in more than 40 years.

Along with the official launch of Global National's broadcast from Ottawa -- filmed in the bitter midwinter chill of the Rideau Canal, Winnipeg-headquartered Canwest also launched Canwest News Service, a national service that has been operating out of downtown Ottawa offices since July.

The service was expanded after Canwest ended its membership in news co-operative the Canadian Press.

Company president and CEO Leonard Asper called it "a historic night.

"It's almost ironic that we have a western-based company in Canwest that has the only national newscast coming out of Ottawa," he said. "But it's also historic because we are adding to the diversity of voices in the country."

Asper said the company had overcome many obstacles to open the two news entities. "We took a national newscast out of nowhere and it became the No. 1 newscast in the country," he said. "News viewership is entrenched. People don't change the channel once they like a newscast, but in seven or eight years we've become No. 1."

The creation of Canwest News Service, he added, is "unprecedented. It won't only provide news to Canadians, but Canadian news to people abroad," he said. "Canwest will be selling its news services to other news gathering entities. It all adds to the number of news choices Canadians have and that's a good thing for everybody."

Derek Burney, a former Canadian ambassador to the United States, now chairman of the board of Canwest, said as an Ottawa resident he is glad to see a major news media outlet with such a large presence in the national capital.

It's the first time since the late Peter Jennings read the news for the fledgling CTV network more than 40 years ago that a network news anchor has been based in Ottawa.

Global National will be a "virtual broadcast," controlled with leading-edge digital graphics technology from a production centre in Vancouver. A robotic camera in the downtown Ottawa studio, where Kevin Newman will be based most evenings, will be operated remotely from the same production centre.

Newman said he wanted to stage the first broadcast live from the canal to "welcome our new neighbours.

"We wanted to tell official Ottawa we're here," he said. "But we also wanted it to be for the people so they can come along and watch."

Dennis Skulsky, president and CEO of Canwest Publishing, said last night's launch of the two news services was the result of a long building process.

"We made a bold decision to leave Canadian Press, and I think it was good for the country," he said. "We now have two very strong news services to serve the country better. For Canwest it will clearly help us serve all the audiences we are serving in print, on television, online and in digital -- whatever format it happens to be. It's an exciting night."

http://www.canada.com/victoria.....77-a5a3-702485b48e94

I think it's great that Global News is broadcasting out of Ottawa.  Good idea and I hope it does well.
However, Asper's comments about "adding to the diversity of voices in Canada" and adding to the "number of news choices Canadians have" will soon fall flat if they continue to centralize their newscasts, slowly eating away at the personnel and content in local markets such as CHEK.

Does anyone see CNS as an alternative to CP?

Quoted from Poopeedoop

I think it's great that Global News is broadcasting out of Ottawa.  Good idea and I hope it does well.
However, Asper's comments about "adding to the diversity of voices in Canada" and adding to the "number of news choices Canadians have" will soon fall flat if they continue to centralize their newscasts, slowly eating away at the personnel and content in local markets such as CHEK.

No kidding. It's hard to think of the Asper family as expert sources on media diversification.

As for the newscast, for all the hype leading up to it, I was a bit disappointed with the end result. It looks like no effort was put into the set-up, and for saying how revolutionary it was that they would be using CGI backdrops, I expected more than just a glorified chroma-key behind Kevin.

blah.

Quoted from newsjunkie

Does anyone see CNS as an alternative to CP?

It is. It's already a wire service that churns out news stories to all the TV stations and newspapers.

Canwest eventually (if they haven't already done so) wants to dump CP and use their own service exclusively.

Quoted from spiffiness

Canwest eventually (if they haven't already done so) wants to dump CP and use their own service exclusively.

Canwest Interactive/Canada.com etc. haven't been using CP since last summer. Months later layoffs were announced across the country, part of their commitment to media diversification.

So does it really matter if the guy robo-operating the studio camera is 3000 miles away?  Does that chip away at the number of local voices?  And if not having a local guy in the audio booth riding the pots means possibly another set of feet on the street, is that a bad thing?  

I see this more as people more concerned about protecting their jobs rather than being realistic about the realities of small and medium market television.

Last time I checked, studio lighting techs and VTR ops aren't the ones shooting, cutting, voicing, and producing stories.  While they're part of the food chain, they're not critical to putting a story on the air.  Unless you're of the union mentality that progress should never be sought out at the possible expense of a working person's (god, what an uppity term) living.  

These would be the same people who had an issue with the personal computer when it came out in the early 80s...  

Is the set completely virtual?

The fact of the matter is that whenever anchors go anywhere it is called "stunting," an attempt to lend credibility to a newscast by placing a talking head close to where the action is.

Unless there's eyewitness reportage involved (ie Kevin Newman jostling in a scrum), Global can put a green screen, a couple of T1 lines and their pretty boy anywhere for all it really matters.

Freqfreak2 is on to something there...Global could have saved a bunch of money by putting the green screen in Vancouver, make it look like Ottawa, and then just put cardboard cutouts of Newman at the Parliament Buildings.  Would anyone notice?

Would anyone notice? Well, the cardboard cutouts might object.

I had a chance to watch Global National tonight.  Kevin was looking a little green around the gills.  Parts of his face seem to reflect some of the green screen.

Either that, or it was the 5 day old sushi I ate from my fridge.