Ghomeshïst lapses of the week

Because there’s always something.

Q does sports (September 21)

How does a Canadian media outlet cover a specialized topic? By getting people who already cover that topic somewhere else to cover it all over again. Q sports panellists Stephen Brunt and Bruce Dowbiggin are already overexposed and represent one side of the same coin. (And they’ll reliably plug their own employers, i.e., the competition. Stephen Brunt [37:47], discussing some topic or other: “And it was written about in the Globe this week.”)

Now, the Mini driver with a crush on a wee Mexican actor actually made the baldfaced claim that “I’m a sports fan. I read the sports pages every day.” And if we use the following as a proxy for sports fans, are there any heterosexualist males working on Q? Even if you want to go in the other direction and insist that the public broadcaster should be airing alternative views on sports, then the feminized Q intelligentsia and host should be well suited to find reasonable on-air guests. Just call around inside Fort Dork. Why aren’t Teddy Katz and Brenda Irving on the show?

Why does Q need a sports panel? Does this exercise in celebrity interviewing and exploration of middlebrow lifestyle issues suddenly take itself for a daily newspaper? Really: If you’ve got five hours a week to fill, why are you recapitulating the subject areas of old media? (News. Weather. Sports. Business. Life. Arts. Obituaries. Comics. How many of those don’t have their own segment yet?)

Testosterone overdose (September 14)

Jian interviews Doug Coupland. On the manliness scale, this is surely akin to Russell Crowe intervewing Richard Simmons. The piece devolved into a Brians Orser and Boitano–style mutual admiration society [28:14]:

— The main characters in Generation A agree that the voice they hear in their heads when they read is not their own; it’s a network news broadcaster[‘s].

— Yeah.

— What voice do you hear when you read?

— In a weird way, and I don’t want to freak you out, it’s kind of you, actually. Um…

— You hear my voice when you read?

— Pretty much. The reason – the metaphor I use is “The Channel 3 News Team.” And news broadcasters aren’t chosen not just for their sort of bland, you know, blandly-attractive looks. Uh, you try and hire a newscaster who has a voice that is sort of broad enough to encompass a broad – a large swath of the people that doesn’t conflict with the inner voice in their heads. So that you turn on the news there’s a reassurance you get from it. It’s kind of like what you hear already. And that you have like—

— [Reverts to “fake” mode] Oh, so you’re using me as a metaphor! I got excited. I thought you were talking about my v— [Laughs]

— The thing is… this is so embarrassing. It’s like, it kind of is you. [Laughs] Because I’ve met – I’ve known you over the years, and obviously I listen to your show. And uh so there you go. You never know you’re changing people. But you are.

— So what, what is that voice doing when you’re reading? Am I reading? [Continues for some time. – Ed.]

2 Comments

  • Anonymous says:

    I thought ‘Q’ was an arts and entertainment show. Is sports now under the entertainment category as opposed to having its own category? All I know is that I don’t tune in to ‘Q’ to hear about sports. But, who am I? Oh yeah, the listening public. And, since when does CBC listen to the listening/viewing public, right?

    It’s a right mess now – the CBC that is. BLAH!

  • Terebi says:

    The floor of the studio must have been postively shimmering with dropped hairpins that day.

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