"Sadly, CityTV is seldom if ever innovative, unless you call stealing/borrowing ideas developed and aired elsewhere. I can't think of a single major CityTV "innovation" which wasn't borrowed from other stations in South America or Europe."

I wasn't aware of that. Then I guess I would have to say that Citytv's genius lies in bringing us these good ideas from around the world, when no other broadcaster to this market dared to, and yet maintaining a local, accesssible, community look-and-feel all the while.

Sadly, CityTV is seldom if ever innovative, unless you call stealing/borrowing ideas developed and aired elsewhere. I can't think of a single major CityTV "innovation" which wasn't borrowed from other stations in South America or Europe.

From Speaker's Corner to "yawn" reading yellow highlighted headlines (how many decades has this been done on RAI in Italy), CityTV's genius is in marketing itself as an innovative station, while playing the typical US produced reality show drivel.

You can also access Citytv's feed by dish, on on the Web at http://toronto.citytv.com.

Actually, Bob Hunter is a little too big-G Green for me. But his bit on BT is very worthwhile, because he quite expertly deconstructs the various "spins" with which the papers polish the facts.

My favourite aspect of Citytv is "Speaker's Corner". They have a camera in a booth on the street corner outside their studio (in the heart of Toronto's funky-trendy-shabby-chic district), where anyone can record a minute of themselves speaking their minds for $1. The least obscene bits they broadcast.

Once, in a moment of weakness, I gave a buck to a wino. Instead of scuttling off to the liquor store with it, he marched up to the Speaker's Corner booth to have his say. He probably made it to air too. In what other city would something like this happen?

This reminded me of the BBC (in fact, all the British news shows), who regularly review the newspapers each day. The Beeb would regularly get guest pundits in to hold forth on the day's news. Radio does the same thing over there, I think.

When I first saw this, I couldn't believe it. One media organization is giving air time to another? And it suggests that TV news recognizes their inherent inferiority to the print media. It was all very strange, and I never really got used to it. Besides, at its heart it's media reporting on media, and that's always a bit distasteful to me.

No, 'blogging plain and simple' would be if he did on on a webpage.

C-SPAN has also been doing it for years, on "Washington Journal" each morning. CNN's Aaron Brown does it more often than not on "Newsnight." ABC's "World News Now" does it on the overnights. And it all goes back to I.F. Stone, who did it in print form with his newsletter.

NYC's all-news station has had this feature for years in the AM. It's their "What's in the papers?" segment.