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WHY JAYSON IS MIA AT FRANKLAND PRESS TIME, BREAKFAST TELEVISION CO-HOST JAYSON BAXTER WAS NO WHERE TO BE SEEN. ON-AIR THAT IS. That’s because the avid sportsman, whose journalistic lineage can be LIZ RIGNEY, FROM PAGE 8 At Frank Magazine we share in the unbridled joy of these idiot-box celebrities, even as they struggle through their clothing-allowance James L. Brooks-directed Broadcast News lives. Even if we can’t determine the reason their kids are ugly. We are still at their side. Now and forever. But when the moment turns sour and the news ain’t so good, baby, does this lot, with three or four courageous exceptions, ever run for cover! Let me tell you. So, somewhere down the crooked path of the last three or four years, Liz Rigney swore she’d have nothing more to do with me. I’m not upset. I’m not hurt. I’m just curious. Like I’ve always been. If Frank Magazine did anything to offend or upset Liz Rigney, I’d just like to know what we did, that’s all. Maybe Liz Rigney “hates” us? Such a strong word, “hate,” isn’t it? Particularly when directed at another human being or group of human beings. Yep. Unleash the ol’ H-word and you really don’t leave yourself much room to backtrack, do you? Nope. Kinda painted yourself into a corner with that one. You said it, you own it. Be careful when you roll out the H-word ‘cause it ain’t so easy to reel back in. Hard to un-hear that one, the H-word. Then again, maybe Liz Rigney thinks we hate her. We don’t. Never have. Never will. What we did hate was Liz’s television presentation: the absolute giddiness, the banshee cries on Breakfast Television; at the 2006 Junos in Halifax, the running up and down the red carpet like an amphetaminelaced chicken with its head cut off. The downright silliness. Our Maritime Neighbourhood It was Liz Rigney’s energy, her enthusiasm, her primal screaming, which got the better of us. But that’s only our opinion. It’s entirely subjective, as are most opinions, as are all matters of taste. As is the distinction one might hold between what one might deem artistic and appropriate and what one might deem over-the-top, vulgar, inappropriate, or even nauseating. Our criticisms of Liz Rigney related to her professional style, and as such were very much unrelated to Liz Rigney as a person. And for every Frank Magazine staffer who recoiled at a Liz Rigney television presentation you can bet out there in CTV’s hokey, homespun “Maritime Neighbourhood” there were tens of thousands of hokey homespun Maritimers who just couldn’t get enough of P.E.I.-born Liz Rigney. Like I say, I’m no expert, but I don’t think there was a lot of middle ground when it came to Liz Rigney. The same can be said for Frank Magazine. It all begs the question: over the past 15 years, has Frank Magazine’s criticism of Liz Rigney’s on-air performance been fair? Well, to employ a well-worn weasel answer, “Probably not.” Number one: Liz, a ’89 Dal BA grad, came to television armed not only with her King’s J-School Repository diploma but with a background in theatre arts. From the very start it was unfair, frightfully unfair, to put Christiane Amanpour expectations on Liz Rigney when Miss Fran from Romper Room expectations would have sufficed nicely. I think that “mis-read” of expectations on our part remains regrettable. I apologize. Number two: Within the regrettable, context of contemporary television news, or at least what attempts to pass itself off as news, Liz Rigney was never out of place. 10 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK SEPTEMBER 28, 2010 traced back to serious news in various western outports for Mother Corp., has a bum shoulder. I understand Jayson was riding his bicycle when he was struck by a motor vehicle. Nothing too, too serious, I’m told, just the broken shoulder and a stiff neck. That’s why if you recently saw Crystal Garrett filling in on BT, it’s only ‘cause Jayson is in the BT sick-bay. Liz with John Gracie. Fact is, CTV’s Breakfast Television never purported to be CBS’s 60 Minutes; CTV’s Live at 5 ain’t Bill Moyer’s Journal; and the CTV News at 6 will never be mistaken for the PBS NewsHour. Not in my lifetime. Fact is, Liz Rigney can just plead Nuremburg. Good Will & Cutsie-Wootsie In the Golden Age of Television Dumb-Down, Liz Rigney, while perhaps not the prototype, was nonetheless suited for the times. Her reportage was apple pie and motherhood stuff. It was good will and cutsie-wootsie. Good CTV, kumbaya, “Maritime Neighbourhood” fluff. The customized fare general manager Mike Elgie and news director Jay Witherbee have been serving their Maritime Neighbourhood for far too long. You know, the usual cancer scares, hurricane scares, all that “Could it happen here?” crap. Crap without enterprise, and requiring only the most perfunctory investigative skills. Any real investigative work will usually fall to CTV veterans Rick Grant and/or Todd Battis. Liz’s hard news reports were more like reasonably good features than hard news. As well, the subject matter for same, the dying kid and the aging WWII veteran, were all too easily predictable. Moreover, while the topic of the dying kid and the aging WWII vet might be something of a challenge for the first year King’s J-School intern, it’s a notch or two below the calibre of reporting the seasoned television reporter should have his or her name affixed to. CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
TAKE COLLEEN JONES ... PLEASE! I KNOW, I KNOW, IT’S GOIN’ SOUND LIKE I’M GETTIN’ GREEDY. AS USUAL I AM ASKING TOO MUCH. BUT I CAN’T HELP BUT WONDER ALOUD: Now that CTV has found other accommodations for Liz Rigney, it is maybe possible that CBC Nova Scotia can finally clip the wings of its very own screaming banshee. I refer, of course, to the one, the only Colleen Jones. Let’s just say that Liz Rigney was sedate, in a very deep coma, compared to the long running antics of gum chomping Colleen Jones. You know when Colleen Jones is on your television because you can hear the wailing from your front lawn. Equally unpleasant is that in every so-called “story” Colleen Jones’s long-suffering cameraman is forced to shoot, he’s also forced to shoot Colleen Jones as the one and only focal point of the alleged story. Either this woman suffers terribly from Nar- LIZ RIGNEY, FROM PREVIOUS PAGE In the fall of 2005, Liz Rigney finally got the Ummm, like where do you go after that? Do you let the dirt under your fingernails pile up, disguise yourself in dirty, baggy clothes, go undercover and hang out for the day bumming quarters on Spring Garden Road, the province’s unofficial Beggar’s Row? Or, maybe, Liz, like an excitable first year J- School intern, already turned that easily predictable trick and I missed it. I apologize once more. So, after near 15 years of Liz Rigney, how do we sum up her career? Did Liz Rigney live up to her potential? Well, we can’t sum up Liz’s television presenter career in shades of black or white, good or bad, success or failure. Her television presenter career is too varied to be measured by broad strokes. That said, Liz’s seven or eight years on asinine Breakfast Television, when the early morning gigglefest was at it’s absolute birdbrained best, didn’t do her any good. She began this madness circa 1996. Liz Rigney goes all the way back to the BT days of Joesph Stalin lookalike Kurt Stoodley, and, of course, up through the ranks of Scott Boyd and Jayson Baxter. In short, Liz Rigney stayed too long at Breakfast Television. She became too closely identified with that product. Not quite a form of career suicide, but definitely a form of career castration. Years later when she moved into the CTV newsroom. Liz openly admitted her years at Breakfast Television made it difficult for her to be taken serious as a television reporter. No kidding. I remember standing with reporter Liz the night health minister Jane Purves lost her seat in 2003 provincial general election. I remember Liz asking Jane the question, “How are you feeling?” I remember feeling, for a moment, as if I was suddenly trapped in a hospital ward. cissistic Personality Disorder, or she continues to angle for her own show on Mother Corp. I don’t know, some sort of “On The Road Again” with Colleen Jones, or “It’s a Living” with Colleen Jones. Hell, maybe Colleen Jones wants to bring back “Man Alive” so she can star in a re-make of that? Become a gum chomping, obnoxious 21st century version of Roy Bonisteel. Who knows? What I do know is that giving Colleen Jones her own CBC show would come at Canadian taxpayers expense. But as a consumer of CBC Nova Scotia I strongly feel the right thing to do is to give Colleen Jones her own regional half-hour show. It would be the most prudent investment. I think Colleen Jones would do rather well working out of CBC North, either Yellowknife or Whitehorse, which ever one is the coldest and the bloody farthest from Nova Scotia. Just a thought. CTV job she had always wanted, entertainment hack. She was turned down for the gig when Joanne Nugent was replaced by Todd Battis. She was turned down for the gig when Todd Battis was replaced by MairiAnna Bachynsky. But when Bachynsky bolted for Toronto that fall, Liz Rigney was third time lucky. It no longer mattered that Liz had also been passed over in favour of Starr Dobson as Nancy Regan’s replacement on Live at 5. Liz Rigney was in her element. She is a natural born schmoozer, an entertainer, herself, having released at least two CDs. For those of you keeping score at home that’s two more CDs than anybody at Frank Magazine. Liz is a bit of a softie. For those who know her on a personal level I am sure she is a wonderful, faithful friend and an absolute scream to hang out with. Liz doesn’t like to offend people. Fact of the matter is Liz Rigney never set out to be the next Barbara Frum or Paul Withers in a skirt. In the entertainment world Liz’s over-the-top exuberance only mirrored the self-aggrandizing artzie-fartzies she had to deal with. To some Liz’s excitable flighty nature no longer stood out like it once did. In fact, to some, if you didn’t know better, you might have thought a time or two that Liz Rigney was mocking, imitating or doing her own parody of the excitable artzie-fartzies. She wasn’t. She was just being Liz Rigney. Liz Rigney was one of them. To that extent, Liz Rigney did live up to her journalistic potential. But it’s all over now. It’s yesterday’s news. Liz is “all growed up” now. She has her own office, her own walls to decorate and she has put away her childish things. We wish Liz Rigney the very best. Does Frank Know? atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca Colleen Jones YO, HO, BLOW THE MAN DOWN! SPEAKING OF NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER, I CHATTED A BIT WITH TELEVISION FOLK THIS WEEK, BOTH ON AND OFF THE RECORD. When the subject of the coverage of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Earl came up, I could detect a bit of a groan from two of my friends. The object of their derision was a piece by CTV Atlantic’s Paul Hollingsworth. It was shot down on the wooden dock on the Halifax Waterfront where all television reporters go when a hurricane/tropical storm comes barrelling in on Halifax. This is done for one reason only, ‘cause they all want to make like Peter Pan and fly high into the hurricane sky. Makes for good television. Or at least that’s what I’m told. Honest to god, the local television reporters/ producers must just, excuse a bad pun, wet themselves over this spot. The one exception is Shelley Steeves, the Maritime correspondent for the Oakville-based Weather Network. Shelley likes to cover hurricanes from Lower Water Street, just diagonally across from the Halifax Law Courts, where she long ago discovered her favourite manhole cover which bubbles up when the storm really gets going. Shelly loves that manhole cover. Especially when it’s boiling over like grammy’s whistling teakettle on the front of the ol’ coal stove. But back to CTV. And don’t shoot me, I’m only the messenger, but two of my friends thought Paul’s piece out on that favourite wooden dock wasn’t exactly spontaneous enough for them. One friend concluded, “You can always tell a piece by Paul...” Whatever that means. SEPTEMBER 28, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 11
Page 1 and 2: HUMAN RIGHTS COMPLAINT TARGETS NEVI
Page 3 and 4: ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK HALIFAX, NOVA
Page 5 and 6: GET READY FOR RUSH HOUR BY RALPH KR
Page 7 and 8: INDIAN NEWS FOR INDIANS BY MICK MAC
Page 9: WHO YA GONNA CALL!? THE CTV COMMUNI
Page 13 and 14: THE DUDESTER IS A DADSTER I’M OVE
Page 15 and 16: A FRIEND IN NEED OF AN ENDOSCOPY IS
Page 17 and 18: DANCING WITH THE STAR: Dr. Hosein w
Page 19 and 20: WHAT HAPPENED TO SWSDA’S MONEY? B
Page 21 and 22: Michael Patriquen BY MARY JAYNE WHI
Page 23 and 24: KEEP THE TUNES & CHAT, BUT CUT THE
Page 25 and 26: Oddly enough, Antigonish used to ha
Page 27 and 28: LETTERS Miss Fran with her Romper R
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Page 31 and 32: FAX ANYTIME: (902) 423-0281 LETTERS

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