Trying to outFox

If I were designing a new news show, it would probably look a lot like Kevin Newman Live that debuted last night on CTV News Channel. The trouble is that the format doesn’t work in real time. There was no content, just blather.

Former Rob Ford staffer Mark Twohey was the in-studio lead item but didn’t have much to add to explain the current fracas at Toronto City Hall. The best Twohey could come up with was to say that Ford could only chose between “fight or flight” and since the mayor has nowhere to go, he’s staying to fight. It’s a phrase that Twohey has used before.

The double-ender with California-based addiction specialist and interventionist Candy Finnigan was weird. In diagnosing Ford from afar she urged him to go into rehab. I guess we knew that already. Finnigan even mangled the cliche by referring to Ford as “a bull in a china closet.”

Early in the show, Newman read tweets. An OK idea but maybe for much later in the lineup. He also told us excitedly how members of the audience could connect with him via Twitter and Facebook. But the newsroom set behind Newman was two long rows of empty chairs. Where was his team? In a show that’s supposed to be about connecting, the nothingness was downright eerie.

I faded after the Chris Hadfield singing in space item and how it was Hadfield’s son who gave him the idea to play air guitar. The 30-year veteran broadcaster is trying too hard to be chipper and hip. Everything was so breezy that somehow the news of the day just got blown away with the fall leaves.