Mentioning Michael Moore always seems to de-rail any conversation, BUT...
If you saw the movie "Bowling for Columbine," you might have felt as uncomfortable as I did by the way Michael Moore treated Charlton Heston. OK, OK, I buy Moore's underlying point...but Heston seemed so old and infirm that Moore's technique seemed unfair.
That aside, you might also have been as-intrigued-as-I-was by Moore's premise that USA media treatment of violent crime has been racially polarizing. And when Moore takes the viewer through-the-tunnel from Detroit to Windsor, Ontario, we see a very different black/white vibe.
THAT is just one of the ways being in Toronto feels "foreign." You think "Canada," and you think "Doug & Bob McKenzie," right? White guys guzzling Labatt's at a hockey game? Thnk again. This is a VERY diverse city. Walk down the street, and there seem to be as many asians as blacks as whites. There are Indian/Pakistani-accented voices on major stations here.
The vibe here is THE OPPOSITE OF insular snipes posted on this site which sought to make Dave Barber feel so unwelcome as a new Rhode Islander. At the airport here, advertising for Cuba tourism (!) uses the slogan "Friendly and diverse."
And there's a sophistication here that you don't feel in New York, let alone Nort' Providence. A hipness.
Want to hear some GREAT -- and very-different-sounding -- radio?
Stream-into Bill Carroll's morning show on 1010CFRB (
www.cfrb.com).
ALL LOCAL VOICES, ALL LOCAL PROGRAMMING.
"Local, local, local," eh?
I was here in August, doing a project for that particular station, and found myself saying-something-most-consultant-haters-on-this-board wouldn't-ever-expect-to-hear-from-a-consultant: "DON'T CHANGE A THING!"
Actuallly, I did make one fundamental imaging recommendation. I suggested re-doing all the station's promos, to adopt the slogan "Turn to Ten-Ten."
