City Podcast: Let’s Put Coffee To Sleep

Okay, Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, this must be said. You have too many employees.

From the media relations department, the media would like fulsome and accurate information. Information to help navigate the city bureaucracy to get what they want … not what the city wants to tell us. We’d like to get answers to important questions in live interviews rather than a paragraph in an email that doesn’t address important public policy questions. The media would like an opportunity to ask follow-up questions. That’s where the real information results.

Instead we have newsletters on municipal topics of the day and how the city is addressing them. That’s not what people want to hear. They want to know after a number of years the root cause of light-rail derailments. Not podcasts. The Bulldog stopped doing podcasts because the listenership from them was a fraction of other posts.

So let’s look at the podcast. Two public servants interviewing another public servant. This missive should carry the disclaimer: “Do not listen to while operating heavy equipment.” Podcasts at the best of times can be gruesome unless the guest is fascinating. Well that’s not the case with Mathieu Grondin.

Ottawa’s nightlife commissioner could put coffee to sleep. No wonder things are moving slowly in the night mayor’s office. If Grondin is Ottawa nightlife, after-dark entertainment is tea and scones.

And the solution to our real or imagined nightlife problems? Grondin says entrepreneurs come forward with an idea with which Grondin will help them. How? Other people come up with the ideas and the city helps them. That eliminates the need for original thought.

How about new ideas. Say a Canadian Music Hall of Fame. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has revolutionized downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Imagine what a Canadian example could do for the ByWard Market. Soon the federal government will be looking for big projects to revolutionize our economy in the face of Trump tariffs. A music hall of fame could do the same for the ByWard Market. The federal money is likely to be there.

So how did it go in the meeting to create this Ottawa podcast. Did someone say a podcast is an original idea and that it would feature city staffers and suddenly it became a great idea. Cutting-edge, original, boppin’. Useless.

Did anyone give thought to the possibility of listeners?

Anyway, the podcast is below. Listen with the cautions above in this post.

So would you rather this or more potholes filled on your street?

Maybe the city doesn’t have too many employees. Perhaps they’re just allocated a tad wrong.

And if this is how media relations is spending money, what are other departments doing in a similar vein?

Ken Gray

Put this in a Canadian Music Hall of Fame in the ByWard Market.

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