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The Newsload

LONDON AND SOUTHWESTERN ONTARIO: 2022 – PRESENT

Local news is in trouble, and everybody has an opinion about why. Fewer reporters, fewer papers, and whole regions where nobody is checking anything any more. The industry calls them news deserts. If you live in one, you know it as the feeling that nobody would tell you if something went wrong.

ALL WORK
01 — THE STORY, AS WE WROTE IT AT THE TIME

London and Southwestern Ontario

The Newsload is what we decided to do about it.

The idea was to build a local news franchise — not a blog, not a channel, an actual outlet with reporters and standards — and then deliver it in a way people would actually watch. That is where the comedy comes in. It is not a gimmick bolted onto the journalism. It is the delivery system. Serious local subjects go further when they arrive through humour, and the Newsload has proved that over and over: a comedian doing street interviews in downtown London gets watched by people who would never click on a council story, and they end up knowing about it anyway.

We make a lot of different things under that banner. There are the shows — Conspiracy Crush, The Axe Grind, Spill The Tea at Fanshawe. There are the reports, which are straight journalism with a real reporter on them: interviews with an MP, a hospital story, a bylaw fight, a report on a local landmark up for redevelopment. There are the sketches, which are written and performed by local comics. And there is Coming Comics, our raw open-mic series, filmed at FitzRay's downtown — no polish, no edits to speak of, just local performers getting their material on film.

That last one matters more than it looks. Stand-up is a hard, cheap, fast way to find out who can hold a room, and we have pointed a camera at every local comic who wanted one. Some of them now work with us regularly.

The name worth knowing is Scott Taylor. He is a veteran journalist, and the Newsload's harder reporting runs on his instincts. Carrie Anne Stephenson produces and writes and performs. Jordan Minter hosts. Raj Kashyap produces and writes. Spencer Higgins, Jester Lind and Sofia Eidsath all came out of the local comedy scene and all appear on camera. Ilea Bakker has worked production across it.

For Bizbio, the Newsload was never a side project. It is the thing that answered the question every production company eventually faces: we make films for other people's platforms and then we hand them over and we are done. Newsload is ours. It has its own YouTube channel, its own audience, its own standards, and a registered trademark. It is a place our work goes where nobody can take it down or change their mind about it.

It also became the studio's training ground. Half the skills we now sell to corporate clients — how to shoot fast, how to get a usable interview in one take, how to cut for an audience that owes you nothing — got sharpened making news and comedy on a local budget for a local audience.

And it does the thing I wanted it to do. It tells people in this region what is happening where they live, and it gets them to listen.

PRODUCER · BRYAN BAKKER

02 — THE FILMS

The films

R
The Comedy Compass™
03 — IMAGES

Images

A large group of people are posing for a photo in a living room, with some standing, some sitting on a patterned couch, and two men lying on a coffee table in the foreground, which holds a book titled "baby" and blocks spelling "1 2 4 6"; the room features a red carpet, a dark wood armchair with a white throw, a dark wood coffee table with framed photos including a handprint and a footprint, a tall green plant in a brown pot, and a framed picture on the wall above a white fireplace mantel, while another tall plant in a white pot stands near a white door in the background.
From The Newsload.
Seven people are posing for a picture in a forest, with a man in the center holding a camera on a tripod, and notable objects include a blue and white patterned fan and a water bottle.R
From The Newsload.
Three glass cloches display a blue sphere, a brain model, and a heart model on a dark wooden shelf, with a "NEWS LOAD" sign and a pair of gold goggles visible in the background.R
From The Newsload.
A winter landscape shows a snow-covered ground and ice-covered structures under a cloudy sky, with text overlays.R
From The Newsload.
A man with light hair and a dark suit is seated on a dark couch, smiling and looking to the left, with framed pictures and text on the wall behind him. A blue and white logo with the words "NEWS LOAD LONDON" is superimposed over the lower center of the image.R
From The Newsload.
Three people are embracing in a dimly lit indoor setting, with one person wearing a baseball cap with "LS" visible on it, and another person's face partially visible with closed eyes.R
From The Newsload.
A man with short brown hair and a grey scarf is laughing with his mouth open, holding a black object in his raised left hand and an alien mask in his right hand, against a dark background with a brown wall on the right. The text "Oh Shit..." is visible in the bottom left corner.R
From The Newsload.
Four people are standing side-by-side, smiling at the camera, in an office with a Canadian flag, a bookshelf, and framed pictures on the wall. A blue and white graphic overlay with the words "NEWS LOAD LONDON" covers the lower center of the image.R
From The Newsload.
A man wearing a fedora, glasses, and a trench coat holds a white mug with "NEWS LOAD" and "YOUR LOAD IS COMING" printed on it, against a dark background with faint lights.R
From The Newsload.
Five people are smiling for a selfie outdoors in a park with autumn trees, with one man wearing a Puma hat and another wearing a Tottenham Hotspur beanie.R
From The Newsload.