Today on the Scroll: Amber MacArthur was hired to help transform the face of local TV news, but the new owners of Citytv didn’t see it that way.

“I think I have an inherent desire to change big media,” types Amber MacArthur. “But the desire is fading.”

Hey kids, remember when the news was going to be cool? Like, a year or three ago when it seemed like every sleeping giant was being roused awake by the thunderbolt of Web 2.0? Citytv did their part to stay ahead of the curve in September 2006, by recruiting celebrity geek Amber Mac from the digital ghetto of G4TechTV, and plunking her into a starring role on their nightly newscasts.

After all, it was important to get the word out that the internet was going to kill your children, steal your money, and make the Earth unsafe at any speed. Or, at least, that was the way her work was being promoted.

“I was always very vocal and careful that I did not sensationalize my stories,” MacArthur IMs from San Francisco. “But there was definitely some pressure to be more dramatic than necessary. I never gave in, ever.

“I really went to Citytv because I believed they were going to try and be different from other newscasts. I hope they get there, but I’m not sure it will happen.

“Keeping the one innovative show they had would have been one way to set themselves apart.”

MacArthur quietly resigned from CityNews in October, because she was getting offers from elsewhere, and there didn’t seem to be much future in interpreting online life to computer-illiterate viewers — especially as the channels were going through an ownership change. But incoming Citytv management from Rogers Media wanted to give a home to her Webnation show, which had an initial run of 16 weeks on CP24, and two months were spent readying a multi-platform launch.

The news of her departure was posted last weekend on blogTO, which fielded a tsunami of invective simply for mentioning that CityNews boss Stephen Hurlbut was shoved out the door after a showdown with sportscaster Kathryn Humphries — who quit the station, only to return the moment Hurlbut was fired — an indication that moves inside 299 Queen St. W. make for blog comment gold.

Joining the fray was Kevin Bartus, a vice-president of digital media at Rogers, who all but explained that the company wasn’t in the business of nurturing niche ideas into something more popular:

“For us to really get behind something, it has to tip in above 100K at some point. Keep in mind that internally everything fights for attention with stalwarts like Sportsnet.ca, CityNews.ca, 680News, Chatelaine, Maclean’s etc.” Which reads like a rare admission that personality-based media isn’t the biggest priority over at Ted Rogers’ castle.

There was also no shortage of speculation that Rogers wouldn’t want to put their resources into a show that might air criticism of the telecom side of the company.

“I don’t know exactly how Rogers felt about net neutrality,” IMs MacArthur, “but last year I tried multiple times to get an interview with someone from the company, and they turned me down, along with Bell. There’s definitely a wide gap going on here.

“I am smack dab in the middle of a generation that believes in transparency, a group of people who like to learn and discuss. And while most old-school companies don’t operate like this, it’s my belief that the ones who do will end up rising leaps and bounds ahead of their competitors. It can’t hurt to engage an audience that you’re already serving.”

The latest announcement of atom-splitting at the former headquarters of Chum Television couldn’t be more conventional, though. CP24, which is owned by CTV, announced a local Live at 5 show co-hosted by Ann Rohmer and long-lost Electric Circus videographer George Lagogianes, starting on Monday. This was apparently hurried on after word got out that Rogers was planning a similar news-you-can-use 5pm show in that slot on Citytv. Both operate under the same roof, and continue to share resources for now, but Citytv will eventually move to new headquarters in Dundas Square.

This ownership-transition stuff is great for media gossip, even if it provides little incentive for anyone new to actually turn away from their computers and tune in.

Amber Mac: “Maybe what I did wrong is that in pushing really hard to make the show happen, we fought against the traditional-news model. We wanted to engage our audience. While these might seem like scary things to a big company, it would have been a huge step in the right direction. I’m not saying we were going to change the world, but we were definitely passionate about creating some kind of tipping point that would put the edge back into Citytv.”

No need to ask the original “TV 2.0” mogul Moses Znaimer what he thinks of the decision by Rogers to apparently skew the station he created somewhat older, in light of a quote from his profile in the latest Toronto Life, as he develops his new empire dedicated to “zoomers” his own age: “Youth is overvalued,” he said. “Hell, they have no money and they’re living in the basement. The world is run by 50-to-70-year-olds, and it’s time we got a little respect.”

MacArthur seems perfectly content to be ducking away from a battlefield that doesn’t seem too likely to result in any survivors. She has spent the past week on a freelance project with toothy motivational guru Tony Robbins in San Francisco, continues to appear on a couple of tech podcasts, and several different broadcasters are wondering if they can hire her next.

Rogers might need her services someday, too, should the five Citytv stations they picked up for $375-million in a CRTC-ordered fire sale last summer not turn out to have been much of a bargain in markets over-saturated with the old model.

“I walked with no package or pay, despite the verbal commitments day in and day out, and they’re acting like I did something wrong,” MacArthur concludes.

“I understand that business is business. But we are also human, and honesty can be a good thing in business.”

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