Takahashi is happy to stay out of the news
Let’s see: she would rather talk about her beloved pooches Billycakes and Koffman, about the Lego castle and village she constructed from scratch, about the Netflix murder mystery The Keepers, about the Beethoven concerto she’s trying to master on her piano, about her needlepoint. Yup, pretty much about anything other than herself.
CTV Montreal’s chief news anchor Mutsumi Takahashi is, unarguably, the most highly visible member of the anglo media in Montreal — and among the most highly trusted. She may also be among the most private. She can’t be found on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat.
Go figure — Takahashi’s mantra is: “It’s about the news. It’s not about me. And it never will be.”
She brings insight, calm, cred and experience to the job. That approach has worked well. Takahashi doesn’t just dominate the ratings — she is an unstoppable force of nature. In the latest Numeris numbers, from last August through this month, Takahashi and co-anchor Paul Karwatsky’s hour-long 6 p.m. newscast reached an average weeknight audience of 189,000, compared to CBC’s half-hour 27,000 audience and Global’s 5:30-to-6:30 draw of 28,000.
Takahashi (Mitz to her friends) eschews interviews. She never does them. Period.
However, the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA Canada) is honouring her with a lifetime achievement award Friday night in Toronto — an award presented to CBC’s Peter Mansbridge last year. So she has most reluctantly agreed to talk about herself — at the threat of having her nightly martini ration pulled from her — but she protests all the same.
“My friends have been bugging me to talk, because they figure that others will think the reason I’ve done no interviews is no one likes me — not that I simply wish to remain private and that I don’t find my private life that fascinating,” Takahashi cracks while holding court (and her two energized canines) in the Montreal West home she shares with husband Michel Cayer.
In the interest of full disclosure, Takahashi is a close friend as well as the orchestrator of a noon-hour TV segment, Gripes of the Round Table, in which she manages to get CHOM’s Terry DiMonte, CJAD’s Aaron Rand and myself to foam at the mouth about everything from orange cones to orange-haired presidents.
The RTDNA award is a big deal. This is Takahashi’s 30th year as a news anchor in a North American TV world that has been pretty much ruled by white guys. (And white guys who love being in the limelight.) When she began, there were very few women in the anchor position — let alone visible minorities.
“I’m very honoured to get this award. It’s just everything that goes with it, like the demand for interviews, I find difficult. I don’t like being the news. An interesting title does not necessarily make for an interesting person. Certainly some of the most interesting people I’ve met have had the least interesting titles.
“I’m not an editorialist or an analyst. I’m not a celebrity. I have a huge respect for my profession, and I feel the best way to show that is to present the news in as objective a way as I can — although not all news organizations adhere to this principle these days. The thing about being a good communicator is about being a good listener.”
Which is not to say Takahashi doesn’t have strong opinions. But what she does is provoke others to let loose. She has done this rather effectively with her current political analysts Gilles Duceppe and Marlene Jennings, as well as with the late Jean Lapierre and Montreal Gazette colleague Don Macpherson and the Gripes gang.
“I can get you guys to say things I sometimes wish I could. There are no sacred cows, but the point is that all these people I use are fundamentally fair and feel that nobody should be exempt from criticism — or praise.”
Born in Shiroishi, Japan, Takahashi moved to Montreal with her family as a child. A career in TV was not initially in the cards: “It never occurred to me, particularly with parents who were serious academics and mathematicians.” They might have wished their daughter would become a pianist or a ballerina, both disciplines she had studied.
Her interest in journalism blossomed at Concordia University while she was broadcasting at Radio Sir George and writing for the student newspaper. (The school presented her with an honorary doctorate in 2013.)
Upon graduation, she landed work as an intern at CKGM before getting a paying gig as a news reader and interviewer at CJFM. She moved up the chain to CFCF-12 (now CTV Montreal) in 1982 as a news reporter, and a few years later ended up at the station’s anchor desk, which she shared for 20 years with her buddy Bill Haugland (another RTDNA lifetime-achievement recipient).
Takahashi insists she faced few problems entering the business as a female visible minority. “Although they did want me to use the name of Lee Taylor on the radio. … It didn’t matter, because it was radio. But that’s often the sad reality you have to deal with when you want the job.
“But I was never referred to by that name in the newsroom, and the funny thing was the other announcers would always forget my fake name. Soon, though, the management at the time was smart enough to realize this was ridiculous, and I was then allowed to use my real name.”
Perhaps curiously, Takahashi watches little TV. She is a compulsive reader. So much so that, unlike many in the media, she will devour every book written by authors she interviews on her noon-hour news show. Even former Westmount mayor Peter Trent was pleasantly surprised to learn Takahashi had read every last word in his 672-page opus The Merger Delusion.
“And all for just a five-minute interview,” she muses. “But, honestly, it’s horribly insulting to an author to interview them about a book you hadn’t bothered to read.
“I always have to find something to read. Even in the bathtub, I’ll read the back of a shampoo bottle. I’m serious.”
Although her shift calls for her to be at the station from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., to cover her noon and 6 p.m. newscasts, she is up at the crack of dawn on her iPad. She scours the Montreal Gazette, Globe and Mail, La Presse, Le Devoir, Le Journal de Montréal, Financial Times, New York Times and the Guardian. Plus, she flips back and forth between English and French radio. And she doesn’t stop researching and checking out news when her shift is over.
In her tenure as news anchor, Takahashi has covered horrific events ranging from the École Polytechnique massacre to 9/11.
“One has to be objective, but that doesn’t preclude emotions. If you’re not moved by a Sandy Hook school shooting, then there’s something seriously wrong with you.”
Yet the worst news she had to report was the death of CTV cameraman Hugh Haugland, the son of Bill, who was killed in a helicopter accident in 2009.
“As horrible as some of these tragedies are, there is a difference when you’re reading something on air about the death of a friend, who happens to be making news in the worst possible way,” she says. “I remember looking out the newsroom window and seeing all the satellite trucks from the other media parked outside, and wishing they would all go away.
“Then I remembered that the day before, our truck and all the others were at the scene of a residential pool where a child had just drowned. And I was thinking this is what we do, and I imagine that family who had just lost a child was looking out the window and seeing all those TV trucks and wishing they would all go away. … I get it, but that, sadly, is the nature of this beast.”