Promises Broken and Exhibits A

I know, I know...I promised a couple of big posts on the Canadian TV situation. And I put off writing about Canadian TV for a week. And that stretched into a second week, And for the moment, the truth is that I just don't want to do it. It's tiring. And it doesn't make me feel great to talk about the situation here, for a couple of reasons. The first is that unlike a lot of powerful producers out there, I'm just American enough that I write how messed up things are. I write it, and I'm working solidly and steadily. Yet people with years more experience than me, and presumably greater stake -- stay silent. Yeah, it's wrong. Yeah, it's dumb. But "don't rock the boat" seems to be as Canadian a value as "peace, order and good government" or "pull the goalie if you're down by 1 and there's 2 minutes left in the 3rd period."

So what to do? I'm actually in a pretty good place right now. (Well, that's not true. I'm in Calgary for the weekend, but...oh relax, it's a joke...) Bill Cunningham recently posted lots and ins and outs and suggestions that were great in some ways, naive in others, but always, at their core, American can-do hopeful.

That's why Americans, when they do good, do great, kids. They don't defeat themselves before they start.

I describe myself as a mid-level writer here and that works for me. But the truth is I don't doubt my talent for a second. I'm smart. I'm a good writer. I know this. I've lived here long enough to know that you don't go around saying that because then people snipe at you and grow unkind. That's the Canadian way.

I suppose, when the subject of Canadian TV came up, I could turtle like most everyone else, but the difference is I don't feel like working in an industry that's fucked -- if that involves me knowingly working on crap that I know could be better, but never can be because the ... [insert the 1001 structural problems here] . I love the medium too much. I've seen the talent here. I've seen the enthusiasm from people at the network side too. I've talked to them at parties and baseball games and everywhere else. They, for the most part, are tied by the fact that what they do is seen as a "necessary evil" inside their organizations. In a way, we have a lot in common with them. They just get to work in the big house. We're out on the street. But unless they start caring more about what upstairs thinks (when upstairs doesn't really care, to be honest) than what they know to be good tv -- they are not the enemy here.

No one wants to do bad work!

If status quo's my only option, I'd rather get out. If I lose jobs because I'm actually speaking truth here, then so be it. They're either crappy jobs, or crappy people giving those jobs out. They clearly don't want what I want or see what I see or hope for what I hope for for TV in this country. They are not bold and they are not quality. So be it.

Right now I'm in a place where I'm working with people I enjoy. I'm having a ball. At work. It's great.

So I may have, in my head, planned a bunch of new volleys, but I'm punting. This is it, for a while on the CanTV file. I'm punting because I can and because it's not my job to wave the flag by myself, but mostly because I don't feel like spending two hours writing a post for dear old Bill that would better be expressed in an hour's ranting over Guinness.

So here's the headline news version, the short version of what Henshaw and Cunningham sparked me enough to say:

1) The Networks decide what shows they want now Under the CTF, not the government. (to clear up a Bil point) That's been the way since they switched to the envelope system. The problem is there's no incentive for picking good shows and no punishment for failure, because the business model of the private Canadian nets is not based on making shows or selling shows, it's based on importing U.S. shows into a very favorable protected market.

That being said, the solution has to be a Made-in-Canada solution, because Canada faces a set of circumstances that no other nation faces, because no other nation has ALL the U.S. nets in there, all the time, as direct competition, yardstick, and tastemaker.

It's all well and good to look to touring American models of storymaking, as the Lee Goldbergs and such paraded around Europe recently. Europeans might need that injection of U.S. story savvy. I don't know.

But what's always been true of Canada is this: America does not think of Canada at all, or if it does, it's as a leg. Nothing more. Our box office receipts? Counted as U.S. domestic.

We can say that we'll do copros with the U.S. -- but let's all remember the dirty little secret -- how a few years ago there were shows that shot in Canada all the time that were Canadian shows for Cancon purposes, but ran their story rooms out of L.A. and hired American writers -- fake Canadians with easy to get passports, or Canadians that live in L.A. This was the NORM. Your tax dollars at work did NOTHING to support people like me -- they went south to L.A. How you like them California oranges?

Let's remember all the Americans who were "deemed" to be Canadian for the purposes of production, then ask why nobody knows who the Canadian showrunners are. Let's ask why the DGC and ACTRA were only too happy to sell Canadian writers down the river and work on these "faux Cancon" shows without nary a stink. Let's look at those credits STILL on some of these shows and note how they're DGC signatory and ACTRA but not WGC -- trading directors for writers, oldest trick in the book.

Then let's wonder why TV -- which at its best is a writer-driven enterprise -- isn't as good as it could be despite the talent here. Let's ask why the talent gets frustrated and leaves. Let's ask why even the ones who are so bright they would have to wind up in the U.S. anyway go there without ever having become a star here first. (Even Tom Green never got a show up here...by the time the Comedy Network bit, he was on the way to MTV.) Insert Jim Carrey here, too, or imagine Ricky Gervais if he'd not been allowed to do The Office, but instill had to work his way up the rungs of Still Standing.

An article in the G&M last weekend said something like 25% of the people working at creative levels of the US industry -- actors, directors, etc -- were Canadian. That seemed high to me, but who knows. (It was in the article where they talked about Waneta Storms bunking with Sandra Oh.)

The truth is when it comes to the U.S. they're always about the open market, until they're not, or can push advantage. Anyone who's read nine thousand years of headlines about fucking softwood lumber knows this.

If we're going to fix it, we got to fix it ourselves. Can we fix it if all the people who've been doing this longer than me won't open their mouths? Who knows?

2) The radical solution --

I do not for a moment think this is actually the way to go. I want to say that up front. But part of the despair of explaining just how byzantine the problems and challenges are here comes from having to frame the discussion before you start. Here's where Bill Cunningham's "solution" post inspired me.

The secret really is stake. Encouraging entrepeneurship, on some level.

But if we're going to get rid of protectionism, as Jim Shaw and the CTF haters and the CBC bashers want, let's get rid of all of it.

Here's my plan. Ready?

1) End across the board simultaneous substitution.

Now CTV and Global and CBC have to compete with the U.S. nets already available in Canada.

Oh wait. Not a good idea? It will destroy their business? Oh. Okay. Hmmm. So you're saying...to compete in the U.S. marketplace...they need a bit of regulatory relief? Oh. Okay...but isn't that what the .... never mind, never mind...

Please note, were this to happen, Canadians wouldn't lose much, because so long as the U.S. nets were here, they'd still see all those shows they like, right? Right? The 1999 rule change which took away the stick that Cannets had to make drama killed drama. They took that away, which was one of the few things that made the Canadian networks different.

Too radical? I agree. You can't throw open your cultural borders entirely -- this is a point that every country in the world except the U.S., and on some level, Canada, understands.

So. THAT being said...

Here is my simplified plan for fixing Canadian TV (revised):

1) Simultaneous Cable Substitution is no longer automatic. Cannets get a set number of hours per week they can substitute. It's low. The rest of the schedule, they either have to go head to head with the U.S. signal (even if they are showing the same program) or they counterprogram. Stick.

2) Tie spending on homegrown production to a formula of spending on U.S. programming and Revenues.
If a network is doing well by showing U.S. shows they picked up cheap, they have to spend more on Canadian shows. If they're doing poorly, they can spend less on Can shows, but they also get to do less substitutions. Cap it at 7% or whatever. Stick and Carrot.

3) Let them earn more substitution windows. The better your indigenous stuff does, and the more you spend on it, you get bonus windows where you can put your signal over that U.S. signal every week. Carrot.

So... what happens now?

Canadian Network people need to find hits. Stick.
Canadian Networks need to care about their Canadian shows. Stick.
Everyone takes a risk....networks and creatives. Stick and Carrot.
Schedulers won't be able to act like rockstars anymore. The D-people will be just as important as people who get to go to the L.A. screenings. Stick and Carrot.
Canadian creatives have to be audience focused, or they don't get renewed. Stick.
The ones who do well will be in demand. Carrot.

Some things will fail. Some people will get fired. Creatives who do not deliver will not get three, four, nine chances because they go to the same dinner parties. There will be new opportunities. But the risk and the reward will be spread around, if not equally, then at least equitably.

Network people who find hits will make more money and get credit and rise. Carrot.
Networks who have homegrown hits will be able to sell them worldwide. Carrot.
Creatives who show they know how to write and create shows that please the audience and are loved will make more money. Maybe even enough so that they don't have to go to the USA. Carrot.

The one thing that will not work: continued protectionism for the corporate side of the industry, while the creative side gets none.

Why? Because under that scenario (the current scenario) one side is getting all the sticks, while the other side gets all the carrots. And the side getting all the carrots points to the guys getting the crumbs and has the audacity to say, "why am I paying for that?"

That's the point we have to make.

(By the way, yes..the CBC is a different story. It always is. We do no one a service by pretending it's not.)

And once again, another little window into just how challenging getting any straight news through about this industry is: here's an excerpt from the LA Times article on Slings and Arrows that ran recently. (thanks to Meridian Artists for this.

Read and weep:At January's Television Critics Assn. press tour, a small contingent from "Slings & Arrows" noticed with some satisfaction how the attending Canadian critics, once dismissive, now seemed proud of their countrymen's show, clearly adored by the U.S. reporters.

"The response in Canada was typically Canadian — lukewarm and in some quarters downright hostile," Fichman said. "Canadians were going, 'Oh, no, not another Canadian thing.' " Even some of those who rolled their eyes at first "are writing really nice stuff now," he said.

When Sundance aired the series in August 2005, it was "an unexpected gift in the TV landscape," said Laura Michalchyshyn, Sundance Channel's head of programming. "No one can believe it's a series not financed in this country. People were begging us for DVDs.

Yeah. It's messed. Today was one positive Canadian TV post, one Neg (or as I'd like to think of it, neutral/hopeful.)

Glad I've got a job. For now at least. Now. Who wants pie?


*** Addendum to Editoires ***

It's a measure of how cloistered and silent people are in the Canadian industry are that I can say this: I know you're out there. I see the site stats, all the people popping in here from Canwest Papers, and CBC, and CP, and all sorts of Canadian news outlets. Register and join the discussion, chilluns. Don't be so Canadian.

Anyway, I'm happy to announce that I'm going to be attending the Banff TV Festival this year as accredited media, for this blog. I'm also looking to freelance a couple of articles while I'm there. If you're interested in having me write a piece for your publication, contact me at the dirty little email addy advertised on the sideboard.

More on Banff and what's coming up there next week.