Step Away From The Canadian TV Crack Pipe

So, um...looks like the CRTC hearings into the CHUM/CTV Globemedia Sale opened this morning. I have many nervous friends at CHUM Stations who'll be watching these hearings closely. For those keeping score, the coverage helpfully whittles down the number of major Canadian media companies left on the horizon:

1. CTV Globemedia-CHUM
2. Canwest-Alliance Atlantis
3. Astral (Standard Radio)
   
4. CBC (if no one tries to pull a fast one, that is)

Guess Gavin Crawford's quip at the WGC awards last week (paraphrased) about "it'll be so much easier when there's only one place to pitch" isn't so far off.

What's my take?

Erm. I have none. What about you?

John Doyle gets my lovin' recommendation, though, for a very, very funny/sad rant in today's Globe & Mail. More about the recent news of Canwest rebranding CH than CTV/CHUM, but still:

The last thing the Canadian TV networks and the watching Canadian audience need is more air-headed coverage of American celebrities.

But that's precisely what we're going to get with CanWest Global's bizarre decision to foist the execrable E! Entertainment Channel on Canadians. With the signing of a cheque and, presumably, the agreement of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, CanWest Global is turning over its venerable CH stations to the content of an American cable outfit that's entirely devoted to maniacally intense and superficial reporting on U.S. showbiz. This move is grotesque. It's the sellout of a string of Canadian over-the-air channels to dumb-as-a-post American cable coverage of already overexposed and often talentless idiots.

It's important to be clear that this is not the arrival of E! on cable in Canada. CanWest's CH network is made up of six local television stations located in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Five are owned outright by CanWest, and the sixth, in B.C., is owned by the Pattison Group. These stations reach the largest markets in Canada.

They are over-the-air stations and they use the airwaves that belong to all of us, not to CanWest. Any broadcaster who wants to use our airwaves is obliged, in return, to provide Canadian content. That's the way it works.

In this instance, CanWest says it will rebrand the CH stations as E!, but maintain local news and current-affairs content. Maybe it will, but that sliver of local content will be aired on a station ostentatiously rebranded as a Hollywood-obsessed celebrity-news machine. It sounds highly unlikely that the CH stations will continue to look anything like they do now.

As I write this, the E! channel is airing The E! True Hollywood Story - Tori Spelling, followed by The E! True Hollywood Story - Lionel & Nicole Richie, and that is followed by The E! True Hollywood Story - Goldie & Kate. I think the latter is about Goldie Hawn and her daughter Kate. In prime time on the day I'm writing, you'll find E! Entertainment Special: Wildest Dating Show Moments. That's a show composed of "outrageous clips from TV's most popular reality dating shows. Clips from Blind Date, Cheaters and Fifth Wheel are featured."

Just in case you need to know what's coming on CH, on E! tonight, in prime time, you could see Dr. 90210: An Officer and a Gentle Woman. That's a reality series about plastic surgery in Beverly Hills. On tonight's episode, "A probation officer turned beauty queen seeks out Dr. Rey for breast implants, and Hayley decides to return to acting after her visit home to Montreal." Like, wow - some woman from Montreal appears on the show. There's your Canadian content right there.

Mmm. Mmm. Delish. That's good rant. We need more ranting in this industry.

Just not from me. heh heh.