Congrats to the Interlocutors

TO INTREPID WRITERS David Barlow, Karen McClellan, Aaron Martin and Karen Walton who all testified before the CRTC today, against the ridiculous proposal to cut the baby in two in the name of "culture" and "commercial." Unfortunately, my wifi mojo proved ill suited to the task of listening in from New York City, but I've gotten several emails from people saying that each person was strong, calm, and incredibly convincing. And the commission asked its same stacked questions over, and over.

Believe me, I have plenty more to say on the subject of words and culture. Especially fired up by what I saw on stage last night. But that will take a while to percolate.

Just for fun, be eagle eyed, and see how many articles cover the writers presentation, as opposed to the many articles laying out the positions of Jim Shaw (who didn't show. Fucktard.) and the various other corporate players.

It's only the fate of writers we're talking about. Why listen to the wordsmiths?

Columbus

SO I HAD some time today in my little weekend jaunt, so I went to check out what hopefully might be the last large protest by the New York-based WGAE writers.

It was a nice sunny day, and not too cold. So the conditions for the 250 or so picketers wasn't quite as dire as they've been.

(Every weather station in New York is trumpeting the ARCTIC BLAST! that's coming Sunday. Heh. I forgot they did that. Seriously, they're big about the Arctic Blast here. That's one above "cold front from Canada.")

If you've never seen the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle, it's an interesting location for a picket, chock full of multiple layers of symbolism.

First of all, the statue of Columbus, which you can see in the background of one of the pictures, is the point where official distances to and from New York are measured.

(Heh heh, geography geek, heh heh.)

So I guess you could say this was right in the heart of New York. Then there's that hoary old idea of Columbus and the New World, and what has this whole messy, endless, maddening thing been over but this new world we're all experiencing together -- the great, uncharted internet?

The building itself holds the New York offices for CNN, which is trenchant when you consider the sometimes suspiciously pro-conglom coverage the 3 month old walkout has garnered.

See? Multiple entry points.

Watching the pickets shuffle by, the other thing you realize is that even with hundreds of people, there is simply nothing human-scaled about the location. All that glass and steel, and the statuary across the way -- the way the tower shoots up and catches the brilliant midday sun. It is so very, very big, that even two hundred fifty people marching around can't help but look very, very small.

I walked the line for a short while in solidarity -- didn't really see anyone I knew, and didn't really talk to many people.

I kept working up the courage to say something to someone, but just didn't. See? I do have a bit of the Canadian in me, after all. At least I didn't apologize to a lamppost.

I saw Andy Samberg and Rachel Dratch from SNL. Didn't take their picture because hey, they weren't there about the whole picture taking thing. There were writers from Late Show and Writers with strollers. Writers with Jaunty Hats and writers who came in costume. There were baby writers and grizzled veterans who look like they'd worked with Edward R. Murrow and Sid Caesar -- who maybe remember when TV was from New York, and live.

Oh, and Michael Moore.

I did take his picture because, you know...it's not like he's camera shy. It was good to see him out there, though.



The mood, overall, seemed positive, and cautiously upbeat. There was laughter, but a lot of weariness, too. It didn't take a lot of intuition to pick up on the general feeling that it would be really super if this was the last time they had to walk around in a big circle like a dinkus.

Especially with the ARCTIC! BLAST! on its way.

I wished a few people Good Luck on the big meetings tomorrow night. The New York meeting takes place at the Crowne Plaza, not far from where I'm staying.

If I pick up a disturbance in the Force, like a million souls suddenly cried out at once and were silenced -- I'll let you know.

Culture is Entertainment, Or Why Splitting The CTF Fund is a Shitty Idea

TWO VIEWS THIS morning on the implications of the current CRTC hearings into the Canadian Television Fund. First is this op-ed by Peter Raymont, the Award winning documentarian and Executive Producer of The Border:

yet there are powerful forces in Canada who want to destroy the very nature of the Canadian Television Fund — people who feel that too much of its financing has been wasted on Canada-centric publicly broadcast TV shows that have little or no audience beyond our borders, that will never turn a profit and that are watched by few Canadians, even. The argument is that private Canadian cable TV companies should not be forced to help finance programs for public TV. These people (most notably Jim Shaw of Shaw Cable and Pierre Karl Péladeau of Quebecor Media Inc.) argue that they should have the right to determine which Canadian TV shows their taxed profits finance.

They are arguing for a "Two-Tiered" or split CTF, with public and government money financing the public TV shows and private and cable company money allocated to the privately broadcast ones. What happens when a show is broadcast on both types of networks (like CBC and Showcase or SCN/TVO and History TV) or when a show jumps between networks is unclear in this flawed scenario.

With the help of the CTF, private Canadian broadcasters have been prescient in financing many award-winning and popular Canadian TV shows. But the problem with splitting the Canadian Television Fund into two tiers — two solitudes — is that it runs counter to the fundamental spirit of what it is to be Canadian.

We have created a wonderfully successful public-private partnership in many fields. By using the best of the British and U.S. models, we have created a third way of governance and productivity that, despite the need for constant vigilance and tweaking, works very well. Yes, it's imperfect, but our private-public health-care system is the envy of the world. Private-public partnerships finance our energy system, our highways, our education and our arts and culture.

That's very heady and maybe a bit arcane. Alex Epstein has an even simpler explanation, which is worth reading in full over at his site:

Let's get one thing straight. Culture = Entertainment. Entertainment = Culture.

Shakespeare was writing for the audience. Not for the Queen. (Ben Jonson was writing masques for the Queen, and none of them are still put on. Look what happens to "cultural" programming.) That's why you have the moments of high drama and the detours for silliness. He was writing for the groundlings and the box seats.

Aristophanes was simultaneously trying to win awards (yep, the Greeks had awards ceremonies) and pack the crowds in. Euripedes, same thing.

A cultural event is only cultural because it affects the culture of the place it occurs. That means people have to see it. If a play is not entertaining, no one sees it. If no one sees it, it does not have an impact on the culture. It neither preserves nor disturbs the culture.

SLINGS AND ARROWS is successful cable TV. It is also successful highbrow culture (which satirizes highbrow culture). TRAILER PARK BOYS is successful TV. It is also successful lowbrow culture. If you don't believe me, wait until "the boys" come round for a signing and see how many people are lining up in the cold. If people waiting in the cold to see actors isn't a sign of vibrant culture, you tell me what is.

Now might be the time, if you're so inclined, to give a gentle poke to your MP to say that you're paying attention to this silly nonsense going on in Gatineau. After all, apparently the politicians love seeing themselves on TV. On some level, you should be able to reach them with the argument that, um, hey, so do you.

It's a Good News, Bad News Thing

SUCH IS THE consistently, maddeningly schizophrenic nature of the Canadian Television racket that good news and bad news can spring from the same event.

First the good. You're looking at the front page of the Globe & Mail's Review Section today. That's two of the Trailer Park Boys, posing with Conservative Minister Stockwell Day at a reception put on by the CTF on Parliament Hill.

John Doyle paints an entertaining portrait of Day deliberately seeking out the Boys -- how, in fact they created excitement in the room. This is great, because it replicates exactly what I've seen with my own eyes across Canada -- only it's not regular folk swarming to see these guys; it's the jaded, stuffy political intelligentsia. I guess some things do translate.

From Doyle's article:

I've no idea what usually happens in Room 200 of the West Block on Parliament Hill. Something serious, I'm sure. It's a gorgeous room, with high ceilings, silk wallpaper and chandeliers. It's a room built for power to reside there.

On Monday night, the Boys were the most popular people in the room. Ricky (Robb Wells) and Julian (John Paul Tremblay) were like a magnetic force. At one point, there were more than 300 people in the room - MPs and senators, TV execs and reporters, TV actors - but the Boys were the central figures and the lineup to talk to them and have a photo taken with them was endless. I saw New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton arrive and, of course, head straight for the Boys to have his photo taken with them. Along with his wife, MP Olivia Chow, Layton looked immensely pleased to bask in the glow of proximity to those stoner-losers from Sunnyvale Trailer Park.

It was a testament to the power of television, and Canadian-made TV at that.

The event was called TV Stars on Parliament Hill, organized by the Canadian Television Fund to coincide with this week's Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission hearings on the future of the fund. The idea was to make politicians and the other powerful people in Ottawa aware that Canadian TV exists, that it is going from strength to strength and that some of its stars are Canadian icons.

As far as I could tell, it worked. If the vibe from the commissioners was hostile about the CTF and its shows, the vibe at the party on the Hill was all positive. I was told that 82 MPs or senators had said that they would come and many did.

What it also puts the lie to, of course, is Jim Shaw's many statements slamming Trailer Park Boys as exactly the kind of programming that points to the failure of the CTF.

You call something that's clearly a success a failure cause you don't like it, proving you're out of touch with the tastes of Canadians. And this is the guy who wants control of funding money because he'd be better at 'picking hits' than the CTF.

A guy who can't even recognize a hit that's on the air.

Now, you'd think that a tantrum throwing millionaire monopolist crybaby who witholds money he's legally obligated to contribute to the fund would be, oh, I don't know...not taken seriously.

But that's not the way things go in Gatineau. In fact, if you're a guy who won the baby lottery by being born into a family that got lucky in the cable business, well, then the CRTC will move mountains to accommodate you -- even when you stamp your feet and claim you're not going to show up.

From Doyle's column yesterday, relating his impression of the same CRTC hearings I wrote about on Monday:

GATINEAU, QUE. -- This is the setting: a windowless, airless room in a bland building in Gatineau, a few minutes drive from Parliament Hill. This is the situation: The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is holding public hearings on the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) task-force report. These are the issues: Is the money from government and cable and satellite levies being spent wisely on the creation of Canadian TV programs; should the money be spent on hit TV shows or on culturally significant TV; and, who gets to say where the money goes and, anyway, who knows a hit show from a failure?

These are the players - TV executives, civil servants, administrators, lawyers, and the unions and guilds that represent the creators of Canadian TV storytelling. This is where what you refer to as the cable company is called a "broadcasting distribution undertaking" (or simply a " BDU") and where everybody uses such phrases as "a benchmark for moving forward."

I hope you get the picture. This is where the vigour and charm of television storytelling disappears. This is where the glamour of making television drama or comedy evaporates.

Nothing is really moving forward here. I can smell it in the airless, windowless room. The smell of people who work for the CRTC wanting to move backward, to retreat from as much Canadian TV storytelling as possible to submit to the whining of cable-company executives. This is where the culture is killed off.

So there it goes. Bureaucrats with the power to shank the system, just as they did in 1999 where a Broadcaster-led rule change led to the demise of sixty percent of Canadian drama and comedy shows within a year.

Voices of regular Canadians ignored. Hits called flops. Successes called failures, and most of all -- creative people held hostage to a system that's always about everything else first, but the work.

There are several Canadian writers right now prepping for their chance to appear in that windowless room in Gatineau on Friday. One of them is Karen Walton. Karen's a prolific feature and TV writer (Queer as Folk, Ginger Snaps, The Many Trials of One Jane Doe) who probably should be working on a script instead of a speech. But it's a speech she's been reworking, time and time again, because she has to go justify herself, and me, and all people trying to make TV in this country before the bureaucrats in Gatineau -- again, because the boy with the pipe stamped his foot, snapped his fingers, and triggered a laughably disastrous report that would make the complicated process of getting shit made in Canada even more complicated. Yet does Walton sound bitter? Well, here's how she described the process on Facebook, when someone thanked her for "stepping up."

This isn't stepping up - it's part of minding my/our store, part of doing business in Canada. Because it's a public + private investment system, we all have the privilege - and responsibility - of participating in its fate. It's a mixed blessing true -- but it beats being completely at the mercy of multinational corporations, to me.

I wish I could be as upbeat about it as Karen. Having dipped in and out of the hearings all week, it just reinforces for me that the ostensible goal of all this -- making decent tv programs -- is a concept that's so far from the Commission's comfort zone that we might as well be talking about how to end the zebra mussel infestation of Lake Ontario.

And Canada's cozy business community, never one to actually make waves when it's, say, the banking system or cable monopolies that are protected or supported, gets to spew their own smug bile. Take Peter Foster in the Financial Post. Seriously. Take him. Writing for his paper, part of the huge Canwest Global chain that, by the way, has gotten rich off being protected through things like foreign ownership laws and simultaneous substitution...(guess so long as its his job that benefits, he's fine with it, eh?) He gets to repeat the usual, perennially unchallenged canards -- "cultural" equals no one wants to watch...if you have a good idea, you go to the USA -- because why would you stay here?

Apparently we need public funding to remind us that we are a country of foul-mouthed, trailer-park-dwelling losers, cop killers, adulterous hockey wives and sanitized religious sects.

Oh, yes. Canadian self loathing, nicely dressed up as cynicism. What a fucktard. Roll over and poke Jim Shaw, Pete. He's late for the hearing he caused.

That's why, it's nice that at least there's that picture. Some evidence that somehow, somewhere, there might be someone who thinks that maybe it's a better idea to stop talking BDU's and start talking outlines. That the time of creatives is better spent working out acts, rather than three sets of forms. That the joy of the Trailer Park and that Gas Station in the middle of nowhere and the denizens of the Mercy mosque and that Cafe in Little Italy with all the Goalies, and Jimmy Reardon and Dominic DaVinci and Mike Kessler and the residents of a run down apartment block called Robson Arms might be worth something.

By the way, the answer to the mussel thing is: dump reruns of The Trouble With Tracey and The Starlost into the Lake.

You heard that here first.

Negotiation 101

I DON'T KNOW John Jabaley. He's a location manager. I'll probably never meet John Jabaley. But if I ever do, I will shake his hand and tell him that he wrote the greatest post of the 2007-2008 WGA strike about how, exactly, you negotiate. And why you don't hurry up the people who are negotiating for you.

Go read it at United Hollywood.

See What Happens When There's No TV?

THIS STUFF always makes me smile. Sadly, I don't think since the day I was born that I've been able to be still for five minutes. Might be something to work towards.

Something Fun

TODAY ON Q, hopefully you'll hear about Monkees and Manson and maybe Mikey and the Pop Rocks, too. Tv Columnist Bill Brioux will be on CBC Radio talking about famous TV legends. Brioux's kind of become the one-man Snopes of TV lore, thanks to his book, Truth and Rumor: The Reality Behind TV's Most Famous Myths.

And no, I'm assured "The Canadian Television Industry" is not one of the myths.

Maybe for the second edition.

Bill Shills after 2 on Q.

"This Just Shouldn't Be This Hard."

I CAN'T FOR the life of me imagine what it must be like to be Maureen Parker.

Parker, Executive Director of the Writers' Guild of Canada, spends her days trying to work on behalf of this country's English language screen and TV writers. She deals with her compatriots at the Directors Guild of Canada, and ACTRA, the national Actors' Union. She lobbies the government and industry, keeps an eye on issues and cultural trends, and occasionally she even gets to spend time talking to creative people.

And ... she spends a lot of time -- probably too much -- in a meeting room in Gatineau, Quebec.

This afternoon, Parker, along with WGC President Rebecca Schecter, VP Charles Lazer and Kelly Lynne Ashton tromped off to another CRTC hearing on the future of Canadian Television. They were joined by like minded representatives from the DGC and ACTRA, including Actors Wendy Crewson and Peter Outerbridge. They sat before the commission and gave very strong presentations that deconstructed, bit by bit, the lunacy that was the CRTC's report on the Canadian Television Fund.

The points made between the three Guilds were strong. They came armed with facts and figures that proved that the Commission's strange contention, that somehow splitting the current CTF fund in two -- into a "market driven" fund and a "cultural" fund -- wasn't based in any sound business plan.

Time after time, they hammered away at the central points in their research -- that the so-called 8/10 productions that are supposed to be the savior of the Canadian industry don't attract audiences like 10/10 productions do. They challenged the assumptions that some third list, b-level U.S. star would be the magic tonic to draw Canadian audiences.

They could have made the point that from HOUSE, to FRIENDS, to LOST to SEINFELD, tv is a medium that doesn't need stars; it makes stars, and that this strange little social experiment the CRTC wanted to try -- see what happens if we cut the baby in two -- is simply another wasteful hurdle for an industry that faces too many of them already. That it would not result in more 'hits,' that it was an attempt to quantify success in a business where even the country with all the money in the world can't figure out a way to do that...

They could, and did, make the point that the talk of a "private fund" and a "public fund" was silly semantics -- since it was all, in fact, "public money" we were talking about...that in fact, all this hearing is about is who gets to hand it out -- the cable co.'s, with no record of doing this kind of thing, who don't have to compete for revenue ever in their protected markets; or the organization that has been examined, poked, prodded and charged with the task for years, the CTF. They could have made the point that rolling the dice on something knew and pulling the plug on something that, while imperfect, meets the need a little better each year was a foolhardy tinkering with a system that could not support it...

But none of those points probably would have mattered. Because judging by the questioning, the commissioners weren't really listening.

Time and again, the questioning returned to "let me just take the devil's advocate position" or "how can it be a problem to have two funds if both kinds of programs are covered?"

Tim Southam, the Director, scored a few points when he pointed out, exasperated, that suggesting that the kinds of programs he makes -- cultural programs where he struggles to take esoteric artistic disciplines like dance and make them knowable to an audience -- should be considered "cultural" and not try to appeal to an audience went counter to what he spent his days doing. It was Southam that also pointed out the peculiar situation a Canadian creative finds themselves in all the time, where you're forced to hustle out there and be the only person who's promoting your own work, because there's no one, no plan, no money behind you.

Rebecca Schecter picked up the baton and reminded everyone that Little Mosque was seen by 4 million people in its first week (over multiple viewings) precisely because there was an unusual -- almost unprecedented -- amount of promotion for it. She pointed out that, to this day, Mosque retains an audience of roughly a million -- proving that when properly promoted, these shows can score.

But through it all was the sense, the leaden feeling that everyone in the room had been there before. Wendy Crewson, Maureen Parker, they've both said most of what they said before.

They were all in that room today because a bully -- a cable mabel who's only too happy to accept his protected market -- stamped his feet and threw a tantrum, triggering this kabuki process.

And then didn't bother to show up.

It was then, near the end of the process, that Parker got this funny wistful look on her face, noticeable even through the jerky internet video. In response to yet another, "let's just play devil's advocate" question, Parker shook her head and said, "Two hundred and forty million dollars. That's what we're talking about here." For the entire Canadian industry. All TV made, and aired with CTF money. Hundreds -- thousands of hours a year. In a month where audiences checked out new shows on CBC and Global voraciously, in which CTV sold shows that haven't even been made yet, Parker pointed out that all the money in the fund was "the cost of three American feature films."

She shook her head.

"This just shouldn't be this hard."

And that's it, in a nutshell. More time, more taxpayer dollars talking about this fund and that fund and who should pay and where it should go and how many board members and culture and market, and this cable co who wants to control that pot of money and should they or shouldn't they -- all this time spent and wasted in conference rooms, going over the same old thing. Not moving forward. Covering the same well trod ground that keeps a dysfunctional industry beeping along, gasping for breath.

"This just shouldn't be this hard."

Maureen's right. It shouldn't be. And we're still talking about all the wrong things. But it looks like writers, and actors, and directors, and producers, and everyone else is going to be tromping up to Gatineau for a long time to come. Because it's not just that they don't really seem to get it. It's that it seems like they really, really don't care.

And meanwhile, all the really juicy stuff..."is this a good show? Is it bad? Why did people tune in? Why didn't they come back?" In short, all the stuff that makes shows better...well, we have to put that conversation aside again. Because it's time to go up the hill to see if we'll still be able to fetch a pail of water, come the fall.

For what it's worth, thanks for making the trip. I just wish I saw a sign that anyone was listening.

The Border: Now With Thirty Percent More Skin

UNFORTUNATELY, THE PREVIEW for tonight's episode of The Border doesn't seem to be up on YouTube. But I'd encourage you to tune in anyway. The ep, "Compromising Positions," is a nice change of pace episode that hits some notes that we haven't hit on the show before.

Ably written by series co-creator Janet MacLean, and Directed by Kelly Makin, this ep hews away from the Canada-U.S. dynamic we've seen in recent weeks for a story that mixes Canadian political intrigue, sex, and a bit of murder for good measure. The ep features the return of the delightfully arch Nigel Bennet, Alberta Watson, and Inna Korobinka in a really delicious comic turn as Svetlana -- the cagiest exotic dancer you've ever seen on the CBC.

The Border airs tonight at 9pm on CBC Television.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking the CTF

I TRIED TO DO something today that I can't remember ever trying to do before. I tried to watch something on CPAC. CPAC, of course, is the Canadian Parliamentary Affairs Channel. Anyway, today is the start of a week of hearings into the disastrous recommendations regarding The Canadian Television Fund, or CTF.

For those needing a catchup:

Last year a couple of cable moguls -- among them the delighfully fatuous Jim Shaw -- threw a tantrum by deciding to withhold their monthly payments to the Canadian Television Fund. Years ago, the Cable co's got a bunch of sweet, sweet breaks from the CRTC. And the payback (much like the "benefits" packages that get bandied about when one Canadian broadcaster gobbles up another) was to contribute to the CTF, a portion of the protected cable revenues they got in this sweet deal.

Jim Shaw, the millionaire monopolist, decided he didn't like the CTF and didn't want to play anymore after the CRTC denied his request to bring in more U.S. cable channels. He didn't get what he wanted, and so he went on a rampage.

Shaw's quite a character. He's famous for wielding his public utility as a private fiefdom -- by refusing to carry channels that disagree with his conservative mindset (Nobody wants to see the gay people!) and playing fast and loose with facts. His little pogrom against the CTF was backed up with months of slanted ads which misrepresented just about everything on the subject of Canadian television.

Oh yeah. He also hates Trailer Park Boys.

Anyway, incredibly, anywhere else the reaction might have been quick and fierce. But this is Canada. So instead a report was struck -- and the recommendations released last year were simply ... dumb. They recommended splitting the fund into two -- one that Shaw and his minions could their grubby little mitts on to fund and support the kinds of program that reflect "their" Canada. And the idiot stepchild fund -- the "heritage" fund. For, you know, "worthy" projects. (Read: crap nobody would ever watch and a fund that we can slowly choke with no money because no one will care.) The other big change - this new spiffy cable fund would relax the rules so that more American content could reign. It wouldn't have to be quite "as" Canadian. Because more American tv is definitely what this country needs.

The CRTC called for comment, and they received a record number of complaints -- most of the mail they received were very against the harebrained, ill-thought out plan.

So today in Ottawa a week of hearings start. Up today was Shaw Communications and the Writers Guild of Canada. Later this week -- on Friday, in fact, the commission will hear from actual creatives -- among them Karen Walton (Ginger Snaps, Queer as Folk, ) Aaron Martin (Degrassi, The Best Years,) David Barlow (The Border, Blue Murder) and Karen McClellan (Show Me Yours, Robson Arms, Alice, I Think)

The cynic in me worries at the Friday presentation. Because it could very well follow the corporate media script we saw at the last CRTC hearing -- where the demands of the huge networks and broadcasters got front page stories, and the presentations by the creative community were basically ignored. (Thank you, Big Media! You're welcome, tiny little citizen nothing!)

As an experiment -- watch the coverage today and tomorrow of Shaw's Charges, and see the play it gets. Then see the coverage the actual creative people get, presenting on a Friday, after weekend deadlines for the Dailies have past. This is how it goes in this country. Worship the power structure, don't celebrate the individual. It's the Canadian way.

But that's a much bigger topic. For now, coming full circle, I went to CPAC, because you'd think that something that was being done by the government to do with changing broadcasting would be on the government affairs channel.

Nope.

I love CSPAN and CSPAN2 in the USA. If you've got any wonky tendencies, they can be like manna from heaven. To be fair, CPAC also does show the daily parliamentary question period, which is the closest thing we have in this country to political bloodsport. (Imagine if Prez GW had to face questioning from the opposition every single day...) but for now, no love from CPAC. They're showing a Senate hearing. (Note to any curious American viewers, the Senate in Canada is not like the Senate in the USA. It's like, oh, I don't know, more like the Old Uncle Cletus Retirement Home for Political Hackery)

On the CRTC site, you can apparently listen to the hearing -- but alas, only if you're on a PC. Oh. The Irony. Let's just let it hang there in the air.

The only reason I'd be considering listening in in a million years, of course, is to see if there's been any last-minute twigging of the Shaw presentation. After all, the landscape and narrative on Canadian Tv has changed considerably in the last few weeks. But then again, it's probably not going to matter. A guy who's been lying for months won't mind throwing out a few more lies on the way to his spin, which basically amounts to, "It's my pipe, I should decide what you get to see."

I trust Maureen Parker and the WGC will do their able best to put forth the Cassandra position. It would be wondrous if just one of the commissioners grasped the social implications of the fact that "English Canada" is the only place in the industrialized world where homegrown shows aren't in the top 10 -- and that now, finally, when some shows are getting traction -- maybe we shouldn't strangle them in the crib.

But I'm not gonna hold my breath.

John Doyle from the Globe and Mail will apparently be taking a looksee at the proceedings. If you want to know what's going on at the circus, spend a loonie and pick up the Globe.

Just don't expect to see it on CPAC. Or, um, be able to listen if you have a Mac.

You know, the computer creative people use.

All this for a fund, the CTF, which definitely does have its shortcomings. But the Canadian way -- to throw the baby out with the bathwater -- is just a disaster waiting to happen. If only the chuckleheads on the commission can be made to see that.

Anyway, while they're all arguing about that little aspect of TV's past, Henshaw's got his last dispatch from NATPE up where he talks about the medium's future.

And Pal Dixon's got another great post from the TV Director's point of view. See, that fits so nicely into the part of the making TV narrative that the Jim Shaw's will never understand -- there are many, many ways something can go wrong -- and having smart creative people in charge with the room to effect real change is your only hope of letting things go right.

Course, you still may wind up with Trailer Park Boys. But that's okay. Some of us love that kind of thing. And there's more of us than there are millionaire silver spoon mogul wannabes who are only where they are because Daddy built up a nice big business for them to splash around in.

Finally, if you want to read the CTF's own spin on how it's been doing, click here. Sure, it's spin. But I guarantee you it's closer to the truth than anything the CRTC will hear out of Jim Shaw's mouth today.

* * *

UPDATE: Oh My God. Unbelievable. The first report from CP about the hearings is up. Jim Shaw didn't show. Why? He threw another tantrum:

The hearings got off to a rocky start Monday with news that one of the key reasons for the review, cable-distributor Jim Shaw of Shaw Communications Inc. (TSX:SJR.B), announced he would boycott the hearings because CRTC head Konrad von Finckenstein would not be chairing.

Instead, the hearings are being chaired by Rita Cugini, the regulator's regional commissioner for Ontario. A spokesman for the CRTC said the three-member panel was chosen for its broadcasting experience and that the final decision of the regulator will be taken by all the members.

Shaw and Quebecor's Videotron caused a crisis in the 12-year-old system about a year ago when they temporarily suspended payments, saying that the CTF had squandered their money by producing unpopular shows. The CTF obtains about $150 million in annual financing from private cable and satellite subscribers and another $120 million from government.

So let me get this straight -- you throw an entire industry into disarray, LIE about it for MONTHS, and then when the landscape CHANGES, and proves that you're full of gas, you don't show up at the hearing YOU CAUSED because DADDY'S not chairing it?

How is it possible that anyone in the country takes this guy seriously?

UPDATE2: Yup, okay. A couple people emailed me to let me know that you can watch the hearing on CPAC's site. Just what I wanted to do. Watch TV on my computer.

Oh the irony.

The Fyoouuchure is Nowww.

YES, YES. JUST about every news site you want to surf to right now is saying that the WGA and the AMPTP are close to a deal to end the writers strike, now in its fourth month.

I'll believe it when I see it. Keep your expectations low.

And while you're at it, why not take a look at these interesting reports Jim Henshaw filed from the NATPE convention in Vegas last week.

The Jeff Zucker speech is interesting, though Henshaw continues his inexplicable admiration for the weaselly and odious. Jesus, Jim. Jim Shaw and Jeff Zucker, too? What's next? Spooning with Nick Counter?