There's always a good argument here about what constitutes a "season." I'm of the opinion that a season is as the creators intended it to be...so if you had a 13 episode season when it was written and conceived, that's the season. Broadcast Networks, of course, get to promote it however they want. (Lifetime chose to call eps 13-22 of Blood Ties "season 2" -- which kind of confused some fans, and sort of bunged up the continuity we had going for the season long arcs, bu whatever.) There might be handwringing on the creative end when you realize they're rolling out 4 eps that were meant to be 10-13 as 1-4, but there's nothing to do about it. What do you think? Does the fact that they're calling Episode 10 of Season One of Flashpoint the 2nd season premiere matter? I guess the real answer is: only if it tanks.
And it didn't.
Over to Bernan:
It was a clean sweep for CBS on this second Friday of January 2009 with its combination of Ghost Whisperer (Viewers: 10.63 million; A18-49: 2.5 rating/8 share), the second season-premiere of Flashpoint (Viewers: 10.06 million; A18-49: 2.2/ 6) and Numb3rs (Viewers: 10.08 million; A18-49: 2.4/ 7). The positive news for Flashpoint, of course, was retention out of Ghost Whisperer of 95 percent in total viewers and 88 percent in the demo. In these tough economic times, it pays to shop around for quality Canadian programming. There is plenty of it.
So I guess expect some knocks. I'm not exactly happy about this, to tell you the truth. The problems creatives are fighting here -- for creative control, recognition of the showrunner, etc, etc, aren't going to be helped with all the pressure now to find a U.S. shotgun sugar daddy. "Pretty good" is the enemy of "great." And I'm firmly of the opinion that while you may be able to kludge a good show together if everything goes your way, unless the person calling the shots is a writer who understands the vision at that basic DNA level -- it's never going to be great. And no manner of sales Stateside is going to make the material better. Especially when grasping ego issues make the "sale" itself secondary to the access.
It's a dangerous thing when you give someone who's only giving you 2 or 300 K an episode carte blanche creative control. It's a small investment for them, but it's everything to you.
Then again -- the scuttlebut I've heard from people who have worked on both Flashpoint and The Listener (upcoming on NBC...sometime...) is that the U.S. network notes are sharp, and on-the-money. Wouldn't it be something if U.S. networks wound up forcing Canadian networks to raise their game in the provision of notes? Hmmm.
In any case, congratulations to Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern, and their hardworking fellow writers, including the Season 1 head writer Tassie Cameron. They don't get enough credit for the success of Flashpoint.
Now wouldn't it be interesting if the next time a U.S. net came knocking, they picked a show with an actual writer-showrunner?
Maybe Lee Goldberg should come up here and do his Germany talk. Not to the writers, Lee. To these guys.
20 comments:
Two shows do not a model make. We still have an opportunity to invent the thing.
Maybe we should stop thinking about the Canada/US development process as a one-way flow (i.e. pitch to Canadian network, shoot pilot, shop it in the US). Seems to me we are entering through the narrow end of the funnel.
Why not pitch to the US nets with an eye towards the copro? That way, the project starts in a system where the writer/showrunner is de rigueur. You may have to smuggle the Canadianess into the stories, but that's much easier from a power position.
...and yes, kudos to the creative team at Flashpoint for opening that door and keeping it open.
Let's hope their high tide floats all boats.
What you're saying makes all kinds of sense Wil...but my experience and others experience with the pitch toward copro with US nets objective has been met with some interest on occasion, but only if a US writer/showrunner or at very least a LA-based Canadian (or landed immigrant) takes over the project...leaving us pitching from up north in the dust and doesn't get 'us' any closer to running the ship in that model.
Or maybe thats what you're endorsing (and yes, big kudos to Flashpoint squad)
I hear you Wil, and Dix, too. Here's my fear though. With comments like Bernan's above I'm starting to fear there's this rolling boulder going down the hill putting WGA and WGC on a collision course. Look how fast the whole "runaway production" thing took steam.
The American cultural chauvinism is going to kick in at some point, here, and we're going to see trouble. Reason enough for Network types in the US to say they're not taking Canadian pitches. The once removed strategy of buying something only once it's in the development pipeline means that they're not necessarily skirting the WGA, right? They're just exercising all their options to cut costs.
Dix, I wasn't writing then, but you can tell lots of your stories about the reverse drain -- washed up hacks who couldn't get US work coming up here to be anointed "saviors" by easily dazzled Canadian networks with more money to spend then creative sense, not to mention the "fake Canaddians" getting passports to qualify for domestic tax status while never venturing outside the 213. But somehow if this thing catches fire, I don't see the WGA or American writers seeing that side of it.
That's the thing about the casual arrogance of the American worldview.
American writers who come up to Canada to work on tax credit shows = perfectly fine.
American networks that buy Canadian co-pro shows that use Canadian based WGC-writers? = the end of the fucking world.
At some point, my fear is that no matter how this is going to pit writers against each other. More than usual, I mean. Unchartered waters are scary waters.
WC, you're right that it hasn't worked before, but three points might hold sway:
1) The tectonic shift in the economics of US TV production changes the game a bit. It might make the Canadian creative position stronger. They've never needed us more.
2) If the show is handed to a LA based ex-pat or landed immigrant, and it has legs, then we are closer, because the show is setup under a writer/showrunner model. Should the showrunner leave, he/she could be replaced by another (Canadian) writer. But if the show starts with a producer as showrunner, they never give it up.
3) Don't discount the ability of a powerhouse US TV agent to negotiate the shit out of the package to your advantage. Don't have one? If you get major US interest in a project, you will.
Denis,
The end game here isn't to usurp the WGA or take over the TV industry. It's to change the Canadian model. The only way to do that is to introduce writer/showrunner projects into the system and let them take hold. Chris Haddock can't do it all on his own and if we can use the current (and possibly fleeting) US interest in copro to push things in that direction, then it's worth a try.
The creatives at Flashpoint don't have to worry about this. Their tickets have been punched. They have a hit show. They can work anywhere they want. But if we change the Canadian system, it will make it easier for the next generation knocking on the door.
Consider this all part of a spirited discussion, since I'm sure we're all pretty much in agreement, but Wil I question the notion that "...the tectonic shift in the economics of US TV production changes the game a bit and makes the Canadian creative position stronger..."
I would say that makes the dealmakers (the 'producers') up here stronger, but not necessarily the Canadian creatives stronger. Even the Flashpoint deal was driven by the nets and the dealmakers putting together the package as opposed to the creatives driving the bus, no?
To me, the economic shift just makes it easier for the producers to keep running the shows, as opposed to a Cdn. showrunner show model getting implemented.
Dix, you're absolutely right. Which is why I'm proposing an end run around Canadian producers.
If a writer goes to a Canadian producer with a project, the producer can dictate the terms. They have no interest in changing the Canadian system, since it works in their favour.
But if a writer gets network interest first (in a system that supports writer/showrunners) they he/she is in a much better position to negotiate creative control, or at the very least, to keep the creative control in the hands of writers.
Call me crazy, but if we want to push producers off the pedestal, we have to get some muscle behind us. An appeal to quality won't do it.
The American rebellion against the British wouldn't have worked without the French.
Am I saying that writers need to become their own producers? Maybe. Maybe we should.
Gotcha...yes, writers as producers tracks, because the deal is almost always going to come first with us going down.
Yes. And/Or -- we need to co-opt the next generation of Canadian producers.
There are people out there that don't want to "fulfill their creative dreams," half baked napkin shows that requires them holding a gun to the head of a golden goose/ writer monkey to get going...there are perfectly reasonable, practical people who would be happy to be the Producer of a good show, a successful show, a show that worked creatively and satisfied an audience. They're not in those positions of power yet. So maybe we do all need to learn producing, and then partner with those people.
It's a hard slog but it's a way easier slog than seeing half of the most craven CFTPA'ers try to learn to write.
And top talent have got to start walking away from non-writer showrunner shows -- where one of the writers is not at least at the level of control as one of the non writing producers.
I've done that already once.
The top WGC earners do it, and we'll start to get somewhere.
Not to turn this into another beer hall putsch, but yeah!
Yeah!
Now that's change we can believe in. We are the ones we've been waiting for. Yes we can.
Anything is possible. Anything.
Let's get off our asses.
US aren't interested in Canadian pitches, because they don't want to pay the freight. They like being able to pay acquisition money ($150,000 max.) per episode. And, Canadian networks are the same. If they pay the freight, they drive the train. It's their development, their series. So unless your American partner (and there is no such thing as an American cp-pro) is willing to put up about a million an episode, you'll be out of luck in Canada.
But there's always a first time...
Even though she's mostly always right, Deb loves to swoop in late and just suck all the fun out of the room...lol
Deb, that was true a year ago.
But CBS invested a third of your magic number in Flashpoint and stuck in Friday nights in the summer, against the Olympics, as filler. It performed. They moved it to Thursdays; it performed. Now it's a mid-season Friday performer and I wouldn't be surprised if they moved it behind Numbers or some such to maximize.
That's a lot of bang for their buck.
This stuff works its way FAST down here. US nets and cable are taking Canadian pitches. US agents are looking for Canadian projects. It's in the air.
I don't know how long it will last, or how it will all shake out, but it smells like opportunity to me.
Or we could just bitch out and go back to filling out CTF applications. Wheee!
Did I say Numbers? I meant CSI: Topeka.
the person who insists on creative control is the one who gets it, no matter the nationality.
Wil, they did fill out their forms. CTV sold Flashpoint to CBS "fully financed out of Canada." That was the attractive aspect of the show. The fact that it's a good show worked to everyone's advantage.
I don't understand the issue here. I'm not trying to be obtuse or smartass but I don't get it.
Are you pissed because the exec producers are getting credit for something they didn't write or is it more than that?
Do you think that because Flashpoint "made it" without a "showrunner" that other shows or producers are gonna say we don't need one?
I don't know if that is the lesson of Flashpoint, at least it hasn't been in the conversations I've had with network types around here. I think most people see it as a "right place, right time" kind of thing - a well made generic cop show, placed with a networks for whom that kind of show is and has always been their bread and butter. Not sure if the success is attributed to cutting out the showrunner.
If the issue is about the undue influence the minor partner in the co-pro has over the material, well my earlier remark was not completely in jest. Control goes to whoever wants it the most.
I've been on plenty of shows in the old days where there were three networks and generally the network who worked the hardest to get their way, got it. it didn't matter who was putting in the largest chunk of change, the person who got to steer the ship was the one who was always there.
I worked on a CBS/CBC co-pro once (well a CBS aquisition of a CBC show) and CBS won most of the time because they had an active presence on set and on location every day, the CBC types showed up for the wrap party and that was about it. It was also way easier to deal with the CBS notes because they were generally just standards and practices issues and not the continual Canadian "why why why whine" you spoke about earlier.
As for the "walking off the show" because you can't get the ideal working conditions, well, I''ve been there and done that many times. I don't do that any more because the only change it effected was measured solely by my bank account.
There's a few things mixed in there -- I think your point about whoever wants the control getting the control is good and probably very true.
I have heard through various other sources that the CFTPA's plan is to try to go hardline and say that "Canada does not have a showrunner system," and point directly to Flashpoint as their standard bearer.
Which would not be great.
In the end, the real issue here is are we going to be able to be storytellers that establish a creative vision and follow it through -- which gives us a shot at doing good work, or are we forever doomed to all become journeymen who get fired and hired at whim and are brought in to save all the animals after they've left the paddock fence open and burned down the barn?
I hear what you are saying, sorta but when you say the cftpa is going to "go hardline" and say we don't have a showrunner system what does that mean to us writer/producer types exactly? who are they going hardline to?
i've negotiated jobs where i have got as far as having final cut, negotiated others where my responsibilities end with the production draft. in some cases the producers have wanted me on the thing all the way thru, in others not so much.
but in all cases so far, it has been a negotiation and at the end of the day, it has been up to me to decide whether i wanted the job or not.
if the cftpa is going hardline and saying there are no such things as showrunners, how is this going to play out? iis it going to be some kind of mandated policty?
as it stands, i know some networks etc don't like hiring me because "they don't like to argue alla time" and others don't have such a big problem with that but in those cases it has had a lot to do with the various personalities involved.
If I knew where it was going, I'd be sipping 50 year old whisky in a deck chair on my private archipelago and not worrying about any of this.
If you're not "willing to fight alla time" then why should audiences be willing to watch?
I mean, it's not like it's a real fight. A fight about religion, or whether to have a baby or something. If you can't be bothered to have a creative discussion, then really, who are these people and why are they wasting the audience's time?
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