Need a Laugh? (Without Looking at your RRSP or 401K?)

THE L.A. TIMES, reporting on this year's pilot season, has news that should surprise precisely nobody:

Of 71 scripted pilots in contention for slots at the five networks, 33 are half-hour comedies and 19 of those are multi-camera formats -- shows taped before a live audience, and sometimes enhanced by laugh tracks. Today, only CBS airs multi-cam sitcoms.

The multi-cam sitcom, such as legendary hits "I Love Lucy" and "Cheers," was once the dominant format in which to televise comedies, as much for conveying a theater-like intimacy to home audiences as for its relatively cheap production costs. But within the last decade, multi-cam sitcoms began to disappear, while single-camera comedies like "30 Rock" and "The Office," with its movie-like freedom, started to rise in prominence.

"The industry had been moving away from multi-cameras out of a sense that other formats offer more creative freedom," said Jamie Erlicht, president of programming at Sony Pictures Television. "But there's room for both and there's a real appetite in these economic times for the tried and true multi-camera format."

Sony, which produces the multi-cam "Rules of Engagement" for CBS, is also behind 10 of the comedies under consideration this pilot season. A year ago, Sony commissioned a study to determine how a change in government or the economy could affect television habits. Its conclusion was that this pendulum would swing away from dramas. Six of the shows on Sony's slate are traditional sitcoms, including "AB FAB," a remake of the popular British series "Absolutely Fabulous" for Fox.

While Fox has a healthy animation comedy block on Sunday nights, it has failed to successfully develop a live-action series for some time. Its pilot slate includes two multi-camera comedies, two single-cameras, one hybrid, and a one-hour comedy.

"Post-9/11, reality TV was very, very fresh to the audience and took up a lot of the space that comedies did," President of Entertainment Kevin Reilly said. "Right now, people are angry. That's where comedy historically has come into play -- when you need someone to voice something in a way that you can hear it."

So there it is. It'll be interesting to see -- if even ONE of the multicam comedies hits in any significant way, watch for all the "death of comedy" talk to simply disappear.

Painful.

JAIME WEINMAN thinks he's the only guy in the world who cares about the cuts to music in TV shows that get released on DVD. He's not, of course. So far this year, I've not bought the DVD of the British show SKINS, which I otherwise would have grabbed, due to music substitution. There's a couple more, too, which I just can't remember right now. And don't even talk to me about WKRP.

Add to that list Andy Richter Controls the Universe, the engaging 2 season long show that shows in this YouTube clip, just how companies not wanting to pony-up for music rights completely pooches the show. Ugh. This is really, really painful to watch.

Paranoia Strikes Deep

THE MORE I think about it the more this makes sense. The next logical step after suing your customers like the RIAA, and seeding malware or tracker torrents to combat piracy could just be ... self spoiling?

So I had a late meeting last night. Which means I wasn't home to watch HOUSE, which is one of the few network shows I watch every week. In fact, now that baseball's back, I can think of nothing more relaxing than flipping between HOUSE and four or five baseball games. Mmmm. Cool down the head at the end of day.

Now if you're a HOUSE person or a habitue´of the gossip rags, you'll know that there was a rather big and surprising happening on HOUSE last night. Which was spoiled for me at roughly 12:01 A.M. EST (or one MINUTE after the show ended on the west coast) in an email, and a Facebook message I got on my phone. Sigh. Perils of the modern world.

...Except...

What if it's not? What if this is a grand, concerted effort to make sure we all watch shows off air again? "The Only Way to Stay Safe From Spoilers -- Watch As It Happens!" I can see the Soviet style propaganda posters now.

I imagine squads of poorly paid peons dropping truth bombs from deep within the FOX complex in a bunker in Phoenix.

"Tivo THIS, you anti-market based hippie." Darth Vader = Luke's father. Ha ha ha hah ha!

Could happen.

State of Play

FOR BRITISH TVPHILES, the news that Paul Abbot's excellent 2003 miniseries State of Play was being remade for American audiences came as a bit of a puzzler, mostly because it was being condensed in a two hour movie, and it was hard to imagine how that could work.

Having rewatched State of Play again recently on DVD I can tell you that it shares a flaw with more recent vintage short run series like Jekyl: it starts like gangbusters and kind of peters out at the end. So that, plus this article, gives me new hope that maybe the movie won't be so bad. Plus, hey...Helen Mirren.

Much harder was shrinking the story to two hours. Mr. Hauptman and Matthew Michael Carnahan, the film’s original writer (whose credits include “The Kingdom” and “Lions for Lambs”), mapped out the entire series and then began eliminating things that didn’t seem essential. They were encouraged by Paul Abbott, creator of the BBC’s “State of Play,” who told them the amount of new information added over the six hours wasn’t as much as they thought. “In some ways the series is just a great piece of six-hour tap dancing,” Mr. Macdonald said.

But Mr. Carnahan’s script was still very long, and when Mr. Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland”) came on board, he hired two new writers, Tony Gilroy and Billy Ray, to simplify it.

Entire characters were dropped, like a brash young journalist with father-son issues, played by James McAvoy in the original. “That was gut-wrenching,” Mr. Hauptman said. And one of the last things to go was an affair between Cal McAffrey, the lead journalist and a friend of the accused member of Parliament, and the M.P.’s wife. It was probably the single strongest story line in the original, because of the way it moved some of the story’s larger themes into the bedroom. But in two hours, Mr. Macdonald said, there wasn’t room for it to be a believable relationship, so it became part of the back story instead, something that had happened in the past.

Eric Fellner, of Working Title Films, which co-produced the movie, also insisted that the resolution at the end be clearer. “You can have all sort of loose ends in a six-hour series that you can’t have in a movie,” he said. “Television and movies are ultimately very different. In TV it’s the beginning that counts. With movies it’s the last 15 minutes or so.”

Playing for Keeps

IF YOU'RE HOME tonight and looking for something to watch, may I direct you to a "ripped from the headlines" TV movie written by the incomparable Shelley Eriksen? Playing for Keeps airs tonight at 8pm on CTV.

You can find out more about the show, and its lead actor, Jennifer Finnigin (Close to Home) in this Globe article.

The $4.7-million, two-hour film is based on the trials and tribulations of Kimberly Van De Perre, a sports groupie who had an affair - and a son, Elijah - with Vancouver Grizzlies basketball player Theodore (Blue) Edwards.

A vicious battle at the time, Canada's highest court eventually overturned a controversial Appeal Court decision that had ruled Elijah would be better off growing up in a black household, and had given custody of him to Edwards and his wife who were living in the southern United States.

In Shelley Eriksen's script, the names and some events have been fictionalized. The sports groupie is Nicole Alpern (Finnigan), who falls in love with pro basketball player Ty Rivers (24's Roger Cross). Alpern's lawyer Peter Marcheson is played by Doug Savant of Melrose Place and Desperate Housewives.

"The story we tell is not cliché at all," says Finnigan, who broke into acting at the age of 17 when she landed a part on the kids' show The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo in Montreal.

"We don't victimize my character too much, nor do we vilify the basketball player. We try to be respectful of all the points of view."

The Times is a Real Laugh Riot

IN THE A&L section of today's New York Times, there's a couple of very different, and informative takes on comedy. First, Michael Cieply profiles Shawn Levy, the Director of the very-family friendly Night at the Museum, and its upcoming sequel, about mining the type of material that appeals to the widest possible audience:

And to talk with Mr. Levy and some of his allies is to realize that big, inclusive comedies — those with a real shot at universal appeal — are an exercise more complex than the arch humor of a “Superbad,” or the druggy in-jokes of a “Pineapple Express,” both of which reflect the hip but narrower approach of Hollywood’s reigning comic king, Judd Apatow.

The most successful in the genre, like “Home Alone,” “Meet the Fockers,” or “Ghostbusters” have wrapped occasionally sharp-edged physical humor, notable star performances and more than a few eye-catching special effects around a warm, forgiving approach to life and laughter. But it has been six years since a family comedy swept the Memorial Day box office, when “Bruce Almighty,” which starred Jim Carrey, did in 2003.

For more than a year Mr. Levy resisted entreaties to direct “Night at the Museum,” a project that Fox had owned for a decade, but finally agreed after reading a draft of the script that included some revisions by Scott Frank, now a regular collaborator. “He made me see that it was really a father-son story,” Mr. Levy said. “I saw the soft center.”

Certainly “Smithsonian” does not stray too far from a key element — basic human warmth — that the most successful comedies share. Cowboys and critters aside, the “Night at the Museum” movies are much the same. At bottom the first is about a divorced father (Ben Stiller) who wins back the respect of his doubting son. In the second Mr. Stiller’s character, with a hand from that son, must regain the trust of a museum full of creatures he abandoned in pursuit of material success. Among all the gags, one character after another does his bit to help the wayward father figure out what he truly loves in life, all of them.

But to deliver its lesson in a slick, funny package that plays to all ages and around the globe is a complicated bit of work.

That's the thing about comedy -- and why, more often than not, it ends up in an argument about subjective taste. So if you're not one of those people who likes the idea of "the soft centre," maybe Dave Itzkoff's profile of Jody Hill, the writer/director of Observe and Report is more your speed:

With the briefest of résumés he has already evolved a storytelling style predicated on awkward comic moments meant to provoke cringes as much as laughs, and offbeat, even unlikable protagonists.

“Observe and Report” stars Seth Rogen as a pathetic mall security guard who sees an opportunity for glory when his shopping center is besieged by a flasher. The film follows Mr. Hill’s independent debut, “The Foot Fist Way,” a comedy about an overweight, overconfident martial arts instructor, and his HBO series “Eastbound and Down,” about a relentlessly arrogant ex-major-league pitcher.

Mr. Hill does not deny that his characters are jerks, but they are his jerks.

“The average Joe doesn’t think of himself as an average Joe,” he said. “He thinks of himself as the star of his own movie.” He added: “I don’t find much in the comedies I’ve been seeing to get excited about. I’ll watch ‘City of God’ and laugh more.”

The profile doesn't back away from the fact that much of Hill's comic territory is mined from a place of anger. Depending on your taste, that might be the reason why the movie appeals to you -- but it also might be the reason why an Observe & Report will never do the business of a family-friendly film like Night at the Museum.

There's no right and wrong here. Both starting places -- warmth or anger -- are fine places to start your exploration of a comic theme. But they are different strands of the comedic DNA.

I've found a lot of the time, in development, screenplays get into trouble when they try to cross-pollinate those streams. This is where a knowledge of who your audience is and what they want isn't being a sellout, or writing for the market instead of yourself.

The market is an idiosynchratic place, and nowhere is this more so than with the comedy -- a form that has to fight cultural differences and reference points to translate. You can tell a lot about a culture by what they laugh at. The fact that both these forms -- the Family comedy and the darker, edgier Hill kind of show, or its prettier cousin: the attitude at the bottom of the well of the Apatow school (which also comes from anger,) both thrive in Hollywood just goes to show you how what a crossroads our culture finds itself at today.

The negotiations required to reach a mass audience aren't just complex: sometimes they're simply a bridge too far.

For a certain kind of viewer, the heart of darkness at the core of the comedy is the whole blessed point.

Iiiiiiiiiiiit's SATAN!

MY POOR FRIEND Dennis Heaton (Blood Ties, FIDO) is liable to be up for a lashing from the fundies, thanks to an article in today's Playback Daily.

Cleverly titled "CFC sides with Satan" (Yup, that's gonna look great on a lot of search listings...) it outlines the twisted (oh, and groundbreaking!) shorts now underway, helmed by the man who should never, ever be referred to as "the other Den(n)is."

A series of five-minute shorts about mismatched roommates -- one of them, Old Nick himself -- has gone to camera at the Canadian Film Centre through its TV pilot program. My Pal, Satan by writer/creator Dennis Heaton features Rachel Wilson as a "fresh-faced Pollyanna" who happens to split her rent with the Devil, played by Jefferson Brown.

Their clashes range from mundane matters, such as toilet seat placement, to the cosmic.

Heaton (Fido, Blood Ties) also showruns, working with CFCers including producer Bryce Mitchell (For All the Marbles) and director Vivieno Caldinelli (Hotbox).

The six shorts are expected to be online at the CFC site, perhaps by spring, with hopes of snaring a broadcaster's attention.

Notice to fulminating fundies: Heaton is more than up for the job of Secular Paladin of truth, skepticism, and the frickin hilarious.

Free Tickets To the WGC Awards: A Dead Things Contest

A COUPLE OF entries have trickled in so far. And I must say, props to reader T. who's currently in the lead with an entry that I will never, ever, ever, EVER be able to reproduce here.

But I appreciate the vitriol and what I can only interpret as an effort to invent ENTIRELY NEW SWEAR WORDS. If you missed it the first time, here's the rules... and I've added a THIRD topic for your consideration:

DEAD THINGS ON STICKS WGC SCREENWRITING AWARD
TICKET GIVEAWAY RULES AND REGS


In order to qualify for the ticket giveaway, you have to write something for me. You don't have to be a writer -- the job is open to any kind of broadcast industry professional. Each ticket is a $100 value!

You have a choice of two three topics:

• My Daily Creative Process -- this is the topic of preference, most likely, for writers or aspiring scribes. You can be funny, disconnected and discombobulated, earnest, tongue-in-cheek, reflective, accusatory, weepy, manic, or even creepy (though I'd advise against the latter.) Remember the takeaway: it's fun if you offer some useful tip, hard-earned truth, or simple homespun advice about your secret for getting through the day without letting procrastination defeat you.
  
  If you're not a writer, or if your process is protected like the Colonel's 11 Herbs and Spices (ps. the secret ingredient is fear) you might want to wax eloquent on our other topic:
  
  
• If I Could Change One Thing About My Job --aha..the preferred topic of overworked production secretaries, P.A.'s, story coordinators, 3rd A.D.'s, Closed Captioners, Sales Assistants, Junior Publicists and Hobos. It doesn't have to be a slam-fest. Don't jeopardize your low-paying, low-status position. You can write about your job in the industry, or the job that you do to try and steal some hours to be creative while hoping that you'll graduate one day to having the latter pay the bills.
  
  
• [NEW] Exit the Gas -- What happens when venerable Canadian TV success story Corner Gas leaves the field? Will it be immediate chaos? Will Little Mosque finally start winning awards? Will crazed prairie hordes descend on the cities since there's no longer not a lot going on? Will another show step up to become Canada's best-loved homegrown series? Will Jon Dore get the Order of Canada? Any nightmare scenario, fabulist fantasy, or wish fulfilling, odd and twisted conspiracy theory you want to envision -- let'er rip.
  

Obviously, these shouldn't be screeds designed as a cry for help or a settling of scores. Any essays of this type will be disqualified.

The essays (800 words max) can be submitted by email to heywriterboy@hotmail.com They should also include a description of yourself, up to 15 words in length, and phone & email contact information (which will not be shared with telemarketers, government officials, or online dating services) so I can get in touch with you. The subject heading should be "DTOS Screenwriting Awards Contest Entry."

HOW YOU WIN:

There are two tickets available. They will be awarded thusly:

ONE TICKET & THE CANADIAN SCREENWRITER SUBSCRIPTION will be awarded to the essay judged the best overall. The decisions of the Sticksville Judges is final, and involves a highly technical process employing super intelligent readers, helper monkeys, and a poultice made from the tears of unicorns. That essay will be reproduced in this space. The winner will also be entitled to be referred to at the awards as "the Squire of Sticksville."

ONE TICKET will be awarded in a RANDOMLY SELECTED DRAW of all entrants.

By submitting to the contest, you give Dead Things ON Sticks the right to reproduce any part of your essay.

There you go. Tickets are non-transferrable. To claim tickets, winners will have to show I.D. at the door of the awards.

DEADLINE FOR ENTRY is 5:00 p.m., FRIDAY APRIL 10th.

Treat Yourself

I'M JUST TOO busy at the moment to really be able to do a proper review for IN TREATMENT, besides twittering things like "OMG Crack Crack Crack!" but if you have interest in the show, you should check out Alan Sepinwall's interesting article about the behind the scenes process of making the show, and why Season 2 is mor of an "adaptation" rather than a "translation" of the Israeli source material.

Warning, though, there's mild spoilage over who the new patients are -- if you'd like to meet them fresh, don't read further, and don't click the link.

I will say of the new cast members, I find Allison Pill and John Mahoney the most affecting.

Both HBO in the USA and HBO Canada here are following a different strategy this year with the show. Research showed that most people watched the show On Demand in chunks, or saved it up on PVR, rather than watch the half-hour, one ep a night.

So the eps are now split up over two nights, with 2 eps premiering Sunday April 5 at 9:00pm, and the remaining three the next night at 9:00 pm. That pattern, 2 Sunday, 3 Monday, will recur throughout the run.

Random TV Thoughts

IN THE MIDDLE of three things, so because we haven't done it for awhile, a couple of Big TeeVee (TM) observations and questions.

(Minor spoilage below for...Life on Mars series finale and Being Erica's season finale)

• Niiiiice twist at the end of the BEING ERICA season 1 finale. Resolution to the season-long arc about the brother and ... a new therapist? Whatever can it all mean?
  
  
• For the life of me, I cannot figure out if the finale of the American LIFE ON MARS was good, bad, trippy, cheesy or just weird. I suspect it's a combination of all those things. And there certainly are things that don't track. I mean, if Sam is actually in 2035, then his memory of 2008 might be nostalgia (although why anyone would be nostalgic and want to go back to that ass-year is beyond me) but then his going back to 1973 is roughly akin to me going back to 1952. I don't know anything about 1952. I mean, not really. Is that around when the Rosenbergs died? Ike would have been elected President. That's it. That's what I know about 1952. Also, Sam's big reaction of looking up and seeing the Twin Towers in the pilot...would he really have an emotional reaction to a set of buildings he'd never seen in life?
  
  Yet for all the tacked on feel -- the little rover-y thing that was all over the finale showed up in a very early episode...so there's evidence to say this is the ending they wanted all along. Like I said. good? bad? trippy? cheesy? or just weird?
  
  
• Still watching UNITED STATES of TARA and starting to feel a little like what I imagine female viewers must feel like watching a Judd Apatow movie. There's not a single truly interesting, developed male character on the show. I love John Corbett, but that character is totally coasting on the actor's charm. The son...the Canadian kid whose name I can never remember...plays his part well, but he's a variation on that stock role I've seen in a hundred other things. When you find yourself hoping Patton Oswalt (who's great in everything) will show up more, you know there's trouble.
  
  
• I got screeners for the second season of IN TREATMENT from TMN. The second season premieres this weekend. I've watched all of week one.
  
  Quite simply, this show is crack. Pure, 100% crack. Damn.
  

WTF? OPF (Other People's Foolin')

YOU KNOW ONE of the sucky things about being a writermole is that when the weather turns and the spring comes, you must stay inside lest the frolic take your fancy. So it is that I'm reading and re-reading scripts, having a call, and getting ready to revise a freelance draft that missed le mark, while sipping Pellegrino with lemon and feeling the Sun Beat through the solarium window. It's not being outside, but it's a pretty good second. I feel like a cat.

Anyway, another break and lo and behold, some other people's pretty funny April Fool's jokes.

Did you know that the UK Paper The Guardian is soon going all-Twitter? Or what about this fantastic on Dashboard TV service?

Meanwhile, Bill Brioux thinks Obama should solve the CBC crisis by firing the middle managers (not a bad idea.) Alex has got a modest new proposal from Konrad, Google -- who LOVES its April Fool's jokes, introduced CADIE -- a sentient computer that gets better when you hit her homepage... and then there's the Hotelicopter.

Of course, in many ways, the BBC's spaghetti harvest is still the grandaddy of them all.

Oh, and the snow in Vancouver today was not an April Fools joke. Still, let me the first Torontonian to say...ahem... HAHAH!

Anybody else got anything awesome, put it in the comments below.

What A Fool Believes

FIRST OFF, AS far as I know, CTV is not buying Global, and there is no imminent rise of CTV Canglobemedia in the offing.

But this morning's little April Fool's debacle, meted out in little controlled bursts, offers, I think, a few teachable moments in relation to screenwriting.

First, though, a personal observation. I remember when I first hit school after we moved to Canada, when April Fool's Day came up, I was bewildered by the insistence that the whole thing was supposed to end at noon. Teachers would be adamant about the fact...something that if you played a joke after noon, then you were the fool, bub.

I've spent a little over twenty years now thinking that's bullshit. Something the teachers made up to snap the lid back on the chaos and get control of their classrooms.

So this morning I'm trying to decide when to pull the pin on the whole thing -- and I do a little research. And what do you know? Apparently, in certain nations such as the UK and Canada, the tradition is indeed that the jokes end at noon. Why was I so skeptical of the fact? Because in OTHER nations, such as the USA and Ireland, you're fair game for the whole day. So how's about that?

Now...what we can learn from the April Fool's Joke and apply to the Craft of Screenwriting?

• Basic plausibility allows you to slip in the ridiculous; just like a spoonful of sugar making the medicine go down.
  
  The idea of Naked News replacing a National Newscast is pretty out there. But with the chaos and sturm and drang going down right now in Canadian media, the idea that Canwest and CTV might merge doesn't seem that far out of whack. It's a testimony to how ridiculous our media situation has become. You know, I type this right now and for all I know, hell, there could actually be talks going on. Would it really surprise you?
  
  The X Files got five good years (and another 3 besides) out of this kind of thing.
  
  
• Let the rope out slowly.
  
  Weaving a tale, laying a trap -- requires patience. Laying those cards down early is key. I actually paved the way for my post this morning with another post that seemed totally plausible. So plausible that more than a few people who cottoned onto the joke of the CTV Global merger still speculated as to what the "real" announcement at 5:30 would be.
  
  
• Details, details, details.
  
  The little things are always what sell it. BSG worked because it seemed to get some basic military stuff right. The terms, the actions, the jargon "felt" right. Similarly, E.R. raised the bar forever as to what you needed to know to sell a medical show. If you go back now and watch a medical show from the 70's, it's laughable. You understand everything the Doctors are saying. When's the last time that happened in real life? So I mixed in reality about the Minister making his visit to Flashpoint, the lobbying that's been done over the last little while, and mixed in references to stages being erected and traffic being snarled, and real-life details like people who actually want to buy some local stations and return them to the community. Drilling down to the detail makes your fiction sing.
  
  
• There's always a spoiler.
  
  This is useful mostly when it comes to notes. A lot of new writers I know are so in love with their material that they're completely unprepared to accept any criticism. It's one of the reasons I don't read new scripts anymore unless I'm being paid to do it. But just as damaging are the outliers who'll take your stuff in a direction that it shouldn't go because they won't play the game. If you have a reader who has no concept of willing suspension of disbelief, then you're going to get notes that want you to explain everything. Including terribly unimportant things.
  
  In this case, I had to hold back several comments from people who wanted to immediately spoil the joke. Part of this is the culture of the 'Net...all the commenters who want to be !First! to say something. It makes me a little sad on the April Fools' tip. I remember childhood, pre-internet, when part of the fun was really not being sure for a long time -- maybe even a whole day -- whether what you heard was a joke or not. For all we've gained in our speeded up world, I think we've lost something there.
  
  
• Reward your audience.
  
  In the end, I decided to add the joke about the immediate reduction in CanCon request because, well, we all need a bit of gallows funny, right? In the end you need to give the audience the release they crave -- an ending that makes sense, a payoff of some sort. I hope my silly little joke did that for you.
  
  Of course, as my friend Mattypants put it, I could be here a year from now talking about CTVCanCorus AstralRogersGoogle GlobeEastWesNorthSouthMedia.
  
  Although if that's the case, I'll probably be sleeping on someone's cot down in Silver Lake. Maybe Encino.

Thanks to Jim and Dix for playing with me....Have a good day!

CTV and Global Climb Into Bed

WOW. IN HIS inimitable way, Jim Henshaw actually tipped this last night when he broke the story that the assets of the Naked News were being transferred to Canwest Global for integration into its news structure.

Turns out there was more than a grain of truth to that. But it's only the first wave. Global will be rebranding its 11pm newscast as Global National Naked News in an attempt to compete with the talk shows on the other nets, and specifically Jon Stewart on CTV.

That's a deal that's supposedly been in the works for a long time. But it's been supplanted in recent weeks by the financial woes and sturm and drang over the network trouble.

If my sources are right (and I have several in both companies) today at 5:30, Ivan Fecan and Leonard Asper will meet on a stage at Queen and John street to announce that Global and CTV are merging.

The new company, CTV CanGlobemedia, will own several stations that compete in different markets, which the CRTC has up til now considered a no-go (they forced CTV to sell the Citytv stations to Rogers when they took over CHUM, remember.) But the prescence of Moore at today's presser suggests that those kinds of regulatory hurdles have all been worked out. I guess they had a lot to talk about in those dozens of lobbying meetings before the CRTC in the last few months.
CTV CanGlobemedia is also going to announce a massive rebranding for its two national networks, CTV and Global, and here's where the big gamble comes in. There's going to be a shuffling of U.S. program assets between the two stations. The 11 o'Clock Global National Naked News is going to be the flagship of the new network, which is being called "Global Dude."
"Global Dude" is going to focus all of its promotional, programming, and advertising might on male-centred series, specifically those that appeal to the 18-49 male demo that has flown conventional TV in droves over the last few years.

Low cost, guycentric Comedy Network shows like Keys To The VIP and The Jon Dore Television Show should find new audiences and new exposure on Global Dude, along side some of the "tougher" crime and guy shows: The Unit, Criminal Minds, 24, Dollhouse, The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, and two of the three CSI's.

CTV CanGlobemedia is also close to a deal where they will be simulcasting shock jock Howard Stern's morning Sirius Radio show five days a week from 7-10 am on Global Dude.

The third CSI, CSI: Miami, is being retained on the CTV network because of its high proportion of female viewers. CTV's U.S. program offerings are going to be aligned along a concerted and concentrated effort to appeal to Canada's female viewers. Global shows such as 90210, Brothers and Sisters, Bones, Project Runway Canada and The Office, will join CTV's heavy female favorites American Idol, Grey's Anatomy, Gossip Girl, Private Practice and the like.

Supposedly the sticking point that might have sunk the whole deal was both networks fighting over HOUSE. It's not clear who got that show. HEROES will go to Showcase.

Expecting a huge outcry from competition watchdogs and the like, CTV sweetened the pot by agreeing not to close the two local stations it announced it was closing last month. And the merged company will immediately offer stations in the money-sinkhole E! and A channel chains to community groups like the one being headed up by CHCH booster Donna Skelly.

It's thought that this is the sweetening the Government needed to sign off on pressuring the CRTC to rubberstamp the deal. The CRTC wanted to hold Hearings, but Moore indicated that Heritage was prepared to overrule whatever process the CRTC instigated to make the deal happen.

So today at 5:30, Moore will get up on the stage, flanked by Asper and Fecan, and say that they've saved local Television. Then, for the entertainment portion, Rockers Nickelback --- fresh off their massive Juno win, will perform a set said to "embody the spirit of 'Global Dude,'" followed by sensitive singer-songwriter Serena Rider and Nelly Furtado, who will "kick it for all the CTV girls." The event will be co-hosted by Rick the Temp, whose soft eyes make him a natural on his new home on CTV, beside Ben Mulroney, and Tanya Kim and Leah Miller, who'll apparently be hosting a new Friday night Wrestling show for the boys on Global Dude.
The show will also feature the first Live Remote from the Global National Naked News Team. They're going to have to figure that out by next winter.

CTV CanGlobemedia is expected to immediately petition the CRTC for a reduction in its CanCon obligations.

Beware the Moores

A COUPLE WEEKS AGO, The Honourable James Moore, Canadian Heritage Minister, made waves when he visited the set of CTV/CBS' Flashpoint. The meeting with the stars and writers was pressed into service by Heritage to make a special announcement, which turned out to be the creation of the new Canadian Media Fund, which is slated to replace the Canadian Television Fund in 2010.

Well, hang on to your hats, because Moore's canceled his schedule today and now there's supposed to be another big press avail and announcement in Toronto.

Toronto's Port Authority were contacted last week about using the old Rochester Ferry Terminal for the announcement, but that plan was discarded quickly, and no one gave a reason. That ferry terminal, of course, has served for the last two years as the backdrop and set for my ex-show, The Border. I don't know whether it's logistics that sunk the Ferry Terminal idea or something else.

Maybe whatever Moore's planning, the backdrop of a CBC show wouldn't be appropriate with all the stuff over the cuts still fresh. It's a pretty rainy day in Toronto, so their Plan B doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

Supposedly now the whole thing's going down at the old CHUM building at John and Queen around five-thirty p.m. If you go by John and Queen right now, John Street is blocked off between Queen and Richmond street, and a stage is being hastily erected like they do for the Muchmusic Video Awards.

A friend of mine who works as an editor in the building also told me that bigwigs have been going up to the big executive suite on the fifth floor since about 8am -- including Ivan Fecan and Leonard Asper from Canwest. This sounds like it's something a little more than just strategy for the upcoming OTA hearings.

Shoes Dropping

LOT OF CHATTER coming out of Canwest yesterday about possible BIG CHANGES afoot. Apparently some major meetings going on. Now I hear from somebody I know inside the old AA building at Bloor and Church that this morning there was a group of "heavily made up women with cheerleader looks" waiting at 15th floor reception. They were all ushered into a big boardroom for a meeting, very hush hush.

Whatever can it mean?