Getting Past the Gatekeeper

This is one of those stories that is different depending on where you live.
If you're an American writer living in L.A., your paths and ways "in" could fill several books, and all sorts of handy advice can be gleaned out in the scribosphere from all those guys way more successful than me.

So this post isn't so much about the politics or tricks of getting your stuff read in Mammon. Sorry. You can stop reading now if you want to.

Outside of the American system, driven by the purity of eyeballs and the quest for audience, things get a little weird. In Canada, in Great Britain, I imagine in Australia and probably everywhere else that's NOT the USA, you have to go through some combination of commissioning editors, network people, or quasi-governmental funding agencies.

(I know you have to eventually go through network people in the USA too, but what they're ruled by, I submit, is simpler to understand. Fear and money is always easier to understand.)

The problem of "How do you get past the gatekeeper" has been in the back of my mind for a while. It came to the forefront this morning with an example that I think illustrates the problem -- at least here in Canada.

On the front cover of today's National Post -- one of Canada's two national newspapers, the above-the-fold story is about a lawsuit. At a froofy do celebrating Maclean's Magazine's 100th anniversary (it's like the Canadian TIME Magazine. Stress ...LIKE) Disgraced Media Baron Conrad Black (kind of like the Canadian Rupert Murdoch. Stress ...LIKE) served a libel suit on a writer named Peter Newman. (Um...he's just a writer.) I didn't see the kind of play the story got in the Globe and Mail, but Toronto's other Broadsheet, The Star, played it quite prominently, too -- I believe on the front page.

What does this have to do with getting Television ideas and scripts past the gatekeeper? Hang on. I'm getting there.

This is a story about society people suing each other. Is it news? Debatable. It's certainly media gossip, and should definitely be played as such. But the fact that it gets played so prominently on front pages (and though I haven't listened today, I'm pretty sure it's a big topic on CBC Radio, too) indicates what's out of whack in the mediasphere in Canada. Though they'd be loathe to admit it, there's a rampant provincialism at work, that vastly overestimates the importance of issues like this to the population at large.

Outside of Toronto, Canadians constantly complain of a "Toronto bias" which I've been senstive to, since I'm not originally from here either. But over the years I've come to conclude that it's not a Toronto bias so much as a favouring of these kinds of stories.

The other recent example I can think is a literary prize called the Giller Awards, which gets massive coverage every year, completely out of whack with the degree to which regular people care about it.

Understand that I'm not saying you don't cover literary awards. I'm not a savage. I'm saying that the news judgement in the media here tends to favour rarefied things of limited interest to people outside that society group. Society balls are not news. But sometimes, here, they're treated as such. On your average Sunday, the New York Times does a far better job covering a wider spectrum of arts, high, low, and middle, than does the weekend Globe & Mail.

What does this disconnect have to do with commissioning editors or funding agencies? (Okay, you've been patient.)

The people reading scripts, deciding on stories to put forward are usually people who strive to be like the people up in the rarefied air. They identify with that strata, and like good little strivers, tend to put forward ideas and talent that appeal and conform to that mindset. When they do deign to do something "populist," it smacks of condescension, and it sinks below the waves without a ripple.

This is especially true at CBC -- but it's also something you'll see in various points at a lot of the funding agencies. A lot of the smaller channels and specialties do have a better handle on who's actually watching and what they actually like. But they have far less money to spend, and far less influence, too.

The problem of the out-of-touch-Gatekeeper is not a small one. Because the arts media in this country all strive, for the most part, to be part of the rarefied group, you don't get a lot of critical coverage of, say, Candadian films that don't appeal to most Canadians, or TV shows that portray a world that's very different from the world that most Canadians experience. TV producers and writers shouldn't want to go to events with the president of the TD Bank Hedge Fund. I don't even know what that is. But it doesn't sound like fun.

Here's the worst part: there's no real incentive to change, because people who fail to deliver an audience don't ever lose their jobs. Most of the money in Canadian TV is made from re-broadcasting US TV, anyway.

The fact that no one has examined Corner Gas, and to a lesser extent, Trailer Park Boys, and tried to understand why they resonate, completely flummoxes me.

They succeed because somehow they got on the air -- they go over the head of the rare air types and right into the homes of Canadians. And like Hockey Commentator Don Cherry (who the CBC tried to fire, then found themselves in the middle of a shitstorm revolt and backed off) people watch them because they're relevant to the 29 million people who don't care about 90% of what's in the Arts section in weekend Globe & Mail.

By the way, Quebec doesn't have this problem. Tons of popular films. Tons of popular homegrown shows. They'll tell you it's because of the language barrier. Don't you believe it.

So say you're a writer trying to reach an audience. Your problems are twofold: do you play the game and show the Gatekeepers the kinds of things they want to see, that conform to the people they'd like to be, and the country they'd like to show? (In which case you may indeed have a very nice career and may even get invited to parties where important people sue each other.) Or do you write for a show that you think will connect with the people?

Decide. Good luck with that. And let me know how it goes, ok? I'd really like to know.

Now... international scribes -- how does it work in your neck of the woods? How do you get past the mighty Gatekeepers? I'm interested to know.