CSI and History: A Match Made in Mammon

JAIME WEINMAN, among others, has reported on the CRTC's final decision telling Alliance Atlantis that, um, no, CSI:NY reruns really don't belong on The History Channel, despite the fact that New York is a place where historical things, um, happened.

Alliance Atlantis has not yet announced how it’s going to deal with this ruling. Part of the point of the article was that the CRTC can make rulings, but there’s not necessarily any real mechanism for enforcing them. So it’ll be interesting to see if Alliance will comply with the order - thereby giving up one of the few obvious ratings-getters on History - or try to find some way around it. They could always replace it with CSI: Miami and claim that David Caruso is a historical artifact.

Playback had this to say:

In a July 25 letter to Alliance exec Elizabeth Duffy-MacLean, the feds conceded that "while an occasional episode may deal with a current or historical event, the series is clearly one that is about forensic investigations, not history or current events." AAC has been given until Jan. 1, 2008 to take "the necessary measures" to remove the show.

WGC chief Maureen Parker cheered the decision, remarking in a statement that the CRTC made the right decision and "restored integrity to the Canadian broadcasting system."

You could be forgiven if you choked a bit on that last one. I did. Anyway, Maureen Parker really does deserve credit for this -- she was the one driving it from the start. But let's step back for a second and ask, "what does it really mean?" "what does it really change?" and "what questions does this raise?"

First, to put things in perspective, CSI:NY has been running on History since last year. They have til Jan 2008 to remove it from their schedule. That means a solid year of pimping those reruns of a property they have an equity stake in. So don't cry for Alliance Atlantis.

Weinman states, and this is true, that there is really no mechanism by which the CRTC can force History to remove the reruns. That's true as far as it goes. But Alliance Atlantis is set to go before the regulator soon with its plans to merge, get bought, or otherwise corporately fornicate with Canwest Global and Goldman Sachs. So now may not be the time to thumb your nose at the regulator.

Especially since, with the CHUM/CTV decision last month, the CRTC seems to have awoken from a slumber and suggested that maybe they will occasionally do their jobs.

It's a measure of just how laissez faire the whole system has become to corporate interests that all this seems to be coming as a surprise. I'm sure that AA never gave a second thougth to the whole CSI thing; just as CTV thought they could bulldoze the "twin sticks" prohibition when they went before the regulator.

The companies are not used to being told "no" by the CRTC. They've gotten what they wanted for so long, that it's kind of set things a bit on edge.

It would be wonderful to think that this new muscle on the part of the CRTC is going to benefit the viewer, long term, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

In the short term, though, it's definitely good news for any cable subscriber who wonders why they're paying for all these channels that never seem to be showing what they got their license to show.

It happens everywhere, I'm sure, but in Canada in particular, we've gotten used to the rinky-dink process of shovelling programs bought over three or four channels, some with nominal or (in the case of History) non-existent connections to the themes they purport to represent.

But before everybody gets all gee whiz fight the power here, understand that I don't think that Alliance Atlantis did anything particularly wrong -- under the terms of the way the game's been played the last few years, I mean. All these channels are showing stuff they shouldn't be showing -- stretching their purchases till they snap. If the result is a shoddy and confusing viewing experience for the audience, well, what do you expect? They're corporate. They pushed. Nobody said no. What did you think was going to happen?

Now that the CRTC has started saying no...it'll be interesting to see if anything changes. Or if Gary Sinise's face will now be used to sell The Food Network, cause, hey, New York's got a whole lot of restaurants. And with that "In Case of Choking" poster displayed prominently in every one of them, well, um...that's close to forensics...isn't it?