THIS AFTERNOON IN the CBC Atrium on Front Street, Executive VP Richard Stursberg almost sounded...cocky.
It's true -- CBC's had a very good season. Mercer's at record numbers, Mosque held, and The Border and Sophie bested previous scripted efforts, leading to a kind of qualified optimism for what's to come. The CBC even scored with its second attempt to launch a daytime talk show.
Depending on how you fiddle the numbers, CBC even beat Global this year. And, as Stursberg pointed out several times, "we did it with all-Canadian shows."
It's probably the closest you can get to gloating without...well...it's close. Let's leave it at that. :)
CBC had their best season since 2001. The slogan for the upcoming season, "Canada Lives Here," suggested a comfort level with the programs. As they were announced, the warmest applause was reserved for David Suzuki, but The Border, Sophie, and the departing Air Farce got an ovation from the crowd that was certainly more enthusiastic than desultory.
So the schedule announced this afternoon by Kirstine Layfield, the Executive Director of Network Programming, looks a lot like what went before. In fact, two of the most notable changes come in the Fringes of the dayparts -- two game shows formerly on CTV will be used as lead ins to lift the rest of the all-Canadian schedule. Wheel of Fortune at 5:30 will flow into the regional newscasts, and Jeopardy at 7:30 (which, let's face it, is still the only Quiz show still out there that requires you to, you know, know stuff) will lead into the 8'o'clock Prime Time block.
When I was a boy, they used to call this, "providing a lead in." It'll be interesting to see if the investment pays off.
I got to interview Layfield just before the kickoff, and the results of that convo will be posted later this week.
For now, though, here's something that got sent to me that blows me away because of what it suggests -- actual break-through. I mean, man...if fans are out there doing shipper videos, that means somebody out there in viewerland likes you.
You can read CP's coverage of the CBC Launch here.
7 comments:
You said it exactly right, Denis, "depending on how you fiddle the numbers"
What happened to the CBC's Ratings once the U.S. Writer's Strike was over?
I'll be very interested to see what the Ratings story is at this time next year.
I think a better way to guage what people REALLY think of the CBC's programming comes from the Comments Section on their very own website. It's good readin'.
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/tv/story/2008/04/09/cbc-shows.html?Authorized=1&AuthenticationKey=2_27_16e64c74-b08e-4672-a7e3-c26a89cee3f6.8046711
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/tv/story/2008/05/26/cbc-fall.html#socialcomments
Well, Stephanie, see that's the way-entertaining and fun thing about the CBC. Everybody feels ownership, and everyone wants to tell them when they're doing wrong.
You're clearly coming from a place where you're kind of partisan-ing for one show that was canceled. And so you're interested in showing up the Ceeb for being boneheaded and wrong.
And classical music fans are showing the CBC is boneheaded and wrong.
And Chris Haddock thinks the CBC is boneheaded and wrong because they screwed up promoting Intelligence, and didn't continue the streak that started with seven seasons of Davinci.
The problem with a lot of the Jpod partisans right now is that you guys want to make it about how everybody who didn't watch the show "doesn't get it" -- including the dumb people at the CBC.
Well the dumb people at the CBC made a quick move to Friday precisely because the show was underperforming. And it bounced back. It did. The ratings went up. Just not enough.
I watched Jpod. I "get it." I wish I'd liked it more. I wished it was better.
I wished lots more Canadians liked it.
But it didn't. And they didn't. And so the CBC is going to try something else. And that is cold, cold reality.
The arguments that Jpod fans are making now, the complaints, were made by fans of This is Wonderland and Davinci's City Hall when those two shows were canceled (with higher numbers than Jpod, by the way.)
You can go for every play in the book in pointing out how the "CBC screwed up.' But the reality is, that only time will tell.
Not only a shipper video, but one done to a Sugababes song!
Sorry--it's not often you hear them on this side of the pond.
Congratulations on the video!
Oh Denis, how I wish it were "just about jPod" for me. But it's not.
http://firefly-alternativegirlfriend.blogspot.com/2008/04/so-not-trailer-trash.html
It's a culmination of years' worth of mostly disappointing television from The Mothercorp. jPod was just the final blow for me. Before that was "The Tournament". And I wouldn't say that show was "too smart" for most, but it was damn funny!
I would love to be able to champion the CBC, I really would! But when it comes to Series Television they just aren't pulling it off for me, and haven't for a very, very long time. And I don't know if I'm in the minority here, but if I had it my way all the programming on the CBC would be Canadian productions. I don't like the fact that The Ceeb pays for Coronation Street, and spends money re-airing episodes of The Simpsons and Arrested Development, which I love by the way, and now Jeopardy. Why spend money buying American and UK when they could put those $$$ into Canadian shows? I love "Spaced" too, but I wouldn't want the CBC to pay for it.
And actually, it's just not the CBC I'm feeling disappointed by. It's TV in general, whether it come from FOX, NBC, etc. My problem with so much of todays programming is that it's all so dumbed down, mindless. Just the mere existence of "Big Brother" offends me. I'm not saying that all television has to be Intellectual Masterpieces, I LIKE My Name is Earl. But I guess I miss the "Pre-Reality Genre" era of television. I can handle a few of them, the kiddies and I like "The Amazing Race" because we get to see alot of places around the world that we'll certainly never get to visit. But damnit, it seems like Reality TV is dominating the whole TV Guide schedule.... I miss the good ol' days of mostly scripted television. I'm a Hill Street Blues kind of girl, and I do get upset when shows like Firefly, Keen Eddie and Sports Night get cancelled in favour of crap like "The War at Home" and the Medium knockoff Ghost Whisperer.
If you haven't seen it yet, watch the movie "Idiocracy" by Mike Judge. While nobody was going to get an Oscar for it - the Message is more powerful than the performances portray.
If people want to rally for Canadian TV, let them eat cake. I know you've pointed to your rules of engagement, and have shaken a finger at the jPod fans -- no, no, don't do it that way, don't alienate the CBC by telling them they're stupid -- of course this makes sense from the outside, but when you're a fan of a cancelled show in full stage 2 kubler-ross anger, some words are bound to get thrown.
Of course it'd be best of all if the fans in the world fought a fair fight (say that five times fast), but the fact that they're fighting at all for Canadian shows is heartening. Bless them for that. Bless any fan who fights to keep their favourite show on the air, who demands to see more. Yes, we never got the numbers we needed. But we got a consistent fanbase who came every Friday night.
We mattered to some people. And that matters to us, and in the end, that should matter to anyone who works in or is a fan of Canadian TV. Heaven help the system if we produce shows that don't raise a cry when they're cancelled.
Y'know I didn't have much time for Daegan's fave show, but I sure have room for that kind of fan passion.
It kinda proves my consistent belief that the audience is waiting for us to give it something better.
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