Be It Resolved...

ROB SALEM, WRITING in a Toronto Star article about things that could make the cultural life of Toronto better, took some serious pokes at the Canadian nets yesterday. Seriously delicious stuff:

I have no personal New Year's resolutions. I mean, my job is watching television. As far as quality of life goes, that's pretty much as good as it gets.

I do, however, have some worthwhile suggestions for the various Canadian networks and their corporate media masters:

CTV (CTVglobemedia): What is with you people? You throw all this money at the CHUM channels, then gut them like a Christmas turkey. You do a spectacular job topping the original American So You Think You Can Dance, wisely retire the coma-inducing Canadian Idol, and yet can't come up with a decent variety/reality/game show of our own? What you paid for the Hockey Night in Canada theme just to blow a raspberry at the CBC could have financed an entire season of Flashpoint and the retiring Corner Gas — shows that millions of people avidly watch. More of that, too, please.

Global (Canwest): C'mon now ... Howie Do It is the best you can do? What's that you say? The Guard? Are you serious? You want to fill your Canadian content mandate, give us smarter shows like Billable Hours. Rebrand E! into something other than a deceptively dubbed dumping ground for American fluff and spillover you can't fit on the main network schedule. And please do not touch the specialty channels you acquired from Alliance Atlantis. They are just fine as is.

Citytv (Rogers): Why did you buy this once-distinctive franchise if all you wanted to do was turn it into OMNI 3? If you're smart, you'll take it back to its roots as funky, street-level guerrilla TV — your new street-front studio at Dundas Square? The operative word here is "street" — and restore the local entertainment coverage this city's vast cultural community deserves. Amortize the format through the other City stations across the country; maybe add some regional talk shows and magazines to the mix. And at least put the shuttered Speaker's Corner online. On the other hand, yay to you for backing Less than Kind.

The Movie Networks/HBO Canada (Astral Media): Slings & Arrows, Terminal City, Durham County ... Resolve to keep doing what you're doing (The Line), financing high-quality, highly exportable miniseries. Sliding worthy Canadian content under that new HBO Canada banner, where it has a second chance of being seen, is a welcome vote of confidence in the industry.

CBC (Us): No one can touch you for documentaries (I should know, I get about a half-dozen delivered to me every day). But take another look at your light entertainment: This Hour has 22 Minutes, Rick Mercer Report ... remember Made in Canada? Come to think of it, just hand the whole thing over to Mercer. That being said, your promising, if unlikely, time-travel sitcom Being Erica (starring Erin Karpluk, left) is already generating serious buzz (as long as it isn't Being Sophie).

Pretty sharp, eh? Nice to see Salem throwing the heat. And most of his comments are seriously on point. (We're all going to quibble about various shows. I think I've stated in the past that personally I wasn't a huge fan of Billable Hours or Terminal City. But whatever. That's just personal taste. The drift of the piece is the thing.

And I'd never thought of the Hockey Night in Canada theme debacle that way. It's true, though.

There's no question that if you're sitting around asking, "who was the smartest broadcaster last year?" that the answer would come back Astral, in partnership with their partners out west in Movie Central. (I don't know exactly if they're as good to deal with since I'm east and deal with TMN.)

Astral's TMN seems to be getting everything right, right about now. A little while back, they redesigned their monthly magazine for Pay TV subscribers. It's slick, easy to read and great-looking.

Their development slate has started to reflect a homegrown quality mandate that's equal to their acquisitions from HBO and Showtime. The January debut of ZOS continues that trend.

Astral also has figured out the P.R. thing - which is the bane of just about every other Canadian broadcaster. Not that they should get massive points for this, since it should fall under the "cost of doing business" side of things.

Yet Astral and TMN were among the first to recognize that TV bloggers had a voice in the reviewing firmament. Their press materials are accurate, and screeners are always sent out with plenty of lead time. You contact them, and someone contacts you back nearly immediately. It's hard to overstate how night and day this is when it comes to other Canadian outlets.

At this point, I can't understand anyone not having the Pay Channels. They're the best value on TV.

And finally, this year, the company scored a coup by their clever rebranding of one of their multichannels as HBO Canada. The extra programming and one-stop destination for that HBO programming has made a big difference.

* * *

Now, while we're on the subject of resolutions. I'd like to take a little moment to talk to you about "TV, eh?"

Over the last couple years, the Tv, Eh? website has become an invaluable clearinghouse for the kind of information you never used to be able to find anywhere. Articles on Canadian shows.

I don't think there's a creative anywhere in this country who hasn't used the site as a resource, or research for a job interview, to keep tabs on potential partners, to check your own press or to simply stay current. It's probably the single greatest resource portal for Canadian Television.

It's so great to see that the Canadian Association of Broadcasters..er...no, the Canadian Film and Television Production Association...um....the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Televis.....uh....the creative guilds... Film Centre and NSI...what?

Um. Wow.

No.

Nope, none of those organizations, with membership fees and fundraising and any other sources of revenue, pulled it together to start Tv, eh?

Since its inception, the site has been maintained and updated daily on a strictly volunteer basis by Diane Kristine, a Vancouver-based web publications manager who doesn't even work in the television industry.

You know, I still get the questions all the time about why I write this blog and I can't always give a good answer. It can sometimes be a pain in the ass. Some of it's ego-driven, of course, and even the part that's an attempt at good passionate citizenry and industry boosterism is cut with an undercurrent of self-interest. The less secretive and more vocal creatives in our industry are, I firmly believe, the better our product will be, and the greater our strength. So in the end, that's why I do it. Because I can, and because I think it helps.

But none of that applies to a woman who runs a volunteer site just because it bugged her that she'd never heard of any of the Canadian shows that I and others were blogging about.

So now I'm addressing the insiders here -- writers, producers, directors, and self-interested others who've gone to TV Eh? in the last year or so to find an article, or see what's being said about your show, or some show you're interested in. If you go to the site now you'll notice there's a "Donate now" button.

The bandwidth and all other costs associated with the running of the site are paid for by Diane herself. I think that's admirable. But I also think after two years of getting that service for free, maybe it's a good time to think about giving something back. Hit the donate now button, and give anything. Even 10 bucks. I know times are tight. But so's the margins by which we get people to watch these shows. How many viewers do you think Diane's activism has bought you? Show your appreciation.

And thanks, Diane, for doing the publicity job that few of the paid people in this industry seem capable of doing. See how easy it is to be a powerful industry insider?

The hard part is being a powerful industry insider who doesn't have to wear a nametag and ask if you want fries with that.