Party Down or Party Over?

PARTY DOWN, the new Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars) series, bowed Monday night in Canada on Super Channel. Super Channel is fast becoming a pay channel you buy not for the movies, but for its series content. Besides the new shows Trust Me, Party Down, and Head Case, Super Channel is also the Canadian broadcast home for the hit British teen show Skins, Burn Notice, The Closer and my must-see guilty pleasure of the last year, Sons of Anarchy.

[*Although, let's face it...we're coming rapidly up on the juncture where these guys need to pony up and MAKE SOMETHING. Hear that, Allarco Entertainment? You know, you buy a script and you hire someone to shoot it. I know you can do it if you try, you little scamps.]

Here's the funny thing. Party Down's original network in the USA is Starz. (They make Head Case, too.) Starz is to cable channels what Corning, New York is to tourist destinations. But there it is, following AMC and a bunch of other "who dat?" networks into the production business.

You gotta ask....why?

Well, the answer's simple enough.

Branding. Remember branding? We talked about this be..wait, wait. Here.

See, Starz knows that it's never going to be a major playa. But it also knows that if it's going to get noticed in the crowded cable market in the USA (where cable systems aren't required to carry anybody - channels need to negotiate carriage) there has to be something that's going to sell people on wanting to BUY them. And "the place for reruns of X" is not enough.

But Canadian stations are terrible at branding. Even Super Channel's boldness, such as it is, of buying the "best of series you're not seeing elsewhere" isn't going to wind up with a cohesive brand. Because they buy from lots of sources: F/X, TNT, USA, Starz, BBC, etc. Why? Well, let's crib from the last time I talked about this:

In Canada, where the norm is to buy programs and spread’em across your broadcast outlets, shoving square pegs into round holes galore – the dilution of the brand begins almost immediately. This is where you get Alliance Atlantis (now Canwest) jamming CSI:NY and NCIS reruns onto History and calling it “history programming.” When I worked at SPACE, every month or two you’d have to shake your head at some kind of moonshine movie or other inappropriate thing jammed onto the air because it was part of a movie package. Bravo! (who, unlike its U.S. counterpart, didn’t take the savvy step of re-inventing itself as a gay or gay friendly network) fell from running “TV too good for TV” to any kind of crappy movie, so much so that you’d scratch your head and say, “what am I watching?”

Contrast that with the U.S. cable channels, where they let the ORIGINALS they make set the tone for the channel...featuring them prominently in all the advertising, and getting reviews, press about them that drive viewers to the channel and creating buzz that makes non-subscribers want to take a look:

Damages, Rescue Me, and The Shield all scream F/X – a channel that’s supposed to be not quite as anything-goes as HBO, and delivers programs that speak to that edginess exactly. Then look at USA – who have perfected a formula of off-kilter light detective shows – Monk, Burn Notice, and Psych.

Then there's TNT -- with female friendly tough detectives Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) and Holly Hunter (Saving Grace). The Closer's the biggest show on cable right now. It MAKES TNT.

The shows make the brand, and the brand makes the money.

But in Canada, for better or worse, the channels here buy from lots of different sources – which means lots of different brands. CTV and Global both have shows from all the U.S. networks, and in some cases, the cable channels too. That means that they try to hang their brand on ephemeral, who gives a shit stuff like promos. (which help to define the channel, but not as much as shows.)

They fire off press releases quibbling over numbers because there really isn’t too much to set them apart.

So right now, while the Heritage Committee and the CRTC are clucking about concessions to the industry, and the broadcasters are crying poor, let's keep a few things in mind. First, the specialty channels are the currently-profitable parts of their empires. Well, unless you believe that maybe the conventionals aren't as bad off as they say. Second, the CRTC has already ruled that unbundling starts in 2011. That means you'll be able to choose individual channels in a more complete way, and not forced to buy 'tiers' of programming that protects weak-ass channels with bad branding and little to offer.

The Nets here ignored the winds of change in Broadcasting down south and didn't get seriously into making and promoting their own shows when they could have helped their bottom lines.

Now, do you think any of them are going to learn anything from why a rinky-dink channel like Starz (or AMC for that matter) -- which get viewers not in the millions, but in Canadian-sized numbers... is getting so heavy into the "make a signature flagship program business?

Or have I just previewed the 2014 CRTC hearings where they all whine about how their business model for specialty is broken?

Super Channel, ultimately, can't be praised because as a brand-new channel they seem hell bent on repeating the experience of all Canadian broadcasters: buy buy buy and don't do the work that could actually pay off -- making something that's all yours to go forth and build your channel on.

Finally, let's pre-empt all the hippie "the internet is mooting all this" talk -- because it isn't. Not yet. Not for a long time still. Look at the furore in the USA over the digital switch. Right now, Cable channels with good brands will be relevant for several years to come...because the alternative is too much like the Internet was before Google. Impossible to find anything. Besides, brand is arguably even more important on the net. Cable channels -- in the USA -- are the things that do branding well, which is why they're the growth area in TV there, too. Whatever the internet-based model for distribution is -- respeck to the Heritage Minister and his Ipod -- it's a ways down the road.

Party Down, people!

EDIT: a previous version of this article made reference to Allarcom. The actual parent company of Super Channel is Allarco Entertainment