PSST. I'LL TELL you something for free.
When it comes to the unadorned, unvarnished, unspun truth about the broken, teeny, cereal-box toy that is the homegrown Canadian TeeVee biz, talk to the writers.
It's not hard to see why. See, Networks get to have lots of lobbying sessions. The Cablers hobnob with their friends in the Government. Directors and Actors and Producers can all hope that even if CanCon goes away entirely, they may pick up scraps from U.S. or foreign service productions that film here.
The writers fight because we have none of those assurances. There is no service work for writers. Time and experience has shown that if they can trade away the Canadian writer's involvement, they will. When the rules changed in 1999, and the nets started being able to count magazine shows as priority programming? Canadian dramas dropped from about 12 or 13 to 2 within a year or two. Some of those crews scrambled onto other shows. Actors might have found less work overall, but there were still auditions. Directors got by on service work. The writers took the full hit...many got bum-rushed out of the biz altogether. Others entered the long darkness as the Canary in the Coalmine of the coming drought in production -- a drought that only really hit the service sector a few years later.
We've spent a long, long decade trying to build back from that disastrous rule change. And now here we are. Again. New decade. Same Sky falling.
In Greek myth,
Cassandra was the prophet who was cursed to speak the truth and never be believed. Writers have a bit of
Cassandra in them;
always have. That makes us
scrappy. At least it should.
I was disappointed to hear that the piece
I wrote in the Star the other day generated a few
grumbles. Not
because of the
grumbles, you see. I
love grumbles. I embrace grumbles with an open heart and a
basso-rumble of my own. A good
Grumble can generate a discussion, and a discussion can lead to new synthesis.
Synthesis is good. It's how ideas are honed, theories developed...it's
how things get better.
But, you see, except for one exception, none of these grumbles came to me. And that's the Canadian way too. When somebody has a problem, nobody talks directly to each other. Oh no, no, heavens no. That wouldn't be passive aggressive.
So people get to nurse their grumbles, but not share them. No chance for synthesis. No new ideas. No way to move forward. Sigh.
Anyway, thank the stars that the Writers Guild of Canada is NOT a passive aggressive organization. They go out there, time and time again, and say the things that need to be said to the committees and the commissions. And they release clear eyed statements like the one below. That's why I'm proud to be a member, and proud to do the Guild's work.
Read this, and remember -- this is an industrial issue as much as a cultural one. There are people inside all of these networks, executives, etc, that want to have a couple of homegrown hits. Why wouldn't you want that? You know that Canwest would love to have their own Corner Gas. They did a bunch of pilots recently -- some that I've read, that you know what? Some of these give Global a shot at that very thing. Say what you will, but damn, Global's actually developed some great stuff lately.
But all that seems so out of reach when you're forced to play the game.
And remember, even if it does affect your livelihood, it is a game, Cassandra.
Does
this release make you
grumble a bit? It should, man. It should.
Canadian private broadcasters are currently bending the ears of government in hope for a bailout package of taxpayer dollars. With the recent release of figures from Canwest Global’s last quarter, the Writers Guild of Canada urges the government of Canada to approach any talk of broadcaster bailout with extreme skepticism. These are still profitable businesses.
The broadcasting arm of Canwest Global turned in an operating profit of $32 million (a 60 percent increase from a year earlier). In fact, the broadcasting operations’ most recent revenue of $234 million matched the same quarter a year earlier. Canwest’s conventional TV ad revenue was down 4%, but this was offset with 4% growth in specialty-channel advertising and a 5% increase in subscriber revenue. It seems when Canwest reports to its shareholders, it’s an integrated business – but when they talk to government it’s all about the hardships of over-the-air.
Though comparable figures for CTV are unavailable, its dominance of the Canadian market would suggest that things should be even brighter on their side of the industry.
“How can the broadcasters ask for a taxpayer bailout when broadcasting remains profitable?” asks Maureen Parker, Executive Director, Writers Guild of Canada. “The creative community has been living in a recessionary economy for the last ten years as broadcasters have year by year spent less on quality Canadian programming and more and more to buy U.S. shows. There was no bailout for screenwriters, actors, producers and directors.”
Parker added, “Broadcasters also have the audacity to request relief in the form of reductions in Canadian content expenditure and exhibition requirements. So after many years of enjoying stable profits and the support of public policy, these newly integrated businesses are petitioning for relief from the very thing that should give them purpose: providing Canadian programming to Canadian audiences. The answer should be a resounding ‘NO.’”
With Canwest’s recent quarter as an example, we have clear evidence that the Canadian broadcasting business remains profitable. Canwest’s problems relate to debt (about $4.1 billion) from business decisions made in recent years, including the $3.2 billion newspaper acquisition which still accounts for a large share of its debt burden. The company reported a net loss of $1.44 billion in its latest quarter, including a $1.19 billion writedown of assets, mostly in its newspaper operations. Do broadcasters deserve ‘relief’ for failures in other areas of their businesses? Should Canadian taxpayers and television viewers be asked to pay the price for this?
The WGC says ‘no’ to a broadcaster bailout, and ‘no’ to asking Canadians to give up Canadian programming.
Right on. Now. Are you going to grumble a bit? Or are you going to swallow those grumbles and let the WGC play Cassandra out there on its own?
Up to you.
4 comments:
You want a grumble?
OK, here's one specifically about the quoted observation that follow s--
"Corner Gas was run like an American show. They set up a story room where writers broke stories and polished scripts, as a group. The star had input, but writers kept the tone consistent. Executive producers Virginia Thompson and David Storey engaged a showrunner – a senior writer whose creative vision trackedthe show through the process, as a production partner – not merely a peon.
This represented a sea change from the usual Canadian method, where non-writing producers and directors would routinely change and tinker with scripts so that by the time they were shot, they wound up looking like any other piece of art made by committee – drab and unfocused."
I find that inaccurate and insulting in the extreme. In one fell swoop you disparage the work, and the contribution of the following writers/producers. David Barlow and Louie Del Grande on Seeing Things. Paul Haggis and Paul Gross and later Bob Carney on Due South. Chris Haddock on Mom PI, DaVinci's Inquest, DaVinci City Hall and Intelligence (three of which I believe preceded Corner Gas). Hart Hanson on Traders and myself on numerous other pre-Corner Gas shows. Others could include Andrew Rai Berzans on the under-rated "Straight Up" Wreggit, Grigsby etc on "North of Sixty", "Guy Mulally on "Street Legal" and I am sure there are a lot more.
None of these people ever were, or will ever be "peons", all of them were responsible for the creative vision of the show, good or bad and none of them were in the pocket of line producers, etc, etc and all got up every day and fought the good fight and fiercely protected the integrity of their show and their vision.
Did we work collaboratively with production people, did we make compromises at the behest of production people, of course we did. When you are trying to make a competitive one hour drama on a million bucks an ep, you have to, especially when the majority of the country thinks your occupation is little more than glorified workfare.
And were there shows that were "line producer driven" or course there were. Theses animals still exist today and always will but to say that all Canadian shows before Corner Gas was "art by committee" is just not true.
The commitment of writer/producers (showrunners) to making quality shows that attempted to gain a large domestic audience did not begin with Corner Gas. There were, and are, lots of people in this industry who have spent their entire careers working so that the voices of writers be heard and have worked hard to get themselves into a position where they were steering the ship, it didn't just start when you and your friends started getting jobs.
Thanks so much for posting and articulating that, Frank. I imagine that's the general cant of most of the grumbling I've heard only third hand.
It gives me a chance to parse a little bit about why I wrote what I wrote, and what I meant, and why I wrote it the way I did.
First of all, it's an opinion piece definitely from a certain perspective. And in 600 words there's only so much qualification one can put in. It's a boil-down of a much longer, much larger, 2 year old post on this site.
I'm not going to quibble about the editing because that's a dodge, but there was a bit of qualification cut there from my draft. Nevertheless if you take the whole thing as laid out, there are other lines that more fully reflect the context of the piece:
"But a new generation of writers saw in Corner Gas an alternative.""The effect of Corner Gas writers on current comedy in Canada cannot be overstated." I'm trying as clearly as I can there to frame this as of this moment. When I say "this represented a sea change from the usual Canadian method," I'm speaking the truth of the numbers in the industry *I* came into. I'm not saying, "the way things always have been done." And there's a lot of daylight between "usual" and "always," at least for me.
It was never my intent to run down or belittle or denigrate the contributions of anybody on the shows that you mention.
But let's speak plainly now. Those shows you cite date from the Early 1980's to the early 1990's. They are from an era when the "Film Centre hothouse" of new TV writers hadn't yet really gotten going. Most of the people working on those shows learned on the job.
Now the industry is very different. Those differences emerged largely in the collapse of two things, both from the 1990's -- the end of the syndie market for TV dramas, of which many, many were produced here, and the 1999 CRTC priority programming rule change
There are lots of questions that could be raised out of that. From that period, you have plenty of Showrunners who went on to success in the US -- Hanson and Shore being two.
But I would say that if you look at the industry since the collapse in 1999, the trend has been toward much, much more marginalized writers.
Shows where writers had control were far fewer. And the examples of the kind of collaboration you cite were few and far between.
Writers coming up now, in a sense, are still fighting the battles that you and the colleagues you cite should have settled already by the example of your professional conduct and process. So why are they still such pitched battles?
Maybe every generation does have myopia about its situation, and maybe we don't have the full context. But I think there's also something else going on here...a deliberate clawback that happened in the wake of 1999. That may be of great interest to us, but it's not really something that the general audience is going to understand.
But while I understand, and am slightly mortified to think that all these people who I've learned a lot from would think I was saying that their fights and contributions and creative processes didn't matter, I didn't create the situation we've seen since the late 1990's.
I had nothing to do with the fact that all the networks talk about a "lack of showrunners" -- even though many of the people you cite there, yourself included, are very much active.
I didn't create the situation where people with tons of experience are brought in late, not trusted to do the job they know how to do, so that we have shows that go off the rails and have to be cleaned up, rather than run logically from the start. I didn't create the situation where the people who know how to make TV are sidelined as "consultants" if they're lucky, or on the sidelines if they're not.
I didn't create the situation where Producers, and to a lesser extent, networks, choose projects from people who are straight out of the film centre or have little experience because it's thought that it would be easier to control them than someone with more experience who might be persnickety and actualy tell them when their idea isn't golden.
The fact is, within the life of Corner Gas, it was pretty much the only show you could point to as being run "right." I'm probably missing a few others -- and if I am that's a sin of omission and I'm sorry. But none had the profile or the incandescence of Corner Gas, with the possible exception of Haddock's shows.
So, if I'm wrong on the complete historical context -- and I'll take that freight even though I don't think I suggested that this had *never* happened in Canada before -- this is a newspaper article about the now. Not the 80's, not the 90's. Now. And yeah, 600 words blah blah blah excuse excuse.
The really provocative question is this: if there were all these showrunners with tons of experience who knew how to work with producers and collaborate in story rooms -- why weren't more of them working? That's probably best not to get into here. I suspect were we to talk about the 'why's' of that, we'd agree a whole lot more than we disagreed.
In any case, I would hope that whatever I wrote in a 600 word article, the way that I've planned by career since the start -- taking jobs on OTHER people's shows to LEARN from them, not focusing on getting shows greentlit only to have them taken away from me, or my contributions marginalized by non-writing producers -- demonstrates the value that I put on experience, and learning from those who've gone before.
If not, hey, it's Wednesday now. The article's wrapping chips and fish. So it goes.
Thanks for writing that comment. It needed to be said and I feel better for being able to confront it head on.
Best
DMc
my last traders were about the millenium bug and I cashed my last cold sqaud check in 2005. Hardly the late 80's
Fair enough. I just checked IMDB and indeed, Traders ended later than I thought it did, I thought it was early to mid nineties, in reality it was 96 to 2000.
And I think I deserve a little slack for Cold Squad, considering how many times it was actually canceled then brought back. There, in fact, is a weird inverse to the Corner Gas effect...it did great numbers and got no respect and kept getting canned. What kind of example was that for "hope?" for a new generation of writers -- to do a show that did good numbers and still got no respect?
I'm hoping since that was your response, that you take the rest of my clarification as read. I didn't mean to get people's knickers in a twist.
You know what? This whole thing is just feeling like it's not worth it anymore. I'm tired of getting flak for trying to big up this industry, I really am.
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