In Cameras and LaLas: Variety's Take on Canada's Branch Plant TV Industry

NORMALLY IT'S MY policy now on this blog not to link to Variety, since their shilling for the AMPTP during the last WGA Strike proved how biased they were. (And Nikki Finke gets the good stuff first anyway,) but a new story is pretty instructive in cutting through the whole domestic TV debate -- since it cuts through the redacted thrill of the CRTC and shows you what an outside perspective has to say.

Here's Variety's take on Canadians coming to the L.A. screenings.

A few key passages:

The Canadians are traditionally the biggest international spenders during the L.A. Screenings, but there is a good chance they’ll be shelling out less this year.

That point -- that Canada spends WAY more than any other country at the L.A. screenings, never came up at the "in camera" network sessions at the CRTC, so far as I saw. Though the spin from the networks seems to be that Canada's creative unions don't understand how their purchase of U.S. shows subsidizes homegrown Canadian production, that's just not true.  How the networks work here might have been news to Konrad, but isn't news to any of us. Nor is it the point.

The reason WHY Canada spends more than anybody else at the U.S. screenings is because they are the only country whose business model is based on running every show they possibly can at the same time as the U.S. nets, to take care of simultaneous substitution.

Other countries can't make any money running a three-ep flop that gets quickly canceled by the parent U.S. network, which is why they wait and buy CSI when they know it's a hit. Yes, when they make that deal, they often have to buy another show or package of shows to close the deal, but it's nowhere near as ginned as the Canadian buy. 

When I was in my twenties, I worked in production inside a media company that's since been swallowed in rounds of Canadian corporate media consolidation.  Though I had nothing to do with buying or selling the product offered each year at the L.A. screenings, I was friendly enough with the people who did to know in rough terms how the bidding and buying worked.   

But based on what we read in the redacted in-camera comments Jim Henshaw wrote about the other day, we're supposed to believe that the Chairman of the CRTC was completely taken aback and surprised by the way Canadian networks buy shows. So in other words, this guy, who's in charge of all our fates, didn't know as much as I did just hanging around a TV station for a few years?  After months of lobbying by the networks?  I tend not to buy it, because the Chairman seems to me to be an intelligent guy.  If it's true, whoa, we're in more trouble than I thought.

By not acknowledging the huge, skewing effect SimSub has on the business of buying and making TV in this country,  you're in effect discussing the effects of melanoma and how to control it and leaving out the fact that the patient also has Stage IV Lung and Pancreatic Cancer.

Understand -- I'm not counselling an end to SimSub. (Well, not really.  To do so I feel would be as cynical as the Broadcasters current "Save Local TV" campaign, as if that, and not their poor decisions and over-reliance on one faded idea wasn't the problem.)  I'm just saying that it's the gravitational change that distorts things so much, that compensatory attention to protecting homegrown production is necessary. If you are supporting one side of the business, it's only fair to support the other.  

The difference, of course, is that the creative unions only get to make that point for 15 minutes, once every hearing, while the networks get private lobbying sessions and in camera sessions to make their point known. Good to know that we live in a democracy, aint it?

Konrad, if the jobs of Canwest and CTV Executives and Salespeople and Buyers are deemed more valuable than those of Canada's Grips, Writers, Actors, Set Builders, Production Designers, Directors and Editors, etc, just say so.  And while we're at it, you might want to have a word with the hundreds of people that these companies have shed over the last few years -- starting when they were flush and bragging about their record profit margins.  (You know, the long ago days of, like, 2007.)   And if that's the case, Konrad, there are several hundred thousand people who'd like to have a word with you. In Camera, if you like.  Maybe we can also have that discussion about what Michel's watching on TV -- since it won't be "on the record," you know.

The edifice supported by SimSub is crumbling anyway.  Borders and exclusive broadcast rights (my problems seeing the Blue Jays game in St. John's notwithstanding) are looking like a pretty tarnished prom queen in a ripped dress right about now.

And here's something nobody ever points out: even the SimSub thing used to be a better deal for Canadian viewers. Once upon a time, when they bought shows from the U.S. nets, Canadian channels, if they couldn't run it at the same time and block out the U.S. net's signal, would often pre-release the show. They'd negotiate it so that, say, CTV or Global would run that show a day earlier. Sometimes two.  So for a long time, into the 80's and early 1990's, Canadians would sometimes get to see U.S. network shows first.  In the days before PVR's it was pretty convenient. You had a couple of chances to catch a show.  That's stopped now, of course. Since the moment a show airs, it's torrented, U.S. nets don't allow Canadians to go first anymore.  Yup. That edifice shure is healthy -- and great for viewers! What choice! Do I watch Law & Order on CTV or NBC? Gawrsh!

Anyway, I'm sure all of this will come up when the CRTC has their in-camera private meetings with the WGC.   Cause I'm sure that's coming, right? 

Right?

Bueller?

To continue with the Variety article:

One studio source familiar with past Canadian negotiations said prices will be “firm and more cautious than in year’s past.” Among the new shows expected to generate some heat among overseas buyers are CBS’ remake of “Melrose Place” and Disney’s sci-fi thriller “Flash Forward.”

That can’t be good news to the studios, which count heavily on Canadian coin and the bidding wars that often take place. Canucks don’t have time to watch, go home and decide what’s worth buying. With their upfronts set for the first week in June, they need to have their lineups — with new American product — set to show off to potential advertisers.

The Canuck broadcasters are breathing a sigh of relief this week because broadcast regulator the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) last week backed away from a proposed plan to curtail the networks’ spending in Hollywood.

Earlier this year, the CRTC had said it was warming up to the idea of forcing the Canadian nets to bring in a one-to-one ratio between its Canadian and American programming expenditures. But the broadcasters protested, and the regulator agreed to drop the idea, at least for this year. Such a rule would have likely radically reduced the amount of Canadian spending in L.A.

It's interesting to see how the Americans view it, huh?  From that position of self-interest?

The amazing thing is that our broadcast regulator, charged with protecting the airwaves for Canadians, doesn't act the same way.  Would that they actually paid attention more to what other countries do to handle the challenge of American signal hegemony, instead of floating timid trial balloons they then quickly back down from.  (And I know they say that the one-to-one spend idea isn't dead, but come on, based on history, do you really want to hold your breath?)

In all this, again, I feel it's important to say that I feel it's important that CTV and Global be allowed to thrive. But they've been addicted to the crack pipe of easy U.S. Simsub for so long, that they know nothing else but to ask for more free money, while at the same time whining about having to make any committment to spend that money on local or indigenous programming.  That's just wrong.

And let's say it plain, too. That "spending spree" in recent years by Global and CTV? It's the same pissing contest that we see every week when they release their duelling press releases.   It was as much about corporate ego and money as business reality and every single person outside of that Gatineau meeting room knows it.  It's pathetic that nobody has the balls to say it. Well, nobody but crazy Uncle Jim.  And me, I guess.  Shit, I can't believe I'm doing this again. 

I have been trying for a little while to lay off the CRTC...but the degree of paternalism and dismissiveness displayed in those documents of the in camera sessions just leaves too bad a taste in my mouth.  That relationship is just too cozy. And Konrad, if I see you at Banff, I'll be more than happy to say that to your face.