Sometimes Things That Scare You

Are worth fighting for.

Keep It Together

MAN. THE HARDEST thing about all these CBC cuts is seeing the utterly predictable whisperings going back and forth as all the departments turn on each other. Regions vs. Toronto. Radio vs. TV. French vs. English. Children's vs. Adults. Younger Generaton vs. Older Generation, News vs. Drama, Fifth Estate vs. Everybody, apparently.

Discussions of who's more important and what's more essential at this point tears the fabric apart, and pulls on the thread that unravels the whole organization. You are under assault from without. Keep it together, please. And see how it plays out going forward. Turning on each other plays into the hands of those who'd take the whole shooting match down. There's nothing they'd like more.

Freshening Up with Wendy Crewson

CHANGED THE QUOTE on the masthead again. Guess for better or worse we're all going into battle mode. You know, I've been known to roll my eyes occasionally when Wendy Crewson (or the guy from Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, old what's-his-name?) are the first people quoted in any article on the business here...but part of the dividends of being the go-to person is that you really hone the soundbite.

Here's an interesting profile of Crewson in the Queen's Alumni publication. She has very trenchant things to say about working both sides of the border.

“You can never be big enough [in Canada] to get a big role, because they’ll never give it to you because you’re not a star. But you can’t be a star because they never give you the role,” she explained.

“So you move away to the States and you get some TV role, you do a series or do something like that. Then when you come back, they’ll give you a big part because they’ve seen you on an American show and yet you’re a Canadian. Now when you’ve been away from the States, even though you haven’t been working down there, you’ve been working up here, honing your skills, doing leading parts. So when you go back down there, you have more chance in an audition because you’ve had that experience here. So it worked out very nicely doing work on both sides of the border.”

And here's Crewson on the current situation in Canada:

“In this culture right now, TV drama is the cornerstone of pop culture in the media. It’s the lynchpin of that. Without that, we have no voice that we all tune to, saying, ‘This is who we are. We’re showing Canadians, Canadians.’ All we see on our screens right now are Americans coming back at us. The only popular voice we have right now is the American. A country that does not own its own airwaves, does not own itself. Eventually, it will fall to the influence of whatever country it chooses to broadcast.”

Crewson said she thinks the Canadian government has been too lenient with broadcasters and isn’t doing enough to protect the arts in Canada.

“The CRTC has been so lobbied by broadcasters who no longer want to do any Canadian content,” she said. “They want to buy American shows, simulcast them and get the advertising money. They make all the money from that and spend all their money on American programming, putting nothing back into Canadian programming.” Crewson said her career’s temporarily on hold due to the economic situation.

Go Wendy!

Aspirations

If you're following a link here from the ugly and malicious CBC-slammer site Teamakers, you're liable to be a little discombobulated. This is a positive post -- which you don't get over there. Par for the course when your correspondents are sociopaths.

EDIT: keep reading through this, Chris Haddock corrects some stuff in the comments below.

THE OTHER NIGHT in Toronto at Atom Egoyan's Camera Lounge, there was a screening and discussion session for Being Erica, with Aaron Martin and Jana Sinyor, the showrunners & exec producers. Host Jill Golick ably directed the show as the crowd sampled two later episodes of Erica, the much ballyhooed "lesbian" ep guest starring Anna Silk, and a special sneak preview of the Season Finale which airs on CBC next Wednesday.

Jill's done these "Writers Watching TV" sessions for a couple of years now. Often they involve the preview of a Canadian show that's yet to make air, as when she hosted Malcolm MacRury for ZOS last year. Attendees of these sessions were also among the first to get a look at my Ex-show, The Border, as well as the Citytv comedy Less Than Kind, a session I wrote about here.

What was remarkable about the screening the other night was the turnout. Granted, Camera's screening room isn't the largest in the world -- probably tapping out around sixty. But there were at least twice that many people there. Never has 'first come, first served' seemed so apt.

I actually slipped out to the bar after the first episode because I thought, "this is crazy. I got my chance to ask Aaron and Jana questions already."

It may not have been the epiphany of seeing dozens of disappointed, shivering people queue up in the dead of winter at the Bloor Cinema just to catch a glimpse of the Trailer Park Boys. But it was a clarity moment. The people at that screening were there because of word of mouth. There were several unabashed fans of the show in the audience...many of them -- most, I'd say -- squarely smack in that women 25-54 demo CBC is coveting. (Apologies to Brioux here...and Bill, 50% in the demo is great for CBC -- it's actually something to build on...) A woman I know was more than proud to delcare full-throated support for the show. She'd clearly watched the season and was looking forward to more. And there were several more where she came from.

The lucky ones who got inside were treated to a peek at a very moving season finale, that puts the pin in the biggest mystery of the show's first season. (I got to see about half of it outside on a monitor.)

As is customary at these things, you talk and schmooze and people schmooze you ... and so it was that I found myself talking Canadian TV with someone (and I'm sorry I forget who; it's a whirlwind) who asked me the question I've been asked a thousand times. About why, with my American passport, I didn't go to the USA to write.

I've had several answers to that usually prepped and ready over the last few years. Most of them are true. There are soft reasons, like the pull of friends and family, and harder ones, like the fact that my decision to quit my job and start writing full time coincided with the rise of George W. Bush, and that ascendancy and the ugliness in the wake of the 2000 recount soured me on going home. There's the comical reason -- I may have only been a baby in New York City, but it's enough to make me fucking hate, hate, hate L.A....and there's the kismet reason. I drew up three scenarios for quitting my job in 2000: 1) Get into the ABC/Disney Writers Fellowship program and move to L.A. 2) Get into the Canadian Film Centre's Prime Time TV program and stay in Toronto, or 3) Get into Neither and go become one of the guys who wears a Mickey Mouse costume and gets beaten up by tourists at Disney World. (I didn't think that 3 would happen necessarily, but I knew if it did, thanks to family connections I'd at least have somewhere to stay.)

But when that question got asked the other night, I had a different answer. Something had been swimming around my head for a day or so and for whatever reason, here's what popped out:

"Because Chris Haddock showed me that I didn't have to."

It's been a tough week. If you're a creative, things are always precarious in the Canadian side of the business. Any regular reader of this blog knows that. So because there's no shortage of bad news this week, I wanted to solicit a little bit of good. How 'bout I go first?

Chris Haddock, with DaVinci's Inquest, proved that you could make literate, tough, interesting, compelling TV in this country; without compromise or apology. That show came on at a time before newfangled PVR's where you can tape lotsa stuff at once, and I remember for whatever reason, I always seemed to have a problem getting both The West Wing and Davinci on tape every week. I think I got The West Wing more often. But if I remember correctly, my friend Gregg was the guy who followed DaVinci religiously.

Which is not to say that I didn't catch it whenever I could. I use that anecdote merely to point out how good the show was. I thought of "Davinci" and "West Wing" in the same breath, at the same level. That was...shocking.

I'd had that kind of shock before. When I was on Media Television, I chased doing a story for a while on the first season of THE NEWSROOM. And I remember so clearly talking to a CBC Publicist who was frankly bewildered by the enthusiasm she was getting from the press...everybody loved the series! She kept saying it to herself like she didn't believe it. Like if she didn't say it out loud she'd wake up to find it was all a dream.

DaVinci's evocation of Vancouver as a place, as a locale, was fresh and exciting (and continued through Haddock's next Canadian series, the underappreciated Intelligence) and never disguised or apologized for itself (would that Toronto-set series did the same thing.) Nicholas Campbell was a hero worthy of a Robbie Coltrane Cracker-tradition. (I loved getting to work with Nick on the Ex-Show, and, God, please, I'll get to work with him again.)

The stories were tough, idiosynchratic, didn't have to end on a 'win' but always stayed with you. And for the first several seasons, DaVinci pulled in over 800 000 viewers a year on the CBC. Not bad. No simulcast, bitches. Not bad at all.

Haddock and his partner Laszlo Barna, whose Barna-Alper Productions produced the series, inspired a new generation of creators to go, "wait. maybe we don't have to go. what if we could stay here an do things our way?"

Now, granted, Haddock is a force of nature and not everyone's going to get to be a Haddock. Haddock talks of himself as a producers, and maybe that's the way you have to be to work in the subsidy-system that rules the roost in this country. But the truth is, he is a balls-out U.S. style showrunner. And for better or for worse, his example is why I decided, "Eff it. I'm going to stay."

Jesus, that might have been a huge fucking mista...

Sorry, sorry..this is a Happy Happy Joy Joy Post.

Okay. So. That was the surprise. Here's the second one, that's not a surprise. I tell this to everybody I talk to. Peter Mohan is a guy I worked for who modeled in its purest form, the platonic showrunner ideal of "Best Idea Wins." But he wasn't the first. I've had the fortune to have a boss before that who taught me about managing people in the media.

Howard Bernstein was my first boss out of University. He had been the head of Global News, and the Senior Producer for The Journal, and Executive Producer for Canada AM, and a bunch of other posts in the business. He used to joke that he had either hired or fired everyone in broadcasting.

When I worked with Howard at TVO, here's what he taught me about management. It's valued stuff, that I've cherished to this day and a philosophy that I will follow to the best of my ability in any show I ever run. Howard's philosophy of management was very, very, very simple:

1) Hire someone smart. 2) Encourage them to take risks, and strive, and stretch 3) Keep an eye on them, and only step in when they go off track.

"Going off track" doesn't mean, "not doing it the way I would do it." It means, "has lost sight of the forest, for the trees."

We live in an age of micromanaging where no one's allowed to show their best. And second guessing is all the rage. It's shocking how much Howard's method works. It frontloads the work for you -- you have to pick the right people. But it's funny what you get out of people when they know it's okay to reach.

Howard and I would talk Murphy Brown and Seinfeld all the time. Later, he produced a show on the Toronto Zoo that kept me afloat during my transition to scriptwriting. So though I've never worked with him on a scripted show, I can honestly say he's the guy, as much as any other, who modeled skills and granted me opportunity to do what I do now.

There's a funny thing at work in the Biz --- Something I've seen in my own life. There is no shortage of people who will line up to take credit for your success. But the people who are really responsible for your success are rarely those who are lining up to claim the privilege.

Anyway. There it is. Those are my stories. Now... The Anecdote lines are open. Enough with the sturm and drang. If you work in Drama, comedy, lifestyle, doc, reality, or infotainment production, who's the person who shaped who you are? Who do you owe and why?

It's a tough time out there right now. We need good stories of people who are decent, and who help others forward. Pour out your stories. We could all use a bit of reflected goodwill right now!

TV with all the Fix-Ins

JUST AS I think to myself, "I can't do it; I can't write about this crap again, I'm going to open a vein," comes Will Dixon at Uninflected Images to fill the gap. To him I pass the fading torch.

Will's got a piece up about the Heritage Committee grilling of CRTC guys here. Here's a surprise: the answer to fixing their business model is you. You're welcome.

Don't ask them what you're paying for. That's not polite.

Does it all sound ridiculous, like, oh I don't know, like all this is a fait accompli?

Will deals with that too.

Will, when the whole thing goes to shit, do you have any prairie property out there where maybe I can dig a very, very, very large gopher hole?

Yes, I will be dying there. Please feel free to sell my glasses and belt buckle.

The Dirty Garage

THIS IS A H/T to Rob Sheridan. If you're writing a screenplay like this right now, put down the laptop, step away from it, take off your Moldy Peaches CD and go eat a veggie burger, you twee hippie poseur goofus.

The Dirty Garage - watch more funny videos

CBC Shows Cut

THIS LIST OF to-be-cut and canceled CBC TV shows comes courtesy Tod Maffin:

This Hour Has 22 Minutes, The Border, Being Erica, Little Mosque on the Prairie will all have their seasons reduced and/or budgets cut. Some shows' online extensions will be canceled.

Marketplace & Fifth Estate will have budget restrictions, 80 jobs in English news will be cut.

Radio drama will also be reduced, and CBC Radio shows like The Inside Track, The Point, Out Front and The Signal are gone. The Current will cut the number of shows by 10%

CBC Radio 3 also drops to one stream/sat radio broadcast.

No word mentioned about Wild Roses -- at least none that I could see.

Oh, and no more Toronto Blue Jays baseball games on CBC. Too bad. They actually did a great job with the HD broadcasts.

CBC's report on the cuts is here.

Hope On The Shelf

IT'S LATE AT NIGHT as I write this. (Thank you, delayed publishing feature.) There are times when the bleakness of the news coming around makes you feel like Joe Frazier right before Cosell shouts "DOWWNN GOES FRAZIER!"

I was caught by surprise by my reaction to the Where The Wild Things Are trailer, (which I've linked to below.) The images, the song, I get to certain point in it and I feel myself tearing up, every time.

See, there are certain things you get out of if you don't have kids. Even as an "Uncle" with kids in my life, reading the occasional story, for whatever reason I've never really ever gone back to Where the Wild Things Are. Which means that I don't really remember it that well -- I don't recall the text, and the images are mostly those that I conjure up from my mind of being read the book when I was a sprout myself.

Clearly there's something deep in my sense memory about this book. And it evokes strong emotions. What a gift.

So no sturm and drang now. How about some evocations of hope? Something positive that I got from some screenwriting or industry related books? Some nugget of usefulness or narrative that reminds me of why I started doing this in the first place.

Find your positive thing and hold on tight to it. And keep writing.


DESPERATE NETWORKS by Bill Carter. A mostly inside-baseball look at behind the scenes building of the network schedules. The hopeful thing I took from this book is also the most scary thing. Every brilliant project was initially spurned. And every hit that comes out of the book came from some development executive who took a flyer on a talent, a piece of material, a something that they saw and their superiors didn't. And then they went out on a limb and made people see it.

You D-types...eventually you're going to have to fight for something. You're going to have to fight for a writer or a project. Read this book and find out why it's worth it.

A GREAT FEAST OF LIGHT by John Doyle Screw the TV turnoff week types. In a brisk, matter-of-fact, unsentimental style, Doyle paints a positive portrait of the effect that TV had on him growing up in Ireland. If you want to dip into a primer about how the medium can make a difference, not by being all self important -- but just by being entertaining and doing what it does best, this is the book. You don't have to say profound things on TV to shape a life. This book is a mash note to the whole TV medium.



BILLION DOLLAR KISS by Jeffrey Stepakoff. Another book I've blogged about here. And there's a lot in here that's depressing. But it's inspiring simply for the retold story of how one idea can pivot and change an entire show's direction. If you're a writer, you will recognize yourself in Stepakoff's every anecdote. And that's comforting too.


SIT UBU, SIT by Gary David Goldberg. I always meant to blog about this book and never got the chance. It's part memoir, part rumination by the guy who brought you Family Ties. What I get from Goldberg is that it's possible to be mercurial and productive, and wise, and foolish, and if you cop to it, come to humility and further understanding. Among the best passages in the book is a self-examination of how he came to leave Spin City... a passage where he's not afraid to look bad. His tale of falling out -- and eventually making up -- with Michael J. Fox should be required reading for any dramatic writer. We tend to be emotional people, and grudges can destroy and poison things...but there's always coming back. And then there's the love affair with his wife. Aw. What a mensch.






There you go. What books are you getting a bit of hope from these days?

Gut Check

SO MUCH NEGATIVITY and bad news today. And then...this.



Yeah? I cried.

NO YOU SHUTUP.

One in Six

JOURNOS have now lost their jobs in Canada. Fagstein has the deets.

Wow. That's a good healthy thing for a democracy.

WGC on the CBC Cuts

The WGC put out a press release this afternoon on the CBC cuts that I think summarizes neatly the harsh and negative reality of this purely political act, at a time when we all least need it. Mad props for contextualizing the situation over the last few years too. Why do we do all these frigging reports if NONE of the recommendations are EVER followed?

THE WRITERS GUILD OF CANADA is extremely disheartened by the CBC’s announcement today that it will cut 800 jobs in order to balance its budget. The WGC asks: why has it come to this? We have known for more than a decade, through successive governments and through a variety of official reports, that the CBC is underfunded – the economic downturn and the resulting decline in advertising revenues have only exacerbated what was already a tenuous financial situation.

The Lincoln report, “Our Cultural Sovereignty,” tabled in 2004, was a two-year study of broadcasting by the standing committee on Canadian Heritage. Among its recommendations was increased and stable funding for the CBC. And just last year, the call for an enhanced parliamentary appropriation was repeated in another standing committee on Canadian Heritage report [emphasis mine] which the WGC publicly supported.

The WGC has appeared in front of successive Heritage committees, advocating for financial stability for the CBC. We presented clear ideas, with the BBC as a model, about how to get the CBC where it needs to be. These reports and recommendations have gone nowhere.

“The loss of 800 jobs is drastic” says Maureen Parker, Executive Director, WGC. “If the CBC needed an advance on their next budgetary allocation, why was this dismissed outright? There has certainly been sympathy expressed for the financial position of the private broadcasters, whose main business is the simulcast of U.S. shows. Yet the CBC is ours – it is where Canadian talent, Canadian voices, take prime-time prominence and pride of place. The CBC should come first.”

The CBC is making popular Canadian shows, and has been succeeding in the battle for ratings. The WGC believes it is essential that the CBC be fully and sufficiently funded to fulfill its role as our national voice. We urge the government to demonstrate its understanding of the value of our public broadcaster, and advance the necessary portion of the CBC’s parliamentary appropriation.

CBC Cuts deep

EIGHT HUNDRED POSITIONS.

400 English, 400 French. Across all services. That's about 10% of the workforce.
Layoffs begin in Summer, complete by September

No additional U.S. programming, No commercials on radio.
National Radio will be cut substantially...lot more repeats.
$50 million cut to programming budget

$175 Million shortfall.
No station closures, yet.
$125 Million worth of assets to be sold to make up one time shortfall.

83% of cuts to TV, 17% to Radio.

Senior managers take minimum 20% cut including bonuses.

bit of math I don't understand exactly -- apparently before today, regional costs were 40% of budget. They're getting a cut of 20%.

More as it develops... but this is deep, broad, and brutal.

UPDATE 4:33 PM: MSM coverage here and here.

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

How I Know I'm Still American

IN CASE YOU missed it, a very funny finale on 22 Minutes last night, culminating in a bit on the latest FAUX News fracas.



So how do I know I'm still, in spite of it all the seeming vitriol, (oh Lordy did I hear an earful from my awesome cousin!) a good little American boy?

Critch's button on this desk joke.....hurts, man. It hurts.

Today's A Day to Check Your Bucket

AS MY FRIEND Andrew Toth reminds me, it's not all about TV sturm and drang and wha. Sometimes, in life, we must pause. We must pause for the passing of the funk. Eddie Bo, Rest in Peace.

Don't know the name? Don't matter. It also strikes me in these times that one of Bo's signature tunes sounds downright prescient.

We are very sad to learn that pianist Eddie Bo, one of New Orleans' greatest and most beloved performers, passed on Wednesday, March 18 at the age of 79.

His legacy is profound, and he was considered the last of the "junker"-style pianists, fusing jazz, R&B, funk, soul, and blues seasoned with New Orleans flavor.


Eddie Bo (Edwin Bocage to his mama) is one of the most important ­ and least known ­ of the great funksters of the 60's and 70's. His recording career, stretching from the mid-50's on started out in New Orleans R&B like "Twinkle Toes" and "Check Mr. Popeye" and moved on, in the mid-60's to some of the grooviest soul and funk made in New Orleans, or anywhere else for that matter. While he made plenty of his own records ­ among them the mighty and legendary "Hook & Sling Pts 1&2" which was a minor national hit in 1969 ­ he was also a major producer, arranger and collaborator on scores of other records. His importance to the New Orleans scene can not be overestimated.

The fact that he wasn't better known nationally is a crime, and probably due in large part to the fact that most of his records were made for small independent labels like Scram, Seven B, and Bo Sound. Some of his best stuff did see national distribution but with the exception of "Hook & Sling" and "Check Your Bucket" not many got anywhere near the charts outside of the Big Easy.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure my bucket's got a hole in it.

What Did You Expect?

WELL BY NOW you've seen it. It's a pretty odious piece of tape. FOX News Types mocking the commitment of Canada's military in Afghanistan -- in a week when 4 more soldiers came home in body bags. Body bags that we weep, and watch on our screens, and silently line up on overpasses on the Highway of Heroes to bear witness to, as the hearses rumble beneath -- not hide under cover of darkness, unquestioning and unreported, yet somehow "fair and balanced."

On the show, Gutfeld mocked comments from Canada’s commander of land forces, Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, who said on March 10 that the military would need a year to recover from its Afghan deployment because of the wear and tear on its equipment and personnel.

Gutfeld suggested the Canadian military would use the year to "do some yoga, paint some landscapes and run on the beach."

"Isn’t this the perfect time to invade this ridiculous country," Gutfeld continued. "They have no army."

"I didn’t even know they were in the war," said Benson, a panelist on the show. "I thought that’s where you go if you don’t want to fight."

"It's a comedy show." "Oh, it wasn't serious." Mmm. Hmm. Imagine if a foreign program had made the same jokes coinciding with the death of an American soldier in Iraq, or Afghanistan. FOX News would take that in stride too, right? No? Well, then...How could they be so cavalier, so terrible, so awful, so downright inhuman? Is there no sense of decency there, at long last?

And my answer to you is, "what did you expect?"

The United States is many things. But at its best, and worst -- it has always been an insular nation. It has the collective ego and force of populus and prosperity to look inward first, and mesmerized by what it sees, it rarely finds the time to turn the gaze outward. Americans, shocked to the core by the attacks of 9/11, woke up and asked, "why did this happen to us?" and
"Why do you hate us so?"

And the world scratched its head and said, "You mean you really don't know?"
On every blog, every Canadian news site, every posting where there's false breast beating and crocodile tears now, I wish you'd remind the right wing, sad neocon trolls that this is the fruit they asked for -- every time they mocked and derided their own artists, and writers, and reporters, and storytellers. So desperate they were to be approved of, to be liked, to show that -- far from being Anti-American -- they loved America as much as Americans did!

The pure, unvarnished, terrible, awful truth? You want it? Really? Here goes.

You're not American.

It doesn't matter how much FOX News you watch, or how you ape and applaud George W. Bush or Cheney, or how you beat your chest when PM Harper plays from the Karl Rove book. You are not American, and you never will be American, though you eschew any cultural product from your home save the occasional hockey game; though you whinge and look down on your national broadcaster and rush headlong to embrace the programming arm of that same news channel that spits on your war dead...you will never make up for the truth that is this: you are not American and they do not care about you.

Your lives, literally, are not worth as much as American lives. That is why they could mock so easily on Faux News. You are not worth thinking about. You are ... the other. That's why they could make fun of Canada's sacrifice...because it's not theirs. You are foreign. You are separate.

I want you to remember that, and think on that the next time you type about the programs that "no one wants to watch." I want you to remember that when American audiences turn on the influx of Canadian made shows popping up on their airwaves and reject them because "they're not about us." I want you to remember that the next time Canadians need to know something about how their parliamentary democracy works and doesn't know because their TV is too full of Law & Order cops reciting MIRANDA rights that your citizens could not claim. Remember it the next time someone is turned away from the border for "taking an American's job," even though that's not what's going on. Remember that the next time someone makes fun of what's close to the bone for you.

Don't expect them to care. They are not you. And you most certainly are not them.

I love my American roots, but it does make for a divided self. And I rage when something like this happens because I see the bloody connection that leads straight from the horror of seeing the deaths of your soldiers belittled to having to beg to get your stories on the air beside that third rate, warmed over U.S. procedural that nobody asked for.
Stop the crocodile tears. This is the culture you made. You made it when you gave your country's airwaves away. Now live with it.

Or, having done so much to sneer and belittle and mock those who'd tell the stories of your people, who'd maybe show the heroic side of those fallen from Afghanistan if you gave them half the chance, repent. Repent not for the silly, low stakes idea of Canadian TV and cultural sovereignty. Repent instead for the mothers and families who had to endure hearing that on the day of inconceivable sacrifice, a U.S. News channel chose to make fun of them.

Repent, shut your mouth, and haul your ass out to that overpass. Your airwaves are gone and colonized for good. Your local stations are soon to follow. Your national broadcaster is bloody and crumbling.

Get thee to an overpass and repent in silence. It's the least you can do for young people braver than you. Better than you.

Repent. And think of how those families' stories shall be told. Because FOX NEWS, or NBC, or CBS, or ABC or DISNEY isn't going to do it for you.

And the next time some fucktard sounds off in the comments section about the waste of money to the CBC and how the arts is a luxury and doesn't matter, remember how you felt when you heard them laughing at the sacrifice of your honoured dead.

The Nasty Spat

THE DAILY BEAST is full of the juicy internecine Hollywood-warfare battle between old privileged establishment media and newfangled web-based media.

Peter Bart vs. Nikki Finke -- go read it at the Beast.

There may be a great deal of validity in Variety’s discussion of blogging in general and Finke in particular. But she is largely inoculated by the simple phrase, “consider the source.” Variety’s Bart—who obviously ordered up this assault—would be in a far better position if he were not guilty of two cardinal sins: transparently carrying the studios’ water on many occasions and ceding so much of the turf of real news coverage that there was plenty of soil in which a blogger with Finke’s news chops and outsized personality could take root.

Finke is truly a larger-than-life figure in Hollywood, a place thickly populated with big personalities. The former debutante is much discussed but rarely seen; no photograph of recent vintage has found its way onto the Internet. She is accused of being many unpleasant things: shrill, vindictive, self-promoting and more. But what can’t be disputed is that she has broken some important news, notably NBC-Universal’s hiring of Ben Silverman to run the network and more recently, the fact that Peter Chernin was leaving his job as Rupert Murdoch’s number-two man at News Corp.

Thanks in part to a loyal cadre sources and to the enormous vacuum she filled during the writers’ strike, Finke’s column has become a must-read in Hollywood. And clearly, Variety’s Bart cannot take it any more.

Bart's weirdo weekend Variety column.

More piling on.

And the Finke, the whole Finke, and nothing but the Finke.

For my part, I have to say, that it's clear Variety still has no idea how much it hurt its credibility by being so in the tank for the congloms during the WGA strike.

Note to dead tree media: the whole populist anger against big business thing is growing... if EVER there was a time to not be shackled to the old elites, it's now. Finke's gone from 'whodat?' to first read in a startlingly small amount of time. You can ask why, or you can......oh, right, okay, you can write hit pieces in your increasingly irrelevant rag. Right. Choice made. Next!

EDIT: Finke responds. Oooh. Did Variety really try to BUY DHD? This looks uglier with every passing second.

Special Pleading and the World of Canadian TV

THERE'S A FALLACY of argumentation that's known as "special pleading." It's a tricky one, and it takes many forms, but the basic definition of special pleading comes down to this:

A presentation of an argument that emphasizes only a favorable or single aspect of the question at issue.

"Special Pleading" is often offered up as a way to try to deflect or change the subject, rather than rationally or coldly examine the issue at hand with logic and a full examination of the facts. As a tactic, it's as old as the hills. But there's something about our age that, far as I can tell, has lead to the spreading of Special Pleading like kudzu.

First, you remove the control rods. For all the faults of contemporary journalism, the way it's supposed to have gone for the last few decades is that you don't take sides. You try to maintain neutrality and present both sides.

That sort of fell by the wayside in the last few years, as the rise of talk radio, and the internet, too, made it OK to retreat into eddies and cul-de-sacs where only one view was ever expressed. When people talk about the death of civility in politics, I think a lot of the time what they're reacting to is the rise in the unchallenged tactic of special pleading.

Sometimes special pleading takes the form of trying to frame the argument in such a way that refutation is impossible, or meets such an impossible standard of proof that there's no way back.

"You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists," is an example of this kind of thinking. Now, simple logic should tell you that there's a whole lot of daylight between these two extremes, but when a top government official maintains that this statement is so, the premise of the argument is so extreme that, if enough people accept it, it becomes a powerful disincentive to explore or challenge the premise. Similarly, "if you don't support the war in Iraq, you are against the troops." This is classic special pleading. There is no burden of proof with which you could refute that argument to someone who believes it.

Part of the reason why "Special Pleading" arguments are so hard to crack, and people who believe them so hard to reach, is because of the built in walls that deliberately shut out any of the avenues of logical debate. If someone says, "You can't judge cops' behavior in the course of their duties unless you've been a cop, because you don't know what it's like," there's no way to counter that argument.

Of course, the problem with arguments that rely on Special Pleading is that their very insularity almost guarantee that there can be no fresh thinking or data, or news, or reality that permeate and change that thinking.

Now, as is my cant (and by dint, I would say, of the current historical moment) the examples I use above come mostly from the left or liberal side of the political spectrum. But I don't mean to suggest that arguments of special pleading are the exclusive province of the right. I find myself frustrated with people I agree with politically all the time, when I hear them utilizing arguments that amount to Special Pleading. If I can't immediately conjure up lefty arguments of special pleading, maybe it's because they fit so nicely into one of the political right's other fave argument tactics of the last few years, the "appeal to authority." But that's getting off on another horse...

The basic rule that's violated in argumentation by special pleading is this principle in philosophy: if you claim a distinction, there should be a relevant and substantive basis for making that distinction. It should be verifiable. When something is not verifiable, because "access to the truth" is claimed by one group, or you ignore any evidence that doesn't support your claim, the way forward is nearly impossible.

So, for instance, claiming that any criticism of Israel's actions in the Palestinian Territories or Gaza comes from a place of anti-semitism -- should be something that is verifiable. If youcan't verify it, then besides being slanderous, it's a form of special pleading.

Special Pleading is ripe now for all sorts of reasons -- one of the big ones being the fact that the internet tends to flatten out facts and truth. At first glance, it may be difficult to tell whether someone's making sense, or is some sort of loon.

I think everybody in the Canadian broadcasting firmament should keep special pleading in mind this week. We're going to be entering a very interesting time.

We have a Conservative Heritage Minister, James Moore, who is very much of the opinion that the CBC should be forced to compete more, and should "live within its means." He doesn't think that it should compete with the Private Networks for advertising or for programming.

There's plenty of people who agree with him, both Inside the CBC and out. They will make all sorts of arguments that the CBC has lost its way, is now chasing ratings, betraying its foundations by not having a service that plays classical music, etc. This ignores the fact that a few short years ago the main argument used against CBC Television was that no one was watching. Now ratings are up, but it's still not good enough.

A full examination of the CBC 's mandate and what would need be done to rationalize it for the 21st century would probably be healthy. In fact, there's been plenty of those studies made in the past. Most of them have been ignored by governments of the day because they usually seem to suggest that the CBC is being asked to do too much with too little. No one wants to take on the politically difficult task of whittling down that mandate, and nobody wants to own up to funding it at a level where it can accomplish everything you're asking it to do.

When you see huge articles about the layoffs at CBC this week -- for they are coming -- I want you to ask yourself if you're hearing all sides of the argument, or if there's a bit of special pleading going on.

The other fascinating thing that's going on in the cultural sector is that the Private Networks,Global and CTV, are agitating heavily for relief from their obligations, blaming the economy and a broken business model. The Heritage Minister has indicated that he's amenable to these arguments. How will that relief come? Carriage fees? Direct investment? I have no idea. But when the news comes down, you owe it to yourself to see if you're getting the full picture of what is going on.

Canadians pay 34 dollars a year for the CBC. Free market types use a type of "special pleading" when they talk about how the CBC has all these advantages and doesn't "compete" like the private networks do. But what does that actually mean? After all, Kirstine Leyfield, the CBC Executive, unearthed a fairly interesting Nordcity study in an op ed she published in the National Post this weekend.

So the CBC competes with private broadcasters. But what is a private broadcaster in Canada anyway?

Nordicity, an independent firm specializing in broadcasting, valued the federal regulations that provide private broadcasters with the right to substitute U.S. content at between $270-million and $330-million. Other provincial and federal government subsidies such as tax credits and the Canadian Television Fund add another $165-million in cash support to the privates. Canada, in short, has a heavily subsidized media industry in which private companies compete for public money, and the CBC, in turn, competes for advertising dollars.

When viewed in that light, suddenly the framing of the argument changes. James Moore is talking about offering relief to the private broadcasters -- who already receive substantialpublic investment. By what token, then, can he entertain that notion, but slam shut the very same considerations for the CBC? Special Pleading.

Here's another case of Special Pleading at work, broadcasting style: and this one hits a bit closer to home. I've mentioned a few times lately that the level of flak I've gotten has risen. Along with the flak there's been plenty of contradictory statements made. I've been told by people that I can't stop blogging because too many people read what I read and nobody else says what I say. I've also been told by people that they could never do what I do. We've seen anonymous letters go around in the last week about the Canada Media Fund that are extremely alarmist, and based in no fact whatsoever. Yet producers won't speak up. ACTRAspeaks up, God love'em, they always do, and not always wisely, but what I hear everywhere I go is that somehow what I do, nobody else could do because they have too much to lose.

This is the very essence of Special Pleading at work. Cause I'm going to tell you this right now: I aint special. I read about what's going on in the industry. I talk to people. I say things on this blog and sometimes I have to walk 'em back. I'm also, essentially, a self-employed freelancer. So you would think that if anybody had something to lose by sticking a head up and saying something about the industry, it's me.

And yet....my phone still rings. I'm getting jobs. I'm busy. I'm not a pariah.

Now, either that means I must be the most talented sonofabitch who ever lived and worked in Canada, or the whole idea that you can't speak up and add your voice to the debate in this industry is a bunch of bullshit. A copout. An appeal to special pleading.

I'm gonna pull the pin out here. I am not the most talented sonofabitch who ever lived and worked in Canada. In fact, I dare say that I've ate and drank and spent time with several people I think are way more talented than me in the last five days alone.

On Friday night, a group of writers gathered together, and one of the people in the group had a very heartfelt thing to say. He told me that it wasn't that he was scared to say something -- it was that he felt overwhelmed. He didn't know what it was possible for him to do.

Well, I think that's a fair proposition. It's so easy to feel helpless, and like you can't do anything. I know what that's like.

The next few weeks are going to be crucial for the direction of the industry. So what can you do, you yourself, without any power?

You can read the coverage. You can be that reality check and make sure that both sides of the argument are getting told. If they're not, you can write a letter to the editor. (#1 thing you can do.)

In your groups of friends and relatives, when you hear the cant about how the CBC should live within its means, and how the private broadcasters need relief -- you can speak up and ask people to examine their feelings about that. What do they really mean? What assumptions do they make? What do they get from the CBC? What do they get from the private networks? What does each cost them? What does each give back? Make sure all sides are represented and discussed. If the broadcasters are offered relief, what should they be required to give back? And do we accept their assurances that this is an unmitigated disaster at face value? Once you give up something, it's very difficult to get it back. Don't allow the arguments to descend to Special Pleading. You have a right to question whether these companies deserve relief. Broadcasting is a public trust. That's the way it's supposed to be, anyway. (#2 thing you can do.)

Pay attention to the Heritage Committee, who will be holding hearings on changes to the TV landscape in a few weeks. This is the process that got the odious provisions of Bill C10 stripped out last year. There is power in the process. Write a letter. Keep informed. Do not leave it to someone else to do. (#3 thing you can do.)

You can forge a relationship with your constituency office, and your MP. Sooner or later there is going to be an election. And culture will be just as unlikely an issue this time as it was last time. Introduce yourself as a constituent and a taxpayer. Get them thinking of you as a worker, as a taxpayer, and not as that boogeyman living high off the hog on the government dime, going to galas. (#4 thing you can do.)

If that little voice of yours has been silent for this time, up til now, then I'm afraid to tell you that you have now lost that luxury. The changes that are going down now are real, they are systemic, they are major, and they will decide whether you have a job within five years. All the special pleading you've done up to now to justify not raising your voice? It's over.

It really is now...or it's never. And then all that safety-silence will have bought you out of the industry, anyhoo. Welcome to the endgame, cutlets.

Pushing Links

REGULAR BLOGGING here resumes, hopefully, tomorrow. We'll see, anyway. But for today here's a few thoughtful links for you from the NYTimes.

Bill Carter has a reflective and interesting retrospective of E.R.

IN the long tradition of cultural touchstones forged from ignored or rejected television scripts, the story of “ER” stands out. “Every network had passed on it, twice,” John Wells, the show’s original and longtime executive producer, recalled. “It had all these characters and medical dialogue, and they found it utterly impossible to follow.”

At the time — the early 1990s — “ER” was labeled a “trunk job,” a script that had languished in some forgotten slush pile for years. And indeed it had, somewhere in the dark reaches of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment production company. Written in 1974 by Michael Crichton, who died last year, the original version of the show included a scene in which a few doctors, working in a Boston hospital, were listening to a basketball game with Bill Bradley playing for the Knicks and Tommy Heinsohn playing for the Celtics.

Then, in 1993, the project attracted new interest when the Warner Brothers studio, which had gained the rights, began pitching the series anew, using Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Crichton as inducement. (The two had just collaborated on the enormously successful “Jurassic Park.”) After an initial round of rejections, NBC — given the big names attached — reluctantly agreed to produce a pilot and put it on the schedule.

In hindsight the early doubters, as they often do, missed a transitional moment in television history — not to mention a blockbuster hit. In the mid-1990s “ER” attracted more than 30 million viewers a week, at its very peak in 1998, 47.8 million. By comparison today’s most-watched dramas rarely reach 20 million viewers. It was the most-watched show in television for three seasons, and even now remains the second-most-watched drama on NBC (after “Law & Order: SVU”).

Tired of hearing about Apatown? That cabal of Rogen and Apatow and Paul Rudd et al. What about this portrait of Diablo Cody and the distaff side. I thought this group profile was really sweet. Nice to see writers supporting each other. Apparently it is actually, like, you know, possible.

And then there was this essay that I just think is a lovely piece of writing, and a wonderful character study. Surprising right til the end, like any good story.

Beyond that, Frak!

...but that's another story for another time.

EDIT: Oh, and Henshaw's got a video that's just going to make your life a little bit better.