A Visit from von Finckenstein

(with deep, deep, deep apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, Not a creature was stirring, Not even a louse.

The cable bill was flung on the ledge with despair

In hopes new antennas would grab HD off air.

Ivan in his kerchief, and Len in his cap

Had settled back down, for their post-hearing nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter

sounded just like that douche yelling "local TV matters."

Away to the window I flew with a shoe

Thought maybe I'd nail the "TV tax" guy too.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,

Gave a sterile appearance quite like Gatineau.

When, what to my wondering eyes did appear,

But a passel of bureaucrats looking severe.

And their driver, so precise and rigid of spine,

I knew in a moment twas von Finckenstein.

He mumbled and shouted in such a great barrage,

saying "value for signal,  not fee for carriage!"

"On Rogers! On Global! You too, CTV!

Bring me solutions, not money for free!"

"To the back rooms! Committees! There's deals to be made!

Throw out an idea, not just a grenade!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

came reams of paper, a snowstorm in the sky,

Up to the house-top the courses they flew,

With a sleigh full of arguments, and Jim Shaw too.

He was green, with a twinkling, and his face in a pinch

And I knew there and then that this dude was the Grinch.

"Here's what I want," he shook with his fist,

"You better sit down, cause it's quite a long list."

Von Finck whispered nervous, "we should move along,"

But Shaw slapped him back, saying, "this is my song!"

He pawed at my aerial, wrecking the mount, and claimed

that Canadians just couldn't count.

"Let the market decide, stay out of our way! 

But don't dare try to tell us how much they should pay!"

Shaw poked through the sack and found all U.S. shows,

and he shook his green head and said, "Finky, this blows."

Von Finck, how he brooded! Til they forged a detente,

and Finky admitted "well, that's all they want."

"I try to encourage, cajole and yes, shame.

But you know, our broadcasters are unspeakably lame."

The Grinch poked the sack and said, "most of it's junk,"

Von Finck sighed and nodded, said, "and thus, there's my funk."

It was round about now that these two got my goat,

I announced my appearance by clearing my throat.

Their eyes snapped to me and I felt a great dread,

And I wished with each fibre that I'd just stayed in bed,

"Who are you?" They demanded, with no ounce of fear.

"Where's your written remarks and notice to appear?"

I held my ground, said, "I just wish to note,

I know I'm supposed to just work the remote.

But now that you're here, I'll try a new tack,

Can you tell me what's there for me in that sack?"

The Grinch shrugged, and mumbled and von Finck went pale,

Then Shaw booked for a profile from the Globe & Mail.

Relief flooded through me, there'd be no background noise,

From the guy who hawks porn but hates Trailer Park Boys.

I then fixed my gaze on the man of the year,

Hoping his solutions I soon would hear,

But he shook his head sadly and said with a sob,

"Skinny basic? Unbundling? Man I hate my job."

So I patted his head, and offered a snort.

And he admitted he didn't have much to report.

So I said, "I'll be brief. And let's start with a fact.

Are we still trying to follow the broadcasting act?"

His eyes started glazing, and I held up my hand,

Said I'd keep my promise, and make short my demand.

"On gaffer, on seamstress, on writer, and grip,

On actor and P.A. and director so hip,

When we come before you, you seem so polite,

But like we don't really matter, and that, sir, aint right."

For it's we who make things, we haul and make fast.

We don't just sell pipe, or simulcast,

So when you consider a future direction,

Please Santa von Finck, can we have some protection?"

He stared straight ahead and he said not a word,

For a moment the whole thing seemed rather absurd,

Then, in a low voice he said something bold,

"Man." Said von Finck, "is it freaking cold."

So there in the midst of the holiday heather,

Two hosers a-sat, discussing the weather.

The hour grew late, and I ran out of beer,

And the man rose to leave, and I wished him good cheer.

But I heard him exclaim, as he rode out of sight,

"Licence renewals in April! Man will that be a fight."

Happy Holidays everybody. Be safe.  DMc

A Pox on All Your Houses -- oh, and Happy Holidays!

I'M GETTING READY to pull out of Dodge and drive into oblivion,  (Glad that blizzard hit the East Coast YESTERDAY...) but before I do there's one more kick to be had at the TV-fight can.

This subject has been woefully under-covered in the Canadian press, and it's not hard to figure out why.  Newspapers showed up for the first days of the latest round of CRTC hearings -- when the broadcasters and cablers sturmed and dranged, and sucked the air out of the room by making what was supposed to be a review of the Canadian broadcasting system since 1999 all about Carriage Fees -- for the THIRD TIME...

Discussion of later issues, indeed, any coverage at all beyond that narrow frame, was ignored.  The Globe and Mail continues to feel the chill of writing honestly about anything that might reflect badly on corporate parent CTV. And the Post and Canwest Papers have their own issues with broke Daddy broke.

The disappointing thing here has been The Toronto Star -- by a miracle of turndowns and vagaries of this or that -- is one of the only papers in the country WITHOUT a significant finger in the broadcast pie.  But they followed the pack and didn't do much to elucidate and illuminate the issue, either.

Well, the Sunday Star today makes an attempt to rectify that, with a series of three articles.

Bill Brioux, of the TVFeedsMyFamily parish, lets loose on the guff that the broadcasters have been giving.

The Canadian broadcasters claim that – especially during the recent recession – their business model is irreversibly broken and that they can no longer survive off ad revenue alone.

What they really want is for the government and ultimately taxpayers to bail them out after decades of reckless overspending on American shows.

The dark side to the whole Canadian broadcast story the past decade or so has been the limitless, reckless overspending – especially by CTV – in order to attain total dominance in the marketplace. CTV has owned the Canadian Top-20 nationally the past decade with its deep line-up of American hits – American Idol, the CSIs, The Amazing Race, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, the list goes on and on.

During – and, really, because of – that drive to dominance, the cost of importing American shows skyrocketed. Still, it seemed, no price was too high to keep a potential hit away from arch rival Canwest Global.

Yours truly tears a strip out of Canada's cable bullies:

Forgive an old cynic, but cable leading the "Stop the TV tax" charge is kind of like the schoolyard bully turning around and telling you you've hurt his feelings. Satellite companies like Bell Expressvu, who aren't as profitable, (they have to pay for those satellites, after all) earn equal disdain for throwing in with the disingenuous tubthumping.


Like every good story, this one comes with a late-breaking twist. The wireless divisions of our new "consumer friendly" carriers got a shock when the government overruled a CRTC decision on Globalive Wireless Management Corp. Wireless phone competition – and maybe foreign ownership – the industry's last big protection – is on its way. I wonder if they feel that one in their bones. I can't wait for the next ad campaign.

And Garnet Fraser, Sunday Star editor -- raises that provocative point that maybe there's some blame to point at our own houses.

In poll after poll – see the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting at friends.ca if you don't believe me – the public has said it wants distinctly Canadian broadcasters and programs. But we'd rather that someone else do the watching. U.S. imports dominate the ratings of private broadcasters; heck, even the CBC does it with British stuff (Coronation Street and the co-production The Tudors).


Last week CTV and Global put out duelling news releases crowing about all of their shows in the top 10. But the shows aren't really their shows; they're the likes of House and CSI. These networks wouldn't mind if their own creations (e.g. DeGrassi) were charting instead; heck, they'd prefer it, as popular shows also sell more DVDs, etc. that the shows' owners would greatly profit from.
But that's not what most Canadians want to watch, whatever we tell pollsters. And it's not like Canadian broadcasters don't sometimes make a pretty decent effort to woo us.

I must admit when I was writing my piece, I found myself in a very weird place with all this.  Weird because I'm currently researching an MOW on a figure in Canadian history -- that of course nobody I seem to meet and talk with casually seems to have ever heard of.   Being American-born, there is something really astonishing about that to me.  I grew up hearing, like everybody else, that "Canadian history is boring."  Right now, I'm learning just how false that is, and how terrible and pernicious that misapprehension is... it probably goes a long way to explaining the conundrum Garnet explores above.

But every time I tell people what I'm working on, there's all this tedious explaining to do.  The equivalent would be if I had to explain who Davy Crockett was to an American. But of course, you'd never have to do that. Not in a million years.

I don't know how a country with such a complete disconnect from itself ultimately survives. But there you go.

It's hard to boil down a problem -- especially one that leaves you with such a feeling of disgust -- to 600 words.   And were there more enterprising and courageous journalists in this country covering the most corporate concentrated media in the world, perhaps one or two might have wondered at how the Broadcast Execs could have repeated the falsehood that "Canadian shows don't make money," when the CRTC has a report prepared by the WGC and other groups showing how patently untrue that is.

But we live in a nation of "official truths," not "real truths."  Where we try to destroy truthtellers instead of embrace them and learn from them.  Where we have no idea where we've been, so no inspiration for where to go next.

No wonder it's so easy to frame a false debate between "saving local tv" and "tv taxes."

And remember, folks, it IS a false debate:




Anyway, hopefully I won't be writing any more about this bullshit.  Through it all I never did get my big questions answered:  1) Howcum U.S. channels make all sorts of money on their local newscasts (so much so that Jay Leno's 10pm numbers are a BIG problem for affiliates) but here, those same newscasts are framed as big money losers?  How is that not just an example of the sales team not being very good at their business?  And the 2nd one -- Corner Gas, our biggest homegrown hit -- a show that was paired with any number of U.S. sitcoms through the years that it regularly beat -- why were commercials in it sold at a discount from shows it was completely outrating?

No matter how you uncoil the tail of Canadian TV it seems, you get caught in the slime trail.

And with that I point my car south.  Happy Holidays to you all.  Stop the Reindeer Tax.  Save Local Elves.

Great Moments in Bad Science

YOU KNOW, sometimes Academics really stretch.  But I've avoided writing about this article on a study done somewhere for two days just because I couldn't get past how stupid it was.

Through a set of ingeniously concocted experiments, reported Friday in the journal Science, researchers show that white characters in television series display far more negative body language toward their black peers than to members of their own race.

The bias conveyed by these body clues is not only recognized subconsciously by people who watch the shows, but significantly influences their feelings about the black characters.

I'm too weary to go into it further. But let's start from the top:

TV storytelling is about characters in conflict.  Therefore, any study of "tv body language" is going to be skewed because on TV, unlike in life, people are ALWAYS IN CONFLICT.

Comparing relations and body language of say, "House  and Foreman" vs. "House and Wilson" that doesn't take into account not just the race of the character, but their social relationship to the other character, the genre of the show, the way they tell stories...all of it...is BULLSHIT.

Phrenology & "subliminal" science -- that's about the weight of this.

I would love to see this study, I really would. I bet any TV writer, no matter how addled, could demolish it simply by comparing how they've cherrypicked character relationships, in about twelve seconds.

Completely fucking stupid.