So Smart

FROM THE YES! file:  (via Playback)

Christmas is coming a little early for Heartland, which this week began production on a two-hour MOW in Calgary.

Known, for now, as A Heartland Christmas, the special has series director Dean Bennett working from a script by writer/exec producer Heather Conkie. The story sees the family's holiday interrupted after an avalanche traps a herd of horses in the wilderness. It stars regular cast members Amber Marshall, Michelle Morgan, Shaun Johnston, Graham Wardle and Chris Potter, with guest stars Nicholas Campbell (The Englishman's Boy) and Hélène Joy (Durham County).

You start pulling a million viewers or more, stay steady, really service your audience and lo and behold -- you get yourself a smart little brand-extension where you can add a few guest stars -- and maybe even get a shiny DVD to market.


Honestly, isn't that better than whining that the internal politics of the CBC are doing this or that, or that you got poor promotion? Or this, or that, or the other thing?  Do the good work. Do the hard work. Collect the reward.


Seems so simple.


Congrats to Heather Conkie and everybody involved.  

On The Raydio

ONE OF THE interviews I did this morning, for CBC's Toronto Morning show, Metro Morning, with the venerable Andy Barrie is up and available for download.

I have to get a better phone.

Andy's questions were really great -- and he's very informed on the subject.  I think it's a pretty good interview. Listen and see if you agree.

Shuffling the Chairs at CBC

SO THE BIG news today is a shuffle at the public broadcaster that will have a significant impact on creative development at the CBC.

From the press release:

Over the last few years, CBC Television has experienced significant success with its new shows," says Richard Stursberg, Executive Vice-President of English Services. "They have drawn bigger domestic audiences and sold well internationally, despite our continually diminishing available resources. This recent success gives CBC an opportunity to increase its position in the international television marketplace. It also helps us to move into the new multi-platform world from a position of strength."

Fred Fuchs, former Executive Director, Arts & Entertainment for CBC Television, has been appointed General Manager, Production Enterprises, with responsibility for strengthening the international relationships and financing of CBC's Arts and Entertainment, Documentary and Factual Entertainment shows.

At the same time, Sally Catto, former Creative Head for CBC Drama, joins the senior network programming team as Executive Director, Arts and Entertainment for CBC Television and will lead the creative development and execution of all programming in Comedy, Drama, Variety, Performing Arts and Children's Programming.

This is a big step forward for CBC, and recognizes Fuchs' background in international deals (he was involved with the setup of The Tudors before coming to CBC, and also worked for Francis Ford Coppola.) With shrinking resources, it probably is good for the CBC to be thinking co-pro. Now creatives just have to keep the heat on and make sure that some Above the line Writers from this country get love on these shows -- not just Editors and Directors and stuff.

This goes hand in hand with this announcement that CBC made yesterday about a new partnership with Telefilm to bring Canadian films to the broadcaster quicker.

The second part of today's announcement is also something I'm really enthusiastic about. Sally Catto is a really great, smart executive who is incredibly enthusiastic about TV. So here's hoping that those initial positive steps into series over the last few years hit a new gear now. With Mercer pulling record numbers and, "oh yes we're just the girls and horses show" Heartland slaying the ratings in that family hour that CBC used to own on Sundays, there's plenty of Up that can be mined from this.

Here's coverage of today's shuffle from CP, and The Hollywood Reporter.

The Border goes to Afghanistan; DMc Stays on Couch

"OH, HELLO THERE. I didn't see you."

"Wow, you look good."

"How you been?"

"Good, good. That's good. Me? Oh. Good. Great. Real Great. So Great."

"So. Um."

"Well."

"It was Great to see you. Great."

Andddd.....Scene!

* * *

Ah, the run-in to the Ex. It's always fraught, innit?

Been meaning to blog The Border for a few weeks now. I've seen a bit of two episodes, including the action-packed season premiere. A few more episodes in and you can see the season arcs progressing nicely. Slade (Jonas Chernick) is trying to grow up a bit, and dress better to impress the new girl, played by Athena Karkanis. Graham Abbey's Gray Jackson continues to try and redeem himself, and Grace Park is back as Liz Carver. Not crazy about the addition of Julie Stewart as Kessler's ex, Terri. No fault of the actor, I just find the part a little flat and uninteresting. And her presence tends to exacerbate another little annoyance -- how daughter Zoe (Sarah Gadon) seems to bounce between seeming like a 30 year old one minute, and a 14 year old the next. But for the most part, hey, it's Season 3... the ensemble works together now like a well-oiled old shoe.

Sorry, it's Monday night as I write this. When I'm tired I mix my cliches.

I jumped on getting a screener for this particular episode because of the fun challenges in the production. They had to go to a quarry in Caledon to try and recreate Afghanistan.

(Here's a bit of trivia: the most international place on The Border in the first two seasons was Toronto's Leslie Spit. I swear... that sucker was more damn places...)

This is one of those shows that shows the true genius of guys like Produder Brian Dennis or Production Designer Benno Tutter... they managed to sell freaking Afghanistan without leaving Ontario.

The episode "Missing in Action" concerns ICS Leader Major Mike Kessler being tapped to go consult on Border Security in Afghanistan. Once there, he's kidnaped, along with DHS "analyst" (um, guys, the second we hear that word we jump ahead) Henry Masoud, played by the great Ennis Esmer.

I'm going to say this out loud. Ennis Esmer is a fucking acting ninja. He is all kinds of awesome. If you've seen Young People Fucking, he's the funniest thing in it. He's done comedy in and around Toronto as Calcu-Lator and the Oral Presentation, where his beatboxing has blown me away...he's a fun guy at a party, and, of course, as he proves in this episode, he can totally sell a dramatic role too. This guy is gold.

This is also a great feature episode for James McGowan, who plays Mike Kessler. Quiet. Tense. It's hard to underplay, but there's something about McGowan that just nails this shiz cold.

Full props too to the above-the-line, behind the scenesters that made this thing happen. Phil Earnshaw is a wonderful, incredibly amiable director who I had a lot of fun working with. He directed my favorite episode of the five I wrote for The Border, a first season show about a child soldier. (Sudan = Leslie Spit.) Oh, and I guess this is the part where I have to say, Sullivan, you were the shit too. (God. Directors. Babies.)

Phil's got a way with his talent, but he manages to do some magic here with a central coterie of scenes that are your basic two-handers -- just Esmer and McGowan, trading it back and forth -- talking in close quarters. The more I do this job, the more I get excited about the juicy three page scene, where drama comes not from throwing grenades but from facing off, and shifting emotion.

There's lots of great technical work here, as well. Fast paced editing... good graphics, gross wounds and makeup and blood effects to make you wince, cool editing... but most of all, at the core there's a story that works, and that has great timing and pacing to it, and some important reversals...give the new girl a win (one of the big clues turns on her)...tease the ongoing relationships... keep people guessing about the intentions of the guy who may or may not be the villain.

All in all, it's a very impresive Border debut for scribe Alex Levine. I know Alex a bit, and he's a nice guy, who obviously feels passionate about creating and crafting a well-told, taut, solid story. And with that story department, I'm sure he had a lot of help making sure he could live up to the hype. But there it was -- solid act outs that propelled you through the commercial breaks. Nice work to the team there.

That old meeting with the ex-girlfriend can be super awkward. But I didn't have time to think about that, because a few minutes in, I was too sucked into the show. Awesome. Never thought in a million years that would happen.

I mean, there was stuff that wasn't awesome. The Zoe-Mom plot was a little cold and by the numbers, and I found Maggie, particularly, a little shrill and, uh..not as nuanced as I've seen her in the past...but for the most part, I really enjoyed myself.

Now -- that being said. God love the CBC and their publicity. But there's just some stuff that makes you wince and shake your head and say, "are you kidding me?"

Two things: all the photos and publicity talk about Sargeant Mike Kessler.

It's Major. Sigh. Still, better I guess than last year where they called him Major Kassler. Or something like that. They spelled his name wrong IN AN AD, that's the important thing.

Secondly....the screener....is....bizzare. Here's the thing. I get screeners -- not a lot -- but enough. HBO and TMN do the high tech thing of giving you numbers that are individualized so that if you pirate it or if it goes up on the net, they know it's you bucko and you're screwed.

But here -- I swear to God, this is an actual pic of my TV -- is the image you get on a CBC screener, ALL THE WAY THROUGH:

I'm not kidding. All Kilroy. All the time. Geez. A big black box covering 35 to 40 percent of the screen. Man. And that's how you review it. Seriously? Do they do this to Brioux? John Doyle? Jesus. No WONDER he's so cranky lately. I had to take Gravol.

Anyway, I enjoyed The Border a lot. Alex, great job! Phil, you're a mensch, and hey, if you tune in and give the show some love this Thursday at 9pm on CBC you will not be disappointed.

Unless some seriously weird shit went on behind the little black box, I mean.

UPDATE: Pain in the ass McGrath, causin' a kerfuffle alla time... so apparently there was some communications specialist- scrambling because of the concern about the big ol' black box. And a few judicious checks with some regular journos from the Dead Tree media, it's been determined that my big old black box screener is an outlier.

Which is fine. Better the real journos with their reach get the good stuff and not my inside baseball bloggity-blogging. In fact, I bet I can even predict what happened.

I'm not on the general screener list for The Border. I requested this one -- so somebody probably pulled an extra dub for me after the rest of the screeners went out and flipped some switch that shouldn't have been flipped. When I worked at the TV station, you'd do this sometime, which is how you'd get dubs with no sound, dubs with strange artifacts, and, I suppose, my big o'l covering a bunch o'the screen black box.

So basically, somebody went and did something out of their way and I rewarded them by assuming that all the screeners looked like this and totally turned it into an object of ridicule, proving that no one should ever do anything nice for me, ever.

On the bright side, I'm a Catholic and have done bad things in my life, so whoever pulled the dub should take some comfort in the fact that I'm probably going to Hell.

And... wait for it... here it comes... ready... watch this, now...ahem...

"If I enjoyed the episode that much with a black box covering half the picture, just IMAGINE how much you'll love it in pristine 16 x 9, or even full HD!"

The Border. Thursday, 9pm, CBC.

One of the actors has told me that he's officially rooting for the Yankees tonight so there's no game. Heh heh. Hey, we'll take your rooting, no matter how compromised its origin. That's the Bronx way.

UPDATE THE 2nd: KEEEEERISSSSST....okay, okay, it was not just "one of the actors." It was Brigadier General Mark Wilson, OBE, AKA Sergeant Al "Moose" Kaplasky, or Kaplinsky, or Kaplasty or whatever the character's name is, I don't even WORK for the show anymore, so how about you get off my ass on this one?

Jeez. Move over Sullivan. You gotta share the crib tonight.

Sucking The Air Out of the Room

SO YESTERDAY WAS the deadline to write letters to the CRTC over the issue of carriage fees.

Can we all go back to worrying about H1N1 now?

Two articles tackle the subject and come to different conclusions. Andrew Coyne thinks both sides have a point.

John Doyle puts this one at the foot of the cable co's, while maintaining a healthy viewer-skeptic perspective on the "importance" of the issue. [And still managing to slip in a passive-aggressive dig at Canadian creatives. Wait, sorry. "Creatives."]

The Doyleian dyspepsia notwithstanding, it truly is unfortunate that this sad display of corporate tantrum-throwing has come up at all. We are, after all, talking about profitable businesses here. Yes, broadcast networks have taken it on the chin lately with the ad dip (after doing nothing to plan for it...did no one have the talk about the boom and bust cycle?) but if you ad that to a rebounding economy, wildly increased numbers due to the PPM sampling switch, and the new data that suggests, lo & behold, PVR viewing doesn't necessarily mean commercial skipping, it's a little early to call chicken little on that business. Oh, and the audience that the broadcast networks have lost have largely gone to specialty channels -- which they

all own.

On the cable side -- the CRTC specifically told them to eat the Local Programming Improvement Fee as a cost of doing business -- a business that made them $2 billion last year, thanks, and they basically said "Go fug yourself."

So the distortions of "Stop the TV Tax" and "Local TV Matters" was born.

The truth is that Cable/Satellite and Broadcasters in this country have been fighting this same fight for YEARS. It's been before the CRTC no less than three times. They've been admonished and told to work it out themselves, and instead we get this crazy display asking us to pick sides. Pick sides? Dude, I have car payments, rent to pay and personal relationships to screw up!

This arcane little business issue has monopolized coverage and attention on the broadcast front for a long time -- and meanwhile, real issues, big issues that affect people and jobs and policy and stuff -- get pushed further and further off. We haven't had a review of the Broadcast framework in this country since the disastrous policy changes of 1999. Doesn't matter. It's pushed.

Most of the broadcasters have done their cap-in-hand best in their license renewal hearings to make the case that Gosh, they just can't afford to make Canadian programs ... but the license renewals? Pushed. Nope. Nothing can happen, nothing can advance nothing can get talked about because we have to talk about carriage fees AGAIN.

The point that Doyle nosed toward in his article and didn't quite come out and say is worth exploring a little further:

Take note of this: Last week in the United States, Fox and CBS announced they're pushing cable companies for fees. The Canadian situation is not unique. Stop the grandiosity and the bickering and look at the big picture...

I urge you to find the report I saw in The Wall Street Journal. The gist is this: "Television-network owners News Corp. and CBS Corp. are pushing cable operators to pay monthly fees to carry their broadcast TV stations." Sound familiar? News Corp. owns Fox. That mean two of the four major U.S. networks, Fox and CBS, are demanding fees from cable companies that usually carry their stations free. According to the Journal story, CBS has been quietly pushing this agenda for some time and has had some success.

The extension that comes out of that last line is the true story here.

Why has CBS been "quietly pushing" the issue in the U.S. -- a country where "quietly pushing" isn't usually the M.O.? Because it's an inter-industry issue. It's conceded that it's something that the public won't care about, and shouldn't have to care about.

Contrast that with the loud, distorted, aggressive demands here that you be onside with one group's spin or the other's and I think you get an ugly window into the truth of media ownership and concentration in Canada. It goes beyond being out of touch; it actually translates into feeling that their concerns trump everyone else's.

These corporations feel such a sense of noblesse oblige that they feel that they should be able to seize the agenda whenever they want. They're not afraid of the CRTC, which cannot issue fines, unlike its American counterpart, the FCC. They're both used to getting whatever they want at the Commission. And along the way, they don't care if they compromise their news divisions, or if CBC's signing on to the Broadcaster side opens them to charges that they're trying to 'double-dip' from Canadians, or even if one side of the business harms the other...cause that's the crazy thing -- start digging into the ownership structure and you'll see that half the time, these are different divisions of the same corporate group fighting each other.

It's mad.

And it sucks up all the air, everything that could possibly be said about the TV business -- so we can't discuss our shows, we can't talk about new media opportunities or what comes next. And the weariness engendered in the public means that they go "pox on both your houses", painting the whole TV industry black.

Try, in that environment, to engage on the subject that we're actually making inroads with homegrown programming. Nope. Try being part of the Creative Guilds, who wait on the sidelines for this ridiculous Big Business Wrestlemania to conclude so we can have that TV business review we've been waiting a decade for. Or to present at the license renewals so we can fight -- again -- the chicken littles who want to complete the transition to being American re-broadcasters.

Now, we're guilty now and then of trying to appeal to the public too. With tiny emails, and blogs, and pathetic rallies in the cold and the rain, because we can't afford $50 Grand per commercial break. But what can you do? We're caught in a tough place. What's the alternative? Trundle up to the commission and get patted on the head with the usual "there there" paternalism, while Mommy Cable and Daddy Broadcaster pull Virginia Woolf out in the lobby... and then book ten lobbying appointments by the time the Writers Guild Staff can retire for a wee and a cup of Ovaltine?

It's an amazing mirror moment.

Oh. And then there's this. See? The business that should go on behind closed doors they want everyone to weigh in on...and the stuff that maybe should be, um, talked about -- happens in secret.

Unseemly it is, I tells ya.

In The Future, Will We All Wear Bad Wigs?

DAMNIT>. I got sent a screener for this week's Being Erica, and meant to watch it after the Yankees debacle last night -- but I seem to have misplaced it.

I'm hoping it's in my car or my office and maybe I'll get a chance to check it out tomorrow and post a few thoughts.

But if you've seen the promo, you know that this is the 2nd cool twist of the Season. Erica gets sent into the future to help her new friend Kai. All the way to 2017 -- where everything is still sort of recognizable, except of course for Erica's hair. Heh heh.

Looks kind of neat. I'm glad they're stretching the mythos of this show.

The girl stuff just, you know, leaves me cold. Just cause. You know. Not a girl. Far as I'm concerned, a truck or some Lego or something would really help this show.

I kid. Anyway. Check out Erica's vision of 2017 tonight at 9pm on CBC.

Back To You, Peter...

BILL BRIOUX posts an entertaining review/blow-by-blow of The National's first night with the new format. Like everything at the CBC, predictably, there are dinosaurs who are immediately off the blocks complaining about it -- one must always endure the "everything CBC ever does is wrong crowd..." but for my part, I found it entertaining and fast-paced. At the end of the broadcast I'd felt I'd learned a few things.

These are dire times (I mean, it's always dire times, but still ... ) for CBC News. They've gone through a painful reorganization and numbers have softened this fall.

Sadly, as I age I've taken to a new metric about news engagement -- the flutter factor. One of the reasons I often opt for Jon Stewart at the end of the day is that he makes me laugh. I love Craig Ferguson, too, but staying up to 12:30 to watch TV is a special occasion these days. Reading, yes...but if it's 12:30 on a school night and my kiester's in front of the TeeVee, there better be a guy throwing a ball or something magic going on.

Jon Stewart usually gets me past the flutter factor -- where mind starts to wander and your eyes get heavy. On a bad night I dump out at the guest if I don't find the book they're plugging interesting. Most of the time if it's a movie star, I'll leave unless it's someone who I know always does an odd or good interview, like Paul Rudd.

Already news purists like my friend Howard might be grinding their teeth. (Can't wait to read what he has to say about the new National; as is his fashion, I'm sure he's waiting til it settles in for a few days to post his thoughts.) The teeth grinding is undoubtedly keyed to the fact that I started talking news and defaulted to my reaction to an entertainment show.

But we all need to get over it. Walter Cronkite is dead, and this path of news as entertainment that Murrow warned us about in the early 60's is now a superhighway with Holiday Inns and Stuckey's and Indian Casinos every three miles. The entertainment value of TV news is important for a consumer like me not because I'm a brain-dead ninny who abhors context and can't sit still for a second and a half (though you could make a case for both) -- but because unlike 25 years ago, or even 10 or 15, I've already been consuming news all day.

I start with the paper in the morning. That gets anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes depending on how I feel and what's in it. (More on the Weekend with the NYTimes -- and lately the Globe's brought up its game too, so the weekend Mop & Pail takes longer to read.) Then I sit in front of a computer being fed news headlines in procrasto-worthy bite sizes.

I might learn of a news headline from Twitter or Facebook. If it's a Political story, I'll usually read about it on Macleans.ca (if it's Canadian) or Salon.Com (American) first.

So my news hole is really a picture hole -- I may have read about protestors in parliament -- but I haven't seen the footage. And I might not have followed the story enough to see how it played out over the day.

So if I'm going to tune in a news broadcast, I'm not looking for the voice of God...I'm looking for the goods on the stories I heard about, a couple of stories I might have overlooked, an analytical spin I didn't consider, and a presentation that beats the flutter factor.

Usually, Lloyd and Peter have had me unconscious by about story 3. Last night's National carried me through start to finish without a problem.

It's an interesting mental shift -- away from "we have to be the record because people are depending on us," to "people get their news from many sources... we have to be smartest one that puts it in context."

That's what Jon Stewart does, with a laugh -- and one of the reasons why, probably, there are those studies that show that his audience is generally better informed than the rest of the populace. There's more than enough room for the serious take on that -- especially if you're going to plop your news broadcast in the 10 o'clock hour where everyone else (well, except NBC) is opting for entertainment.

So I'll be going back to the New National. For the first time in a long time, it seems like there's a reason to.

What Blades Can Teach Scripted @ CBC

IN MY DESIRE to do as little as possible on the blog this week, a longtime TV professional familiar to Sticksters by his pseud, Frank "Dolly" Dillon had something to say about this line in my post yesterday:

One final, final thought -- Battle of the Blades is now consistently way, way higher than any scripted show on theCBC. Mercer comes close, and that's it.

So what are those two shows giving the audience that the scripted fare isn't?

Frank's comment:

With Blades I think the biggest surprise is that anyone is surprised that it is doing well.

The concept is immediately understandable and the show stars a group of the Canadian publics most recognizable public figures (hockey players/figure skaters) in a role where we can "learn a little bit more about them.

For hockey fans it is "fun" to watch and the results can be surprising -- Claude Lemieux is still in and Glenn Anderson is out? In a skating contest? And the producers picked very wisely when casting the hockey players (a nice mix of "pretty boys" and "tough guys".

The CBC also got a guy who knew what he was doing when it comes to these kind of shows -- John Brunton and his team at Insight pretty much re-invented the Junos, ran a pro looking Canadian Idol, and has done innumerable figure skating specials.

At the end it really wasn't rocket science -- pick a project you know the public is going to want to see and pick the best, most experienced professionals to execute the concept.

If they applied those standards to their other fare, we'd all be in much better shape.

And yet there was surprise. And beyond surprise, a whole lot of sneering and carping from CBC insiders who want Classical Music 24/7 on Radio 2 and who think that CBC needs to begin and end with The National.

This disconnect between public taste and decisionmaking was reflected a few years ago when CBC bobbled the negative P.R. from the possible departure of Ron MacLean from Hockey Night in Canada. It surfaced again when they let the iconic theme go from HNIC. Both times, huge stories that seemed self-evident to most of us, but that caught the insiders unawares.

The point is, there is proof now. It's not just Hockey. Hockey, Mercer, Blades, Dragon's Den -- CBC can draw over a million viewers, consistently. If the scripted fare doesn't meet that metric, then maybe it's time that Frank's common sense started to enter the equation, no?

Something to think about.

A Whole Bunch of Questions Without Easy Answers

I'VE BEEN DOING a lot of work or thinkin or whatnot with the WGC lately. Between that and my own development stuff, I find myself in the peculiar position of having a whole, whole bunch I would LOVE to talk about here, but simply can't.

This isn't a new phenom. It's been building like a slowly-boiling lobster in the pot for more than a year now. And I suppose it's inevitable when you try to both be inside an industry and comment on it too. In many ways, I'm envious of my friend (and mentor) Howard Bernstein, who sketched out for me twenty years ago, at the beginning of my career, what he'd say about the business as he knew it, if only he could do so in some sort of column or what have you.

Well, Howard's retired now, and he's doing it, in spades, and pulling no punches and I think that's grand.

Meanwhile, I have to put up with the swirling of the "things that should be said" and the very careful dance of trying to figure out how much I can say. And I do so with the ongoing, angry-making knowledge that there's just so many people out there who could very well join in, add to the discussion, help make things better, but don't because good old fashioned Canadian timidity gets in the way.

So I sit, stumped, starting posts in my head and very quickly getting to the, "are you fucking kidding? You can't actually say that" point, trying to tell myself that it's OK, you do what you can, and hell, you still go way further than those Producers who seem to email John Doyle after every column he writes in the Globe.

But the ju-jitsu is getting a bit exhausting, frankly.

Which is why I'm so happy to find somebody else who writes thoughtfully, and who takes a look at things going on in the biz and isn't afraid to do more. Peter Typing Faster is a blog by a recent CFC Prime Time TV writing graduate. He's a pretty smart cookie and has something great to say all the time.

Recently, he's posted a number of articles that put fresh eyes on an old subject in TV Land -- eyeballs vs. demos. He hangs his musings on some of the frankly, astonishing data that's started to come back about FX's Sons of Anarchy.

In Canada, the switch to Personal People Meters is quietly rippling through the biz and it's got everybody talking; nobody knows what it means. Yet. The truth is, that Canadian Broadcasters are so conservative that any innovation in how they slice, dice and sell the numbers probably won't catch on here til long after it's figured out down south. But change doesn't just come in the "it's all moving to the web variety." There are real, actual things to pay attention to in conventional TV. There's life in the old girl yet.

Also, for anyone keeping score and track of the ebb and flow of prediction and pundrity...what is there to make of the fact that, we've heard about the decline of comedy for the last four years now? Article after article proclaimed the genre just about dead. And yet what's performing well this fall? Hmm. Curious. Curious indeed.

If changes like that can happen and upend the conventional wisdom so quickly, let's all take a pill and a grain of salt and pause before we worship at the new gloom-line that advertisers are gone for good and never coming back to TV.

Really? Like the dead half hour comedy? See, smart people know it's never that simple.

One final, final thought -- Battle of the Blades is now consistently way, way higher than any scripted show on the CBC. Mercer comes close, and that's it.

So what are those two shows giving the audience that the scripted fare isn't? And what does it mean that other scripted stuff on the CBC is trending down, but Being Erica seems to bounce around like a pinata, with 20% jumps and drops from week to week?

That's all I can say. Really. Talk amongst yourselves, chickens.

Sophomores.

WELL WELL WELL. Further to the post from earlier today, after watching the Season 2 premiere, I think I'm going to have to go with Salem over Doyle. Being Erica just became a way more interesting show.

...But I still don't think His Crankiness "has it out" for the CBC.

...And with that I'm off to New York in the morning. Be swell.

Friends Like These...

IS IAN MORRISON and his Friends of Canadian Broadcasting -- are they just, y'know, reflexively against everything now? Like, you know, it's a given?

Throwing Stones

SOMETIMES PILOTS don't go. It's a fact of life. And lots of times when they don't, because of CTF requirements, they get burned off with little or no promotion in the summer.

There's a pilot on CBC on Wednesday night this week called Throwing Stones. (Wednes

day, 9pm...uh, 9:30 in Newfoundland? Is that right? Am I ever going to get that right?

It's about women's curling, and it's one of those things that, you know, came close. It's instructive to watch and speculate why you think the network didn't pick it up.

Part of the heartbreak of series tv is that I guarantee you one of the reasons the show didn't get picked up WAS NOT because people didn't work hard on it.

Making TV is gosh darn hard.

I'm pretty sure we'll be hearing from the writing talents behind this pilot -- Lara Azzopardi and Julia Cohen, again soon. But in the meantime, why not check out what they put out there with hope, and hopes of what might have been?

A bit about the show...

Meet Patti, Shirley, Annette, Cindy and Marge – Five very different women just trying to stay afloat amidst the chaos of life: demanding children, high-maintenance husbands, mortgages that keep them awake at night, uninspiring jobs, and all the challenges that come from being a wife, a mother and more significantly, a woman. They’re working class women who do it all and more. And they’re just desperate for a little me time. They are the real desperate housewives.

BUT…all is forgotten, all is left behind when they are together, playing, training, and competing for their true love…curling. They are proud members of the West Kildonan Curling Club in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Don’t worry – this is NOT a show about curling. For our women, curling is just their escape, their girls’ night out and, frequently, a metaphor for life.

What's There To Say?

I DON'T REALLY have anything to add here. Minister James Moore said last week the CBC wouldn't face any more cuts. Fifty-six million dollars while they're still talking about "relief" of private broadcasters is just offensive.

There's no good spin here. None.

CBC could be facing a cut of up to five per cent, or $56 million, from its parliamentary appropriation in the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

That reduction would come on top of a funding shortfall this year of $171 million as a result of a decline in ad revenue.

The federal government has set a target of reallocating expenses by five per cent under its strategic review of government departments and Crown corporations.

The strategic review program, begun in 2007, requires all departments and Crown corporations to look at their spending once every four years, according to a spokesman for the Treasury Board.

CBC president Hubert Lacroix told CBC employees on Friday that CBC/Radio-Canada has been asked to participate in the spending review for 2010-11.

CBC TeeVee & Me: Down East Edition

SOMEBODY, I'M NOT sure who, once pointed out that CBC has four distinct programming seasons: Summer, Fall, Winter and Hockey.

Well, CBC today announced the highlights of the big two of those seasons: Fall and Winter.

Besides returning shows like Little Mosque on the Prairie, The Border, Being Erica, Heartland, The Tudors, Dragon's Den, The Mercer Report and This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Canada's public broadcaster will be adding a figure-skating based reality series, and a spelling-bee like reality show. Also new is venerable CBC favourite Ron James, in an eponymously named sketch comedy show.

As for January?

Two new shows will premiere during the winter: 18 to Life, a domestic comedy about a couple who marry at 18, and Republic of Doyle, a one-hour, St. John's-set dramatic comedy about a dysfunctional father-son private investigator team.

I've been waiting for this official announcement to hit, cause now I can finally confirm the scuttlebutt that's been floating about for the last little bit. I'm very happy to be able to say that I've signed on to run the writing room on Republic of Doyle.

This is the project I blogged briefly about back in February, when I went out for a working weekend in St. John's.

Sometimes when a series gears up after a pilot there's an initial trepidation. Will it work as a series? Is it sustainable? I don't feel any of that going into Republic of Doyle. Allan Hawco, one of the show's creators and its lead actor, is a young actor who's already an old hand at the business. He's got smarts, passion for miles, and a clear, infectious sense of the show he wants to see -- and how he wants to see his city presented. It's a show that's pure entertainment, that's going to feel fresh and fun -- and it's going to be a love letter to St. John's to boot.

Even before I went to Newfoundland, from the very first meeting I had with Hawco and his producing partners John Vatcher and Rob Blackie, at an extremely generic Jack Astor's in downtown Toronto, my spidey sense said that these guys were kindred -- all looking to do a show that's work worth doing, and worth having a lot of fun doing it. Then Hawco and I sealed some kind of mojo-devil magic at one of the craziest nights I have EVER had at The Paddock.

Once I met Perry Chafe, Hawco's writing partner, and jawed a bit more with Malcolm MacRury, who helped them write the pilot, and we got down to breaking story, I started getting really excited. Anticipating a new show is kind of like falling in love that way.

So there it is. I've drunk the KoolAid. Harrrd. Next week I'm on a plane to St. John's, and hopefully, touch wood, all goes well, I'll be there most of 2009, doing the thing I love, and helping other people to do the thing they love. It's a good life, I think.

That's going to mean changes and evolutions not just for my life, but for this blog. No, in case you were wondering, I shall not miss being at the centre of the universe (note to the rest of the country: nobody in Toronto EVER actually thinks of the city this way.) I won't miss being far from the networks, or from the gossip. I won't miss the occasional sniff of toxic weirdness that seems to have crept out a lot more in the last month or two. But I will miss all my wonderful friends, and the streets I know so well. I'll have to sneak back for a weekend now and again. (As well, I'm working with the WGC to figure out the ways I can continue to discharge my Councillor duties.)

Your life prepares you for things in funny ways. I've been in this place before -- poised to go somewhere utterly new to write a chapter of a new adventure. For years now, I've harboured a kind of fascination for Newfoundland, that didn't just begin and end with The Shipping News. No, I've found myself drawn to myth like The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, the modern day movement of Michael Winter's This All Happened, the Iambics of Newfoundland...I've had a strange running series of books on my bedside table.

But to be so far away and so head-down-and-working means that, oh, say....CRTC...yeah, I hate to say it, but I can't see writing much of that up for the moment. Good thing you've got the WGC blasts and Kelly Lynne Ashton's Twitters and La Walton's ink reportage to fall back on.

I'm going to say right now that blogging's liable to be light for the foreseeable future. I've got to, first, do a thousand things to be ready to get out of Dodge, and second, immerse myself into getting stories into the pipeline. It's going to be more than all-consuming.

I can't say that there won't be craft dispatches along the way, maybe along the line of the kinds of things I wrote when I was working on the first season of the ex-show...but at the same time, I'm a big believer that the first impression you get of a show should be of the work itself. So you're not going to hear a lot about Republic of Doyle. Nope. Not til you see it in January 2010.

This is a chance to re-order certain attentions and patterns in my life, too. This blog hasn't been as fun for me to do for a while now. Maybe I'll have a chance to rediscover what was fun about doing it with a change of scene. To fill the gaps this summer, I'm going to be trying to wrangle other Canadian writers to take up a Dead Things Residency for a week at a time.

A bold experiment, I guess. See if it works.

In the meantime, I hope you'll all continue to come back here when there's something new, and that you'll continue to try and find the creative spark and courage in your own lives. Little Darling, I feel the ice is slowly melting. And over the last months, it really has seemed like years since it's been clear.

But now, here comes the sun -- and there's something new, and shiny, and wonderful to play with -- and new kids in the sandbox to dream with, too.

Can't. Hardly. Wait.

Everything You Need to Know

THERE ARE, I think, certain clarity moments in the culture. Especially when you make culture (ugh, that sounds pretentious, let's say, if you make "cultural products") you have to try and figure out ahead of time, where people's heads are going to be at. There's a lag between when you make something and when it gets exposed to the audience. An artist creating a painting or sculpture, a playwright preparing a theatre piece, or a writer crafting a TV show or a film screenplay are obviously on very different timetables.

The lag for screenplays and TV series means you're taking a gamble on what people are going to be in the mood to see when it finally gets made, and ordered and on the air. In the USA, with pilot season, that can mean a matter of months. In Canada more often it can be a year or more. With screenplays it can be years and years.

Below we see one of the effects of the current economic times...suddenly everybody's trying to move toward comedy. That extends to the projects I'm developing and that I see other people developing. It's like no one can bear to come up with the same perilous, down, damaged or downbeat concepts about crime or strife. Everybody wants something escapist or redemptive. And you know what? Trying to write something like that actually lifts your spirits, too.

At the same time, I think we've come to a sort of ending, or a pause, at least, in our TMZeedy consumption of celebutardism. The Bale/Joaquin/BillyBob stuff comes down the pike so often these days that we're fully desensitized. A year ago, I could still summon up some outrage toward Kim Kardashian and wonder why on earth anyone expected me to care about her. Now, the UK, who always was better at this kind of weird celebrity just for celebrity's sake thing than we in North America were (I mean, Page 3 girl is a career there. The Girl in the WonderBra ad got to have her own press agent!) have gone through their first reality show burial. We are, in essence, at the end of the snark, I think.

It's not to say that the snark will stop, or even that it should. But really, Billy Bob Thornton can go beep beep beep and fireman carry one of Angelina's 11 babies down the field and spike it in the endzone, and...uh.... nope. Don't really care anymore. I mean, O.J.'s finally in jail. It's a whole new world.

So I look for the redemptive message or story in life, and in art. I hope that despite the current government's determination to hobble the CBC, there will be a way found to preserve that which needs preserving. Yeah, the dice is stacked against creatives getting anything made in Canada. But yet people get stuff made. And some of it is actually quite delightful.

A final aside. Probably the only time you'll ever see a link back to this site from Sticksville. There's this blog about the CBC that was started in the wake of the 2005 CBC Lockout by a Manager inside the building. It chugged along for a couple years as a quixotic but occasionally informative organ of dissent and tough love for the vagaries of the CBC. Awhile ago, that manager stepped back and handed over the reins of the place to a group of dyspeptic, antisocial wingnuts. They claim to be the "loyal opposition" and to be doing all they do from a position of "love for the CBC," but whenever I see a link back to something I've written here, or other media sites, it's an inevitable gainsaying criticism of CBC. The Corp, to these guys, can do nothing right. At a time when the place is fractious, bleeding, and in real trouble, there is nothing weirder than a bunch of idiot contrarians claiming to know better, showing with every post that they don't understand anything about a) broadcasting b) management c) dealing with people d) business e) ratings f) journalism g) ...and so on and so on.

So why talk about them here? Because I am weeeak, chickens. Heh heh. Nah. Because every once in a while you get the perfect example, the absolute embodiment of what is wrong with something. And here it is. From the self-appointed "loyal opposition" to the CBC:

In the case of Jian Ghomeshi and Q vs. Billy Bob Thornton....the Teamakers sides with Billy Bob.

It is, as they say, to laugh.

Blue skies coming my way. Kardashians, NetNuts, YellyYellers, the Jaloux and the Paranoid, your time's up.

Enjoy your weekend everybody.

EDIT: but just in case you didn't hear the Q Bob dustup -- Jeremy Fisher nails it and offers context in this video. Brill.

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.

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.

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.

Swoon.

MAYBE HE HATES me lately. One gets tired of the backhand barbs, the rough, come-lately jabs, the rough plating of opinion and man...I have no cat to take the brunt, you see. So it was that we saw Mister John Doyle at the Place last Friday, yes we did. And well, many of us wanted to say something and extend welcome, Band Practice writers that we were. There was no Walty to give us succor, no Sherry White, no Daegan, no possible entree of warmth and common sense, no, just plebian scribes deathly and dirty, bereft of entry and fearful of supplication.

And besides. Himself was busy socializing, so fair play to him.

But then he goes and writes such about the CBC to make one weep. Clear headed and lovely and full of sense. Ah sense. The TV Racket could use more of you.

Readeth the Doyle...