CTV's The Bridge & Global's Pilot Slate

CTV HAS JUST ordered eleven episodes of a new scripted series called The Bridge. From the release:

Based on the insights of veteran insider and outspoken former Toronto police union head Craig Bromell, CTV has ordered 11, one-hour episodes, following the production of a two-hour pilot shot in Toronto last summer. THE BRIDGE provides an unflinching look at the struggle street cops face as they not only battle criminals - but also their own bosses - in order to protect society and, ultimately, themselves.

Produced by Barna-Alper Productions, an Entertainment One company, 990 Multi Media Entertainment Company and Jonsworth Productions, in association with CTV, production of THE BRIDGE is scheduled to begin in 2009.

THE BRIDGE becomes the third, new original drama series to be ordered by CTV in the last year, joining last summer’s breakout hit FLASHPOINT and THE LISTENER, currently in production.

“Craig Bromell is one of the most galvanizing figures in the history of policing in Canada,” said Susanne Boyce, President, Creative, Content and Channels, CTV Inc. “We look forward to working with him on THE BRIDGE, and bringing to Canadian audiences a distinct and authentic view of life behind the scenes of a modern police force.”

“We set out to make the most realistic two-hour movie drama about cops ever seen on TV, and it has paid off,” said Craig Bromell, Executive Producer, 990 Multi Media Entertainment Company. “We expose the inner workings of a big city police force - the police, power and politics behind the blue line. It’s something that hasn’t been seen before on TV, and we’re grateful to CTV for this opportunity..”

Written by five-time Gemini Award winner and six-time nominee Alan Di Fiore (DA VINCI’S INQUEST, THE LIFE, THE HANDLER), THE BRIDGE peels away the veneer of a big-city Canadian police force to reveal the political machinations underneath. After the rank and file unanimously vote street cop Frank Leo (Aaron Douglas) into office as union head, he begins his quest to put street cops first and clean up the force from the ground up.

But the old boys’ network running the police force and the city’s self-serving politicians are not about to sit idly by while a former street cop makes up his own rules. Frank walks a thin blue line as he battles wiretaps and a concerted campaign to bring him down, letting nothing stop him from fulfilling his unwavering vow that when cops are in trouble, the union will be there.

There's a lot going for this project, starting with DiFiore and Fawcett. They've also assembled a great cast -- Aaron Douglas was the Chief, and usually the heart, of Galactica, as well as Ona Grauer (who was originally in Flashpoint before the role was recast, post-pilot, at CBS' behest) Inga Cadranel (Frannie on Rent-A-Goalie) and Frank Cassini.

I have to admit, I'm a little uncomfortable with the glorification of Bromell. I think it's great that CTV acknowledges that he was a 'galvanizing' force, but that's kind of an understatement.

His tenure as union head of the Toronto force was controversial in the extreme. He headed up the Operation True Blue campaign, and was contemptuous of civilian oversight. Yup, he fought for his cops, and they loved him for it. But there was much about the man's methods that sent a chill through portions of the city.

One time, when I was worked at CityTV, I found myself leaving work one day in the midst of a Bromell-led wildcat strike. As people left the building, they were treated to catcalls by dozens of police -- some in uniform -- waiting outside. It was the single most sinister thing I've ever been invovled with; really, really upsetting. Seriously, you have no idea what it's like to be catcalled and harassed by dozens of cops. Brrr. I've never really felt the same way about the Toronto Police since. (Before that they'd come to my assistance a couple of key times in my life. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, but...man.)

But here's the thing: the writer in me, the TV guy in me, rather than being turned off by that, is attracted to it. Because it's frightening, and edgy, and potentially explosive. And very, very real. I find the prospect of a show with Bromell's involvement incredibly exciting. That impulse, the "oh, man, I don't know about this..." could just be lightning in a bottle. We've seen the "thin blue line" done from the outsider perspective. Here's the opportunity for a show that could be exciting and different. I'll sure as hell watch. It will be interesting to see if they can keep it from being an in-the-tank hagiography of Bromell. If the creatives and Bromell can keep it from being too one-sided, if they allow his Douglas-inspired doppleganger to be the anti-hero he should be rather than an apologia for a misunderstood cop, well, this might just be the most exciting Canadian TV series ever. Imagine the fights in that story department! The discussions, the arguments, the back and forth? We could use our own version of The Shield -- where Mackey is both disturbing and sympathetic. If they can bottle that? Wow.

And imagine the publicity tour.

Meanwhile, Canwest has released new details about those upcoming drama pilots they ordered last week:

The one hour drama Shattered, a Force Four Films Ltd./Blueprint Film and Television Ltd. production to be shot in B.C., will be directed by Bobby Roth (Prison Break). The roster of acting talent confirmed today also includes Callum Keith Rennie (Californication, Battlestar Gallactica, Hard Core Logo) as the series lead, Kyle Logan, an ex-cop with a multiple personality disorder.

I was worried that Global might get scooped on this because of My Own Worst Enemy. But that Slater-vehicle on NBC doesn't look like it's lighting any fires, so maybe there's hope for this. I love Rennie. I'm really enjoying him in Californication right now.

EDIT: a commenter below says he's read Drew's script for Shattered and it's great. Awesome! Now all they have to do is not screw up the execution somehow!

David Wellington (Would Be Kings, The Eleventh Hour) directs the House of Films Inc./Four Seasons Productions Inc. drama Clean, to be shot in Toronto. Ben Bass (The Eleventh Hour, Law and Order, Queer as Folk) is cast in the lead role Bobby Gould, an addiction counselor with Tom McCamus (Shake Hands with the Devil, Queer as Folk, Slings and Arrows) confirmed as a series regular, Dr. Wilson McKenna, CEO of Happy Valley Treatment Facility. Sonja Bennet (Young People F(*)cking, Control Alt Delete) plays Caroline, one of Bobby’s colleagues.

This pilot shot out of the same Production Office complex as The Border. Wellington's a good Director, and the script is by a really interesting playwright named Adam Pettle who's branching into TV. I'd need to see this one I think. Could be great, could be depressing and airless. If it's funny, I'll like it better. This one's all about the execution.

Luke Kirby (Tell Me You Love Me, Slings and Arrows, Mambo Italiano, upcoming feature Labor Pains) takes on the role of the lead character, insurance adjuster Jimmy Burns, in the Whizbang Films Inc production of Lawyers, Guns & Money.

Clark Johnson (The Wire, Homicide: Life on the Street, also an Emmy nominated director on The Shield), joins the production as Walker Hearn, a retired cop and Jimmy’s unofficial mentor alongside Carole Cave (The L Word, Regenesis) as Angela, a company lawyer. Steve Bacic (The Guard) is Pavel Korkov, an ambitious local gangster who clashes with Jimmy. Ken Girotti (Mayerthorpe, Rescue Me) takes the directorial helm of this production which will be shot in Hamilton, Ontario.

I ran into Girotti at the Geminis, night 3 (ohgod) just as he was winding down prep for this shoot. He was stoked -- and extremely happy being able to shoot The Hammer for the Hammer, which I am all over. It's a GREAT locale for a story like this. Johnson's a get, and though I haven't read it, I hear the script by Malcolm MacRury -- who's also picking up buzz for the upcoming ZoS. Wonder what they're going to do about Bacic if this gets picked up -- I don't imagine both The Guard and this show, shooting thousands of miles apart, would be able to juggle shoot schedules so he could appear in both. (Besides the fact that it also extends the "same 10 actors in every Canadian show" problem...)

There's also another pilot called The Prodigy, that also has John Fawcett attached, but no other info.

One quibble about the Global release. They've been talking up the need for strong showrunners -- they even established a showrunner training program -- but guess who gets left out of the release? Sigh.

Still, point is, all of these shows sound promising. Of course, a million things could go wrong in the production process. Such is the nature of our collaborative medium. Still, I'm pretty juiced to see every one of these.

Could this be a taste of better things to come?

Stay tuned, citizens.

Thanks to TV, Eh for the releases.

CORRECTION: 01/10/09 - an earlier version of this story identified John Cassini (Robson Arms, Intelligence) as part of the cast. The Bridge actually stars Frank Cassini, his brother. Apologies for the error.

Louise Clark

IS SOMEONE whose name you likely will only know if you're a writer or producer in this country. She's been a development executive at CTV for several years, and recently she's been heading up the development at CTV from Vancouver.

She's leaving CTV. Officially, for a sabbatical, a change and something new. Man, if I was a Production Company in this country, I would snap this woman up fast as you can.

I only had one meeting with Clark, for a project that I was briefly involved with last fall. But she was well liked and well respected -- arguably the most respected development exec in Canada. In a world where a lot of people jump to take credit for it -- those in the know would point to Louise Clark as the person most responsible (on the Network side) for bringing Corner Gas to CTV.

This isn't the best news for creatives. I hope that CTV, a place that's had a lot of turnover in the last year, finds its way. There's some good people there, and I guess though there's never a great time for this kind of thing, at least it's happening when they have the blush of recent success.

Getting Brandtastic -- Better For Viewer Choice, But What About Networks?

BRANDING. IT'S ONE of those words that just won’t seem to go away. And outside the advertising industry, it’s not a concept that’s very well understood in the media in Canada.

The old joke says that it takes whatever is the hot trend two years to travel from the United States to Canada. But in the case of broadcast branding, it’s even further behind. I would argue that the last truly successful Canadian broadcast brand that launched was Muchmusic.

Part of the problem with branding successfully is that you really have to know your audience – you have to have solid research, broken down and parsed exactly, and then you have to follow-through with programs – either self-produced or acquired – that almost selfishly and monomaniacly conform to that brand.

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?”

The over-the-air broadcast channels don’t do any better, most of the time, for different reasons. Some are ego-related, and some are economic. Actually, most of the time there’s a combination of the two that come into play.

If you look at the U.S. networks, for all their current troubles, most of them have an immediately recognizable brand. ABC has more shows that appeal to women. Most ABC shows have a high-female appeal. CBS is the home of traditional, almost stodgy procedural cop shows, and CSI. It’s no wonder that Flashpoint, despite scoring not-so-stellar American reviews, managed to score in its first few airings: it’s actually a really great fit for CBS.

When the WB morphed into the CW, it lost most of the lustre of the former’s laser-sharp branding of shows designed to appeal to the American teen. And NBC remains mired in the basement largely because its brand is diffuse: the channel that once-sported “must see tv” came late to the reality game, and let its 90’s hit grow too long in the tooth without viable replacements. Same with HBO.

Shows, not Promos -- Make the Brand

Turn to cable and you see branding even more starkly, because they hang the identity on fewer shows. 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.
There’s way less data, too. At a Canadian network you don’t have the spooky drill down psychographic data on viewership that is commonplace at all the U.S. nets. There is the ratings information, which any journalist will tell you is information guarded like the crown jewels, another difference between here and the USA, where the availability of ratings numbers is downright promiscuous.

There’s lots of games to play with ratings, and lots of reasons why you play them, too. Canadian numbers just don’t sound as impressive, first of all, because the country’s a tenth the size of the USA. Second, there’s often games played, like adding together the number watching on your channel, and –thanks to simsub – the U.S. channel too. (This is why CBC will always lag behind the privates – they don’t get to add the people watching on a whole other cable position into their numbers.)

Over the last couple weeks, I was collecting examples from newspapers talking about fashion, TV, music, advertising – all quotes by people explaining how the U.S. was way better at this branding thing than Canada is – but of course, I’ve lost the clippings. D’oh.

Nevertheless, from the inside – there really is not much of a comparison. It’s like calling the guy who took a Cessna up with someone else handling the takeoff and landing calling himself a pilot when he’s sitting beside a USAF Colonel who flies experimental black aircraft out of Nellis AFB in Nevada.

What got me thinking about branding again in the last couple weeks were a few recent events. The first was the extraordinary emergence of AMC over the last year as a new home for top-quality drama. Mad Men and Breaking Bad – just two shows – have erased the image of AMC as that place that shows all the badly edited movies. That’s the power of what a signature program can do for you.

Two Audiences?

The second thing was the Emmy nominations. John Doyle wrote about the growing split between the families of TV drama – the quality, small audience niche shows that gobble up nominations, critical acclaim, and loyal discerning viewers, and the networks, who increasingly seem to be retreating into cheeseburger tv – which still pulls way more viewers, but in the end, is what it is.

Just as there are now two kinds of TV being made, there are two kinds of audience. There are those who watch CSI or Law & Order, and might watch Wipeout; and there are those who watch only Mad Men, The Shield, Damages and all those HBO dramas.

Though I think he's largely right, I shy away from the us and them of it all, because I think it plays into a very reductive view of TV. It's true that many of the large audience for Broadcast TV would never cross over to one of the more challenging cable dramas...but I'm not sure that it goes the other way. I like to think that the number of people who will watch Mad Men but not CSI or House, or whatever -- is small. They'd have to be terrible snobs, and I'm not sure the terrible snob demo is as big as, well...snobs think it is.

Just as the right wing Republicans don't have a complete hold on "people of faith," neither does the cable audience have a hold of "the smart people" while network tv serves "the dumb people." (Remember this the next time someone starts screaming about the 'dumbing down' of the CBC.)

What I'm saying is that the fight between Cable and Broadcast shows is way more about branding than about the shows themselves. We just happen to be at a historical moment where the explosion in viewing choices and the technologies challenging TV for viewer/citizen attention combine in such a way that - the brand is ever-more important. Men of a certain age will watch Spike and Cartoon Network and nothing else -- unless you give them the show that brings them to you. Then, having brought them, you have to want to keep them and work at it.

I’m fine with both types of TV, by the way. I’ve written one miniseries that aimed for the "cable kind of feel" and I’ve gladly written episodes of the more populist network tv show. (I think the show I’m currently working on is a really good cheeseburger. I’m not sure that’s the opinion of everyone involved, but then again, it’s easier for me to say that because, hello – cheeseburgers are delicious.)

Which brings me to the other side of the TV branding discussion, Canadian flava.

See, all that data and all that money down in the USA has a very focusing effect. It’s all about the Benjamins, honey. And if putting a program that’s off-brand costs you X dollars, well, then that’s a branding driven X-dollar limo to the ash heap for that show.

But none of the Canadian networks – in their original programming – are driven by money. Not exactly. Not completely. Not really.

For CTV and Global, let’s face it, Canadian programming is a loss leader. They make their gelt entirely on those simulcasted American shows. They grudgingly do what Canadian programming they have to do. But that’s not where they make the dosh. And in a world where the brand was less important, that was fine.

The CBC has a different problem. Seeing as they’re funded a little bit by advertising and a lot by you and me, they have a whole mandate under the Broadcasting Act they have to fulfill. They have to reflect Canada. That’s why everybody fights about the CBC – because everyone has an idea of what they should be doing that would better fulfill those rather vague terms. Of course, they also can’t simsub, and they (during the regular season, at least) don’t rely on American programming in prime time.

What else drives the networks? Well, something that also plays in the USA (but not as big as money.)

Ego.

How Ego Can Wreck a Brand

Citytv was a local Toronto brand that took the superstation mentality and ran with it long before Ted Turner thought to do the same thing. From the news to the promos to the very character of the station, Citytv looked like nothing else in the world.

It ran magazine shows like FT or Movie Television that eschewed chirpy v/o and polished film look, for “authentic,” “handheld” and “street level.” (Also: cheap.)

But even before Citytv founder Moses Znaimer was slowly forced out, things started to change. The parent company, CHUM, wanted to be more of a player. They wanted a more corporate look. Instead of “A City tv production,” (a brand that had some funky history) shows started being tagged by “CHUM Television.” (a brand that had none.) And the slice of life people-in-the-city promos were replaced by flashier graphics, similar brand and promo elements. Lot more shooting on film. Lot less heart.

The people then in charge “upscaled the look” of the station. When acquisitions of other stations in other cities caused them to become rebranded Citytv’s, they went for a unified look – promos that used to be charming and idiosyncratic became…just like other stations. They brought in the same news consultants selling the same snake oil they’d sold all over the USA – weather porn, action news-style stuff. They lost what was special about the place, and added a whole wack of Vice Presidents. The ratings went down. There wasn't anything special anymore. No mythos, no heart. I remember in the ten years I taught University -- at the beginning it was the best students saying, "how do I get into Citytv?" and by the end... the ones asking were no longer the best, the brightest, or even the hippest. They'd found other places to go. Hubris and a desire to be a mini-network bled out what was once charming and special about the place.

Now the Citytv’s belong to Rogers, CHUM the corporation is no more (most of it having been absorbed into CTV Globemedia) and though viewers might not know the word “brand” in this context, most would probably agree that the stations that Rogers bought just weren’t the special things they’d been maybe fifteen years ago.

So, as much as we can, when we take a look at the state of the Canadian Broadcast Brands, what do we see?

CBC

CBC identified a problem and a strategy. The problem was that nobody under 50 was watching. (That's a problem for most of TV, but when your funding comes from the Government, it's a much bigger problem -- it allows them to cut you and say you're not relevant.) The strategy it decided on was that it needed to raise its 18-49 but mostly its 25-54 viewing numbers. To show its relevance to Canadians, it would program a middle of the road, straight down the pike strategy of dramas and comedies and information/entertainment programs that tried to have the widest appeal possible. If you talk to Kirstine Leyfield, as I did back in June, she's pretty laser-clear about this. That's what they're doing. They're a year into it. And after having nothing to see on the channel for years, younger viewers are going to take a while to come back. At the very least, you have to view this as a 2 or 3 year rebuilding process.

Now, is that the right strategy? Not for me to say. Plenty of people to argue against it. But the level of argument against the CBC can sometimes be kneejerk and pretty childish -- every interest group wants the thing that it wants, and the worthy arguments (are they starving the news to pay for comedy and drama, and is that a good idea?) gets lost in the ridiculous or provincial (classical music is inherently better and should be played on Radio Two all the time even if only 40 000 coast to coast ever listen)

In this example, then, the CBC is most like a U.S. network, ironically -- they are trying to please the widest possible segment of the populace, and they're pursuing a strategy to that end. Remains to be seen if it ultimately works.

CTV

has grown to super-hegemony by buying the right shows, and by buying up other shows they didn't want to run just so competitors wouldn't get them. They also got lucky with a few homegrown shows that actually hit with an audience. They cherry picked a few cable dramas to give a taste of that kind of programming to the sched, too, with varying results -- The Sopranos did well for them, but Dexter and Mad Men, so far, not so much.

Now their strategy seems to be to aggressively pursue these U.S. deals for indigenous shows. It's a smart win-win, because it allows them to do what they love to do (make money by simulcasting with the U.S. networks) and put the best face on the numbers (Flashpoint scores over a million because you get to count the people watching on CTV PLUS those watching on CBS!)

But these shows, these ersatz American shows, are never going to be loved in the USA. So long as you do shows that are *like* the USA's but slightly...off...that's going to get reflected in the U.S. reviews.

So you win on the bragging rights for the money and the eyeballs - but you're never going to get the love.

And the success of this strategy -- and here's the funny part -- does nothing to build your brand. The thing about Flashpoint is that they can put out as many pressers as they want, but now, boys -- that's a CBS show. You win. But it doesn't help your brand. You're yoked to the USA farther than ever. And in a marketplace moving away from 'casting and toward production -- this baby step aint gonna get you to where you need to be when the floodgates really open.

Global

I don't know. The brand seems to be identical to CTV, but less successful at the moment. They do better with the E! channels -- but even there, it's really borrowed robes, innit?

Let Ego Lead You To The Brand?

Now. Remember when I talked about ego and branding? Here's where the other part comes into it.

Mad Men draws a million viewers in the USA. That's a Canadian-sized number. On CTV, it premiered strong around 750 000, but dropped like a stone. It's drawing 200 000 or 300 000 now. Dexter gets in that range too.

Herein lies the number one-brand problem when it comes to Canadian networks pushing material:

They all ask for Six Feet Under, but they want it to get CSI numbers.

It's a fundamental disconnect. A misunderstanding of the marketplace.

Those challenging, cable-like dramas are never going to get network numbers. Which in Canada means 1 million to 3 million viewers. It's NEVER going to happen. Ever. Ever. Evah.

But Lordy, they do get respect. So it strikes me that there's an opportunity here. Either the CBC, CTV, and Global can all lemming-like, try to place these dramas that are American-lite, that will get put on in the summer and tepidly reviewed and worsen the problem of being exactly the same.

Or...

Somebody can step up and try to be bold and say, "we're not going to go for big number viewers on this show because who cares, that's not how we make our money. We're in the simulcast business. But we're also going to develop and air and fund only the best, most interesting, edgy or funny or scabrous dramas and comedies. They're going to win awards. They're going to get great reviews. They're going to be things that we can be proud of."

Somebody can make Six Feet Under. And promote it, and air it, and know that it might only get 200 000. But it will win Emmys and travel round the world ...

...and you might get an honest to goodness brand out of it.

Intelligence drew just as many viewers as Mad Men & Dexter

The path has been blazed. Personal shows like Slings & Arrows, or Trailer Park Boys have already been noticed. DaVinci's Inquest shows at 3am in the USA, but those who find it say, "whoa, this is actually different." In the UK, BBC 2 and BBC 4 and Channel 4 all have vastly different brands in the public's mind based on their original programming.

One more thing: in the context of those numbers, CBC already did this and turned away: Intelligence, with its faithful audience in the 250 000 range -- was, in fact, a cable niche show on the CBC. You could make the case that Jpod was the same thing (I wouldn't, but hell, you could -- and maybe if more Jpod eps had been like the ones I saw at the end of the run, maybe I'd agree.)

But CBC has set their strategy -- they want the populist numbers. So those are the shows to take to them. Now, would that they are wise enough to greenlight those kinds of shows.

But Global or CTV could be the F/X of Canada in original production, while still making their dosh in their real business -- at least until that business goes away.

Realign the thinking of executives and creatives and you could wind up with good reviews, stroking of the whole ego, and shows you could actually hang a brand on.

Again, all it takes is someone to be bold.

In Canad..

oh shit.

6.75

WEEK TWO fast overnight ratings for Flashpoint came in at 6.75 million viewers overall for the hour, but with an uptick to 7.46 million in the second half.

That means they lost a million viewers from the premiere week. There's a couple ways to look at this. The first is that 6.75 is still about 82% of that premiere audience. That's nothing to sneeze at. And the continued growth in the second half hour means that people are tuning in, not tuning away once they find it. That's a positive sign too.

Still, you wouldn't want another drop like that for week 3.

I think the head-scratching question about Flashpoint now moves to the question I've had all along about the show:

What happens in show 18?

But there are a bunch of clever clever writers working that question right now, somewhere in Toronto, toiling away without a hiatus, in sweatshop like conditions...

Well, the last part isn't anybody's fault really -- the sweatshop like humidity has finally descended upon the Toronto summer.
Sigh.

Anyway, good news for the show and here's hoping more of those people remember to tune in from the beginning, and not halfway through next week!

EDIT: I guess the venerable Diane was right once again, the numbers reported for the hour are an average of both half hours, so they seem to be reporting them as 7.11 million. Which though my math is bad, I understand to be more than 6.75 million.

The Political vs. The Personal: Elijah meets Recount

ONE COMES WITH a chad, the other a feather. Both make their points with grace and a little humor. And both are richer viewing experiences for knowing the context which follows.

Canadians have a rare viewing choice this weekend. Two movies about politics. It's a measure of how colonized our culture truly is that the homegrown story might seem the less familiar.

First, then, to RECOUNT (TMN/MOVIE CENTRAL, Sunday) a classy HBO Films retelling of the debacle that ensued in Florida after the botched 2000 Presidential Election. With star studded performances from Kevin Spacey, John Hurt, and Denis Leary, clearly this is the film that's got the higher pedigree.

All the queasy ins-and-outs of that election (doesn't it seem 1000 years ago?) are here...Gore turning the limo around, the first hint that thousands of elderly voters in Florida mistakenly pulled a lever for Pat Buchanan, the Bush/Cheney bully boys airlifted in to play the part of "activists."

What's interesting about this film is its authenticity in all the public details. The State of Florida has something called "the Sunshine Law" which forces an incredible degree of openness on the government there (Florida may leave a bad taste in your mouth for what happened there in 2000, but this law is exemplary, a model of its kind.) so the filmmakers were given access to many meeting rooms, locations, and the tapes of most of the relevant meetings and committees.

But since the drama is so familiar in what played out on CNN, the film rises and falls on its postulations of what went on behind closed doors. And for the sake of verisimilitude, they largely pull it off.

First, there's Laura Dern's performance as Katherine Harris, a woman who during and after the debacle aptly proved herself to be an over-her-head wingnut thrust into something she was clearly unprepared for. Warren Christopher, the leader of the Gore legal team, is portrayed as somewhat feckless -- a man concerned with propriety and honor, not willing to go the extra mile to win it for his guy. Christopher has come out and complained about his portrayal in the film in recent days, but I have to say that he comes off as honorable -- but too concerned with history. The rules of dramatic convention kind of demand a price from Christopher -- he did leave halfway through the process (a sick daughter) and he also lost.

The great thing about the film -- and Danny Strong's capable screenplay, is that it manages to portray the leader of the Bush team, James Baker III (Tom Wilkinson) as likable, affable, and even in a way, principled, even as he outmaneuvers the Gore team and perpetrates one of the most awful miscarriages of the popular will in American history. "We're in a street fight for the Presidency," is Baker's first piece of advice. And from the get-go, you have the sense that this is an essential truth about Republican politics for the last several years. You've heard it before -- it's pure Rove: all that matters is the win. As a primer and a caution, Dems should watch this film, and watch the likable Republicans clean their clock once more.

The outrages are too painful to recount, but they're here: the African Americans stricken from the voter rolls, the uncounted votes, the mealy mouthed Supreme Court decision that handed the Presidency to Bush but sidestepped making precedent...the whole sordid mess. And lurking in the background is your knowledge that once the fight was over, the tough but pragmatic Republicans like Baker, they were shoved immediately aside so we could get Wolfowitz, Cheney, and the fantasy of the neocons. The pain may have cooled, but the most searing thing about election's dark comic take on the whole 2000 thing is this:

The punchline, seven years later, is 4000 dead American boys, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, a wrecked economy, and oil at 130 dollars a barrel.

Street fights never end well.

What a delight, then, to take in ELIJAH. (CTV, Sunday) It's a retelling of an important footnote in Canadian history, when a single MLA from Manitoba, Elijah Harper, used parliamentary procedure to scuttle the Meech Lake Accord, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's attempt to broker a Constitutional Deal with Quebec.

Harper is a shy figure, the first treaty Indian ever to serve as an elected MLA in Canada. We see his early life, kidnapped and forced into residential schools. The POV and narration is darkly comic, with captions from the Indian Point of view.

A delicious early scene shows Harper's political philosophy forming when he wanders into a presentation on the Indian "White Paper" being presented by a young Indian Affairs Minister from the Trudeau Government. The man's name is never said, but from the moment he opens his mout' an you here dat voice, you know who you're listening to.

The film is full of deft touches like that -- and it gets points for explaining some complicated constitutional concepts through the use of inventive Python-esque animations. There's a bit of mawkishness in the middle, but the performance of Billy Merasty as Harper and the fierce Glen Gould as Phil Fontaine carry you through.

Like in Recount, the big pols are mostly seen as figures on the TV screen, which adds to the realism. And it's in the human moments as Harper's refusal to budge ticks the days toward ratification away, where you really get to see the nut of the story. The sense is strongly put across that the impasse might have been solved, if only Mulroney came to meet the natives. Mulroney says he can't because he has to meet Nelson Mandela. You think that's a flourish too far for the script -- no way, no way could that have happened without anyone seeing the irony in the situation and the parallels with the Native struggle...

...and then they show the footage of Mulroney and Mandela on the tarmac.

Ultimately, we know that Canada didn't break apart -- and what's more, Harper's actions finally got Native issues onto the front burner. The quiet man with a feather and the word 'no,' accomplished more than a team of democrats counting undervotes and dimpled chads ever could. Harper makes a cameo near the end of the film that's unbearably moving.

It's nice to have a guy named Harper in a Canadian story who you can actually be proud of...anyway, if you've gotta pick one film, I'd say go with Elijah. It's well told. Screenwriter Blake Corbet and Director Paul Unwin pull off a dynamic story far better than many of CTV's recent real life films. I've been hot and cold on this CTV Programming stream, but when they put out a film like this, you have to give them props. It's relevant, it's Canadian, and it's interesting as hell.

Equal Opportunity Plugger

LAST WEEK I wrote a little thing despairing that CTV didn't go the extra mile to capitalize on the Kiefer Sutherland Corner Gas cameo.

In the comments, there were a few people who wrote in including one of the big Promotions people at CTV.

Well, mama and papa always taught me not to be one sided, so I have to say that I'm pretty tickled to see this current promotion running for Robson Arms:

Win your rent with 'Robson Arms'

It's a renter's or homeowner's dream!

Beginning Monday, May 5, Canadians have the opportunity to win up to $12,000 towards their rent or mortgage payments for one year by virtually stepping into Robson Arms and playing the "Robson Arms Rent Control" game at robsonarms.CTV.ca.

Created exclusively by the CTV Creative Agency, the game serves as a companion to Season 3 of Robson Arms which airs Mondays at 9:30 p.m. ET on CTV.

Additional promotional support for the Season 3 premiere included teams dressed as Robson Arms character Yuri Kukoc (John Cassini) who took to the streets today in Vancouver and Toronto to hand out free DVDs of the season premiere including special Season 3 bonus material.

The giveaway DVDs also included instructions on how to enter the "Robson Arms Rent Control" contest. CTV viewers can also qualify to win an iPod Touch by simply subscribing by June 1 to the Robson Arms newsletter at robsonarms.CTV.ca.

Now that's actually going the extra mile. Not because there's so many DVD's that are gonna get handed out, but because the news that they DID hand out DVD's could make for a start of good buzz.

The contest is kind of a hoot, too, and perfectly matched with the Robson Arms brand. You know, there were grumbles that "sneaking" those Season 3 eps after American Idol kind of almost dumped them without warning...but this is a really positive, forward thinking step showing that CTV is trying to get behind the show.

Launching Monday, May 5 at 9:30 a.m. ET and available online for six weeks (May 5 - June 15), "Robson Arms Rent Control" is a virtual game that has players embark on a quest to help Bobbi (Gabrielle Miller) find her rent money so she doesn't get evicted from Robson Arms.

Players must hunt through the apartments of Robson Arms tenants Nick (Fred Ewanuick), Hal (Zak Santiago), Yuri (John Cassini), Chuck (Dave Foley) and Trixie (Allison Hossack) to locate Bobbi's missing money. In doing so, they can also discover hidden storylines, video and audio clips and delve into the lives of the tenants, all while getting to know them on a "virtual" level.

Players will also need to collect a designated item from each apartment. Once they have travelled through all of the rooms, successfully completed the tasks and collected all of the key items, participants will be eligible to enter the contest and get a chance to win free rent or mortgage payments - up to $12,000 - for a year. Visit robsonarms.CTV.ca to play.

This promotion was conceived by the CTV Creative Agency. That's an in-house sort of promotions/advertising shop that was set up in the wake of the CTV-CHUM merger. (It was also developed with the help of Vancouver online ad shop Noise Digital.)

If this is the taste of the first things to come from this shop, then maybe, just maybe, we might have a light at the end of that chronic Canadian under-promotion tunnel.

CTV Executive Exit Shocker!

CTV CREATIVE EXECUTIVE Brent Haynes is going to New York.

He'll be taking over in some sort of East Coast Veep Programming role for MTV Networks. This comes only a few months after he was promoted to have some responsibility over CTV's CHUM acquisitions, including Space. The news supposedly became official around CTV this week.

This could be good news for Canadian comic talent, though not necessarily for writers. And it's certainly interesting timing. Now that new boardroom blood's being forced onto CTV's comedy development -- at the same time as Corner Gas saddles up for its ride into the sunset -- could it be a case of getting out while the getting's good, or the dawn of a new day?

Good Luck to Haynes. Gee, after Roma Khanna, and Laura Michalchyshyn, imagine if the executive exodus gives rise to scurrilous rumormongering among creatives, "Oh, you know, all the good broadcast executives don't stay in Canada ... they all go south..."

Okay. Pause. Wait for it.

Get it? Ah, yes. Irony.

Tasty.

Shocker! Corner Gas To End in 2009!

A PRESS RELEASE just went out minutes ago: Brent Butt is going to bring Corner Gas to a close in 2009, after the completion of Season 6:

Corner Gas creator and star Brent Butt, on behalf of Prairie Pants Productions, announced today that the series will come to an end following the conclusion of its upcoming sixth season.

Production on the final 19 new episodes, to be broadcast in 2008-2009 on CTV and The Comedy Network, begins May 15 in Regina and Rouleau, Saskatchewan. The series' finale will air sometime in Spring, 2009.

"It's a very difficult decision, but the right decision, and one I felt I
had to make," said Brent Butt, who is also a writer, director and executive
producer of the series. "When I told CTV about my decision, they made it clear
that they were keen to do more seasons. They didn't want it to end yet. But
for the good of the show, I wanted to exit gracefully, on top of our game,
when we're at our prime -- because that's how I want viewers to remember
Corner Gas: at its very best."
"This is not goodbye, it's see you later," said Susanne Boyce, President,
Creative, Content and Channels, CTV Inc. "Brent and his team have accomplished
something that has never been achieved before. They said it couldn't be done,
but Corner Gas did it anyway. The series has paved the way for other Canadian
productions by proving that if you make great TV, Canadians will watch.
"It's been a great collaboration between CTV and the Corner Gas creative
team and we've always respected what should be the right creative choice. We
look forward to another great season of laughs, and seeing what this team
comes up with next."
Butt will continue to develop projects for CTV and The Comedy Network as
production wraps on the finale season of Corner Gas.

Classy way to go out! Hey, Producers, how about this challenge:

Do what you can to keep Canada's top comedy talent in Canada, eh?

Whose Fault Is It Anyway?

I THOUGHT A LOT about whether I should write this post or not. I don't really have a desire to go to war with people. I really don't. And you can just tell when someone won't really cotton to a little constructive criticism. So maybe I'll do the thing that you're supposed to do when you're giving big notes on a draft that needs a lot of work. I'll start with the good.

Onscreen, Jeff Seymour can be a very compelling actor. He has a dark, handsome, brooding look and a great voice and presence. He can play a hero, but he's best playing a kind of opportunistic guy out for his own ends. In any case, he's good on screen. He is.

Seymour emigrated to Canada from the United States when he got one of the leads on The Eleventh Hour, a CTV show that ran three seasons, but ultimately didn't really connect with an audience.

After the cancellation of that show, Seymour decided to stay here. Then after he produced a demo for it himself, CTV gave Jeff his own series. It was a half-hour, a comedy. Originally it was called Jeff@Work, and when it went to air, it was called Jeff Ltd. It ran two seasons on CTV and the Comedy Network, and was ultimately canceled due to low ratings. I wrote about it a few times.

Since the show was canceled, Seymour has, in increasingly public forums, heavily criticized CTV for not promoting the show effectively, especially in moving it to Saturday nights.

Last week, I sat through a very uncomfortable Gemini Awards gala that Seymour hosted. He did a lot of material that didn't connect, and didn't get laughs. And in one segment, he went after CTV again, from the stage. The sound of shifting and shuffling,the sheer uncomfortable vibe in the room was palpable. It practically walked up and smacked you in the face.

A performer can always have an off night. But the general consensus after the show was that this...this was kind of something else.

Now, in the latest issue of Playback, Seymour does it again:

The topic of how much broadcasters promote Canadian shows is a delicate one, but Jeff Seymour makes no bones about it - he believes that his comedy Jeff Ltd. died after two seasons due to insufficient support from broadcaster CTV.

The half-hour show, starring Seymour as a conceited advertising exec, premiered in March last year in the plum Wednesday timeslot after American Idol to nearly 900,000 viewers, with subsequent episodes averaging solid audiences of 700,000. But those numbers plummeted quickly to the 100,000s after Jeff was moved to the Saturday 9 p.m. timeslot toward the end of its first season, which is where it remained for its second run, though bumped to 9:30 p.m.

"[CTV] didn't really announce [the scheduling change]. I can't tell you the countless people that assumed my show was over...they couldn't find it," Seymour told Playback, just days before he joked about Jeff's fate as a host of the third night of the Gemini Awards in Toronto...

Jeff was paired on Saturdays with the Vancouver-set comedy Robson Arms, which averaged 311,000 viewers at 9 p.m., compared to Jeff's 176,000 second-season average. Robson Arms has been renewed for a third season.

[CTV VP of Communications Scott] Henderson says Jeff simply did not perform, noting that of the 10 original productions on CTV during the 2006/07 season, Jeff ranked number 10.

"The data that was coming in was showing us that viewers were not coming to the show...We let it take its natural course," he says. Numbers provided by CTV indicate Jeff's audience dropped 65% from the first to the second season.

Now that is truly a precipitous drop. But can it really all be blamed on a lack of promotion? The article in Playback goes on to point out that Robson Arms, the show that was paired with Jeff Ltd. in that Saturday night death slot, still managed to pull almost twice the audience.

Here's the thing: in TeeVee, massive promotion can buy you a big first week audience, just as blanket advertising can make for a big opening weekend. But you can't expect promotion to save or bolster a product that people simply don't want to see.

The first CTV show starring Seymour, The Eleventh Hour, had a similar viewer trajectory. It was heavily promoted and opened well -- I believe at least 1.5 million viewers watched it. And then the audience declined every week. People saw it, sampled it, decided they didn't like it, and moved on.

Then CTV heavily promoted the show for its second season premiere...and it got HUGE numbers. I think almost what it had got in the beginning. When viewers tuned into that premiere, they saw a show that ended in a very unsatisfying way. The next week, half the audience was gone. They never came back.

In the case of Jeff Ltd, a show that was paired with it (Robson Arms) not only got better reviews, it drew a bigger audience with the same lack of promotion. People felt more warmly toward it.

On Jeff Ltd., Seymour was the star. He was the Executive Producer. He wrote or co-wrote every episode. He was in charge of who got cast...he was personally involved in just about every decision made on that show. If you watched more than one show (as I did) you quickly saw that the scripts and gags were repetitive, and unfunny. The show was kind of a mess. Jeff made sure that his show was a one-man band. At what point do you take a bit of responsibility for it not connecting with the audience?

Break it down another way: Corner Gas moves every single season, but people still manage to find it. And it's not because the time change is all that well advertised. It's because there's a baseline of goodwill toward the show.

A Global cop show called "Blue Murder" repeats on a specialty channel here called Showcase. A recent broadcast -- of a years- old repeat, that's already aired multiple times, with no promotion, rated 260 000 viewers in Canada. That's more than two and a half times the numbers Jeff Ltd. got when it was canceled.

Under promotion IS a chronic problem in Canadian TV. But Jeff Seymour is not the standard bearer for it. That's a frequent problem in our industry -- we mix together things that are real concerns with stuff that are excuses that can't be justified. It makes us ripe for attack from those who'd try to choke off Canadian content altogether.

This is one of the things I was talking about when I wrote this post. Seymour talking about his show as an example of a real problem muddies the waters. It's like dealing with famine by having a supermodel talk about how starving she is: it's not good optically, and it doesn't advance the cause.

There are shows that I think could do better with better promotion. Intelligence is probably one (it also was better reviewed.) But I could be wrong about that. I don't know. I find it interesting that Intelligence has built its audience slightly over the last couple weeks, compared to the first two episodes.

Later in the Playback article, the CFTPA makes a case for one way to fix the chronic under-promotion problem:

The CFTPA is now pushing the CRTC to facilitate collective producer agreements with broadcasters, according to Brinton, who says "these terms of trade" would create a framework of basic practices.

"Things like [lack of promotion] wouldn't happen, because the broadcasters would have pre-negotiated levels of commitment for any productions before they enter into specific agreements with that individual show," he says.

When Michael Bay blamed his cast and just about everybody else for the failure of The Island, he was roundly ridiculed for it. His reputation took a big hit. I don't think anyone should be ridiculed here. But there should be a reality check.

Before we crown a standard bearer for the problems facing Canadian TV, we really need to have a consensus that the project is actually an example of the problem -- and we're not just glomming onto a real problem to escape our own culpability.

So long as we mix the bad and the good, the real problems and the excuses together -- it's never going to get better.

Good shows fail. Bad shows succeed. It happens. But when the audience votes with their feet, it's another kettle of fish altogether to suggest that they'd choose differently if you shoved a few more promos down their throats. Seymour's complaining doesn't pass the smell test, and it makes it harder to attack and rectify the real cases where maybe promo IS the problem.

Americans are a Gassy People

WELL CONGRATS all around to those toiling out in Rouleau.

From Playback:

Americans have been charmed by the quirky residents of Dog River, who drew high ratings to Superstation WGN when Corner Gas made its south-of-the-border premiere.

Amid favorable reviews from U.S. critics, the first two episodes of season one scored 357,000 and 290,000 viewers (2+), respectively, on Sept. 10 at 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. ET. Those numbers compare favorably to America's Funniest Home Videos, the highest rated show on the satellite and cable channel, which garnered 541,000 viewers in the same Monday timeslot the week prior.

The Gas episodes also played well in the key 18-49 demographic -- 176,000 and 168,000 -- taking second place behind AFHV and even finishing ahead of a Cubs-Cardinals game.

"Baseball, especially Cubs competing for the division title, is big on our network, so this was a great start," a spokesperson for WGN tells Playback Daily. The Chicago-based channel reaches over 70 million U.S. homes. It celebrated the premiere of the Regina-shot comedy, seen here on CTV, with a free gas giveaway during an online contest.

We can do this if you support us. There are more Corner Gas's in us yet!

Rogers Buying Citytv

Rogers to buy Citytv stations
CTV to get $375-million for 5 stations

Financial Post
Published: Monday, June 11, 2007
Rogers Communications Inc. is buying the five local Citytv stations after the broadcast regulator said it would not allow CTV Inc. to buy CHUM Ltd. without the sale of those properties.
Rogers and CTVglobemedia said the five stations -- in Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver -- would go to Rogers for $375-million. The purchase would give Rogers an instant presence in what it calls a "formidable national television platform."

From the Financial Post. Full article here.

In the wake of the CRTC rejection (or conditional approval, depending on how you look at it) of the CTV takeover, this replaces the previous deal where Rogers was going to buy the A-Channels. CTV will now keep those.

What does it mean? Nobody knows. But here's a few nuggets for thought:

299 Queen Street West -- the main Citytv building, houses all the specialties like Space, Muchmusic, Bravo! etc. Now they'll be owned by a different co. than Citytv. Presumably either the stations or the specialties will have to move.

CHUM has always relied on cross-pollination - Camera guys would be shooting for Fashion TV one day, Much More Music or Star! the next. As an insider told me earlier today in Banff, "it's going to be like trying to separate conjoined twins."

CHUM has always bought shows with a specialty (Space, Bravo!) and terrestrial (Citytv, A-Channel) component. Now that presumably goes away. Where will the envelope come from? How big will it be? Does the benefits package go away now? Will CTV operate A-Channels or turn them CTV? Will we be left with small local programming spends from Citytv?

Considering the fact that they just announced the largest slate of indigenous programming of any of the Canadian Private Networks, that can't be good?

Does anyone know what's out there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone home?

Daddy needs to get Comfortably Numb now.

CTV and CHUM and CBC

WELL, CBC.CA is moving a CP story about the CTV/CHUM takeover which I've alluded to this week.

Tomorrow at 11am the decision gets handed down and I suppose CTV will probably have 30 days to come back with another deal.

OTTAWA (CP) - The federal broadcast regulator will hand down its verdict on CTVglobemedia's $1.4 billion purchase of CHUM Ltd. on Friday amid expectations that Canada's largest private TV network will be forced to sell some or all of five Citytv stations, a key element of the deal.

Sources have told The Canadian Press that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will make the selloff of at least some of the stations a condition for approving the takeover of CHUM. The Toronto broadcaster has an extensive network of radio and television stations, including six A-Channels and 21 specialty channels.

"CTVglobemedia isn't going to like this decision," one source said, on condition of anonymity.

In any case, it means more uncertainty in an industry with an awful lot of it already.

The Most Trusted Name in Fake Programming News

JON STEWART isn't just a truly funny comedian and trenchant commentator. This most American of Comedians may now actually be counted as one of the better stewards of Made-In-Canada Culture.

Not only did he pluck Sam Bee and Jason Jones from our shores (two talents who were, um...let's be kind...underutilized here, though I'm sure Jones loves that beer money now that he's, you know, known...)

Not only did he spin better satire out of our last leaders debate than our homegrown comedy shows could manage....last night, depending on how you read it -- he may have just spoken up for CanCon.

Speaking via videotaped message to the big CTV fall launch party at Toronto's new Opera House:

"You've done a great job there, airing all those American shows and taking credit for them,"

"The C in CSI doesn't stand for Canada."

From Lee-Anne Goodman's Canadian Press report:

The network's Canadian shows, in fact, weren't highlighted till midway through the launch, when Brent Butt took to the stage to promote the upcoming season of the beloved hit sitcom, "Corner Gas." "Degrassi: The Next Generation," "Whistler" and "Robson Arms" join "Corner Gas" on the slate of returning Canadian shows, but there were no new ones on the schedule.

A CTV official says the network will announce some new Canadian shows later in the year.

As Jon would say, probably straight to camera: Whaaaaaaaaa?

And There You Have It!

From Bloomberg News:

``This deal is done,'' said Stuart Langford, a commissioner with the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission. ``It's highly unlikely that anyone would tolerate us just saying no.'' He spoke at a hearing in Gatineau, Quebec.

``We are not in the business of killing deals,'' Konrad von Finckenstein, the CRTC's chairman, said at the hearings in response to a request to postpone a ruling on the acquisition until the CRTC updates its rules. That would cause a ``tremendous loss of value.''

Please sir, can we have some more? (money for Canadian programming, I mean.) 50% of the advertising market should come with a price, n'est pas?

Lest We Forget Robson Arms...

Canadians, you have a chance to see Robson Arms, sprung for this one week from its Saturday night Gulag to follow that horrible song show with the warbling people and the mean man.

The episode showing tonight also features SCTV demigod Joe Flaherty. But really, how many reasons to watch do you need?

This show falls squarely into the, "shows that people don't watch that prove the whole Canadians don't make good shows thing is bullshit."

9:30 p.m. Please do give it a go. Don't wait til it's sold to the USA three years from now to decide that, hey, you know what? It's good.

CTV & The Benefit of The Doubt

So...

Robson Arms & Jeff Ltd.

2nd seasons.

Both premiering next week...on Saturday.

Deadest night of the week. Opposite Hockey Night In Canada.

I just don't know anymore. Two views:

1. What, are you kidding me? CTV shows that it just doesn't give a rat's ass about Cancon at all. It's totally depressing.
2. This is great news! Saturday nights are dead zones for U.S. nets, which means they don't run new stuff, which means CTV won't pre-empt for simulcasts, which means people might actually get a chance to know that these shows are on in a constant timeslot, without being bumped around the schedule.

Like I said...I just don't know anymore.

How Corner Gas Ruined Everything

[CANADIAN TV] The narrative used to be easy. It went like this:

"Canadians don't want to watch Canadian shows."

That statement was a powerful defence. It's the reason why, in 1999, the broadcasters successfully got the CRTC to relax Canadian Content regulations on homegrown comedy and drama.

Actually, what they did was allow networks to count things like lifestyle shows and light entertainment and reality toward their CanCon quotas. The result, by now, is well known. There were eleven drama series on the air in 1999 on the various Canadian networks. Those numbers dropped by half within a year or so. These days, you'd be hard pressed to find more than one drama or comedy show on any of the Canadian networks at one time or another. The private networks continue to make their money by buying U.S. shows at the L.A. screenings, programming them at the same time as the U.S. networks, to take advantage of their promotional spending and then, as a final gift, the CRTC allows them to substitute their signal over the American networks, so that even if you watch the NBC show on NBC, you're actually watching CTV or Global, and their commercials. Then, they fill out their schedule and CanCon with cheap shows like ET Canada or E Talk Daily -- which they sell as -- and here's the final insult -- a way to promote Canadian stars!

At the time, Canadian creatives tried to make the case that maybe the reason people weren't watching had something to do with a lack of promotion, bouncing the few series they did do around the schedule to accomodate money-making U.S. simulcasts, dumping homegrown series in unflattering slots where they were designed to fail (like scheduling TRADERS for years against E.R. which was then Canada's Number 1 show.)

But the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (the broadcaster lobby group) had a powerful, though passive ally: viewers themselves.

Because they could also point to viewers and hear things like, "Canadian shows look cheap." "They're not good." "There's no one in them that I know."

That's a hard thing to hear -- and unfortunately, it's often true. I'll return to that later.

So how did Corner Gas ruin everything?

By exposing the fracture and fiction points that underpin the laughable toy that is the domestic Canadian broadcast industry.

Let's take the first canard out. More than a million people watch Corner Gas in Canada every week, and have since it came out. Most week it's closer to 1.5 million. To give context to that number, remember that Canada is a nation of 30 million people. So this is roughly equivalent to over 30 million viewers a week in the USA -- which is way, way, way better than most of the shows that are considered hits in the USA. Better than Lost. Better than Prison Break. Better than House.

What's more, viewers have followed Corner Gas whenever it's been moved. It's been bounced around the schedule on CTV a lot. And viewers always find it. They want to watch it.

They've released three Corner Gas DVD sets. They sell incredibly well. Brent Butt tours across Canada to sold-out shows on the strength of the recognition he gains off Corner Gas.

Yet no one -- and I mean no one -- asks what does Corner Gas does right that everybody else gets wrong? This show shreds the argument made by the CAB -- that no one wants to watch Canadian shows -- but they still make it. And no one challenges them.

Why?

Because there are other people who don't want to face up to what Corner Gas does, and does well. And does differently. Because if they did, they might have to change what they do, and how they do it.

So what does Corner Gas do differently?

Well - first off, they do in the neighborhood of 20 shows a year. Not 8. Not 6. Not 13. So there's an actual industry involved in producing them. People who work on the show make good money for their efforts, so they attract the top talent. Corner Gas has a writing staff, four or five strong, who write in story rooms. They break stories together, just like U.S. shows do. There isn't one writer pumping it all out by themselves in a room, and they don't have to write it all themselves just to make enough money to live for four months. It's not a freelance situation where the scripts get written, passed off to the producers, and then the writers go home and aren't involved in the process when the thing gets made. The producers listen to the writers. They focus on making the show. The writers are there in Saskatchewan while the thing is being made. They are also working while they're shooting, which means that courses can be changed, things punched up, even as the show goes to the floor.

In other words, part of the reason Corner Gas works is because it's made in the same way that a U.S. show is made: hire top talent. Have a writing room. Do enough episodes. Have everybody on hand to make sure it all goes well.

Now, what about the content? How is Corner Gas different than other shows made in Canada? For that, let's turn to John Doyle, who wrote this in response to the news that Gas has been sold to syndication in the U.S. and lotsa countries 'round the world...including, interestingly, Iraq.

Corner Gas is our kind of humour and its success is also an inconvenient truth for many people in the Canadian TV racket. People in the racket who think they're smart and sophisticated sneer at Corner Gas. The deft, light sophistication of it escapes them. In truth, many are livid and seethe with envy and resentment. Corner Gas is eight characters in the middle of nowhere, affably swapping absurdly daft jokes.

Doyle comes perilously close to touching the third rail here... but he doesn't come out and say it. I will.

A lot of Canadian TV creative types are snobs. They are out of touch with the Canadian viewing audience. And that's why they make bad shows.

I love TV. I love quality shows like The Sopranos, and I love lowbrow, well executed stuff like that first glorious season of The O.C. Sure, I'll be snarky about the stuff I don't think is worthy, like According to Jim or JAG or whatever...but I know that people like them, and you know what? That's fine.

But often when I move and shake (in the former case, slowly, like a manatee, and in the latter, kind of like the Michelin man) at industry functions, I find myself out of step. Because a whole lot of people want to talk about making something "groundbreaking" and "important" and "not like you usually see on TV" and not something "entertaining" that people "want to watch."

And this bias is nowhere more nakedly exposed than in attitudes toward Corner Gas. In the leadup to the execrable Rumours, my former boss Moses Znaimer was widely quoted as saying that show was going to be "the anti-Corner Gas." Well, it certainly turned out that way, didn't it? A couple weeks back, The Sun ran an article with cast members from Rumours blaming the audience for no one watching the show.

That's right. The audience is the problem. We should blame the audience. Because, (all together now!) "Canadians don't want to watch Canadian shows!"

Except Corner Gas.

Oh. Doesn't count. Right.

I've stood around with writers from Corner Gas as people at industry events have pooh-poohed their show and its success. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, and heard it with my own ears.

Below, I linked to an article from the Edmonton Sun, where Brigitte Bako was talking about her show, G-Spot. Here's that link again, and here's a quote from that article, below:

While the show is set in L.A., it's filmed in Toronto, which wasn't a problem for Bako, just so long as the show didn't look like a Canadian production. Touting shows like North of 60 and Corner Gas as benchmarks, the best Canuck TV has to offer, is a sad joke, she contends.

"I've actually lived in the U.S. longer than Canada, but I love my country. You should see me during the Olympics; I want everyone to die except Canada.

"But in production meetings with my crew, I'd say, 'If this looks like a Canadian show, I will shoot myself and then all of you. We have so much talent in Canada, we can do better.'

"I have no competition, in my opinion. I happen to think most stuff in Canada sucks ass, and you can quote me on that. I don't like one Canadian show. I watch it because that's what I'm supposed to do, to see what's out there. It's not funny, it's very politically correct and nobody steps outside of the box. And I don't know why, but when things are shot in Canada they sort of look like they were shot in a tin can."

Now, let's be clear here. G-Spot, which is a Canadian take on Sex in the City, is shown on TMN and Movie Central. It's about to enter its third season.

And no one cares.

There is no buzz around G-Spot. Whatever I think of actors writing shows, the blithe way in which Bako dismisses a show that reaches 1 to 1.5 million viewers a week, and praises her own work, reveals all. And yet I would have never thought to criticize Bako or her show. Except. Except. The attitude she shows, and the way no one challenges her on it, says everything about the bizarro world of Canadian TV. Bako feels free to say something like she doesn't watch a single Canadian show.

Well, you know what?

Corner Gas. Davinci's Inquest. Intelligence. Slings & Arrows. Trailer Park Boys.

I watch em all. Because I love'em. Some are connecting and high rated, some are merely critical darlings. But they're all great. And they're all shows that are completely unlike anything you see in the USA. Unlike, say, a Sex in the City clone.

On a smaller scale, the snobbery that surrounds Corner Gas and its success is even more pronounced toward Trailer Park Boys. It doesn't matter that the guys get mobbed everywhere they go. It doesn't matter that a thousand people turn up to a personal appearance in a Toronto theatre, people of all ages, people who look like they're working class and young and old and brown and white and asian...you know, like Canada...it doesn't matter that there's a movie, because the cabal that rules the roost here still want to get their money for producing highbrow, "important" or "different" fare that doesn't connect. And the only way they can keep doing that is by running down the shows that do connect.

Nobody asks, really, why TPB connects, either. Except maybe, again, John Doyle:

As any fool knows by now, Trailer Park Boys is terribly sweet. It's just that there's a lot of swearing, drinking, and dope-smoking, and occasionally there's utterly innefectual gunplay. What it shares with Corner Gas is the sweetness.

I get the sweetness. The TPB movie, for all its greasy madness, is very sweet indeed. The Christmas special is actually touching.

Yes, we in Canada are regulatorily beset. But the other dirty part of the equation is this: the people who've gotten the funding for too long, have been exactly the kind of people who hate things like Corner Gas. The show's success, and the indifference with which they treat the fact of its success, shows that they don't care about the audience.

And the CAB types are more than happy to cynically throw their lot in with these types, because so long as they keep making these shows that no one wants to see, the more they can keep funding requirements at bay, keep pushing the "Canadians don't want to see Canadian shows" canard, and focus on how they make their real (easy) money: buying U.S. fare and having big brother protect them while they filter it to a Canadian audience, and reap the advertising rewards.

Understand this: I'm not saying you can't like Corner Gas. I've made this point before, but it always bears repeating. Being professional means separating out your personal taste from your professional opinion. I don't watch Ugly Betty, or listen to Cedric The Entertainer comedy records, but I understand why they work. I would personally never choose Leno over Letterman, but I understand what his appeal is to those who do so. Understanding the audience is my job. It has to be. And if you work in the business, no matter where you work in the business, it's your job too. And that's why I have no problem saying this:

If you can't learn from Corner Gas, I don't think you should be in this industry.

For the way it exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of the Canadian domestic production industry, well...I think that's the most important way in which Corner Gas ruined everything.

And maybe, just maybe...it points to the way out.