UPDATE 5:19 P.M. Whoopsie-Daisy. Looks like there was a bit of a hiccup with the video getting out of sync there -- this one isn't exactly frame-perfect, but at least it doesn't mysteriously chop eight seconds off the vid and stays in sync right to the end! Okay, then, forward THIS ONE to everybody. Yeesh!
Showing posts with label Cable. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cable. Show all posts
Friday, November 13, 2009
Tv Tax? Save Local TV? Gimme Some Truth!
FOR YOUR WEEKEND delight, and in anticipation of the opening of the 3rd - count 'em - 3rd hearing to examine fee-for-carriage at the CRTC on Monday, the Writers Guild of Canada has prepared this little video that debunks and explains some of the misleading sturm and drang rhetoric you've been hearing on those duelling commercials for months. Feel free to email this sucker to EVERYBODY!
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
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.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Fatuous Gasbag Gets Knuckles Slapped
WELL, THIS IS SOMETHING, at least:
Don't you feel better? Have a good weekend.
The CRTC can't level fines like the FCC can, so this is about all they can do.Regulators have slapped Shaw Communications Inc. [SJR.B-T] with one of their strictest penalties possible, short of revoking its licence, by placing Canada's second-largest cable company on probation for flouting federal rules.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission took the unusual step Thursday of only renewing Shaw's operating licences for two years, well short of the standard seven-year term most companies are afforded, following recent clashes with the cable operator.
Don't you feel better? Have a good weekend.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Welcome To Hicksville
EVERY ONCE IN a while, something happens in Canada that just makes my pancreas hurt. Such great people, such a wondrous spirit, such interesting diversity and dignity. I've met lovely people in Victoria and Vancouver who couldn't be more different from the Calgarians I've hung out with. I've broken bread in the 'Peg and Regina and had laughs and traded bon mots in Montreal. I've stomped my feet to keep warm in Thunder Bay and Quebec City, laughed it up in the Market in Ottawa, and enjoyed conversations and hale fellows well met in Halifax and Fredricton.
This truly is an amazing country.
When it's not busy being a backward, bush league, ridiculous punchline.
Sadly, we've gotten the latter a lot lately. There's the crushing idiocy of having to explain why culture is important -- a concept that's just taken as read in every other country in the world. There's the insanity of holding the gun to a head of an entire industry over two paragraphs in a 600 page tax bill -- and of continuing to let your oppponents unfairly characterize a labor tax credit as "public funding."
But all that's small beer compared to the latest.
There's one batshit crazy dude who owns a cable company, see? And he doesn't like Trailer Park Boys. So on a whim, he instigates a convulsion that throws the Canadian Television Industry into crisis by witholding money is legally required to contribute. Then, when there are hearings to deal with the problem that he himself instigated, he refuses to show up.
Cut to another set of hearings, another regulatory soft shoe. This time, batshit crazy dude writes a letter to his friend the Prime Minister complaining that the regulatory body is mean.
He has a laundry list of stuff he wants, you see. And he really doesn't want other people getting their laundry list of stuff. Oh, and by the way, he still doesn't want Mr. Lahey or Ricky or Bubbles to get anything. (Bubbles doesn't want much. Maybe a couple Kittys.) Anyway, like it or not there's another whole set of hearings to deal with how the broadcast system is going to change. There are millions on the line.
And once again, the crazy batshit fucker doesn't show.
Seriously. Stephen Harper, the fact that you know this guy is embarrassing. The fact that he might have your ear is totally frightening.
The fact that this guy single-handedly holds everybody hostage to his caprices and moods makes Canada look like a hick provincial backwater.
And how wrong is it that they shuffle every cultural institution into one three hour block, but give every cable company and broadcaster their own slot to present -- a slot that Shaw thumbs his nose at. I mean, is this really where we are in this country? Where right there, out in the open, a guy gets to flout the system because he expects his friend the PM to just intervene, change the rules, and give him what he wants?
Seriously. I understand that money talks. But this is bullshit. And we all know what bullshit does.
Does no one have the guts to give this guy his walking papers?
If you're a SHAW shareholder, seriously, aren't you the slightest bit mortified by this guy? If you're in the cable tent, are you happy this guy is on your side?
Is no one shamed by this dude? I mean, really...is it just me?
This truly is an amazing country.
When it's not busy being a backward, bush league, ridiculous punchline.
Sadly, we've gotten the latter a lot lately. There's the crushing idiocy of having to explain why culture is important -- a concept that's just taken as read in every other country in the world. There's the insanity of holding the gun to a head of an entire industry over two paragraphs in a 600 page tax bill -- and of continuing to let your oppponents unfairly characterize a labor tax credit as "public funding."
But all that's small beer compared to the latest.
There's one batshit crazy dude who owns a cable company, see? And he doesn't like Trailer Park Boys. So on a whim, he instigates a convulsion that throws the Canadian Television Industry into crisis by witholding money is legally required to contribute. Then, when there are hearings to deal with the problem that he himself instigated, he refuses to show up.
Cut to another set of hearings, another regulatory soft shoe. This time, batshit crazy dude writes a letter to his friend the Prime Minister complaining that the regulatory body is mean.
He has a laundry list of stuff he wants, you see. And he really doesn't want other people getting their laundry list of stuff. Oh, and by the way, he still doesn't want Mr. Lahey or Ricky or Bubbles to get anything. (Bubbles doesn't want much. Maybe a couple Kittys.) Anyway, like it or not there's another whole set of hearings to deal with how the broadcast system is going to change. There are millions on the line.
And once again, the crazy batshit fucker doesn't show.
This marks the second time this year that he has personally boycotted a CRTC proceeding. He refused to turn up at hearings on the Canadian Television Fund in February after learning that von Finckenstein would not be present and had opted to put one of his underlings, commissioner Rita Cugini, in charge.At the time, Shaw famously referred to Cugini and her colleagues as the CRTC's "B Team," a criticism that von Finckenstein tossed back at the company yesterday.
"Sending you – which in his views, in his terminology, I would characterize as a `B Team' – I don't think adds to the process," von Finckenstein told Shaw executives, led by president Peter Bissonnette. "This is not meant in any way as disrespect to you."
Seriously. Stephen Harper, the fact that you know this guy is embarrassing. The fact that he might have your ear is totally frightening.
The fact that this guy single-handedly holds everybody hostage to his caprices and moods makes Canada look like a hick provincial backwater.
And how wrong is it that they shuffle every cultural institution into one three hour block, but give every cable company and broadcaster their own slot to present -- a slot that Shaw thumbs his nose at. I mean, is this really where we are in this country? Where right there, out in the open, a guy gets to flout the system because he expects his friend the PM to just intervene, change the rules, and give him what he wants?
Seriously. I understand that money talks. But this is bullshit. And we all know what bullshit does.
Does no one have the guts to give this guy his walking papers?
If you're a SHAW shareholder, seriously, aren't you the slightest bit mortified by this guy? If you're in the cable tent, are you happy this guy is on your side?
Is no one shamed by this dude? I mean, really...is it just me?
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Your Weekend Context
WHILE THERE'S A pause in the CRTC Hearing bafflegab, let's kick for a moment toward something that's NOT being talked about, but that has EVERYTHING to do with what's going on in the "review" of the TV system currently going on in Gatineau.
One look at the (mostly) aged white men asking the questions at the podium will tell you that this is not a particularly hip group. The challenges and implications of 21st century media is not likely to be something that motivates them. I would even go so far as to say, they probably don't see the forest for the trees.
But the cable companies do. And so do the phone companies.
While they're up there arguing for the entire system to be thrown open to deregulated, unrestricted American signals, there's another battle quietly going on. If you're a customer of Rogers or Bell, you've already seen the first stirrings of it: you may buy a nice high speed connection, but you're not getting it. See, thanks to something called "traffic shaping," or "throttling," these companies are already trying to dip their toes into a much larger pool. Traffic shaping means that they throttle, or restrict, some types of media files going across the network. Like video. So video comes to you at a much lower bit rate than, say, email or text.
The telcoms and cablecos are testing and gauging the public's taste for this right now because they have a much bigger target in mind: net neutrality. You might have heard that phrase, or maybe you haven't, but this is a video that explains what's going on and what's at stake:
That's a U.S. example, of course. But don't for a moment think that Shaw and Rogers and Cogeco and Bell and Telus aren't all over this as well. Their plans for the future include controlling the pipe you can use to access the internet, and also being able to endrun Canadian channels to drive more American content to you -- all while maintaining their historic protections through government regulation, without giving anything back, either to the system, or consumers.
As you watch the big corporations battle, remember that this is lurking in the background.
They're playing a much bigger game than you are.
One look at the (mostly) aged white men asking the questions at the podium will tell you that this is not a particularly hip group. The challenges and implications of 21st century media is not likely to be something that motivates them. I would even go so far as to say, they probably don't see the forest for the trees.
But the cable companies do. And so do the phone companies.
While they're up there arguing for the entire system to be thrown open to deregulated, unrestricted American signals, there's another battle quietly going on. If you're a customer of Rogers or Bell, you've already seen the first stirrings of it: you may buy a nice high speed connection, but you're not getting it. See, thanks to something called "traffic shaping," or "throttling," these companies are already trying to dip their toes into a much larger pool. Traffic shaping means that they throttle, or restrict, some types of media files going across the network. Like video. So video comes to you at a much lower bit rate than, say, email or text.
The telcoms and cablecos are testing and gauging the public's taste for this right now because they have a much bigger target in mind: net neutrality. You might have heard that phrase, or maybe you haven't, but this is a video that explains what's going on and what's at stake:
That's a U.S. example, of course. But don't for a moment think that Shaw and Rogers and Cogeco and Bell and Telus aren't all over this as well. Their plans for the future include controlling the pipe you can use to access the internet, and also being able to endrun Canadian channels to drive more American content to you -- all while maintaining their historic protections through government regulation, without giving anything back, either to the system, or consumers.
As you watch the big corporations battle, remember that this is lurking in the background.
They're playing a much bigger game than you are.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Kids, the Candy Store, And Breaking the Cookie Jar
A BIG "GOOD LUCK" to the WGC contingent, as well as Rent-A-Goalie writer Graeme Manson, who get to trundle up to Gatineau today for the latest hearings that could completely spike the entire broadcast system.
They're against, by the way.
It's funny, you know, I don't have a lot of time to blog right now, so I can't get off on too much of a rant here, but I would really like to hear from someone with a better background in economics than me. Here's my question. Ready for it? Deregulation. Has it ever worked?
I mean, really? Can you please tell me the industry that it's been great for? Let me rephrase that -- can you tell me the industry that was deregulated where things turned out better for the general public? Right now, as we watch the U.S. teeter on the brink of a spectacular financial crisis because one firm managed to almost tank the whole investment market? And as our lips work their way around "Bear Stearns," lips still parched from mouthing the dreaded name of "Enron," plenty of us have time to contemplate such issues as we wait in crowded terminals amidst the blasted, hellish clusterfuck that air travel has become in the wake of that industry's deregulation. Maybe we can try to soothe ourselves, and turn on the radio -- except of course that'll just annoy you, as you listen to the same Mariah Carey song on every station in the country because Clear Channel owns them all, and if you can't get NPR you're screwed because, hey, consolidation and deregulation of the airwaves has really helped the public really stay better informed because there are so many new, wonderful players in the infosphere.
Oh, I could go on. But I won't. If there's a budding John Kenneth Galbraith or Adam Smith out there, please let me know. Because deregulation to me smells vaguely like ass.
So of course, the kabuki spectacle at the CRTC this week is all about deregulation. Basically, two groups who have long enjoyed a great degree of protection -- Broadcasters and BDU's (don't you love that -- it's a fancy way of saying cable and satellite and TeeVee through your phone line -- broadcast distribution units) are duking it out. Each wants to take away the other's protections and keep their own.
Like a dyspeptic Don Quixote, even Jim Shaw's been riding back in on his ass. See, our favorite foot stamper has written his friend the Prime Minister (big donor, Jim Shaw, and we all know how seriously the Conservatives take their election financing) because he's "fed up" with the CRTC. He wants the government to intervene directly to give him what he wants. Just like Charles McVety, another good friend of the Conservatives.
Sweet Jesus, it makes me want to scream. Privileged kids, all, fighting over the candy and the cookies and leaving the entire production community -- which employs tens of thousands of people in this country, and adds millions to the economy -- to fight over the crumbs. And we are the ONLY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD that pulls this bullshit. In Australia, they understand culture. Their parties may not agree on everything, but support of cultural industries? They get why they need to be supported. They understand what they mean to the fabric of a nation. England, France, the rest of what they used to call, "The West," -- they all get it. Canada stands alone on this philistine-crowded cliff, dying to jump off. Way to go! We're number one!
At this point, nothing would surprise me. Nothing.
Ulp.
Holy Gods. You have to understand something. Canwest and CTV appearing together at this point is like watching the entire player roster of the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox go into a gay bar, start doing body shots, and pair off for canoodles and backrubs. It's Sharks and Jets sharing a soda. It's like watching Jon Stewart french kiss Dick Cheney. It's dogs and cats sleeping together. It's like Woody getting together with Mia to talk about the kids. It's like...well....you get the idea.
But, sad to say, this is just a measure of just how weird it's gotten. And also a wakeup call for creatives in this country. There are sides in this hunt, and if you write, produce, act, work on a film set, in marketing, sales, accounting, or anything even tangentially connected to the film and tv business -- whatever your issues might be yesterday, or tomorrow -- you gotta suck it up and pick the Canadian networks on this one.
The CFTPA, Canada's producers association, did a survey that showed that of the top 200 shows in the United States -- fully 97 percent of them were already available on Cable and Sat. That means 6 out of 200 weren't. Six. Out of 200.
What the Cablecos want is complete deregulation. They want to be able to do what they want -- with all the protections they have retained, with no responsibility either to you as consumers of local programming or to the industry at large.
They are all Jim Shaw. Well, most are, anyway. Here's how bad it is. You think the Global/CTV thing is weird? Last week, Ted Rogers spoke out against his own company.
Even he sees what's behind this. It's the purest, wettest, most breathtaking kind of arrogant greed. It's a giant, candy-coloured, gift wrapped "fuck you."
Flown lately in the U.S.A.? Fun, huh? Well fasten your seat belts, bitches. That's what's coming to your TV soon.
So I guess you'll just what, turn to the internet, right? Not so fast, buster. They're putting the fix in on that, too.
So good luck Graehme, Kelly, Maureen, and the other voices trying to counsel some degree of sanity in this mad spectacle. I'm sure you'll be met with the same respectful and attentive attention you got the last time round.
Remember the Bowie song from Ziggy Stardust? "Five Years?"
Two.
Depending on what goes down at the CRTC in the next couple weeks, anybody who makes their living off anything other than shovelling U.S. programs down a pipe has got about two years before you have to seriously think about, you know, maybe doing something else.
Not a great way to end the week, but hey, at least it's sunny, right?
EDIT: You can listen to the CRTC hearing by clicking the button their page. Or you can watch video via CPAC here. (Unless your ISP shapes the traffic.)
They're against, by the way.
It's funny, you know, I don't have a lot of time to blog right now, so I can't get off on too much of a rant here, but I would really like to hear from someone with a better background in economics than me. Here's my question. Ready for it? Deregulation. Has it ever worked?
I mean, really? Can you please tell me the industry that it's been great for? Let me rephrase that -- can you tell me the industry that was deregulated where things turned out better for the general public? Right now, as we watch the U.S. teeter on the brink of a spectacular financial crisis because one firm managed to almost tank the whole investment market? And as our lips work their way around "Bear Stearns," lips still parched from mouthing the dreaded name of "Enron," plenty of us have time to contemplate such issues as we wait in crowded terminals amidst the blasted, hellish clusterfuck that air travel has become in the wake of that industry's deregulation. Maybe we can try to soothe ourselves, and turn on the radio -- except of course that'll just annoy you, as you listen to the same Mariah Carey song on every station in the country because Clear Channel owns them all, and if you can't get NPR you're screwed because, hey, consolidation and deregulation of the airwaves has really helped the public really stay better informed because there are so many new, wonderful players in the infosphere.
Oh, I could go on. But I won't. If there's a budding John Kenneth Galbraith or Adam Smith out there, please let me know. Because deregulation to me smells vaguely like ass.
So of course, the kabuki spectacle at the CRTC this week is all about deregulation. Basically, two groups who have long enjoyed a great degree of protection -- Broadcasters and BDU's (don't you love that -- it's a fancy way of saying cable and satellite and TeeVee through your phone line -- broadcast distribution units) are duking it out. Each wants to take away the other's protections and keep their own.
Like a dyspeptic Don Quixote, even Jim Shaw's been riding back in on his ass. See, our favorite foot stamper has written his friend the Prime Minister (big donor, Jim Shaw, and we all know how seriously the Conservatives take their election financing) because he's "fed up" with the CRTC. He wants the government to intervene directly to give him what he wants. Just like Charles McVety, another good friend of the Conservatives.
Sweet Jesus, it makes me want to scream. Privileged kids, all, fighting over the candy and the cookies and leaving the entire production community -- which employs tens of thousands of people in this country, and adds millions to the economy -- to fight over the crumbs. And we are the ONLY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD that pulls this bullshit. In Australia, they understand culture. Their parties may not agree on everything, but support of cultural industries? They get why they need to be supported. They understand what they mean to the fabric of a nation. England, France, the rest of what they used to call, "The West," -- they all get it. Canada stands alone on this philistine-crowded cliff, dying to jump off. Way to go! We're number one!
At this point, nothing would surprise me. Nothing.
Ulp.
GATINEAU, Que.–Two of Canada's largest television broadcasters set aside their fierce rivalry yesterday and presented a united front, imploring the federal regulator to put consumers first by resisting demands from cable and satellite companies to relax the regulations governing the television industry.
The top executives of CanWest Global Communications Corp. and CTVglobemedia Inc. sat shoulder to shoulder as they made an "unprecedented" joint submission at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, warning the very survival of Canadian TV is at stake.
Holy Gods. You have to understand something. Canwest and CTV appearing together at this point is like watching the entire player roster of the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox go into a gay bar, start doing body shots, and pair off for canoodles and backrubs. It's Sharks and Jets sharing a soda. It's like watching Jon Stewart french kiss Dick Cheney. It's dogs and cats sleeping together. It's like Woody getting together with Mia to talk about the kids. It's like...well....you get the idea.
But, sad to say, this is just a measure of just how weird it's gotten. And also a wakeup call for creatives in this country. There are sides in this hunt, and if you write, produce, act, work on a film set, in marketing, sales, accounting, or anything even tangentially connected to the film and tv business -- whatever your issues might be yesterday, or tomorrow -- you gotta suck it up and pick the Canadian networks on this one.
The CFTPA, Canada's producers association, did a survey that showed that of the top 200 shows in the United States -- fully 97 percent of them were already available on Cable and Sat. That means 6 out of 200 weren't. Six. Out of 200.
What the Cablecos want is complete deregulation. They want to be able to do what they want -- with all the protections they have retained, with no responsibility either to you as consumers of local programming or to the industry at large.
They are all Jim Shaw. Well, most are, anyway. Here's how bad it is. You think the Global/CTV thing is weird? Last week, Ted Rogers spoke out against his own company.
Even he sees what's behind this. It's the purest, wettest, most breathtaking kind of arrogant greed. It's a giant, candy-coloured, gift wrapped "fuck you."
Flown lately in the U.S.A.? Fun, huh? Well fasten your seat belts, bitches. That's what's coming to your TV soon.
So I guess you'll just what, turn to the internet, right? Not so fast, buster. They're putting the fix in on that, too.
So good luck Graehme, Kelly, Maureen, and the other voices trying to counsel some degree of sanity in this mad spectacle. I'm sure you'll be met with the same respectful and attentive attention you got the last time round.
Remember the Bowie song from Ziggy Stardust? "Five Years?"
Two.
Depending on what goes down at the CRTC in the next couple weeks, anybody who makes their living off anything other than shovelling U.S. programs down a pipe has got about two years before you have to seriously think about, you know, maybe doing something else.
Not a great way to end the week, but hey, at least it's sunny, right?
EDIT: You can listen to the CRTC hearing by clicking the button their page. Or you can watch video via CPAC here. (Unless your ISP shapes the traffic.)
Monday, August 27, 2007
Know Thine Enemy
SO, ON THE weekend the Globe & Mail Report on Business ran a profile of errant cabler Jim Shaw. It's an instructive profile. Yes, yes, it's the business section. So the general self-congratulatory sloppy softball hagiography is to be expected. I mean, just look at the title of the article:
Confessions of a cable guy
The industry is chugging along, and the money is rolling in. With everything in check, it's the future that's on Jim Shaw's mind.
It gets slightly worse from there, but the upshot is this: Jim Shaw and the Shaw family have made a lot of money off Canadians. They've made it in the cable business.
They made it in the cable business because the CRTC had protectionist policies in place. These protectionist policies allowed the Shaw family and the Rogers family etc, etc, to grow Canadian-owned cable companies that didn't have to compete with American firms.
The other edge of the Canadians love American TV sword is this: there are an awful lot of people out there who would have loved to sign up to get US networks like HBO, FX, Sci-Fi, USA, Showtime and the like. As the CRTC dearly points out -- there are many Canadians who would love to watch U.S. commercials during Superbowl. But they can't. Because the CRTC says they can't. Unless you break the law and go for, say, a Grey Market satellite. So the CRTC put the kibosh on that kind of foreign competition, and the Shaw family prospered.
A little over ten years ago, times were getting a little harder for Cable. They saw satellite coming and didn't like it too much. So they were given a series of further regulatory perks. And in payment for those perks, they were mandated to give something back: they were to contribute to a new fund to produce homegrown Canadian shows: The CTF, or Canadian Television Fund.
Now earlier this year, Jim Shaw threw a fit and said he wasn't going to make his contributions anymore. He doesn't like the way his -- meaning your -- money is being spent. And a whole fooferal ensued, culminating in an investigation into the fund, and disastrous recommendations for reforming the fund, which I've blogged about endlessly.
So here's how Jim Shaw, protected monopolist, spun his behavior in his puff piece in the Globe this weekend:
Okay. Let's break this down.
A rich guy, who inherited the company Daddy built, wants to be able to decide what programs get made in Canada.
And now we come to the problem of the hammer. You know the hammer, right? The guy whose solution to every problem is to nail something? Well, Jim Shaw is a pipe guy. Cable is pipe. So what we have here is that the guy who owns the pipe wants to decide how to build the house. That sound groovy to you?
The problem is he's got his facts wrong. Like a true pipe guy, he don't know nothin bout birthin no houses.
In the many interviews and attention he got for his stampy-feet routine earlier this year, Shaw was devestating about the shows that no one watched. Problem was, one of his examples was Trailer Park Boys -- a bonafide, quirky, completely Canadian success. Jim Shaw, being a rich white old guy, doesn't get it. So he uses it as an example of what bad programming comes out of the CTF.
That's substituting personal taste for judgement. That's not dealing with reality. I have zero interest in Jim Shaw's tantrum, because I know the way that the drift has actually gone, and I know that in the midst of the worst, leanest funding crisis the domestic production industry has ever known, we are somehow managing to produce the best shows we've ever produced: shows like DaVinci ,or Cold Squad, which finally are being syndicated. Durham County, which rivals Britcrime shows for quality. Corner Gas, Little Mosque -- Slings & Arrows, which gets raves from the NYTimes. Genre stuff like Blood Ties that sells around the world and develops a loyal fan following. And yeah. Trailer Park Boys -- good enough that Ivan Reitman went and produced a movie.
By the way, in a stackup between those two on the content front, uh, I'd back Reitman.
Are there problems with the CTF? Absolutely. Do changes need to be made? Probably. But right now what Jim Shaw wants to do is substitute his judgement for those who are there.
And in his statements thus far, he's proven, unequivocably, that he does not know what the fuck he is talking about.
What do we know that Jim Shaw doesn't?
Plenty, when it comes to this subject. The danger, though, is that Canada is a country that very much loves to listen to its Jim Shaws. Look at the ridiculous CRTC recommendations for the CTF. Jim Shaw's loud voice, bought with your money, backed up by fawning profiles in business-friendly magazines, is shaping the cultural story of Canadian TV.
Do you think that's right?
Cause he has more money than you?
I don't.
Which is why if you are someone who works in Canadian TV, or watches Canadian TV, you need to make sure that the Jim Shaws of this world aren't the only guys being listened to.
We need to make sure that the false narrative -- "Canadians don't want to watch Canadian shows" gets put to rest. We need to remove the comfortable, cozy relationship where outlets that make money on U.S. simulcasts don't tank homemade shows just because it's bad for their business plan.
In the USA, people send nuts to save shows. In Canada, sending a letter or a postcard might just help all the shows.
If you're a Shaw cable subscriber, you may have gotten little mailings in the last little while. They've been playing games with stuff like online surveys with loaded questions that seem to suggest big support for Shaw and his "anti CTF crusade." Do us all a favor, and the next time you pay your bill, send a letter to Shaw.
Wait I have a sample letter for you. Here it is:
I got news for you bubby. Anyone who spins that line in the press -- cares a whole heckuva lot what people think. That's how massive ego works. You know Warren Buffet? There's a guy who doesn't care what people think. Donald Trump? Cares an embarrassing about.
Jim Shaw is way more the latter than the former. Tell him what you think.
And here's the ironic thing: he's not 100% wrong. Some of his ideas -- like having successful shows repay into the fund -- are actually pretty good.
But he's not an expert in this area.
You are. Cause you've got the remote. You're the one with the power.
Jim's just had it so good for so long that he's forgotten that.
Confessions of a cable guy
The industry is chugging along, and the money is rolling in. With everything in check, it's the future that's on Jim Shaw's mind.
It gets slightly worse from there, but the upshot is this: Jim Shaw and the Shaw family have made a lot of money off Canadians. They've made it in the cable business.
They made it in the cable business because the CRTC had protectionist policies in place. These protectionist policies allowed the Shaw family and the Rogers family etc, etc, to grow Canadian-owned cable companies that didn't have to compete with American firms.
The other edge of the Canadians love American TV sword is this: there are an awful lot of people out there who would have loved to sign up to get US networks like HBO, FX, Sci-Fi, USA, Showtime and the like. As the CRTC dearly points out -- there are many Canadians who would love to watch U.S. commercials during Superbowl. But they can't. Because the CRTC says they can't. Unless you break the law and go for, say, a Grey Market satellite. So the CRTC put the kibosh on that kind of foreign competition, and the Shaw family prospered.
A little over ten years ago, times were getting a little harder for Cable. They saw satellite coming and didn't like it too much. So they were given a series of further regulatory perks. And in payment for those perks, they were mandated to give something back: they were to contribute to a new fund to produce homegrown Canadian shows: The CTF, or Canadian Television Fund.
Now earlier this year, Jim Shaw threw a fit and said he wasn't going to make his contributions anymore. He doesn't like the way his -- meaning your -- money is being spent. And a whole fooferal ensued, culminating in an investigation into the fund, and disastrous recommendations for reforming the fund, which I've blogged about endlessly.
So here's how Jim Shaw, protected monopolist, spun his behavior in his puff piece in the Globe this weekend:
With cable steady, Mr. Shaw has found other ways to keep busy.
When not involved in Shaw's operational matters, he attacks the Canadian Television Fund, a $265-million federal program that doles out money to produce domestic TV shows. The cable industry is required to pay more than half of the budget, through fees collected from customers on monthly bills. Mr. Shaw has become increasingly upset in recent months that the fund doesn't disclose how and where that money is spent. He wants to see a balance sheet similar to the accounting public companies must produce, and threatened to pull his payments eight months ago.
It has become such a hobby horse that he often does the work at night.
“This is good fun. This is the most fun I've had in a long time. It's my best file,” he says, motioning toward a stack of papers marked CTF. “All of the other financial stuff that I have to do – boring. Not only is this fun, I think it's important.”
Mr. Shaw has sent a barrage of letters to the CTF, most recently questioning why auditors have not yet produced financial statements for the program, which were due a few months ago.
He wants the fund to be accountable to the people who pay into it, and he figures the money could be better spent, suspecting that most Canadians couldn't name five TV shows the dollars are used to produce. And he wants the CTF to get an equity stake out of its investment, so that when successful domestic series are sold internationally, funds are put back in.
The CTF has always stuck in his craw, but it didn't become his cause célèbre until an adviser to former prime minister Jean Chrétien told him that if he wanted to change things in government, he would have to raise a ruckus. “He said ‘If you want to make it an issue, Jim, make it an issue.' So I did.”
In February, after Mr. Shaw dug in his heels and threatened to pull his payments and refund the money to his customers, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission chairman Konrad von Finckenstein agreed to a review of the CTF, but threatened legal action if the company didn't get in line.
“I will litigate, trust me, if there is a further breach,” Mr. von Finckenstein told a Canadian Heritage committee.
Mr. Shaw is not intimidated.
“That's a tough role, boy, we have lots of lawyers too,” he said. “I don't know if I'd be heading down that trail.”
Ottawa doesn't enamour Mr. Shaw either, but he enjoys shaking things up for issues that he believes in. “That Ottawa, that is the town that fun forgot,” he says. “Brutal.”
It's vintage Jim Shaw, the cable guy at 50: He cares about what people think of his company, but he's apt to blithely disregard what people think of him.
Okay. Let's break this down.
A rich guy, who inherited the company Daddy built, wants to be able to decide what programs get made in Canada.
And now we come to the problem of the hammer. You know the hammer, right? The guy whose solution to every problem is to nail something? Well, Jim Shaw is a pipe guy. Cable is pipe. So what we have here is that the guy who owns the pipe wants to decide how to build the house. That sound groovy to you?
The problem is he's got his facts wrong. Like a true pipe guy, he don't know nothin bout birthin no houses.
In the many interviews and attention he got for his stampy-feet routine earlier this year, Shaw was devestating about the shows that no one watched. Problem was, one of his examples was Trailer Park Boys -- a bonafide, quirky, completely Canadian success. Jim Shaw, being a rich white old guy, doesn't get it. So he uses it as an example of what bad programming comes out of the CTF.
That's substituting personal taste for judgement. That's not dealing with reality. I have zero interest in Jim Shaw's tantrum, because I know the way that the drift has actually gone, and I know that in the midst of the worst, leanest funding crisis the domestic production industry has ever known, we are somehow managing to produce the best shows we've ever produced: shows like DaVinci ,or Cold Squad, which finally are being syndicated. Durham County, which rivals Britcrime shows for quality. Corner Gas, Little Mosque -- Slings & Arrows, which gets raves from the NYTimes. Genre stuff like Blood Ties that sells around the world and develops a loyal fan following. And yeah. Trailer Park Boys -- good enough that Ivan Reitman went and produced a movie.
By the way, in a stackup between those two on the content front, uh, I'd back Reitman.
Are there problems with the CTF? Absolutely. Do changes need to be made? Probably. But right now what Jim Shaw wants to do is substitute his judgement for those who are there.
And in his statements thus far, he's proven, unequivocably, that he does not know what the fuck he is talking about.
What do we know that Jim Shaw doesn't?
Plenty, when it comes to this subject. The danger, though, is that Canada is a country that very much loves to listen to its Jim Shaws. Look at the ridiculous CRTC recommendations for the CTF. Jim Shaw's loud voice, bought with your money, backed up by fawning profiles in business-friendly magazines, is shaping the cultural story of Canadian TV.
Do you think that's right?
Cause he has more money than you?
I don't.
Which is why if you are someone who works in Canadian TV, or watches Canadian TV, you need to make sure that the Jim Shaws of this world aren't the only guys being listened to.
We need to make sure that the false narrative -- "Canadians don't want to watch Canadian shows" gets put to rest. We need to remove the comfortable, cozy relationship where outlets that make money on U.S. simulcasts don't tank homemade shows just because it's bad for their business plan.
In the USA, people send nuts to save shows. In Canada, sending a letter or a postcard might just help all the shows.
If you're a Shaw cable subscriber, you may have gotten little mailings in the last little while. They've been playing games with stuff like online surveys with loaded questions that seem to suggest big support for Shaw and his "anti CTF crusade." Do us all a favor, and the next time you pay your bill, send a letter to Shaw.
Wait I have a sample letter for you. Here it is:
Dear Jim Shaw,Oh but wait...right...Jim Shaw doesn't care what anyone thinks of him.
Nice Globe article. You're pretty full of yourself.
No offense, but I'd rather have the CTF decide what gets made, rather than a rich white guy who'll point to shows that are successful and popular and claim they're failures.
Stick to laying pipe.
Rock on,
(Your Name Here)
I got news for you bubby. Anyone who spins that line in the press -- cares a whole heckuva lot what people think. That's how massive ego works. You know Warren Buffet? There's a guy who doesn't care what people think. Donald Trump? Cares an embarrassing about.
Jim Shaw is way more the latter than the former. Tell him what you think.
And here's the ironic thing: he's not 100% wrong. Some of his ideas -- like having successful shows repay into the fund -- are actually pretty good.
But he's not an expert in this area.
You are. Cause you've got the remote. You're the one with the power.
Jim's just had it so good for so long that he's forgotten that.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
One More From The CRTC...
AS FOR those letters about the CTF, well supposedly the CRTC got over 200 submissions, the vast majority of them negative. Even the whining companies who started all this: Shaw and Videotron, didn't like the CRTC's proposals. But let's keep this in perspective. They're doing quite well with their own protections, thank you very much.
This was my favorite article on the impasse, and not just cause it quotes my show-mate, the esteemed Mr. David Barlow:
Hearings! Wheee! One thing about us Canadians! We loves us a good hearing!
Hang on...where's my...
BLAM!
Much better.
This was my favorite article on the impasse, and not just cause it quotes my show-mate, the esteemed Mr. David Barlow:
"What in the world are you thinking?" asked David Barlow, a Toronto television writer who lists King of Kensington and the comedy-mystery series Seeing Things among his credits.
"If the CRTC aims to entirely subsume populist Canadian drama into the U.S. production framework ... then hiving off the majority of the CTF funds to a new stream is certainly an excellent way to accomplish that end," he wrote.
Still others objected to reducing the 10-point criteria that goes into qualifying a show as "Canadian," to eight points, arguing that would result in the hiring of so-called U.S. star actors in place of equally qualified Canadians. Points are allocated for having Canadians in key creative functions of a show, such as director, writer, actor, or editor.
With such an avalanche of negative feedback, much of it coming from different directions, a spokesman for the CRTC said there is a chance chairman Konrad von Finkenstein will hold public hearings to further explore options.
Hearings! Wheee! One thing about us Canadians! We loves us a good hearing!
Hang on...where's my...
BLAM!
Much better.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Promises Broken and Exhibits A
I know, I know...I promised a couple of big posts on the Canadian TV situation. And I put off writing about Canadian TV for a week. And that stretched into a second week, And for the moment, the truth is that I just don't want to do it. It's tiring. And it doesn't make me feel great to talk about the situation here, for a couple of reasons. The first is that unlike a lot of powerful producers out there, I'm just American enough that I write how messed up things are. I write it, and I'm working solidly and steadily. Yet people with years more experience than me, and presumably greater stake -- stay silent. Yeah, it's wrong. Yeah, it's dumb. But "don't rock the boat" seems to be as Canadian a value as "peace, order and good government" or "pull the goalie if you're down by 1 and there's 2 minutes left in the 3rd period."
So what to do? I'm actually in a pretty good place right now. (Well, that's not true. I'm in Calgary for the weekend, but...oh relax, it's a joke...) Bill Cunningham recently posted lots and ins and outs and suggestions that were great in some ways, naive in others, but always, at their core, American can-do hopeful.
That's why Americans, when they do good, do great, kids. They don't defeat themselves before they start.
I describe myself as a mid-level writer here and that works for me. But the truth is I don't doubt my talent for a second. I'm smart. I'm a good writer. I know this. I've lived here long enough to know that you don't go around saying that because then people snipe at you and grow unkind. That's the Canadian way.
I suppose, when the subject of Canadian TV came up, I could turtle like most everyone else, but the difference is I don't feel like working in an industry that's fucked -- if that involves me knowingly working on crap that I know could be better, but never can be because the ... [insert the 1001 structural problems here] . I love the medium too much. I've seen the talent here. I've seen the enthusiasm from people at the network side too. I've talked to them at parties and baseball games and everywhere else. They, for the most part, are tied by the fact that what they do is seen as a "necessary evil" inside their organizations. In a way, we have a lot in common with them. They just get to work in the big house. We're out on the street. But unless they start caring more about what upstairs thinks (when upstairs doesn't really care, to be honest) than what they know to be good tv -- they are not the enemy here.
No one wants to do bad work!
If status quo's my only option, I'd rather get out. If I lose jobs because I'm actually speaking truth here, then so be it. They're either crappy jobs, or crappy people giving those jobs out. They clearly don't want what I want or see what I see or hope for what I hope for for TV in this country. They are not bold and they are not quality. So be it.
Right now I'm in a place where I'm working with people I enjoy. I'm having a ball. At work. It's great.
So I may have, in my head, planned a bunch of new volleys, but I'm punting. This is it, for a while on the CanTV file. I'm punting because I can and because it's not my job to wave the flag by myself, but mostly because I don't feel like spending two hours writing a post for dear old Bill that would better be expressed in an hour's ranting over Guinness.
So here's the headline news version, the short version of what Henshaw and Cunningham sparked me enough to say:
1) The Networks decide what shows they want now Under the CTF, not the government. (to clear up a Bil point) That's been the way since they switched to the envelope system. The problem is there's no incentive for picking good shows and no punishment for failure, because the business model of the private Canadian nets is not based on making shows or selling shows, it's based on importing U.S. shows into a very favorable protected market.
That being said, the solution has to be a Made-in-Canada solution, because Canada faces a set of circumstances that no other nation faces, because no other nation has ALL the U.S. nets in there, all the time, as direct competition, yardstick, and tastemaker.
It's all well and good to look to touring American models of storymaking, as the Lee Goldbergs and such paraded around Europe recently. Europeans might need that injection of U.S. story savvy. I don't know.
But what's always been true of Canada is this: America does not think of Canada at all, or if it does, it's as a leg. Nothing more. Our box office receipts? Counted as U.S. domestic.
We can say that we'll do copros with the U.S. -- but let's all remember the dirty little secret -- how a few years ago there were shows that shot in Canada all the time that were Canadian shows for Cancon purposes, but ran their story rooms out of L.A. and hired American writers -- fake Canadians with easy to get passports, or Canadians that live in L.A. This was the NORM. Your tax dollars at work did NOTHING to support people like me -- they went south to L.A. How you like them California oranges?
Let's remember all the Americans who were "deemed" to be Canadian for the purposes of production, then ask why nobody knows who the Canadian showrunners are. Let's ask why the DGC and ACTRA were only too happy to sell Canadian writers down the river and work on these "faux Cancon" shows without nary a stink. Let's look at those credits STILL on some of these shows and note how they're DGC signatory and ACTRA but not WGC -- trading directors for writers, oldest trick in the book.
Then let's wonder why TV -- which at its best is a writer-driven enterprise -- isn't as good as it could be despite the talent here. Let's ask why the talent gets frustrated and leaves. Let's ask why even the ones who are so bright they would have to wind up in the U.S. anyway go there without ever having become a star here first. (Even Tom Green never got a show up here...by the time the Comedy Network bit, he was on the way to MTV.) Insert Jim Carrey here, too, or imagine Ricky Gervais if he'd not been allowed to do The Office, but instill had to work his way up the rungs of Still Standing.
An article in the G&M last weekend said something like 25% of the people working at creative levels of the US industry -- actors, directors, etc -- were Canadian. That seemed high to me, but who knows. (It was in the article where they talked about Waneta Storms bunking with Sandra Oh.)
The truth is when it comes to the U.S. they're always about the open market, until they're not, or can push advantage. Anyone who's read nine thousand years of headlines about fucking softwood lumber knows this.
If we're going to fix it, we got to fix it ourselves. Can we fix it if all the people who've been doing this longer than me won't open their mouths? Who knows?
2) The radical solution --
I do not for a moment think this is actually the way to go. I want to say that up front. But part of the despair of explaining just how byzantine the problems and challenges are here comes from having to frame the discussion before you start. Here's where Bill Cunningham's "solution" post inspired me.
The secret really is stake. Encouraging entrepeneurship, on some level.
But if we're going to get rid of protectionism, as Jim Shaw and the CTF haters and the CBC bashers want, let's get rid of all of it.
Here's my plan. Ready?
1) End across the board simultaneous substitution.
Now CTV and Global and CBC have to compete with the U.S. nets already available in Canada.
Oh wait. Not a good idea? It will destroy their business? Oh. Okay. Hmmm. So you're saying...to compete in the U.S. marketplace...they need a bit of regulatory relief? Oh. Okay...but isn't that what the .... never mind, never mind...
Please note, were this to happen, Canadians wouldn't lose much, because so long as the U.S. nets were here, they'd still see all those shows they like, right? Right? The 1999 rule change which took away the stick that Cannets had to make drama killed drama. They took that away, which was one of the few things that made the Canadian networks different.
Too radical? I agree. You can't throw open your cultural borders entirely -- this is a point that every country in the world except the U.S., and on some level, Canada, understands.
So. THAT being said...
Here is my simplified plan for fixing Canadian TV (revised):
1) Simultaneous Cable Substitution is no longer automatic. Cannets get a set number of hours per week they can substitute. It's low. The rest of the schedule, they either have to go head to head with the U.S. signal (even if they are showing the same program) or they counterprogram. Stick.
2) Tie spending on homegrown production to a formula of spending on U.S. programming and Revenues.
If a network is doing well by showing U.S. shows they picked up cheap, they have to spend more on Canadian shows. If they're doing poorly, they can spend less on Can shows, but they also get to do less substitutions. Cap it at 7% or whatever. Stick and Carrot.
3) Let them earn more substitution windows. The better your indigenous stuff does, and the more you spend on it, you get bonus windows where you can put your signal over that U.S. signal every week. Carrot.
So... what happens now?
Canadian Network people need to find hits. Stick.
Canadian Networks need to care about their Canadian shows. Stick.
Everyone takes a risk....networks and creatives. Stick and Carrot.
Schedulers won't be able to act like rockstars anymore. The D-people will be just as important as people who get to go to the L.A. screenings. Stick and Carrot.
Canadian creatives have to be audience focused, or they don't get renewed. Stick.
The ones who do well will be in demand. Carrot.
Some things will fail. Some people will get fired. Creatives who do not deliver will not get three, four, nine chances because they go to the same dinner parties. There will be new opportunities. But the risk and the reward will be spread around, if not equally, then at least equitably.
Network people who find hits will make more money and get credit and rise. Carrot.
Networks who have homegrown hits will be able to sell them worldwide. Carrot.
Creatives who show they know how to write and create shows that please the audience and are loved will make more money. Maybe even enough so that they don't have to go to the USA. Carrot.
The one thing that will not work: continued protectionism for the corporate side of the industry, while the creative side gets none.
Why? Because under that scenario (the current scenario) one side is getting all the sticks, while the other side gets all the carrots. And the side getting all the carrots points to the guys getting the crumbs and has the audacity to say, "why am I paying for that?"
That's the point we have to make.
(By the way, yes..the CBC is a different story. It always is. We do no one a service by pretending it's not.)
And once again, another little window into just how challenging getting any straight news through about this industry is: here's an excerpt from the LA Times article on Slings and Arrows that ran recently. (thanks to Meridian Artists for this.
Yeah. It's messed. Today was one positive Canadian TV post, one Neg (or as I'd like to think of it, neutral/hopeful.)
Glad I've got a job. For now at least. Now. Who wants pie?
*** Addendum to Editoires ***
It's a measure of how cloistered and silent people are in the Canadian industry are that I can say this: I know you're out there. I see the site stats, all the people popping in here from Canwest Papers, and CBC, and CP, and all sorts of Canadian news outlets. Register and join the discussion, chilluns. Don't be so Canadian.
Anyway, I'm happy to announce that I'm going to be attending the Banff TV Festival this year as accredited media, for this blog. I'm also looking to freelance a couple of articles while I'm there. If you're interested in having me write a piece for your publication, contact me at the dirty little email addy advertised on the sideboard.
More on Banff and what's coming up there next week.
So what to do? I'm actually in a pretty good place right now. (Well, that's not true. I'm in Calgary for the weekend, but...oh relax, it's a joke...) Bill Cunningham recently posted lots and ins and outs and suggestions that were great in some ways, naive in others, but always, at their core, American can-do hopeful.
That's why Americans, when they do good, do great, kids. They don't defeat themselves before they start.
I describe myself as a mid-level writer here and that works for me. But the truth is I don't doubt my talent for a second. I'm smart. I'm a good writer. I know this. I've lived here long enough to know that you don't go around saying that because then people snipe at you and grow unkind. That's the Canadian way.
I suppose, when the subject of Canadian TV came up, I could turtle like most everyone else, but the difference is I don't feel like working in an industry that's fucked -- if that involves me knowingly working on crap that I know could be better, but never can be because the ... [insert the 1001 structural problems here] . I love the medium too much. I've seen the talent here. I've seen the enthusiasm from people at the network side too. I've talked to them at parties and baseball games and everywhere else. They, for the most part, are tied by the fact that what they do is seen as a "necessary evil" inside their organizations. In a way, we have a lot in common with them. They just get to work in the big house. We're out on the street. But unless they start caring more about what upstairs thinks (when upstairs doesn't really care, to be honest) than what they know to be good tv -- they are not the enemy here.
No one wants to do bad work!
If status quo's my only option, I'd rather get out. If I lose jobs because I'm actually speaking truth here, then so be it. They're either crappy jobs, or crappy people giving those jobs out. They clearly don't want what I want or see what I see or hope for what I hope for for TV in this country. They are not bold and they are not quality. So be it.
Right now I'm in a place where I'm working with people I enjoy. I'm having a ball. At work. It's great.
So I may have, in my head, planned a bunch of new volleys, but I'm punting. This is it, for a while on the CanTV file. I'm punting because I can and because it's not my job to wave the flag by myself, but mostly because I don't feel like spending two hours writing a post for dear old Bill that would better be expressed in an hour's ranting over Guinness.
So here's the headline news version, the short version of what Henshaw and Cunningham sparked me enough to say:
1) The Networks decide what shows they want now Under the CTF, not the government. (to clear up a Bil point) That's been the way since they switched to the envelope system. The problem is there's no incentive for picking good shows and no punishment for failure, because the business model of the private Canadian nets is not based on making shows or selling shows, it's based on importing U.S. shows into a very favorable protected market.
That being said, the solution has to be a Made-in-Canada solution, because Canada faces a set of circumstances that no other nation faces, because no other nation has ALL the U.S. nets in there, all the time, as direct competition, yardstick, and tastemaker.
It's all well and good to look to touring American models of storymaking, as the Lee Goldbergs and such paraded around Europe recently. Europeans might need that injection of U.S. story savvy. I don't know.
But what's always been true of Canada is this: America does not think of Canada at all, or if it does, it's as a leg. Nothing more. Our box office receipts? Counted as U.S. domestic.
We can say that we'll do copros with the U.S. -- but let's all remember the dirty little secret -- how a few years ago there were shows that shot in Canada all the time that were Canadian shows for Cancon purposes, but ran their story rooms out of L.A. and hired American writers -- fake Canadians with easy to get passports, or Canadians that live in L.A. This was the NORM. Your tax dollars at work did NOTHING to support people like me -- they went south to L.A. How you like them California oranges?
Let's remember all the Americans who were "deemed" to be Canadian for the purposes of production, then ask why nobody knows who the Canadian showrunners are. Let's ask why the DGC and ACTRA were only too happy to sell Canadian writers down the river and work on these "faux Cancon" shows without nary a stink. Let's look at those credits STILL on some of these shows and note how they're DGC signatory and ACTRA but not WGC -- trading directors for writers, oldest trick in the book.
Then let's wonder why TV -- which at its best is a writer-driven enterprise -- isn't as good as it could be despite the talent here. Let's ask why the talent gets frustrated and leaves. Let's ask why even the ones who are so bright they would have to wind up in the U.S. anyway go there without ever having become a star here first. (Even Tom Green never got a show up here...by the time the Comedy Network bit, he was on the way to MTV.) Insert Jim Carrey here, too, or imagine Ricky Gervais if he'd not been allowed to do The Office, but instill had to work his way up the rungs of Still Standing.
An article in the G&M last weekend said something like 25% of the people working at creative levels of the US industry -- actors, directors, etc -- were Canadian. That seemed high to me, but who knows. (It was in the article where they talked about Waneta Storms bunking with Sandra Oh.)
The truth is when it comes to the U.S. they're always about the open market, until they're not, or can push advantage. Anyone who's read nine thousand years of headlines about fucking softwood lumber knows this.
If we're going to fix it, we got to fix it ourselves. Can we fix it if all the people who've been doing this longer than me won't open their mouths? Who knows?
2) The radical solution --
I do not for a moment think this is actually the way to go. I want to say that up front. But part of the despair of explaining just how byzantine the problems and challenges are here comes from having to frame the discussion before you start. Here's where Bill Cunningham's "solution" post inspired me.
The secret really is stake. Encouraging entrepeneurship, on some level.
But if we're going to get rid of protectionism, as Jim Shaw and the CTF haters and the CBC bashers want, let's get rid of all of it.
Here's my plan. Ready?
1) End across the board simultaneous substitution.
Now CTV and Global and CBC have to compete with the U.S. nets already available in Canada.
Oh wait. Not a good idea? It will destroy their business? Oh. Okay. Hmmm. So you're saying...to compete in the U.S. marketplace...they need a bit of regulatory relief? Oh. Okay...but isn't that what the .... never mind, never mind...
Please note, were this to happen, Canadians wouldn't lose much, because so long as the U.S. nets were here, they'd still see all those shows they like, right? Right? The 1999 rule change which took away the stick that Cannets had to make drama killed drama. They took that away, which was one of the few things that made the Canadian networks different.
Too radical? I agree. You can't throw open your cultural borders entirely -- this is a point that every country in the world except the U.S., and on some level, Canada, understands.
So. THAT being said...
Here is my simplified plan for fixing Canadian TV (revised):
1) Simultaneous Cable Substitution is no longer automatic. Cannets get a set number of hours per week they can substitute. It's low. The rest of the schedule, they either have to go head to head with the U.S. signal (even if they are showing the same program) or they counterprogram. Stick.
2) Tie spending on homegrown production to a formula of spending on U.S. programming and Revenues.
If a network is doing well by showing U.S. shows they picked up cheap, they have to spend more on Canadian shows. If they're doing poorly, they can spend less on Can shows, but they also get to do less substitutions. Cap it at 7% or whatever. Stick and Carrot.
3) Let them earn more substitution windows. The better your indigenous stuff does, and the more you spend on it, you get bonus windows where you can put your signal over that U.S. signal every week. Carrot.
So... what happens now?
Canadian Network people need to find hits. Stick.
Canadian Networks need to care about their Canadian shows. Stick.
Everyone takes a risk....networks and creatives. Stick and Carrot.
Schedulers won't be able to act like rockstars anymore. The D-people will be just as important as people who get to go to the L.A. screenings. Stick and Carrot.
Canadian creatives have to be audience focused, or they don't get renewed. Stick.
The ones who do well will be in demand. Carrot.
Some things will fail. Some people will get fired. Creatives who do not deliver will not get three, four, nine chances because they go to the same dinner parties. There will be new opportunities. But the risk and the reward will be spread around, if not equally, then at least equitably.
Network people who find hits will make more money and get credit and rise. Carrot.
Networks who have homegrown hits will be able to sell them worldwide. Carrot.
Creatives who show they know how to write and create shows that please the audience and are loved will make more money. Maybe even enough so that they don't have to go to the USA. Carrot.
The one thing that will not work: continued protectionism for the corporate side of the industry, while the creative side gets none.
Why? Because under that scenario (the current scenario) one side is getting all the sticks, while the other side gets all the carrots. And the side getting all the carrots points to the guys getting the crumbs and has the audacity to say, "why am I paying for that?"
That's the point we have to make.
(By the way, yes..the CBC is a different story. It always is. We do no one a service by pretending it's not.)
And once again, another little window into just how challenging getting any straight news through about this industry is: here's an excerpt from the LA Times article on Slings and Arrows that ran recently. (thanks to Meridian Artists for this.
Read and weep:At January's Television Critics Assn. press tour, a small contingent from "Slings & Arrows" noticed with some satisfaction how the attending Canadian critics, once dismissive, now seemed proud of their countrymen's show, clearly adored by the U.S. reporters.
"The response in Canada was typically Canadian — lukewarm and in some quarters downright hostile," Fichman said. "Canadians were going, 'Oh, no, not another Canadian thing.' " Even some of those who rolled their eyes at first "are writing really nice stuff now," he said.
When Sundance aired the series in August 2005, it was "an unexpected gift in the TV landscape," said Laura Michalchyshyn, Sundance Channel's head of programming. "No one can believe it's a series not financed in this country. People were begging us for DVDs.
Yeah. It's messed. Today was one positive Canadian TV post, one Neg (or as I'd like to think of it, neutral/hopeful.)
Glad I've got a job. For now at least. Now. Who wants pie?
*** Addendum to Editoires ***
It's a measure of how cloistered and silent people are in the Canadian industry are that I can say this: I know you're out there. I see the site stats, all the people popping in here from Canwest Papers, and CBC, and CP, and all sorts of Canadian news outlets. Register and join the discussion, chilluns. Don't be so Canadian.
Anyway, I'm happy to announce that I'm going to be attending the Banff TV Festival this year as accredited media, for this blog. I'm also looking to freelance a couple of articles while I'm there. If you're interested in having me write a piece for your publication, contact me at the dirty little email addy advertised on the sideboard.
More on Banff and what's coming up there next week.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
I *Said* I'd Report Good News...
So here it is:
Not to anger the Henshaw, but I'm still mulling and keeping to my CanTV layoff this week. Stay tuned.
Shaw to resume TV funding
Feb 20, 2007 10:18 AM
Canadian Press
OTTAWA – Shaw Cable has agreed to pay up its commitments to the Canadian Television Fund.
The president and CEO of the cable company, Jim Shaw, made the announcement during an appearance before the Commons heritage committee.
Not to anger the Henshaw, but I'm still mulling and keeping to my CanTV layoff this week. Stay tuned.
Friday, February 16, 2007
When "Fed Up" Doesn't Cover It
Paging Dr. House. Your refrain, "Everybody lies," has hit class A hemorrhagic infection status in the Canadian TV game.
ACTRA and CFTPA have stopped their duelling pressers for now, but that doesn't mean either side's closer to the truth.
Everybody's got a take on Jim Shaw and the CTF, but having a good point doesn't mean stamping your feet and taking your ball and going home is right.
Then there's Konrad Yakabuski, who earned his asshat by writing this howler of a story in the Globe and Mail's Report on Business section yesterday. The breathtaking thing is that he "gets inside the mind of what everybody was REALLY doing and thinking" over the flap at the Heritage Commitee, then bumbles just about every fact he quotes to make his point.
On Showcase, a top American import like Rescue Me, might do a few hundred thousand viewers. And that's a massive number. The 80 000 figure he's quoting for TPB is likely to be, inevitably, the average viewership for the season which is now in its 2nd or third cycle through on the channel. It is not a premiere showing.
But see, it's not enough to actually talk about what's really wrong in Canadian TV. There's such a streak of stupid perversity running through Canadian media, that you have to do this bullshit dance of trying to tear down the stuff that actually does work. "Trailer Park Boys isn't a hit!" Yup. The guys sell out Vancouver's Commodore Ballroom for a personal appearance, host the East Coast Music Awards, get mobbed at signings. The movie flopped. I'm sure the Amazon.ca sales this week don't mean anything, either. Konrad knows the score. He goes on:
Online, if you look at that article, you'll see that it's been corrected. But it wasn't corrected in the original article. Konrad's fuzzy math is out there. A lie gets halfway round the world before the truth gets its boots on. In an industry beset by problems on all sides, what chance is there for resolution when the public is ill informed, the lies fly fast and furious, and lazy writing gets to muddy the debate like this?
By the way, by point of contrast, let's look at an outsider view. Maureen Ryan in the Chicago Trib, writing about Slings & Arrows:
Maureen also is working in one of the markets where Davinci is a syndie hit on U.S. tv. Suddenly it all makes sense.
If we want to get support for the beset Canadian TV industry, all we have to do is...
...turn to Americans.
Pathetic. Absolutely Pathetic.
ACTRA and CFTPA have stopped their duelling pressers for now, but that doesn't mean either side's closer to the truth.
Everybody's got a take on Jim Shaw and the CTF, but having a good point doesn't mean stamping your feet and taking your ball and going home is right.
Then there's Konrad Yakabuski, who earned his asshat by writing this howler of a story in the Globe and Mail's Report on Business section yesterday. The breathtaking thing is that he "gets inside the mind of what everybody was REALLY doing and thinking" over the flap at the Heritage Commitee, then bumbles just about every fact he quotes to make his point.
Viewers, meanwhile, are not watching any more Canadian dramatic programming than they were a decade ago.Trailer Park Boys airs on Showcase. Konrad here is basically comparing ratings for 2nd tier cable with terrestrial, which considering the difference in their reach, is laughable. It's like comparing FOX ratings to ratings for F/X, Fox's cable station. The Sopranos, which is a monster show for HBO, would be canceled or on the bubble with the ratings it gets, were it on ABC.
Enter Jim Shaw. The outspoken Alberta cable king dared to say publicly what his industry cohorts have long been complaining about before the CTF's 19-member board. We'll let the TV critics determine whether Mr. Shaw's depiction of Trailer Park Boys as "guys running around half-naked, swearing and smoking weed" is fair game. But let's end the myth that the show is a ratings success.
Trailer Park Boys has drawn an average audience of less than 80,000 viewers this season, compared to more than three million for any one of the CSI franchises. The Canadian series, which got $2.8-million from the CTF this year, has been sold to a few foreign cable networks, but in the thousand-channel universe, fees for such sales are negligible. Maybe a few hundred Australians get a kick out of the beer-swilling trailer trash from Canada. But should Canadian taxpayers have to pay for it?
On Showcase, a top American import like Rescue Me, might do a few hundred thousand viewers. And that's a massive number. The 80 000 figure he's quoting for TPB is likely to be, inevitably, the average viewership for the season which is now in its 2nd or third cycle through on the channel. It is not a premiere showing.
But see, it's not enough to actually talk about what's really wrong in Canadian TV. There's such a streak of stupid perversity running through Canadian media, that you have to do this bullshit dance of trying to tear down the stuff that actually does work. "Trailer Park Boys isn't a hit!" Yup. The guys sell out Vancouver's Commodore Ballroom for a personal appearance, host the East Coast Music Awards, get mobbed at signings. The movie flopped. I'm sure the Amazon.ca sales this week don't mean anything, either. Konrad knows the score. He goes on:
It took CNN to pump up Little Mosque on the Prairie, which got $2.5-million from the CTF, for Canadians to tune in to the show's debut on CBC last month. The public broadcaster subsequently took out full-page newspaper ads to boast the show's success with 2.1 million viewers. It hasn't, however, advertised the fact that once was enough for most Canadians. The most recent Mosque episodes have drawn fewer than 300,000 viewers.In their 2nd window repeats. Yes. The reality? Let's turn to how Bill Harris wrote it in the Toronto Sun:
NOT-SO-LITTLE MOSQUEHere on this blog there was a bit of back and forth of what "stabilized ratings" means. Well, we now have a metric that's based on five airings. The huge number (2.2 million) of the first airing did go away, but the 1.2 million average of the last few weeks is stable. And the repeats get 300 000 to 600 000 viewers, which means when you add them together, Little Mosque is always in striking distance of 2 million viewers a week. In a country of 30 million. (By the way, this kind of mismanagement of ratings data is exactly why a lot of Canadian networks play those numbers close to the vest. Can't trust a reporter to do math, after all. Not when they, too, think of 'hits' and 'misses' in U.S. style numbers. Even that 80 000 number has a selling commercial value in Canada for cable. I mean, at SPACE, when they got 300 000 viewers, for anything, people would be clicking their heels and lighting cigars with fifty dollar bills. But I digress.)
No one can deny any more that CBC's Little Mosque On The Prairie is a hit. A new episode on Wednesday attracted another 1.2 million viewers. The numbers for all five first-run episodes thus far have not dipped below a million.
Online, if you look at that article, you'll see that it's been corrected. But it wasn't corrected in the original article. Konrad's fuzzy math is out there. A lie gets halfway round the world before the truth gets its boots on. In an industry beset by problems on all sides, what chance is there for resolution when the public is ill informed, the lies fly fast and furious, and lazy writing gets to muddy the debate like this?
By the way, by point of contrast, let's look at an outsider view. Maureen Ryan in the Chicago Trib, writing about Slings & Arrows:
What’s with these Canadians taking American jobs?
Aren’t we Yanks supposed to be crafting delightful backstage dramas about the catfights, crankiness and passion that go into the creation of a work of artistic genius?
Well, I guess if the behind-the-scenes chronicle “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” was any good, we wouldn’t have to worry about incursions from north of the border (though the terrific backstage comedy “30 Rock” is doing us proud).
As it is, let’s just allow the Canadians to show us how it’s done with the rollicking and ultimately moving third season of the import “Slings and Arrows,” which debuts 7 p.m. Sunday on Sundance Channel.
Maureen also is working in one of the markets where Davinci is a syndie hit on U.S. tv. Suddenly it all makes sense.
If we want to get support for the beset Canadian TV industry, all we have to do is...
...turn to Americans.
Pathetic. Absolutely Pathetic.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
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:
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:
- 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.
- 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.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Bite Sized Bits
I don't have the full mojo for a big post, so a couple of observations on unconnected subjects follow:
Dresden Dolls
I caught the premiere of The Dresden Files on the weekend and thought it was kind of spiffy. Paul Blackthorne is very good, the production values were great, and the story was, you know, good old fashioned genre double. I call shows like Dresden Files "peanut butter" because they're never going to win Emmys, but when you're curled up on your couch it's actually nice and diverting. I'll be watching it again. And best of all -- shot in Toronto, so yay for that. (Sci Fi in the USA, Space in Canada, Sundays.)
Brush Up Your Shakespeare
I've been laying aside 2nd season Rome till I had the time to devote to it. I got just enough time to watch the premiere episode last night and found something so great and valuable in it that it actually made me clap my hands in delight. One of the things I'd been wondering was, in the aftermath of the death of Caesar, how would they handle the oration over the body? How do you top "Friends, Romans, Countrymen Lend Me Your Ears, I Come to Bury Caesar, Not to Praise Him?"
Well the answer, of course, is you don't. You go to the aftermath: straight to the scene where Marc Antony negotiates with Brutus to get him out of Rome because the crowd turned on the killers after Antony's oration. Brilliant! You play the fact that EVERYONE KNOWS THIS SPEECH, or at least everyone literate. You're playing on the audience's own knowledge, and engaging them. Then you play a scene from the perspective of the lower classes, recounting the two speeches -- not quoting the speeches, but simply speaking about the emotional content and how it made them feel. Dramatize the effect, because that's what's important for the narrative. Not the cause.
We struggle all the time with: how much does the audience know here? Should they know more? And sometimes we forget that you can actually count on the audience quite a bit. Twenty years ago they didn't trust that you could cut from someone in a car to someone knocking on a door. Now, you can omit the oration speech and play other scenes we haven't seen a hundred times before.
Whenever you can omit the scene we've seen a hundred times before, why wouldn't you do it?
How many of those scenes are in your script. Rip'em out.
Conservative Surprise
I can't figure out our Conservative Government here in Canada. But I am glad they seem to recognize that as screwed up as it is, the TV industry is actually an industry that employs real people. Go read this article in the Globe and Mail, and then read the comments below. That's what we're up against. I swear, it's when I read these comments from the body politic that I think to myself, "what are you doing here? Just take the hit, move south, and let them trade their damn country away." They'll get teary eyed at a beer ad manipulating Canadian pride, but they'll blithely hand over cultural sovereignty when it counts.
Canadians, you are an odd, odd people.
Dresden Dolls
I caught the premiere of The Dresden Files on the weekend and thought it was kind of spiffy. Paul Blackthorne is very good, the production values were great, and the story was, you know, good old fashioned genre double. I call shows like Dresden Files "peanut butter" because they're never going to win Emmys, but when you're curled up on your couch it's actually nice and diverting. I'll be watching it again. And best of all -- shot in Toronto, so yay for that. (Sci Fi in the USA, Space in Canada, Sundays.)
Brush Up Your Shakespeare
I've been laying aside 2nd season Rome till I had the time to devote to it. I got just enough time to watch the premiere episode last night and found something so great and valuable in it that it actually made me clap my hands in delight. One of the things I'd been wondering was, in the aftermath of the death of Caesar, how would they handle the oration over the body? How do you top "Friends, Romans, Countrymen Lend Me Your Ears, I Come to Bury Caesar, Not to Praise Him?"
Well the answer, of course, is you don't. You go to the aftermath: straight to the scene where Marc Antony negotiates with Brutus to get him out of Rome because the crowd turned on the killers after Antony's oration. Brilliant! You play the fact that EVERYONE KNOWS THIS SPEECH, or at least everyone literate. You're playing on the audience's own knowledge, and engaging them. Then you play a scene from the perspective of the lower classes, recounting the two speeches -- not quoting the speeches, but simply speaking about the emotional content and how it made them feel. Dramatize the effect, because that's what's important for the narrative. Not the cause.
We struggle all the time with: how much does the audience know here? Should they know more? And sometimes we forget that you can actually count on the audience quite a bit. Twenty years ago they didn't trust that you could cut from someone in a car to someone knocking on a door. Now, you can omit the oration speech and play other scenes we haven't seen a hundred times before.
Whenever you can omit the scene we've seen a hundred times before, why wouldn't you do it?
How many of those scenes are in your script. Rip'em out.
Conservative Surprise
I can't figure out our Conservative Government here in Canada. But I am glad they seem to recognize that as screwed up as it is, the TV industry is actually an industry that employs real people. Go read this article in the Globe and Mail, and then read the comments below. That's what we're up against. I swear, it's when I read these comments from the body politic that I think to myself, "what are you doing here? Just take the hit, move south, and let them trade their damn country away." They'll get teary eyed at a beer ad manipulating Canadian pride, but they'll blithely hand over cultural sovereignty when it counts.
Canadians, you are an odd, odd people.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
A Bunch of Little Old Ladies In Pasadena -- And How David Milch Broke Them
With the semi-annual Television Critics Tour underway again in Pasadena, it's a good time to check in with some of the best writers writing for dead tree media, as opposed to i kiss you media (Ie: the innertubes, of which Dead Things Labs is a rustly bustly part. Got it?)
I especially like the writers who blog their daily schedules. The faux process of the whole thing is at least as interesting and full of silliness as anything that comes out of the pre-packaged sessions themselves. Probably more so.
I'm disappointed that the Globe and Mail didn't send John Doyle this time. I always find his writing about the TV Hacks on Tour funnier than the other guy, Ryan.
But there is a Ryan I will go out of my way to read: Maureen Ryan, whose The Watcher blog at the Chicago Tribune is always good for a laugh and some great info. For instance, here she runs down David Milch's description of his new HBO show, John From Cincinatti:
Then there's Alan Sepinwall, who writes for The New Jersey Star-Ledger (which, if you're interested in such little things, has extra coolness because it's the paper that Tony Soprano walks down and gets at the end of his driveway in all those Sopranos episodes.)
Take Sepinwall's take on the David Milch session for John From Cincinatti:
Finally, I don't think she's on the tour. And I don't always agree with her, but I love, love, love Virginia Heffernan's TV blog in the NYTimes. (And not just because apparently she's related to a fictional character on the King of Queens.)
Do you know any other dead tree writers blogging about the TV tour? Anyone you like to read? Let me know.
Now, I think it's time to go and crack one of those...book...things that I've heard so much about. I wonder if I can find a place to have coffee in Vancouver.
Hmmmm.
I especially like the writers who blog their daily schedules. The faux process of the whole thing is at least as interesting and full of silliness as anything that comes out of the pre-packaged sessions themselves. Probably more so.
I'm disappointed that the Globe and Mail didn't send John Doyle this time. I always find his writing about the TV Hacks on Tour funnier than the other guy, Ryan.
But there is a Ryan I will go out of my way to read: Maureen Ryan, whose The Watcher blog at the Chicago Tribune is always good for a laugh and some great info. For instance, here she runs down David Milch's description of his new HBO show, John From Cincinatti:
“I guess that's what I was trying to say in this answer [in a previous interview] that to my mind reality is a shifting and elusive condition. It redefines itself constantly. …
“And which is to say that, when I was saying that this is a story that takes place on the margins of things, the attempt to identify the coordinates of reality is itself a kind of problematic and conditional effort. It's changing all the time.
"What constitutes -- where are we when we sleep? What is our sense of reality at that moment? It's, you know, science now suggests to us that what has been perceived as matter for a long time is, in fact, energy. That what looks solid, in fact, is constituted in waves, that Einstein's beautiful mathematical equations which depict the nature of reality don't apply at certain levels. And I think that's true as well about what constitutes the natural and the supernatural. You know, it depends on what foxhole you're in.”
Then there's Alan Sepinwall, who writes for The New Jersey Star-Ledger (which, if you're interested in such little things, has extra coolness because it's the paper that Tony Soprano walks down and gets at the end of his driveway in all those Sopranos episodes.)
Take Sepinwall's take on the David Milch session for John From Cincinatti:
Perhaps sensing he was losing his audience, Milch retreated to that familiar standby: jokes about his legendary history of drug use. (He's now in recovery from multiple addictions.) Quoth in its entirety:Awesome. Seriously, I think David Milch should now be considered the standard bearer for TV writer crazy. No...not good enough...he shoud be like the measurement of writer crazy. Like when describing people we work with, we should talk in units of Milch. "How's so and so?" "Oh, they're about .5 Milch on talent." "Really, that's pretty good." "Yeah, but they're 3 Milch's of crazy." "Oh, fuck it, then."
"I was talking about this research project in pharmacology into which I was dragooned. The freon aspect began when I was eight, and then I was transferred over to the alcohol project, and then subsequently to narcotics. And in all of that research, to the extent that there was a coherent intention, it was to ride a wave, which one could generate on one's own terms, that the self was suppressed and the sense of -- I used to -- nitrous oxide. I was involved in the subsidiary project involving nitrous oxide. And the great thing with nitrous oxide, I was getting teeth filled before I even had teeth."
Near the end of the session, stars Bruce Greenwood and Rebecca De Mornay, who had been silent the entire time, were asked how working with Milch was different from other showbiz bosses.
"Well, I think you probably witnessed the difference in the last 20 minutes," said Greenwood, whose tone hovered somewhere between amused and annoyed.
Finally, I don't think she's on the tour. And I don't always agree with her, but I love, love, love Virginia Heffernan's TV blog in the NYTimes. (And not just because apparently she's related to a fictional character on the King of Queens.)
Do you know any other dead tree writers blogging about the TV tour? Anyone you like to read? Let me know.
Now, I think it's time to go and crack one of those...book...things that I've heard so much about. I wonder if I can find a place to have coffee in Vancouver.
Hmmmm.
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