WELL, THE LOCAL forecast here over the weekend was a 103 fever, lots of the shakes, an inability to swallow, night sweats, the poundies and the stumblies. I love you, St. John's, but I suspect you may be trying to kill me.
Luckily, this gave way today to a glorious torrent of work. On Saturday morning when I first thought, "I think I need to lie down" I had 12 pages. Now, I'm halfway through the script and seem to be able to hold down something other than saltines.
Now, it would give me great pleasure to be able to say that my condition was exacerbated by the great SaveLocal tv sham-o-rama this weekend, but I wisely kept that off my TV -- my attention and energy being delirious enough.
But since today seems to be the Local TV day at my blogging brethren, (*ps: Will Dixon is a girl) I thought I would nip in and share a few of my thoughts about the phenomena in the here and now.
I've spent most of my life, and chose to spend most of my life, in large, large metropolitan centres. I used to say that anything less than a million people was a village. I have the ones I love, (New York, Toronto) the ones that I don't understand (Vancouver, Calgary, Seattle) and the ones that I think maybe I could love if I knew them a little better (Boston, Montreal, San Francisco.)
Part of being in a large city is not necessarily understanding what "local market" meant. Even going back to the 1970's when we had those wired converters that looked like Kleenex boxes, with the manual buttons you had to push for a channel -- state of the art at the time -- local just meant the same programs, sometimes at slightly different times.
Until I thought about it. I remember realizing that not everyone knew about Commander Tom and Rocketship 7, or people who'd get the jokes about Irv Weinstein. I remember hearing about Ghoulardi when I got a little older. I took the pomo step of seeing the three or four people who fed into Count Floyd on SCTV. And yeah, there was also the fishing shows I didn't watch, and Tiny Talent Time, a show that I think a neighbour of ours went on one time. And there was Party Game! and the Hilarious House of Frightenstein, the greatest local program ever produced anywhere and if you suggest otherwise I will come to your house and cut you.
As consolidation in the media industry happened, these reference points all slowly slid away. Some moved to the burgeoning world of cable. Yeah, it's cool that I remember Mike Myers on Citylimits, and Chuck the Security Guard and the all night movies (and the Saturday night Italian movie on Channel 47....boys, you know what I'm talking about.) But those times past, as technology and viewing habits changed. And then came Muchmusic, and HBO and TMN and TSN....
Except in an important way they never did change. I think of that line, and paraphrase, that we didn't leave local TV. Local TV left us.
McLuhan and Znaimer, the two guys I spent a lot of time in my 20's studying, both theorized that the future of programming was local. That the best TV was going to be the station that told you what happened to you, today.
I was lucky enough to work at one of those stations in the last years before they worked to dismantle it: Toronto's Citytv. Others have written better and longer essays about what made City unique and different, but I have to say that rather than being any one thing, it was everything. The fact that the promos were cut by promo guys in house, who wrote funny voiceovers for Mark Dailey to read. The fact that you could sneak funny and slightly off stuff onto the air at 3am. Many have reminisced about the great post midnight voiceover for Atlantic City, where Mark Dailey enthused to the night owls watching, "Don't go anywhere! Coming up next you get to see my boss get shot in the chest!" And indeed you did. Moses had a small part in that Louis Malle feature.
If you were in a hotel in Toronto and you flipped on the TV and saw City Tv, it made you want to get out and explore that city. My time exploring other cities, especially when I started working in TV and had cause to visit other affiliates, I found the local affiliates were parked in strip malls or far out industrial bunkers divorced from the city proper never made me feel that way.
But there were some notable cases where I stepped a little outside my personal zone and discovered just what "local media" meant to communities smaller than those cities I hailed from.
When I was at a somebody's cottage, and realized that the station that you got on the dock was the same station the kids parents had listened to when they were kids;
When I realized what a complete Oasis the university station was for my friends who lived in Austin, who had to deal every day with the fact that they were in a liberal bubble surrounded by harsh, hard R Republican Fundamentalism.
It's always the small groups that are threatened by the bigger groups for whom "local" is truly important. The bigger the picture you paint, the less likely it seems that it needs to include those little quirks or elements that define a small place, that make it what it is. Maybe you can leave the Red Apple off the list of landmarks where you're dealing with a footprint of 500 miles square. From there, maybe it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to have one entertainment report done from the studio in Toronto and farmed out to other communities. And maybe it's not that big a deal if "your" weatherman is standing in front of a green screen talking about how cold it is on St. Denis street right now, when really he's up in Don Mills, ON. Maybe there truly IS no party like a Scranton party! I mean, how would you know?
But yet here I am, in a place that's vibrant and different, and way, way, way below my usual comfort zone for number of people. St. John's may be the oldest City in North America. (it is, look it up.) But it's still only 112, 000 people or so.
Yet those people, and their ways of thinking, are just so different in so many very important ways. Like a lot of islanders, I think, they just go their own way. What a treat it would be to see that reflected on screen.
Except, um. You really can't. Not really.
There's a local station here called N.TV. Such are the times we live in that it bills itself as "Canada's Superstation" -- see, because the taste is for that, not for local. I was surprised, one of the nights when I was first here, to watch an entertainment report on that station from my hotel room. The whole report was about four to five minutes long -- filler length -- and it consisted entirely of a woman giving the weekend's US box office receipts for the top five grossing films. Then they'd cut to about a minute of each of the trailers. That's it. That's the entertainment report.
Such is the problem with local TV. It was simultaneously ignored, by stations getting gobbled up by huge conglomerates like CTV Global and CHUM and CRAIG that then gobbled up some more of each other til now we have the two of them, and one on the teeter. We were told that getting bigger was the better way to go. That it promoted synergy. That it was the future of broadcasting. That it was the great big shiny future.
It wasn't. It was a lie.
Meanwhile, those little stations that were trying to make a go of it were so cut and so decimated by cuts to their operating budgets that they couldn't train people anymore. They couldn't report. They couldn't cover their communities well. Maybe they'd struggle through their one newscast with pride, and maybe you'd even see a few people on that newscast who were proud local talents (I certainly see that here in St. John's.)
But the trend is also evident: this is dying. Last one out of local broadcasting, flip the switch. Oh, the HD switch? Now now. Don't even start about that. Seriously. Don't. (Canada's just not going to do that. Hey CRTC, Fuck you!)
Meanwhile, let's take the case of the CBC. I was out at a bar for happy hour a couple weeks back, and an arts report came on the CBC affiliate from one cultural opening or another, and of course everyone sat around and spoke up and clapped and pointed every time they recognized somebody. And I realized that this was really important to them. They liked seeing this because this was rare. This is not ETalk going to some crap book launch which happens every day in Toronto. This was here. It was them. It was the kind of thing that only the CBC could afford to cover. And it was way better than the number of times I wanted to find something coming from Newfoundland only to find the only station I could get was from Halifax. And suddenly I understood far better, the cries from those who were desperately trying to tell the CBC don't cut the regions....
...because the regions are the only thing CBC has left that make it different.
The real irony about Save Local TV is that the patient's already dead. We all let it happen. The viewers by not being active enough in protesting it. The city dwellers in being arrogant enough to assume our covered asses meant everyone's were covered. The media companies who did everything they could to centralize and swallow, and now, the CRTC, who let the whole thing happen by rubberstamping instead of acting in the best interest of Canadians.
So what we're seeing now is not so much the attempts to save the patient. Nope. What we're seeing now is a little juice being punched through the corpse to get it to dance, one last time, so that maybe they can ring one more morsel of gelt out of it. Unseemly.
It's a sad thing. And there are no good guys in any of it. And whatever happens, my friends, trust me on this one: nobody's getting saved.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
A Pox On Both Your Houses
BECAUSE THEY HAVE made worms' meat of us...
Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while,
Till we can clear these ambiguities,
And know their spring, their head, their
true descent;
And then will I be general of your woes,
And lead you even to death: meantime forbear,
And let mischance be slave to patience.
Bring forth the parties of suspicion.
-WM. Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet, V, iii
And I for winking at your discords too
Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd.
Romeo & Juliet, V, iiiBy I, I mean anybody working in Canadian TV. And by all are punish'd I mean, stay tuned, bub. Stay tuned.
In Cameras and LaLas: Variety's Take on Canada's Branch Plant TV Industry
NORMALLY IT'S MY policy now on this blog not to link to Variety, since their shilling for the AMPTP during the last WGA Strike proved how biased they were. (And Nikki Finke gets the good stuff first anyway,) but a new story is pretty instructive in cutting through the whole domestic TV debate -- since it cuts through the redacted thrill of the CRTC and shows you what an outside perspective has to say.
Here's Variety's take on Canadians coming to the L.A. screenings.
A few key passages:
The Canadians are traditionally the biggest international spenders during the L.A. Screenings, but there is a good chance they’ll be shelling out less this year.That point -- that Canada spends WAY more than any other country at the L.A. screenings, never came up at the "in camera" network sessions at the CRTC, so far as I saw. Though the spin from the networks seems to be that Canada's creative unions don't understand how their purchase of U.S. shows subsidizes homegrown Canadian production, that's just not true. How the networks work here might have been news to Konrad, but isn't news to any of us. Nor is it the point.
The reason WHY Canada spends more than anybody else at the U.S. screenings is because they are the only country whose business model is based on running every show they possibly can at the same time as the U.S. nets, to take care of simultaneous substitution.
Other countries can't make any money running a three-ep flop that gets quickly canceled by the parent U.S. network, which is why they wait and buy CSI when they know it's a hit. Yes, when they make that deal, they often have to buy another show or package of shows to close the deal, but it's nowhere near as ginned as the Canadian buy.
When I was in my twenties, I worked in production inside a media company that's since been swallowed in rounds of Canadian corporate media consolidation. Though I had nothing to do with buying or selling the product offered each year at the L.A. screenings, I was friendly enough with the people who did to know in rough terms how the bidding and buying worked.
But based on what we read in the redacted in-camera comments Jim Henshaw wrote about the other day, we're supposed to believe that the Chairman of the CRTC was completely taken aback and surprised by the way Canadian networks buy shows. So in other words, this guy, who's in charge of all our fates, didn't know as much as I did just hanging around a TV station for a few years? After months of lobbying by the networks? I tend not to buy it, because the Chairman seems to me to be an intelligent guy. If it's true, whoa, we're in more trouble than I thought.
By not acknowledging the huge, skewing effect SimSub has on the business of buying and making TV in this country, you're in effect discussing the effects of melanoma and how to control it and leaving out the fact that the patient also has Stage IV Lung and Pancreatic Cancer.
Understand -- I'm not counselling an end to SimSub. (Well, not really. To do so I feel would be as cynical as the Broadcasters current "Save Local TV" campaign, as if that, and not their poor decisions and over-reliance on one faded idea wasn't the problem.) I'm just saying that it's the gravitational change that distorts things so much, that compensatory attention to protecting homegrown production is necessary. If you are supporting one side of the business, it's only fair to support the other.
The difference, of course, is that the creative unions only get to make that point for 15 minutes, once every hearing, while the networks get private lobbying sessions and in camera sessions to make their point known. Good to know that we live in a democracy, aint it?
Konrad, if the jobs of Canwest and CTV Executives and Salespeople and Buyers are deemed more valuable than those of Canada's Grips, Writers, Actors, Set Builders, Production Designers, Directors and Editors, etc, just say so. And while we're at it, you might want to have a word with the hundreds of people that these companies have shed over the last few years -- starting when they were flush and bragging about their record profit margins. (You know, the long ago days of, like, 2007.) And if that's the case, Konrad, there are several hundred thousand people who'd like to have a word with you. In Camera, if you like. Maybe we can also have that discussion about what Michel's watching on TV -- since it won't be "on the record," you know.
The edifice supported by SimSub is crumbling anyway. Borders and exclusive broadcast rights (my problems seeing the Blue Jays game in St. John's notwithstanding) are looking like a pretty tarnished prom queen in a ripped dress right about now.
And here's something nobody ever points out: even the SimSub thing used to be a better deal for Canadian viewers. Once upon a time, when they bought shows from the U.S. nets, Canadian channels, if they couldn't run it at the same time and block out the U.S. net's signal, would often pre-release the show. They'd negotiate it so that, say, CTV or Global would run that show a day earlier. Sometimes two. So for a long time, into the 80's and early 1990's, Canadians would sometimes get to see U.S. network shows first. In the days before PVR's it was pretty convenient. You had a couple of chances to catch a show. That's stopped now, of course. Since the moment a show airs, it's torrented, U.S. nets don't allow Canadians to go first anymore. Yup. That edifice shure is healthy -- and great for viewers! What choice! Do I watch Law & Order on CTV or NBC? Gawrsh!
Anyway, I'm sure all of this will come up when the CRTC has their in-camera private meetings with the WGC. Cause I'm sure that's coming, right?
Right?
Bueller?
To continue with the Variety article:
One studio source familiar with past Canadian negotiations said prices will be “firm and more cautious than in year’s past.” Among the new shows expected to generate some heat among overseas buyers are CBS’ remake of “Melrose Place” and Disney’s sci-fi thriller “Flash Forward.”
That can’t be good news to the studios, which count heavily on Canadian coin and the bidding wars that often take place. Canucks don’t have time to watch, go home and decide what’s worth buying. With their upfronts set for the first week in June, they need to have their lineups — with new American product — set to show off to potential advertisers.
The Canuck broadcasters are breathing a sigh of relief this week because broadcast regulator the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) last week backed away from a proposed plan to curtail the networks’ spending in Hollywood.
Earlier this year, the CRTC had said it was warming up to the idea of forcing the Canadian nets to bring in a one-to-one ratio between its Canadian and American programming expenditures. But the broadcasters protested, and the regulator agreed to drop the idea, at least for this year. Such a rule would have likely radically reduced the amount of Canadian spending in L.A.
It's interesting to see how the Americans view it, huh? From that position of self-interest?
The amazing thing is that our broadcast regulator, charged with protecting the airwaves for Canadians, doesn't act the same way. Would that they actually paid attention more to what other countries do to handle the challenge of American signal hegemony, instead of floating timid trial balloons they then quickly back down from. (And I know they say that the one-to-one spend idea isn't dead, but come on, based on history, do you really want to hold your breath?)
In all this, again, I feel it's important to say that I feel it's important that CTV and Global be allowed to thrive. But they've been addicted to the crack pipe of easy U.S. Simsub for so long, that they know nothing else but to ask for more free money, while at the same time whining about having to make any committment to spend that money on local or indigenous programming. That's just wrong.
And let's say it plain, too. That "spending spree" in recent years by Global and CTV? It's the same pissing contest that we see every week when they release their duelling press releases. It was as much about corporate ego and money as business reality and every single person outside of that Gatineau meeting room knows it. It's pathetic that nobody has the balls to say it. Well, nobody but crazy Uncle Jim. And me, I guess. Shit, I can't believe I'm doing this again.
I have been trying for a little while to lay off the CRTC...but the degree of paternalism and dismissiveness displayed in those documents of the in camera sessions just leaves too bad a taste in my mouth. That relationship is just too cozy. And Konrad, if I see you at Banff, I'll be more than happy to say that to your face.
Save Local TV? Or Save Huge Media Companies?
BY NOW YOU'VE started to see all the "Save Local TV Ads" on your screens. (Wow, what do you think would happen if just once they had promoted a Canadian homegrown show that much?) For a different perspective, I direct you to this very interesting post by an admitted representative of several small cable companies.
The whole thing is really worth a read.
Consider this. CTV and Canwest are publicly traded, for-profit companies. The first question is why should they be rescued at all? Should Canadians put money into their shareholders pockets? Should we permit a massive transfer of wealth from one set of for-profit companies to another just because one group yelled long enough?
Note that the main reason that the CRTC chose not to mandate these fees is that the conventional stations would not commit to ANY improvement or increase to local programming if they got the money (about $350 million this year).
The next question is, why should cable and satellite companies bail them out of financial difficulties that cable and satellite did not cause? If fragmentation of audience is the problem, why should cable pay to fix it?
The next question is, if cable and satellite customers are to be charged an extra few dollars on the monthly bill (which is, in all probability, where the money will come from) why should ONLY cable and satellite customers pay to save an over-the-air broadcasting system designed to push signals to the remaing 8% of Canadians who do not pay for TV at all?
If the system truly needs fixing, isn't that something that ALL Canadians should decide and then pay for? Isn't that a matter for Parliamentary debate and, then, amendment to our cultural and taxation policies?
And a final note: do not think for a moment that this is a one-time payout. First, the fees would be charged monthly, forever. Second, if the conventional broadcasters succeed in getting fees authorized, the next step will be incessant requests for increases to those mandated fees. Customer pays!
So now my "blather button" is really pushed. Honestly, the more I think about this, the angrier I get, as a cable representative, as a cable customer and as a Canadian television viewer.
Part 2 – Digital Conversion
As you may know, the US broadcasting system, by legislation, must go digital on June 12. That means that all over the conventional stations in the US must build digital transmitters (studio facilities and towers) for their signals.
As you can imagine, the US broadcasters balked at the cost of doing that. However, after some struggles, most, if not all, of the US conventional stations have now spent the money, gotten the job done and are broadcasting digital signals. On June 12, the analog over-the-air signals will shut down. Basically, the US is ready and it shouldn't be a huge issue.
In Canada, the digital cut-over is scheduled for August 2011. Under existing CRTC regulation -- that is, the law -- the Canadian conventional television stations MUST have digital transmission facilities built and ready for the cut-over at that time. The main point of the regulation here is that the CRTC does not want Canadians who presently get their signals only by antenna to lose TV service altogether when the analog transmission is shut down.
However, pleading poverty, the conventional broadcasters are now saying, regardless of their regulatory obligations, that they simply ARE NOT GOING TO DO IT.
So, at this time, the digital transition in Canada is pretty much up in the air. The conventional broadcasters will not divulge whether or where they intend to build any digital transmitters. Instead, they want the cable and satellite companies to solve their problem by distributing their signals for them, both to existing customers and to those Canadians who, today, do not subscribe to cable or satellite but take signals only by antenna.
However, despite the fact that they will again save hundreds of millions of dollars by avoiding their existing regulatory obligations, the broadcasters refuse to contribute ANY funding to solving the serious problem that antenna-only viewers will face when analog transmission shuts down or, for that matter, even to commit to delivering their signals at their own cost to the cable and satellite companies for onward distribution to Canadians.
Canada is beginning to lag the US seriously with respect to digitization of its broadcasting system. The conventional broadcasters are not helping us to catch up. Meeting the CRTC's August 2011 cut-over deadline appears less and less likely.
The whole thing is really worth a read.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Me and Mister C
TODAY WE'VE GOT something different. A guest post -- a little about writing, a little about television, and a little about life, courtesy of my friend Robert Sheridan, comedy writer extraordinaire. (Corner Gas, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Red Green) Enjoy.
So Denis is busy in Newfoundland and looking for a guest post, and it just so happens that I’m in the middle of writing a script and looking for a way to procrastinate. Isn’t it nice when agendas collide?
I’ve been resisting doing this because I don’t really have any hot button issue to rant about right now. On the other hand, I do like telling stupid stories that don’t really go anywhere, especially ones that involve me and someone even marginally famous. So here’s one.
I didn’t start writing TV until I was 30. Based on my earliest credits you would think that would make me 38 by now, but you’d be wrong. I’m 32. So shut your face.
Anyway, before I started writing, I did a variety of things, one of which was working as a publicist for the now-defunct Livent out of Toronto. The one run by, you know… that guy.
I knew nothing about publicity and even less about musical theatre, but for whatever reason someone snatched me out of the mailroom one day and said “here, do this.” So I did it, for nearly four years, as my twenties quietly slipped away from me without my really noticing. Note to twentysomethings: Pay attention.
It wasn’t really a bad gig, though. I got to travel around the U.S. with the touring companies of the various shows and set up media interviews with the actors in each market. Sometimes it was a real A-list town like Boston, but usually it was places like St. Louis, Indianapolis, Hartford, Cleveland... cities you might not otherwise find yourself in, but were often more fun than you’d think. And sometimes not.
The lead actors in these shows tended to be people with some background in musical theatre, but were primarily known from television, and often sitcoms, hence the marquee value. Cloris Leachman. Betty Buckley. Pat Harrington. Yes, for a brief moment in time, I called Schneider from “One Day at a Time” a friend.
One slight variation was the time we had Dean Jones in a show. Dean was a Disney star in the early 70s and had been the original dude in “Herbie the Love Bug.” Very nice man.
One night Dean Jones and I are in the back of a limo trying to get to a television station way out in the sticks. Big snowstorm. Traffic’s just crawling. And Dean’s telling me about the height of his career, and it sounded pretty great. Lots of parties and women. Lots and lots of women. And I’m really enjoying the stories and feeling kind of envious until it all culminates in Dean having a moment of clarity in a hotel room late one night. At this point in his story he turns to me and says “Rob. Have you accepted Christ into your life?”
And so a long drive suddenly got a lot longer.
But I digress. The actual story I wanted to tell was about Tom Bosley, Mr. Cunningham from “Happy Days.” Tom was playing Cap’n Andy in one of the touring companies of and before his career in television, he too had been a musical theatre star, most notably in the tile role of “Show Boat,”“Fiorello!” back in the 50s.
When I first met him in Detroit several months earlier I had heard that he could be a little crusty at first, and I guess he was. But at some point not long thereafter I had taken the time to tell him that I had been a huge fan of “Happy Days” as a kid.
That in and of itself was unremarkable – Bosley heard this sort of thing a hundred times a day. But I also happened to mention, genuinely, that my favourite seasons of the show were the first two.
In case you’ve forgotten, during the first two seasons (the ones with the “Rock Around the Clock” opening instead of the other one) Happy Days was actually a single camera show. There was a laugh track, but no studio audience. The humour was a little smaller and more subtle, the cast didn’t have to play to the back row, and Fonzie was not yet a superhero. He was there, but more of the stories revolved around small stuff between Richie and Potsie, and Richie and his Dad. Most of these episodes are really kind of terrific, if you get a chance to check them out on DVD.
Anyway, I got the sense that Tom Bosley especially liked those shows as well because we got along like a house on fire after that. Couldn’t have been nicer.
So one day we were driving around San Francisco, visiting a bunch of local TV and radio stations for various interviews. Ron Howard also happened to be in town, shooting “Ed TV.” I had, in fact, seen Ron Howard putting mustard on his hot dog at a Giants game just the day before, but I was alone at the time and hadn’t found the courage to go up and say hi. That was already eating at me by the time Tom and I had our media day.
Then, out of nowhere, Tom turns to me over lunch and says, “Oh, you know… Ronny is shooting his movie around the corner. Do you wanna go visit the set and say hi?”
I told Tom I thought that would be a little bit of all right, and so we did.
There was the usual amount of security surrounding the perimeter of the set, but the funny thing was that we didn’t have to show or do anything to get on. Tom just smiled at one of the guards and said “I’m here to see my son” and the guy smiled wide and shook his hand and removed the barrier. It was kind of awesome.
Then, we march right up to Ron Howard, who is between set-ups, and for like, ten minutes, I just stood there talking to Richie and Mr. C. Well, mostly I just stood there slack-jawed, saying squat. But it was, as any other TV-baby like me might imagine, one of the highlights of my life.
The amazing thing is that not once, not even for a second, while I’m standing there with one of the biggest directors in the world, who is himself standing there talking to his TV-Dad, who also happens to be starring in the expensive live musical that I am in town to publicize, not once does it occur to me to tell someone to grab a fucking camera.
The point is: I was a really, really shitty publicist.
Wait. That wasn’t supposed to be the point of this story.
Oh, right, now I remember. So the Ron Howard encounter behind us, we returned to the business of the day, which was ferreting Tom around to all these TV and radio stations. And it was then that I noticed that every single person we came into contact with throughout the day had the exact same reaction as that security guard on the set. The second, and I mean the second, Tom Bosley walked into a room, there wasn’t a twenty, thirty or fortysomething person who didn’t immediately smile wide and, with almost childish enthusiasm, step forward to shake his hand.
It was like their own father had gone out for a pack of smokes 20 years ago, disappeared, and had magically returned. These people were positively giddy, I tells you.
At some point, at one of the TV stations, maybe the local NBC affiliate, the woman who booked the show comes up to me and says “You know, we’ve had a lot of big stars come through here.” And she rattles off a list of names I’ve mostly forgotten, but they were all big, A-list movie stars and rock stars. Springsteen, Cruise, Hoffman. This sort of thing. Then she says: “But I have never, ever seen the staff more excited about a guest coming in. It’s Mr. Cunningham.”
I got what she meant completely.
Now, I’m not saying this was the exact moment I decided I wanted to write for television (I’ll leave that for Chapter Two of my upcoming autobiography “Rob, We Hardly Knew Ye”) but it made a big impact on me nevertheless. I think in some way every television writer kind of quietly yearns to be writing for the movies. There’s a romance to that, and you know, it would be pretty cool.
The thing is, and I realize this has been said before by people a lot smarter than me, there really is something about the primacy and intimacy of that little box being right there, in your home, every single day, that establishes an emotional connection we’re simply never gonna have with Tom Cruise. That’s the magic of the medium. And while we’re all working on those desk drawer feature screenplays with visions of glowing marquees and opening night klieg lights dancing in our heads, I like to remind myself from time to time what a privilege it is to work in television, even if I never make 1/1000th the impact of a cultural touchstone like Mr. C.
That was my point. I’m sorry it took me so long to get there.
Anyway, as luck would have it, San Francisco was, I think, the last time I ever worked with Tom. Livent basically imploded at the end of the year, and that was that. But I remember lying in my hotel room that night and feeling kind of privileged to have had that experience, and then doing a little math and realizing that it was entirely possible that there were periods in my childhood when I spent more time with Mr. C. than I did with my own Dad.
This says absolutely nothing about my father, by the way, who was a wonderful guy. Only that I was horribly, horribly addicted to television. It was a real problem.
Still is.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
I Hope Ted is Spinning
DEAR ROGERS,
You suck.
You completely, totally, utterly suck.
It was bad enough last summer, when it took about nineteen phone calls and two visits just to get my parents' big screen HD TV set up.
But here I sit in St. John's NL. I bought your super sports pack. All I want to do is watch the Blue Jays Boston game in the BG as I write. But I can't. Because after a stupid corporate fight, you've made your stupid, childish corporate deal to get TSN2 on the air --everywhere BUT in Newfoundland. And the Super Sports Pack blocks out the game, because TSN2 has the rights. Even though they're not actually showing it.
So I can't watch it. Even with the box, even with the package. Even though you OWN THE GODDAMN TEAM.
You know, when Canadians complain about Toronto, and not being included, and people having their heads up their asses, this is the kind of thing they're talking about. Just, FYI. You have terrible, legendarily terrible customer service. Every customer interaction with you is a nightmare. Last night, technical support cut me off four times. Customer service had no answers. They never do.
Oh, and while we're at it, you completely fucked up CityTV when you bought it too. So congratulations. Enjoy your money, enjoy your subscribers and tax breaks and regional monopolies.
But know this: you completely, totally fucking suck. I hope your wires corrode and your executives all quit and go to greener pastures. I hope your every future business venture collapses and burns. I hope that somewhere, one of your top managers suffers torment for every hour I have spent on the phone with you in the last 25 years, trying to straighten some stupid thing out because your evil, stupid, boneheaded corporation sucks so very hard.
My parents, when they go to Florida, get their cable through a company called Bright House Networks. They always answer the phone. They fix things right. They don't send out subcontractors who don't know what they're doing. They don't transfer you and cut you off. They don't sell you high speed bullshit and then throttle your connection. The mobile section doesn't not know what the tv section is doing. It doesn't take four phone calls to get your bill consolidated. Your Mom who's been paying the cable bill since 1977 doesn't get told she's not authorized on the account, and "you should get your husband to phone in and change that." Your HUSBAND. In 2008.
No, it takes a special kind of fucked-up, Enron-level degree of fucktardery to so completely, utterly, and totally frustrate and alienate your customer base.
Fuck you, Rogers. You suck Donkey Balls.
Hey there Bell Canada, what the @$%* do you think you're smirking at?
You suck.
You completely, totally, utterly suck.
It was bad enough last summer, when it took about nineteen phone calls and two visits just to get my parents' big screen HD TV set up.
But here I sit in St. John's NL. I bought your super sports pack. All I want to do is watch the Blue Jays Boston game in the BG as I write. But I can't. Because after a stupid corporate fight, you've made your stupid, childish corporate deal to get TSN2 on the air --everywhere BUT in Newfoundland. And the Super Sports Pack blocks out the game, because TSN2 has the rights. Even though they're not actually showing it.
So I can't watch it. Even with the box, even with the package. Even though you OWN THE GODDAMN TEAM.
You know, when Canadians complain about Toronto, and not being included, and people having their heads up their asses, this is the kind of thing they're talking about. Just, FYI. You have terrible, legendarily terrible customer service. Every customer interaction with you is a nightmare. Last night, technical support cut me off four times. Customer service had no answers. They never do.
Oh, and while we're at it, you completely fucked up CityTV when you bought it too. So congratulations. Enjoy your money, enjoy your subscribers and tax breaks and regional monopolies.
But know this: you completely, totally fucking suck. I hope your wires corrode and your executives all quit and go to greener pastures. I hope your every future business venture collapses and burns. I hope that somewhere, one of your top managers suffers torment for every hour I have spent on the phone with you in the last 25 years, trying to straighten some stupid thing out because your evil, stupid, boneheaded corporation sucks so very hard.
My parents, when they go to Florida, get their cable through a company called Bright House Networks. They always answer the phone. They fix things right. They don't send out subcontractors who don't know what they're doing. They don't transfer you and cut you off. They don't sell you high speed bullshit and then throttle your connection. The mobile section doesn't not know what the tv section is doing. It doesn't take four phone calls to get your bill consolidated. Your Mom who's been paying the cable bill since 1977 doesn't get told she's not authorized on the account, and "you should get your husband to phone in and change that." Your HUSBAND. In 2008.
No, it takes a special kind of fucked-up, Enron-level degree of fucktardery to so completely, utterly, and totally frustrate and alienate your customer base.
Fuck you, Rogers. You suck Donkey Balls.
Hey there Bell Canada, what the @$%* do you think you're smirking at?
Flashpoint Renewed
NEW EPISODES will air Summer 2010.
(via Twitter @EWAusielloFiles)
It's not clear that they've actually ordered any ADDITIONAL eps to the ones already in the hopper. The same thing happened with the U.S. sale of Blood Ties, which they marketed as two "seasons" when really, from production's standpoint, it was one 22 episode season.
(via Twitter @EWAusielloFiles)
UPDATE: what's unclear at this point is what "renewed" means. There's some question that the "third season" they're talking about might just be CBS holding back nine episodes from the current order that's being shot right now in Toronto.
CBS previously "held back" 4 episodes from FP's original order and ran them when the show returned in Feb. So there's discrepancy between what the Production considers a "season" and what the network does.It's not clear that they've actually ordered any ADDITIONAL eps to the ones already in the hopper. The same thing happened with the U.S. sale of Blood Ties, which they marketed as two "seasons" when really, from production's standpoint, it was one 22 episode season.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
In The Thick of It
WELL, I'VE TRIED, chickens. I've tried to line up guest posts. Those writers, they shant be wrangled unless there's a paycheque attached, it seems.
And after a weekend back home in Toronto I'm back on the Rock and deep into the shit. Deep work on several fronts trying to get stories up and running -- reading, writing, noting, and breaking new stories so that the great production machine can begin to rumble to life.
So the combo of those two things means that you should expect crickets here for the next bit. Now, ahem, if any of the brave souls I specifically, pathetically, pleadingly asked for material from this week come through, maybe there will be joy. But til then, may I suggest you visit all your other favorite TV sites to find out about such brilliant topics as:
My favorite moment of the redacted CRTC stuff (which was redacted, supposedly, because they didn't want "competitive details" revealed so that competitors could see them,) was the CEO of Canwest, Peter Viner, answering a question about Canada's creatives "not getting" the message that the money spent on U.S. shows subsidizes Canadian production (a point that not a single member of the WGC I've ever talked to disputes) apparently Viner said the following:
Oh MAN! He said Whhhaaaaa? What do you think's under that black bar?
"These are very intelligent people; we wish they'd just %$#$@ go away?"
Remember how the bleeps made The Osbournes funnier? Who was the guy at the CRTC wielding the pen? Dick Cheney?
Anybody who wants to guess what salty or businessy-competitive thing that was said "in camera", let me know in the comments below.
(And to Mr. Viner, I'm pretty sure you didn't drop a few stray F-bombs there. Here at Dead Things Labs, we give all professional broadcasters the benefit of the doubt. You gotta admit though -- that looks pretty dang funny.)
See you when I see you.
And after a weekend back home in Toronto I'm back on the Rock and deep into the shit. Deep work on several fronts trying to get stories up and running -- reading, writing, noting, and breaking new stories so that the great production machine can begin to rumble to life.
So the combo of those two things means that you should expect crickets here for the next bit. Now, ahem, if any of the brave souls I specifically, pathetically, pleadingly asked for material from this week come through, maybe there will be joy. But til then, may I suggest you visit all your other favorite TV sites to find out about such brilliant topics as:
- The Wonderful, Evolving World of U.S. Network Pickups
- The Canadian shopping spree that follows
- The bloodbath in TV representation
What becomes clear is that Canadian nets still fail to see that the way around their problems is the same strategy most European nations have used to end-run the Hollywood studio insistence on owning it all -- to produce programming they can own and sell.
But I’ve been beating that drum since I started writing this blog and it seems CTV and Global would rather swallow lye than make a couple of dollars from their own labor.
At any rate, my favorite moment in this whole sorry affair occurs on pages 144-145, wherein the Commission Chair offers the following:
Unfortunately, “…what Ms. Williams just explained to me” has been redacted. So I, my fellow artists and the Arts Guilds the Commission Chair speaks of have no way of understanding her argument.
Or perhaps – of REFUTING it…
But then, we don’t matter to this Commission any more than the public does. And that’s made crystal clear over and over during CRTC hearings.
Writers Guild of Canada Executive Director Maureen Parker can explain a half century of Broadcaster “betrayal” of her membership and MP Cheryl Gallant can detail how her constituents in Pembroke were consistently lied to by CanWest. But those submissions are not explored while this document illustrates that the Commission feels enormously educated by whatever the broadcasters have to say.
My favorite moment of the redacted CRTC stuff (which was redacted, supposedly, because they didn't want "competitive details" revealed so that competitors could see them,) was the CEO of Canwest, Peter Viner, answering a question about Canada's creatives "not getting" the message that the money spent on U.S. shows subsidizes Canadian production (a point that not a single member of the WGC I've ever talked to disputes) apparently Viner said the following:
Oh MAN! He said Whhhaaaaa? What do you think's under that black bar?"These are very intelligent people; we wish they'd just %$#$@ go away?"
Remember how the bleeps made The Osbournes funnier? Who was the guy at the CRTC wielding the pen? Dick Cheney?
Anybody who wants to guess what salty or businessy-competitive thing that was said "in camera", let me know in the comments below.
(And to Mr. Viner, I'm pretty sure you didn't drop a few stray F-bombs there. Here at Dead Things Labs, we give all professional broadcasters the benefit of the doubt. You gotta admit though -- that looks pretty dang funny.)
See you when I see you.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Creativity
YOU MAY HAVE missed it, but last week, FOX quietly dropped this season's experiment which saw it run less commercials in FRINGE and DOLLHOUSE. Turns out that it there were improvements in stopping PVR ad fast-forwarding, and they did get a premium for the ads -- but it still wasn't profitable. Still, it was a pretty bold try.
No question, the show looks like it might be a winner. And it also is a perfect match for Idol. But the fact is that in the battle for eyeballs, in the midst of trying times for the TV business, with the full knowledge that the network TV model is eroding, and it's getting harder and harder to pay for shows through advertising, FOX is trying bold things. They are doing whatever they can to get one past and over, to find a hit, to place a show, to make the model work. There are ideas here. Some don't work, some might. But they're trying.
FOX is trying something new again this week. It's premiering one of its Fall shows early. MONTHS early, in fact. Glee is getting all sorts of love from critics. It's definitely a hopeful, Obama-era show in line with the kind of sunny programming I've been saying would be in vogue soon.
Well, FOX obviously wants to make its impact count -- because it's sneaking the show right after the finale of American Idol on Tuesday. Here's sort of an extended trailer:
No question, the show looks like it might be a winner. And it also is a perfect match for Idol. But the fact is that in the battle for eyeballs, in the midst of trying times for the TV business, with the full knowledge that the network TV model is eroding, and it's getting harder and harder to pay for shows through advertising, FOX is trying bold things. They are doing whatever they can to get one past and over, to find a hit, to place a show, to make the model work. There are ideas here. Some don't work, some might. But they're trying.
Let's contrast that with the Canadian networks.
Questions? Comments? Observations?
Friday, May 15, 2009
Playing Poker With a Weak Hand
GRANT ROBERTSON in the Globe & Mail has some delicious tea-reading of the recent CRTC hearings, and how the Canadian Networks are being pushed to seek their "carriage fees" in a different way:
The networks have doubled down on local news. Sure, that's one thing - unless you're under 50 and get your news from the internet. The rest of the time, the privates are usually re-broadcasting American shows. They have spent so little time bringing up a homegrown stable of shows that if you were to lose their feeds, what would you be missing? It's likely a pretty empty threat.
Even their new strategy -- pairing with U.S. nets for "reverse simulcasted" U.S. shows -- means that you could still get those shows on U.S. nets if the CTV or Global signal went dark on your dial.
For years, this argument has been framed by business. And they forgot the first rule of selling: What's your unique selling proposition?
I'm not sure CTV and Global have one. In fact, since they took over CHUM and Alliance Atlantis, respectively, even the properties they once held seem less valuable. I used to watch Bravo! and Showcase and History and Comedy and Space. But lately, a channel like Showcase, which used to have a very distinct identity, looks like just one more repository for the shows bought down south at the screenings. What made it unique is gone. In St. John's, I have a cable package that includes TMN, but none of those specialties -- Space, Bravo! History, HG, Comedy, etc. Don't miss 'em. The only channel I don't have that I miss is CNN.
It's curious: with that one simple word: negotiate, we risk exposing just how unclothed the Emperor is in this situation.
I'd have paid 50 cents a month for Corner Gas, maybe. Gas is gone. I would certainly pay 50 cents a month for four or five shows like Corner Gas I couldn't get on CBS, ABC, NBC or FOX. But if the Cable co's and the CanNets continue to play this game of chicken and that signal disappears? What am I supposed to miss, exactly?
Interesting corner we've been painted into. I mean, they could point to the Broadcast Act and say, "you have to carry us, we're Canadian." But how do you do that with one hand and keep playing the "we can't afford to do the rest of the stuff the Broadcast Act demands, and make Canadian shows?"
Curiouser and curiouser.
The problem here, of course, is that it brings into sharp, sharp relief the question exactly as framed by the creative guilds in this country: if you lose Canadian signals, what are you missing?According to transcripts of the meetings, Mr. von Finckenstein instructed CTV and Global to consider a different path that would see the networks negotiate with the carriers for compensation for their signals, rather than the regulator approving a monthly fee. He suggested the CRTC would look at changing federal regulations to allow the networks to enter arbitration if a deal could not be reached.
"I think you should contemplate a scenario where there is a negotiation where at the end of the day if you don't get to an agreement you can put it to us for arbitration and we will deal with it," Mr. von Finckenstein said in meetings that were closed to the public. The transcripts have since been produced with sections blacked out, though much of the discussion remains intact.
The CRTC's idea would see the networks given the right to negotiate money from the carriers for their signals, as cable channels do, and potentially withhold their signal. That rate would not be set by the regulator. If a deal could not be reached, the matter would be settled in arbitration.
The networks have doubled down on local news. Sure, that's one thing - unless you're under 50 and get your news from the internet. The rest of the time, the privates are usually re-broadcasting American shows. They have spent so little time bringing up a homegrown stable of shows that if you were to lose their feeds, what would you be missing? It's likely a pretty empty threat.
Even their new strategy -- pairing with U.S. nets for "reverse simulcasted" U.S. shows -- means that you could still get those shows on U.S. nets if the CTV or Global signal went dark on your dial.
For years, this argument has been framed by business. And they forgot the first rule of selling: What's your unique selling proposition?
I'm not sure CTV and Global have one. In fact, since they took over CHUM and Alliance Atlantis, respectively, even the properties they once held seem less valuable. I used to watch Bravo! and Showcase and History and Comedy and Space. But lately, a channel like Showcase, which used to have a very distinct identity, looks like just one more repository for the shows bought down south at the screenings. What made it unique is gone. In St. John's, I have a cable package that includes TMN, but none of those specialties -- Space, Bravo! History, HG, Comedy, etc. Don't miss 'em. The only channel I don't have that I miss is CNN.
It's curious: with that one simple word: negotiate, we risk exposing just how unclothed the Emperor is in this situation.
I'd have paid 50 cents a month for Corner Gas, maybe. Gas is gone. I would certainly pay 50 cents a month for four or five shows like Corner Gas I couldn't get on CBS, ABC, NBC or FOX. But if the Cable co's and the CanNets continue to play this game of chicken and that signal disappears? What am I supposed to miss, exactly?
Interesting corner we've been painted into. I mean, they could point to the Broadcast Act and say, "you have to carry us, we're Canadian." But how do you do that with one hand and keep playing the "we can't afford to do the rest of the stuff the Broadcast Act demands, and make Canadian shows?"
Curiouser and curiouser.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
House of (No) Change
I WAS A little p.o'd by HOUSE's Bobby Ewing episode this week, but I have to admit I find Jaime Weinman's latest take on the show quite convincing -- even if he goes to some lengths to back away from it.
it’s pointless to complain that nobody ever changes, because that’s the whole point of the show.As I said, this is not an uncommon or illegitimate take on House. I don’t really buy it, but it does indicate why House has been so successful: it combines the up-to-date features of hip TV storytelling — ongoing storylines, speculation about what the characters will do next — with the traditions of comfort-food television, the most important tradition being that every episode should be pretty much the same. David Shore may not have planned it all out like this, but he hit upon a way to have his cake and eat it too, to create the comfort of familiarity without being written off as TV for the uncool. And he did it by creating a premise that turns the biggest tradition of old-school episodic television — that people stay the same no matter what happens — into a big over-arching worldview.
Like I said, I don’t exactly buy this, or I might have been more likely to buy it back when the show was at its peak. The past season has been uneven enough that I’m not prepared to accept the repetition as part of some statement about human nature. But it is part of the genius of House that, at its best, it made formula storytelling into something cool by transforming the formula into a worldview.
It occurs to me that this is exactly how I've treated HOUSE for the last couple seasons: comfort food. I'm watching a lot less TV right now than usual (that always happens when I'm on a show) and I watch different shows for different reasons. Like a lot of people right now, I'm drawn to comedies, which is why How I Met Your Mother continues to grow in my estimation, and why 30 Rock is crack to me (even if I have to stay up to 11pm...seriously...to catch it.)
But HOUSE, which is a show I used to call brilliant, is now like a pair of comfortable slippers. It's the Snuggie of network TeeVee. And that's OK.
But seriously, no more Bobby Ewing in the shower, m'kay?
Norm Bolen's New Jersey
THERE'S A LOT of people I've talked to lately who had stories about Norm Bolen, mainly from his days at Alliance Atlantis. In the Globe & Mail today, there's a profile by Gayle MacDonald of Norm in his new role as spokesman and President for Canada's producer's group, the CFTPA. He was a frankly surprising choice for the CFTPA. In the article, I appreciate his categorization of his time at Alliance Atlantis as his phase of being a "born again capitalist."
And then there was this:“I see a gap that needs to be filled. A leadership gap. I've always had a strong affinity with producers, and at Alliance we were focused on Canadian content. We did not see it as a cost of doing business or a tax or a liability.”
In recent years, Bolen says he's seen a huge shift in the broadcasters' muscle over the production community. “There is an imbalance in the system. … Because of the broadcasters' strength, they make a decision and dictate to producers, who don't have much leverage to negotiate reasonable terms. Producers have to take it or leave it. And if you leave it, you have no work,” he adds.
On average, Bolen says broadcasters are currently paying 37 per cent of the total budget of Canadian productions. In return, he adds, they are demanding non-negotiable, unlimited plays on all their channels (conventional or specialty) for up to seven years. He says broadcasters are also demanding all digital media rights.
“Producers can't speak out as individuals because they're in jeopardy of alienating broadcasters who control their fate.”
The networks argue that they want to retain more rights to their content, including subsequent broadcast windows and digital platforms. CTV has told the CRTC that if it gets another hit like Corner Gas it wants to be able to make more money off the show. The producers, who generally retain some of those rights, are concerned about this, since they put up a considerable amount of the money upfront and take on the risk if a show flops.
At the end of the day, everyone involved in this cat-and-mouse game “has to rise above narrow self-interest and see if we can find bigger solutions,” he says.
“The first thing I did when I took the job was dig up the Broadcasting Act, and read it,” he adds, noting that section three is about the primacy of Canadian content and how the airwaves belong to the people. “The purpose of the broadcasting system is to see that Canadian stories are told. It's not just to be a rebroadcaster.
Hear hear. I still think that individual producers fear of speaking out is a lot more of an excuse than an actual problem. But I guess some of us just feel more comfortable with a target painted on our ass.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
What's There To Say?
I DON'T REALLY have anything to add here. Minister James Moore said last week the CBC wouldn't face any more cuts. Fifty-six million dollars while they're still talking about "relief" of private broadcasters is just offensive.
There's no good spin here. None.
There's no good spin here. None.
CBC could be facing a cut of up to five per cent, or $56 million, from its parliamentary appropriation in the 2010-2011 fiscal year.
That reduction would come on top of a funding shortfall this year of $171 million as a result of a decline in ad revenue.
The federal government has set a target of reallocating expenses by five per cent under its strategic review of government departments and Crown corporations.
The strategic review program, begun in 2007, requires all departments and Crown corporations to look at their spending once every four years, according to a spokesman for the Treasury Board.
CBC president Hubert Lacroix told CBC employees on Friday that CBC/Radio-Canada has been asked to participate in the spending review for 2010-11.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Why J.J.'s Trek Prospers
LIKE ROUGHLY A jillion people across North America, I saw the new Star Trek this weekend, and loved it.
[SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE FOLLOW]
But it took the kung fu of John Rogers to point out how the movie also kicks most of what you know about heroic storytelling on its ass:
The rest is well, well worth your time.
Captain James T. Kirk, the protagonist of the movie, does not have the development executive's beloved "character arc." He has no arc at all.
He starts as an arrogant sonovabitch, and becomes a slightly more motivated arrogant sonovabitch. He does not learn to sacrifice, he does not learn to work well with others -- he takes over the goddam ship. He's right all the time, he never doubts he's right, and the only obstacle he occasionally faces is when other people aren't sharp enough to see how frikkin' awesome -- and right -- he is as quickly as they should.
He never has an end-of-Act-Two "low point." Being stranded on the ice planet? Please. He spends those few minutes dictating a memo about bringing Spock up on charges when -- not if, when -- he rejoins the fleet. Oh yes, and then not one but two deus ex machina's get him back to the ship in time.
Does he learn Spock's precious lesson about fear? No. Does he learn what it was like for his father to willingly stare death in the face and sacrifice himself? FUCK no, that's Spock in the starship in the end, making the kamikaze run.
Canadian TV Pays Its Way
YOU MAY HAVE missed it (it was undercovered, as usual) but one of the cornerstones of the WGC presentation to the CRTC last week at the license renewal hearings (the same one where the broadcasters claim local programming is dead unless they get carriage fees, and the cable co's called 'liar liar pants on fire') was a study co-commissioned by the WGC that showed that contrary to what the networks claim, homegrown programming is profitable for Canadian networks.
This study was prepared despite the fact that the networks do everything they can to not release the disaggregated data about how much their various channels make.
There's a deliberate attempt to conceal and mislead the commission and the public into thinking that Canadian produced shows don't make money. This is so they can ask for "relief" in the form of lowered CanCon regulations, or relaxed rules that let them count cheap Entertainment Tonight or ETalk shows as part of their quota.
Does Canadian programming make as much as those cheap U.S. shows that they have spent the last decade outbidding each other for? No, of course not. But it does make money.
And after all, the question of why we need Canadian networks at all if they're just going to be U.S. network affiliates is a provocative one. I have a U.S. network affiliate as part of my cable package. Right now, in St. John's, they come from Boston. In Toronto, they come from Buffalo. And when I was in Vancouver, they came from Seattle.
Why do we need them from Toronto, or Ottawa too? Fine question.
The complete Nordcity study on the profitability of Canadian TV can be downloaded here, or at the WGC site.
This study was prepared despite the fact that the networks do everything they can to not release the disaggregated data about how much their various channels make.
There's a deliberate attempt to conceal and mislead the commission and the public into thinking that Canadian produced shows don't make money. This is so they can ask for "relief" in the form of lowered CanCon regulations, or relaxed rules that let them count cheap Entertainment Tonight or ETalk shows as part of their quota.
Does Canadian programming make as much as those cheap U.S. shows that they have spent the last decade outbidding each other for? No, of course not. But it does make money.
And after all, the question of why we need Canadian networks at all if they're just going to be U.S. network affiliates is a provocative one. I have a U.S. network affiliate as part of my cable package. Right now, in St. John's, they come from Boston. In Toronto, they come from Buffalo. And when I was in Vancouver, they came from Seattle.
Why do we need them from Toronto, or Ottawa too? Fine question.
The complete Nordcity study on the profitability of Canadian TV can be downloaded here, or at the WGC site.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Take the Damn Job
THERE'S AN INTERESTING article I want to link to, but I'll get to that in a moment. In my travels, I often find myself talking to aspirants; people who want to get into the writing room and want to work in TV but ... aren't sure. The worst kind of "aren't sure," is the person who seems to have a job on the hook. Maybe they've made a connection with the producer, but the material is something that they hate, or don't respond to very well.
Maybe it's the fact that the producer seems a little shady, or the show's a little shaky.
In any case, even though a few months back the only thing you could possibly imagine is having the chance to sign up to write on something, or to be a story coordinator and be close to writers in the room, but something, something now is holding you back...you just can't put your finger on it.
I'm telling you to take the job.
It's a funny business. It's full of charlatans and pretenders. There is definitely an A-list, B-list, C-list etc of everything -- Producers, Prodco's, Writers, Crew. Everybody wants to start with the A-list. And very few people get to start with the A-list.
And that's a good thing.
Have you ever noticed that when you watch a totally amazing movie, there's very little you can learn from it? You can steal, but not learn. We got talking the other day about Goodfellas in the writing room. Goodfellas is guycrack. You see Goodfellas on TV, you have to keep watching it. It's almost beyond your control.
But as a writer, Goodfellas has very little to teach you. It's wonderfully executed. A lot of elements have come together in exactly the right way. And that's why you can't learn from it. Now, if you watch a noir or a comedy that misfires in the final act, or that doesn't set its characters off the top correctly, the conversation you're going to have about what was wrong and how maybe it could have been fixed would have been far more illuminating than sitting around for the 100th time and running down all those awesome, favorite scenes from Goodfellas.
The fact is, the same thing holds in the writing workplace. Everybody has their disaster shows. Shows which are managed poorly, where the showrunner doesn't have a vision, or where toxic relations with the producers, basic criminality, insanity or mental illness makes a great product impossible. Or maybe the material just is what it is. Maybe it's beyond being "elevated," whatever that word might mean to you.
That's okay.
The idea is to get those shows under your belt early in your career. This serves a number of purposes:
1) It gives you stories.
There will come a day when you're grizzled and hopefully not old; still creatively vibrant, where you will be able to bond over stories over the abject insanity, mendacious behavior and sheer stupidity you saw back in the day. You will go into these bull sessions thinking that your story will be the craziest and most outrageous. This will be true about 10% of the time. It's also a great way to bond and connect with writers who have a few more years in on you. Maybe they've been at it a decade, or two, and you've been on the job five years, but you've both been in the shit.
2) It builds up your "never gonna do's."
Writing is largely self-taught. Writing professionally on TV is self-taught, too -- but there's also (hopefully) an element of mentorship involved. But a lot of the self-taught component is watching people behave spectacularly badly: scream at underlings, lie for no reason, reject wise counsel simply because it wasn't their idea... any and all of this kind of thing goes in your bank of experience and hopefully hardens your resolve to never, ever, ever repeat those mistakes when you somehow find yourself on a better show.
Again, watching a remarkably well-oiled machine, where the showrunner is always on the ball, the producers make things happen, and the writers support each other and turn drafts in on time doesn't really teach you very much at all. In fact, it can be a little traumatizing if you have that experience, and then go to your next show and find that it's an utter disaster. It's one thing to be in hell and imagine the shape of heaven; quite another to have been there and now to have to undure an unending flaming pitchfork in your butt.
3) It lets you get to know your fellow travellers.
Sometimes the people that you find yourself beside on those really bad shows are going to wind up being players. If you were in the shit with them, and showed grace and supportiveness, you never know. Somewhere else somebody wrote about the "Nash Bridges" effect -- how that show, even though it was a straight up-and-down, not very creative effort, nevertheless trained great writers who one day found themselves on LOST. Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars, Cupid) also cut his teeth on that show, I believe.
So even if the work is ass, the contacts may not be. Tell yourself that. It will help. A bit. At 3am. When you're rocking like a ball in the corner.
4) Only Assholes pick at early credits.
It's true. You think you're going to be forever stigmatized because you worked on a crappy show? By who? They've all worked on crappy shows too. I know two guys who were drivers -- pretty low on the crew. One's an international rock star now who's won Grammys. The other pitched a Director and wound up being a screenwriter who's now written several of the top grossing films of the last twenty years.
The other joke you hear writers make all the time is a version of this: they hold up their resumes and say, "oops, there it is! that's the sound of that credit falling off!" It's a happy, happy day when momentum allows you to 'retire' a less-than-desirable credit. But until that day, anybody who gives you stick for that show where you were a staff writer or story editor is just showing their utter and complete ignorance of the business.
If you achieve any degree of success -- and I mean ANY degree, whatsoever, the amount of jealousy and crazy-hate that's going to come your way will astound you. No, you did nothing to deserve it. Yes, they are small people and possibly disordered. Maybe they live with their moms, or hang out in IRC chatrooms or in Second Life or something. Fuck'em. The idea that one day someone might point at that early credit and judge you for it -- and that being a valid reason to not take a job -- THAT WILL PAY YOU TO WRITE -- is flat out, the craziest thing of all.
5) Nobody knows Anything: or the Inverse Rule of the Film/TV job.
Talk to the crew and they will tell you that when you're making it, there is usually just no way to tell whether it's going to be a good show or a bad show. Sometimes the best movies or TV shows are nightmares to work on. And sometimes the crummiest stuff will form friendships and memories that will carry you through a very long, long life. You just can never tell. So you may as well relax.
There's a show on my resume that I'm not particularly proud of, that was a pain in the ass at times, that exposed me to insanity and stress like you wouldn't believe. But it was fun. Lots of fun. And I made friends. And that's enough.
Now...all's that preamble to this. Imagine a show so packed with talent behind and in front of the camera, given such free rein by the network, that it just couldn't possibly fail.
Well, then you'd have the Dana Carvey Show, kids. With Carvey and Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert on screen, and Robert Smigel and Louis C.K. behind the scenes. It's out on DVD this Tuesday.
See? You just never, ever know.
So stop kvetching. Take the job.
Maybe it's the fact that the producer seems a little shady, or the show's a little shaky.
In any case, even though a few months back the only thing you could possibly imagine is having the chance to sign up to write on something, or to be a story coordinator and be close to writers in the room, but something, something now is holding you back...you just can't put your finger on it.
I'm telling you to take the job.
It's a funny business. It's full of charlatans and pretenders. There is definitely an A-list, B-list, C-list etc of everything -- Producers, Prodco's, Writers, Crew. Everybody wants to start with the A-list. And very few people get to start with the A-list.
And that's a good thing.
Have you ever noticed that when you watch a totally amazing movie, there's very little you can learn from it? You can steal, but not learn. We got talking the other day about Goodfellas in the writing room. Goodfellas is guycrack. You see Goodfellas on TV, you have to keep watching it. It's almost beyond your control.
But as a writer, Goodfellas has very little to teach you. It's wonderfully executed. A lot of elements have come together in exactly the right way. And that's why you can't learn from it. Now, if you watch a noir or a comedy that misfires in the final act, or that doesn't set its characters off the top correctly, the conversation you're going to have about what was wrong and how maybe it could have been fixed would have been far more illuminating than sitting around for the 100th time and running down all those awesome, favorite scenes from Goodfellas.
The fact is, the same thing holds in the writing workplace. Everybody has their disaster shows. Shows which are managed poorly, where the showrunner doesn't have a vision, or where toxic relations with the producers, basic criminality, insanity or mental illness makes a great product impossible. Or maybe the material just is what it is. Maybe it's beyond being "elevated," whatever that word might mean to you.
That's okay.
The idea is to get those shows under your belt early in your career. This serves a number of purposes:
1) It gives you stories.
There will come a day when you're grizzled and hopefully not old; still creatively vibrant, where you will be able to bond over stories over the abject insanity, mendacious behavior and sheer stupidity you saw back in the day. You will go into these bull sessions thinking that your story will be the craziest and most outrageous. This will be true about 10% of the time. It's also a great way to bond and connect with writers who have a few more years in on you. Maybe they've been at it a decade, or two, and you've been on the job five years, but you've both been in the shit.
2) It builds up your "never gonna do's."
Writing is largely self-taught. Writing professionally on TV is self-taught, too -- but there's also (hopefully) an element of mentorship involved. But a lot of the self-taught component is watching people behave spectacularly badly: scream at underlings, lie for no reason, reject wise counsel simply because it wasn't their idea... any and all of this kind of thing goes in your bank of experience and hopefully hardens your resolve to never, ever, ever repeat those mistakes when you somehow find yourself on a better show.
Again, watching a remarkably well-oiled machine, where the showrunner is always on the ball, the producers make things happen, and the writers support each other and turn drafts in on time doesn't really teach you very much at all. In fact, it can be a little traumatizing if you have that experience, and then go to your next show and find that it's an utter disaster. It's one thing to be in hell and imagine the shape of heaven; quite another to have been there and now to have to undure an unending flaming pitchfork in your butt.
3) It lets you get to know your fellow travellers.
Sometimes the people that you find yourself beside on those really bad shows are going to wind up being players. If you were in the shit with them, and showed grace and supportiveness, you never know. Somewhere else somebody wrote about the "Nash Bridges" effect -- how that show, even though it was a straight up-and-down, not very creative effort, nevertheless trained great writers who one day found themselves on LOST. Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars, Cupid) also cut his teeth on that show, I believe.
So even if the work is ass, the contacts may not be. Tell yourself that. It will help. A bit. At 3am. When you're rocking like a ball in the corner.
4) Only Assholes pick at early credits.
It's true. You think you're going to be forever stigmatized because you worked on a crappy show? By who? They've all worked on crappy shows too. I know two guys who were drivers -- pretty low on the crew. One's an international rock star now who's won Grammys. The other pitched a Director and wound up being a screenwriter who's now written several of the top grossing films of the last twenty years.
The other joke you hear writers make all the time is a version of this: they hold up their resumes and say, "oops, there it is! that's the sound of that credit falling off!" It's a happy, happy day when momentum allows you to 'retire' a less-than-desirable credit. But until that day, anybody who gives you stick for that show where you were a staff writer or story editor is just showing their utter and complete ignorance of the business.
If you achieve any degree of success -- and I mean ANY degree, whatsoever, the amount of jealousy and crazy-hate that's going to come your way will astound you. No, you did nothing to deserve it. Yes, they are small people and possibly disordered. Maybe they live with their moms, or hang out in IRC chatrooms or in Second Life or something. Fuck'em. The idea that one day someone might point at that early credit and judge you for it -- and that being a valid reason to not take a job -- THAT WILL PAY YOU TO WRITE -- is flat out, the craziest thing of all.
5) Nobody knows Anything: or the Inverse Rule of the Film/TV job.
Talk to the crew and they will tell you that when you're making it, there is usually just no way to tell whether it's going to be a good show or a bad show. Sometimes the best movies or TV shows are nightmares to work on. And sometimes the crummiest stuff will form friendships and memories that will carry you through a very long, long life. You just can never tell. So you may as well relax.
There's a show on my resume that I'm not particularly proud of, that was a pain in the ass at times, that exposed me to insanity and stress like you wouldn't believe. But it was fun. Lots of fun. And I made friends. And that's enough.
Now...all's that preamble to this. Imagine a show so packed with talent behind and in front of the camera, given such free rein by the network, that it just couldn't possibly fail.
Well, then you'd have the Dana Carvey Show, kids. With Carvey and Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert on screen, and Robert Smigel and Louis C.K. behind the scenes. It's out on DVD this Tuesday.
See? You just never, ever know.
So stop kvetching. Take the job.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
The WGC on the CRTC Hearings
FINALLY, AFTER THE cablers and broadcasters whining, the WGC today made its case for Canadian programming for Canadian viewers. (Yes, you love your U.S. shows. But you already get those, remember.)
This release went out this morning:
This release went out this morning:
The Writers Guild of Canada appeared today at the CRTC’s licence renewal hearings for private over-the-air broadcasters. After several days of the broadcasters expressing their desire for ‘flexibility’ in the regulatory system, the WGC called on the CRTC to reassert the primary place of Canadian programming in the Canadian broadcasting system.
The WGC applauds the CRTC’s recognition of the imbalance between broadcasters’ spending on Canadian programming and American programming in its proposal of a 1 to 1 spending ratio. “We agree that the system is out of whack, with the ludicrous amounts these companies are spending on American programming,” says Maureen Parker, Executive Director, WGC, “and we want to work with the CRTC to refine the 1 to 1 model. The last decade tells the tale: without specific regulation, broadcasters will not do local programming and they most certainly will not make the kind of high-quality Canadian shows that audiences want and deserve.”
In 1998, private English OTA broadcasters spent 5.1% of their ad revenue ($73 million) on Canadian drama. Last year, they spent just 3% of ad revenue ($50 Million) on Canadian programming – and this included benefits spending from consolidation. Over those same years, the amount the English OTA broadcasters spent on foreign drama has increased, rising steeply in the last years as they entered into bidding wars with each other for American programming.
“There’s no one with more skin in the game than the creative community,” says Ms Parker. “In fact, since 1999, we’ve been flayed in the interests of flexibility - but we know now that ‘flexibility’ is just code for less Canadian in our broadcasting system.”
The WGC requested that while the CRTC addresses the immediate issue of local programming, they hold the OTA broadcasters to 2008 expenditure levels on quality Canadian programming like drama. Ms. Parker added, “the status quo is still a loss for us, but let’s save the complex policy issues for the 2010 hearings when we will have the time and facts to address them fully.”
On this note, the WGC also called on the CRTC to require broadcasters to provide the disaggregated data necessary to making informed arguments about revenue and expenditure levels across station groups. Broadcasters have refused to provide the disaggregated data required for a full discussion of the issues instead focusing on immediate relief in the form of fee of carriage and reduced levels of Canadian content.
“Canadian programming, especially drama, has been getting the short end of the regulatory bargain, when it should be the very raison d’être of Canadian broadcasting,” says Rebecca Schechter, President, WGC. “Without quality Canadian programming, the Canadian broadcasters are nothing but network affiliates of the American stations. If they’d prefer to just air U.S. programming, let’s do away with their protections and subsidies, and we’ll get the American shows directly from the U.S. sources.”
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
"I Love You" only means "I Do Not Hate You"
I'M CATCHING UP on my blog reading and missed this til now, but SERIOCITY did a great piece last week on the neurotic calculus of staffing season.
There's much, much more. Go read the full post here.
I put together a list of rules to help you make it through:
1. If someone says they love you, that only means they don't hate you. It does not mean that they will hire you. Quite the contrary.
2. No matter what level you are, you will always be too expensive.
3. Even if you have twenty different samples, you will never have the exact right one.
4. The studio or network list doesn't mean anything if you're on it, but it does mean something if you're not.
5. Most people don't know how to recognize good writing, which is why having the exact right sample is so crucial.
6. You will always knock a meeting out of the park on a show that doesn't get picked up.
7. There is always one show that gets picked up that makes everybody in town go, "Where the fuck did THAT come from?" That show never lasts.
8. The rumors you hear only come true if they diminish your chances of getting a job.
9. Somebody in one of your meetings went to college with that psychopath you worked for.
There's much, much more. Go read the full post here.
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