The CRTC Wades In

WHERE YOU END UP depends on where you start.

That's the most important thing to remember as you parse the decisions released yesterday by the CRTC.  The decision on Consumer impact is a hoot too.  We're going to have a lot of angry Canadians, quietly seething in their quiet, seething Canadian way.

Time to buy the entire nation a mouth guard, methinks.

The brief they had to consider was simply massive -- revisit the entire framework of the Canadian broadcast system & figure out how the business needs of the various players should be balanced. 

Ignore people who talk about "market-based" this or that, because that's a canard.  Like a lot of industries in Canada, broadcasting has always been very managed and protected.  There's always been a thumb on the scale in one way or another.  The problem is that the last time the CRTC changed the weight of the thumb, the domestic TV industry kind of died. Whoops.

A lot of other things have happened in the 11 years since the CRTC shuffled the deck.  The rise of the Internet offered a whole new way to distribute programming -- much (not all) of it illegally.  Cable's power rose, as did the number of specialty channels, who profited from two revenue streams -- traditional advertising and subscriber fees -- carved out dimes & nickels on your cable bill tha flow back to the companies that own them.

Broadcasting used to be a great gig in this country -- a "license to print money," they called it.  That's largely because of the CRTC.  The CRTC had rules in place that allowed Canadian networks to substitute American signals with their own so long as they showed the same program at the same time. This simultaneous substitution -- "simsub" -- was very profitable, and also locked Canadian private networks into the same kind of mindset you see from a zombie computer during a phishing attack; freed from the need to think or create, they became addicted to going south twice a year, buying whatever U.S. product they could, and showing it at the same time.

The problem is that while all this was going on there were warning shots on the horizon that presaged big changes coming.  The U.S. networks they bought all their product from started to see that their future as middlemen was tenuous -- and so they got more into owning and developing the product that they showed.  Time was, 70 or 80 percent of the shows you saw on U.S. Tv came from independent studios like Warner Brothers.  Now that's down to about 20-25%.   Add in the internet, streaming, cable channels' growing audience base, and the shrinking relevance of the advertising model, and there were all sorts of canaries in the coal mine.

But for the most part, the Canadian private nets were blissfully unaware of this. They'd outbid each other for shows -- sometimes even paying to put a show on the shelf so that a rival wouldn't get it.

So the economic tsunami that hit in 2008 hit the Canadian networks way worse than their U.S. counterparts.  They'd gotten used to being easy middlemen. They didn't bother to care about having anything new and different of their own -- viewing homegrown programming as a "tax" and an afterthought.

Over the same period, Cable became far more profitable and powerful. First there were all those cell phones that they were overcharging you for. Then there's the internet pipe that threatens that Broadcast model, and all the VOD and sweet sweet Porn money that comes with it...

Twice before, hearings at the CRTC were consumed by the fight between Cablers (called BDU's -- broadcast distribution units) and Networks. Networks wanted fees for their signals like specialty channels get.  Cable said 'hell no.'   The same fight happened in the USA by the way, but there the channels had a much stronger argument -- local news was a strong profit centre at most stations, and each of the networks had a passel of shows that millions of people like to watch.   In Canada, the nets had to invent the whole "Save Local TV" thing to paper over the fact that a) they'd pretty much dismantled anything local over the last two decades and b) they didn't really have much to offer beyond the same U.S. shows that Canadians got from the U.S. network feeds already on their cable dials.   By not diversifying, or reading the signs that a model was going away, these nets were fast becoming the first victim of that model.

At the same time, Cable co's like Rogers & Shaw got nice and fat, first by having protected monopolies in certain regions, and then by being protected from foreign ownership.

But this fight -- "give us fees"  vs. "stick it" -- never got anywhere. Both industries acted like Children and refused to come to a deal.

That's past as prologue.

Back to where you end up depending on where you start --


Employees at CTV got a terse email last week informing them that the "decision on Value For Signal was expected Monday."  This is pretty funny, in a gallows way, because it shows that although the decision was much wider in scope than that, and encompassed much more -- that's the only thing that they cared about.  When the decision came down -- essentially, the CRTC punted on this point, referring it to the Federal Court and telling the two sides to negotiate a fee, which has really worked well so far -- most of the broadcasters reported the news like their little part of it was the only thing that happened that day.    If you're actually, really worried about local TV, and continued vibrant reportage -- that should worry you a bit.  One of the most disturbing things through this whole period has been watching how the Broadcasters had no compunction blurring advocacy and editorial.  The idea of "journalistic independence" does not apply.  It's the biggest growing trend in Canadian broadcasting -- and it's actually pretty terrifying. But I think I'll wait for my friend Howard to examine that part of it and do it justice.  Oop. Look. Them retired folk are fast & crafty -- he's already up with his take.

The Cable companies, too, kind of got handed a bag of flaming poo yesterday.   They face the prospect of angry customers getting mad at them not just because their cable bills are going up, but because now they're going to have to figure out a way to block out broadcast signals on the U.S. nets if the nets show a show at a time other than when the Canadian rights holder wants to show it.  Simsub has been transparent for the viewer, mostly -- that's why the CRTC only gets complaints every year when people realize they can't see the Superbowl commercials.  Just wait.  Now you're going to have blue screens of death all over the dial.  An audience who is moving to a "TV Everywhere" model is going to see more restrictions placed on how and when they can watch -- restrictions that go against what they've had for 40 years.   The audience reaction to this is going to be ugly.  If Rogers wasn't Rogers and didn't so totally suck, I'd almost feel sorry for them.

As for Canadian Creatives?  Well.  That's a more complicated stew.  First, I think it bears repeating that one of the problems in the past has always been that the Canadian nets have never really wanted to make Canadian programs. That's why they came up with photocopies of Entertainment Tonight when the rules allowed them to do that.  That's why they ran cheap, low quality crap like Train 48 that nobody watched or cared about.  That's why they used to whip CanCon shows around the schedules, promote it poorly, and throw it on Saturday night at 10.    Corner Gas became inconvenient, as did little cable successes like Trailer Park Boys, because they seemed to suggest that maybe there was a market for homegrown -- just as there is in every other Western country in the world.  (Western country? Geez, check out "Nollywood" sometime.) 

There's stuff in the decision that shows that the CRTC is at least trying to incentivize spending on domestic stuff.  There's a push for 5% of revenues to be spent on a very narrowly designated set of programs -- drama, kids, documentaries -- and it looks like cheap and cheezy magazine shows won't qualify.   There's a closed loophole where nets won't be able to count money they get from the Canadian Media Fund as part of THEIR contribution -- so they'd have to spend more.   There's also something in there the Broadcasters wanted -- some of the money they spend can be on stuff they produce in-house.  Get off the teat of that U.S. programming, they say.  Diversify, at least a bit.

But there are a lot of potential pitfalls too.  A reduction in CanCon levels.  Removal of spending requirements for Specialty channels (instead, each "ownership group" ie: Canwest, CTV -- will have their revenues & homegrown spend calculated across all their properties.)

Seeing as the nets in the past have done everything they can to get around rules, and use every loophole, the worry is that there's a whole lot here to find ins and outs.  Maybe the problem was too complicated to solve, but the solution as proposed is byzantine.  So though ACTRA was confident enough to come out and blast it right away.  (God love them emotional actors!) the WGC posted a more cautious, "Ummmm..." response on their site.   There's a lot to parse here.

And one of the worst parts of it is that there's now another one-year push as people figure out the rules.  Hearings will happen next year.  Which means that no changes will be concrete til 2012.  Which means that by that time the Domestic TV industry will have endured about 5 years of complete violent uncertainty.  I don't know if there's anybody who can hang on that long.  I'm in Florida right now, and four people in the last two days have emailed me Real Estate listings in Southern California.

Ha ha.

Where you end up on this depends on where you start.  What about the observers, then?  Well, a generation of viewers who have felt entitled to getting any program when they want it, where they want it, on the screen they want it, are probably going to shrug and keep doing what they're doing.

Banks who have been tougher about gap financing Producers trying to make TV product, I don't imagine are going to get much looser.  It's not a confidence-building decision for them.

Anyone who's been sick of the "Save Local TV" "TV Tax" B.S. is likely to get a whole lot sicker. Goodbye "Old Spice, I'm on a Horse" guy, we hardly knew ye.

And then there's professional observers like John Doyle  at the good grey Globe & Mail.  He writes a pretty on-target analysis of his own about the decision.  But you can see ample evidence in the article of where he starts, too.  It's seemingly from a place of real fatigue.

Part of Doyle's schtick has always been as a bit of a crankypants and occasional scold.   That's been cut with a true & trenchant insight into the good of our homegrown TV -- what we do well, what we don't.  If you read his book A Great Feast of Light, where he started becomes ever more clear -- an Irish immigrant for whom TV was both a window and an escape. There's no question that his love of the medium comes from a deep and honest place.

But in the last year he's also curdled.  You can see it in the way he takes a swipe at "creatives" (his quotes) every time they come up.   Example from the latest article:

At the same time, it has to examine the interests of the unions and guild representing actors, writers, directors and producers of Canadian programming, those groups who like to call themselves “the creatives.” The cable and broadcasting bosses don’t have a monopoly on egotism, believe me. The Canadian TV racket is shark-infested waters, and somebody has to regulate.

Can someone please send this man a cookiegram?

You can see it in the way he returns to certain subjects over & over like a monomania -- the position of women in the TV racket (most of what he writes here I agree with, but it's like every third column now,) and a certain fealty to certain voices that have led to a few weird reviews that seem to be going out of the way to not say something bad.  Surface praise, dark waters underneath -- followed by a review that just goes completely over-the-top.

I have sympathy for this.  I stopped writing about shows here that I didn't enjoy because of one too many weird and whiney emails.  So I try to do the positive sell now when I like it, and go by the golden rule of not saying anything at all when I don't. But then again, I'm also directly engaged in the same biz.  I expect what I write here -- even when it's critical -- to be read through the filter of an insider's view, not a dispassionate critic's.

I guess Canadian TV will eventually drive you insane.  There's no way around it.

Doyle's second book, about soccer, "The World Is a Ball," drops in a few weeks, just in time for World Cup Fever.  He's an excellent writer & I hope it's a real hit, because I think he's looking for a way out of the TV writing ghetto. And really, who can blame him?

The thing is -- I don't want to chicken little here -- but I think we should probably all follow his lead a bit.  Got a book in ya? How's that knitting?  I hear Green Roofs are a big grower.

Not saying it's the end of anything.  But not saying it's not. Welcome to the age of uncertainty.  Try to look natural.  Smoke'em if you got 'em.

EDIT: 6:20 p.m.  Bill Brioux covers a part that I left out -- the effect on the CBC.  Personally, I think CBC was wrong to join in actively in the carriage fees debate just because politically it makes it so easy for the anti-CBC wingnuts to accuse it of "double dipping" -- Boy, those guys get a whole lot of fucking complaining for their 37 bucks a year, don't they? -- but he stresses too that the most devastating aspect of this is the "hurry up and wait"-ism of the slow, slow, slow bureaucracy at work:

by dithering on a CBC decision, he will end up punishing the people who write, produce, act and everything else associated with Canadian television at the one network that actually makes Canadian television. CBC--hit as hard as the other guys in advertising revenue during the deep recession--admitted they were short some $60 million a year ago when they started cutting back on show orders. CBC president and CEO Hubert Lacroix said yesterday that "one thing is clear: this will force us to cut programs and services, and our ability to fulfil our mandate has been compromised."...

The CRTC decision has probably doomed one or more of these shows and will likely mean shorter seasons for some of the others. While they were busy finding a way for Canadian cable and satellite subscribers to pay for CTV and Rogers' Olympic party, found money that bails out a decade of reckless, unchecked spending on U.S. imports, the CRTC burns the one guy with a schedule full of Canadian shows. Von Finckensten may have honestly thought he was protecting the CBC, but he really is punishing the network and anyone in the business of doing the one thing the CRTC was supposed to protect--making Canadian television. 

A Digital TV Antenna...

...COSTS ABOUT EIGHTY bucks.  You can set up a PVR on your computer, or put it to your TV.  You get 12 channels uncompressed.  I can get 2 of the 4 U.S. nets from my window.

Just saying.

Texts Without Contexts, Authors Without Revenue Streams, Digerati With Doubts

FASCINATING ARTICLE in the Sunday New York Times this week that examines web texts, and the current noise and sturm and drang over David Shields' repurposed book that's much in the news.

But what really caught my eye in Michiko Kakutani's Reading and the Web - Texts Without Context, were the comments by Jaron Lanier, one of the pioneers of VR & the Web.  This is a guy I interviewed fifteen years ago, way back in the gee shucks days of the web.

An excerpt:

THE WEB’S amplification of subjectivity applies to culture as well as politics, fueling a phenomenon that has been gaining hold over America for several decades, with pundits squeezing out reporters on cable news, with authors writing biographies animated by personal and ideological agendas, with tell-all memoirs, talk-show confessionals, self-dramatizing blogs and carefully tended Facebook and MySpace pages becoming almost de rigeur. 

Kakutani goes to point out a 2006 NYTimes magazine article by Kevin Kelly that suggested a day where all text would mingle.  And it's here that the two most interesting points get made.  These are the central texts that bring together, for me, questions about Web 2.0 projects, Webisode storytelling models, and even the recent contentious fights over copyright:

As John Updike pointed out, Mr. Kelly’s vision would in effect mean “the end of authorship” — hobbling writers’ ability to earn a living from their published works, while at the same time removing a sense of both recognition and accountability from their creations. In a Web world where copies of books (and articles and music and other content) are cheap or free, Mr. Kelly has suggested, authors and artists could make money by selling “performances, access to the creator, personalization, add-on information” and other aspects of their work that cannot be copied. But while such schemes may work for artists who happen to be entrepreneurial, self-promoting and charismatic, Mr. Lanier says he fears that for “the vast majority of journalists, musicians, artists and filmmakers” it simply means “career oblivion.”

Then Lanier brings it home with comments on the mash-up culture...

To Mr. Lanier, however, the prevalence of mash-ups in today’s culture is a sign of “nostalgic malaise.” “Online culture,” he writes, “is dominated by trivial mash-ups of the culture that existed before the onset of mash-ups, and by fandom responding to the dwindling outposts of centralized mass media. It is a culture of reaction without action.”

He points out that much of the chatter online today is actually “driven by fan responses to expression that was originally created within the sphere of old media,” which many digerati mock as old-fashioned and passé, and which is now being destroyed by the Internet. “Comments about TV shows, major movies, commercial music releases and video games must be responsible for almost as much bit traffic as porn,” Mr. Lanier writes. “There is certainly nothing wrong with that, but since the Web is killing the old media, we face a situation in which culture is effectively eating its own seed stock.”

This is the central question that I have yet to see any of the digital polyanas -- or even the fair use, fair dealing maximalists like Michael Geist, deal with.   No one seems to be able to suggest how the current seed stock will be replaced.  It doesn't help matters when smart guys like Geist -- who work in the tenured worlds of academia -- pooh pooh things like collective licensing out of hand,* but don't really  engage on the question of how authors, screenwriters, or certain types of artists who don't have immediately monetizable revenue streams (or entrepeneurial mindsets) get to earn some gelt for their efforts. 

EDIT*(the crossed out section above represents what might be a too-harsh and not entirely accurate view of Geist's concerns about collective licensing.  However, I do feel frustration that like a lot of the fair-dealing expansion crowd -- he comes down on a very wide interpretation of use, while not engaging entirely on the mechanisms by which people like me will be able to, oh, I don't know, not have to work at Home Depot.)

A provocative article...and all the more interesting because the guys who I remember trumpeting the upside early -- Doug Rushkoff, Jaron Lanier -- seem to be the only ones who see the problems & wrinkles inherent in the mediascape that we're already inhabiting...

...never mind what comes next.

Thank You

MADAME SPEAKER, Mr. President, and the 216 + Congressional Democrats who voted for reform & what's right tonight, thanks.

Mr. Majority Leader, it's now up to you. 

Sunday Evening Coming Down, or Go Ask Alice.

A FEW WEEKS of hard work and bouncing from project to project has led me to this: a rainy Sunday in Central Florida, trying not to turn on CNN until the vote in the House is close at hand.

From time to time on this blog I might have talked about my septuagenarian father.  An industrial plant manager til a wave of downsizing in the 1980's,  my Dad & I spent several years on parallel tracks -- me trying to get established in a series of careers I found satisfying, him trying to cobble together a living til he could retire. 

Sometimes it doesn't seem like it, but I found my footing enough to make a rough stand doing what I loved -- at least so far.  A lot of the values I've taken with me came from my Dad. He was the one saying as I was a kid that you had to get involved; that if you thought something was wrong, "you should write a letter."  He negotiated labor contracts as a manager and explained to me the pitfalls of unions & management excess.  He lamented about a change in the business culture he saw firsthand -- an MBA driven, winner take all mindset that did nothing to make people's lives better.

But at the same time, my Dad was a guy who loved shopping at Wal Mart.  He thought Jack Layton was 'shifty' and liked Mike Harris, the paleo-conservative golf pro who ran the province of Ontario for a while. 


My Dad also still gets visibly angry at the mention of Robert McNamara's name, and can't watch a Jane Fonda movie.  He can't forgive her for being "Hanoi Jane."


My Dad's an Irish Catholic guy from the Bronx, born just before the 2nd world war.  His Dad died when he was a teenager. He got his Accounting degree in Night School at the City College of New York -- and reminded me that the whole time he was there he was aware that there were 3 or 4 guys waiting for his seat.


I told my Dad yesterday -- as he fired up the grill on a gorgeous, sunny warm spring Florida day -- that one of the most profound things he ever said to me --something that I've thought about a lot through the years, at a lot of different junctures -- was that he was seventeen before he realized he'd grown up poor.

He grew up in a time when everybody around him in the South Bronx had pretty much what he had. The idea that that wasn't a lot wasn't important. And it also wasn't fed back to you every day through a culture that was obsessed only with wealth.  Lucy & Ethel worried about money.  Ralph Kramden drove a bus.  I think I remember one time hearing that my Mom & My Dad went on a date to Dr. Zhivago. That gives me a good laugh, thinking of these two Irish Catholics from the Bronx, educated by nuns -- with parents who worked on the Railroads and what they used to call, "in service," -- seeing a movie with the sweep of Imperial Russia.

My Dad got successful in his career and went further than his parents dreamed.  And that career took him so far out of his comfort zone -- out of the City, through the adventures of home ownership and moving, and living in another country.   Both my parents show their aggresively NOT Baby boomer bonafides by talking about the 60's as a "terrible time."  My mom once told me that she thought I was the only good thing that happened in 1968!

But my Dad also took the same journey of thought that many of his generation and background took... he drifted toward a more conservative way of looking at the world. He voted for Reagan enthusiastically, bad-mouthed Gore.  We'd argue ferociously about politics when I was a teen and in my 20's.

I happen to even think that the ups and downs and the work struggles I watched my Dad go through in the 1980s made me a much stronger, even-keeled person when it comes to dealing with uncertainty.  If only I'd picked up more of my Grandparents' frugality through the Depression, I might really be somewhere.

Anyway, all this ramble is background to a funny little story that shows how lives change and where things go.  My Dad and I stopped arguing about politics a few years ago.  He moved; I didn't.  Part of it was living part time in the USA again, I think.  He really saw how little Americans got of a balanced view of information.  The bleating of the Liberal elite tag really does not do justice to how profoundly conservative the slant is in most media outlets. 

Anyway, this morning, my Dad got up and got dressed and went to church.  And I stayed in and worked and loved listening to it rain like hell outside.  My Dad went to the Supermarket after church today. One of the things he likes to do is cruise the aisles and sample all the various samples.  Did I mention he's retired?

So it was somewhere over some wonderful shrimp thingy, that my Dad, a naturally garrulous sort, got talking to Alice.  Alice (not her real name, but go with it) is a thin little woman, very slight, very small.  She works putting out those samples in the supermarket seven days a week.  Never takes a time off because she needs the money.  She's got a sick son. 

And so my Dad and Alice talked a bit about the NCAA. She's supporting Kentucky.  She's got a bit of money on it. 

And then Alice asked my Dad about the Health Care fooferal and my Dad said he hopes to God they finally pass it today -- and she shook her head violently and said she hopes they kill that bill because it's so expensive and there's no way to pay for it -- and anyway she's against the government taking over healthcare and going all socialist.

And my Dad as nicely as possible, gently tried to explain that she can't believe that stuff...that she's the very kind of person that will benefit, and that just like Medicare, somebody in her position who parrots the fear tactics and fact-free bromides that masquerade as "responsibility" is being duped. 

Alice couldn't believe my Dad was for the bill -- and my Dad said if he could he'd jump up and down and shout and wave his arms and make a scene if it would help it to pass -- that's how important he thought it was.

The Republican Party used to be a party with several wings.  The idea of small government was actually an idea.  So was fiscal responsibility, and encouraging individualism.  There were socially progressive Republicans.  And there were pragmatists...there were even Liberal Republicans...like Nelson Rockefeller & Jacob Javits from New York.

But when the history of today's Republican Party is written, it will be that their real brilliance was in convincing people like Alice, through fear or religion, or wedge issues, or out and out lies and repetition -- to fear and vote against what was best for them.

Time was in business, and in life, people who'd been lucky enough to earn so much, to do so well so long would vote slightly against their interests to make our society a little better.

But that was before we started going to war without paying for it, and at the same time as we lowered taxes on rich people; before we sent poor people off to fight and busted up families through stop-loss & then abandoned them when they returned.  When the idea of plutocracy and shareholders usurped citizenry & sacrifice. 

The United States is a country so schizophrenic right now that the Census can be a huge flashpoint fight. The Fucking Census.

I don't know what I'm even trying to say here.  Maybe nothing.  There's a whole lot of crumbum stuff that's going to be announced that affects the Canadian TV industry in the next week.  Most of it tomorrow.  The Usual Suspects will say the usual things.  Networks will say it's all about fee for carriage or money for manatees or whatever it is called now; but it's not.  And things might get better for Canadian creatives, but it will probably stay about the same, or get a bit worse.  And if you want to read some interesting context on that, may I suggest here and here?

But as I sit here typing this rambly thing, and hear my Dad tell my sister on the phone -- for roughly the hundredth time -- that "though he never really liked that Nancy Pelosi, he's really come around to respect her now"... I guess what I'm thinking about is Alice and her samples and her day 7 at work.

And I guess I'm just glad to have a Dad who surfed the changes in his life and grew more flexible and agile and caring as he aged -- who bequeathed to me a feeling that one ought to speak one's mind when one believes something, and that there's no shame in evolving your opinion as you go.  I'm glad I have a Dad who worked hard to make things better for his kids, who worked with my Mom to insulate us from hardship when circumstances changed; who showed us a greater world that allowed us to have more open minds, who models curiosity and the joy of speaking to others every day -- even though it was really embarrassing for a while there when I was a teenager.

And I'm glad he'd wave his arms and shout and stamp his feet to help Alice. 

I know it won't do any good.  But a vote in a few hours just might.  And Great God Almighty, I'm glad for that too.

And for bonus points -- there's my Mom, who I think is just relishing the fact that when it comes down to a street fight between Catholic Nuns and Catholic Bishops -- she gets to side with the nuns.

But how THAT side of the stew got me to how I think about stuff -- well....I guess that's just a different story for a different day.

Pass it. Sign it. And get back to it.

Writer Ear Candy: Oh, Zooey.

DOESN'T HELP YOU if you're one of those "must work in silence" people.*

But if you're like me, and spending another day staring at the same chunks of guide-prose willing them to make more elegant sense, there's probably not a better soundtrack than the delightful new album by She & Him.  Volume Two is now being streamed as a preview here on NPR.org.  

And unlike many goodies available to the U.S. domestic market where they don't have universal health care and coloured money, this link works from Canada.  Enjoy.






*Freak.

Day Job Night Job

A PLEASING AND suprising profile of Donald Glover, "Troy" from Community, in today's New York Times. I read with some surprise a few months ago that he'd spent two seasons writing for 30 Rock, and I remember Bro Rape with fondness and guilt...


But what strikes you most, or should, as you read Megan Angelo's profile is the breadth, depth & tenacity of Glover's efforts to develop his talent.

“In Hollywood people are risking a lot of money on your weird ideas,” Mr. Glover said. 

“They’re trying to make money, and so they should. It’s an expensive business. The vision will always be a bit corrupted, and I’m really fine with that. But online, hopefully, will always be like the Wild West, where anything goes.”

Even with a steady day job on “Community,” which NBC recently picked up for a second season, Mr. Glover made time over the past year to spoof boy bands and Tiger Woods, to help distribute Derrick Comedy’s first feature film, “Mystery Team,” and to hone his stand-up at casual shows in New York and Los Angeles.

But nothing underscores Mr. Glover’s commitment to self-produced content as much as his decision to depart the writing staff of “30 Rock” because the job was keeping him from his other endeavors.

That was nearly a year ago. Yet much of the buzz surrounding Mr. Glover still concerns how he came to “30 Rock.” David Miner, an executive producer on the show, was searching for writers when he found Mr. Glover on the Web site of the comedy troupe Wicked Wicked Hammerkatz (hammerkatz.com). In a rare instance of reverse cold calling — from producer to unknown writer — Mr. Miner reached out to Mr. Glover and sent him to meetTina Fey, the star and creator of “30 Rock.”

“All he had was a packet of sketch comedy pieces,” Ms. Fey said in an e-mail message. “One was about going on a date with a girl and slowly realizing that she was a Fraggle. She ate furiously, like Cookie Monster, and food fell out the sides of her mouth. That sketch made me laugh.” 

In a fragmented world it's not enough to have 'a couple things' on the go.  Nor is it good enough to sit around and whinge that no one is discovering you.  The time has passed where you can hide your light under a bushel.   I imagine if you're a young writer, or writer-performer, you'd read the article and be inspired. Or at least I hope you'd be.

There's one caveat to this, of course. (There always is.) Once you hit the section about the 'reverse cold call' that led Glover to his writing staff job on 30 Rock, one has to admit that, based on the evidence, that part of the equation is well and truly missing in Canada. Commercial casting directors may troll the local Toronto Second City show with one eye half open; but the reality is that very, very, very few people at the network, casting, or development level are really looking for new talent in Canada.

Twas ever thus, though.  More dispatches from a colonized culture.  More's the reason to book that ticket, find a floor, and line up at the UCB theater.

The Pacific: Terrific, Horrific

A COUPLE OF weekends ago, feeling a bit under the weather and worked-out, I did a very stupid thing.  I watched all ten hours of the new Tom Hanks/Spielberg miniseries THE PACIFIC in one sitting.

Now there's a whole bunch of reasons why this is a bad idea, but one of them certainly isn't quality.  In short, The Pacific  (HBO & HBO Canada, April 14/9pm)  is very, very, very good.

The follow up to the enormously successful Band of Brothers, The Pacific may ultimately lack the cohesiveness of that series' tracking of Easy Company, but that's merely because of it staying true to the template established by Brothers...don't embellish & keep it close.

Like the earlier series, The Pacific accomplishes its depiction of the bloody, four-year long hop from island to island by focusing in on some real life material.  In this case, the real-life figures are Sgt. John Basilone, Pvt. Eugene Sledge, and Pvt. Robert Leckie. All were with the 1st Marine Division, but each was not present at every battle.  Basilone was celebrated in accounts at the time, and Sledge & Leckie, the material comes from their published memoirs.

At the end of the series, which tracks the men returning home, one of them is dropped off by taxi. The driver, a former army man, who, in a nod to Brothers, served in the European theatre, refuses to take money. "I got to see London & Paris at least. You guys in the Pacific..."

And that's probably the best way to describe the show. It's great, it's compelling, and as it goes along it's very, very, very difficult to watch.

My knowledge of the Pacific war was limited going in... I knew placenames, some of the battles, and the idea that it was tough.  It's a tribute to the guys making this series (in Australia) that they managed to make all the islands look different.

They also don't skimp on either side of the story.  They show the heroism, but also the madness.  The U.S. marines are not always portrayed in the best light.  You see people do terrible, terrible dehumanizing things. The Okinawa episode, which comes 2nd last, is almost unbearable.

But the psychological map painted, almost essential so that it's not the fog and noise of dirty, bloody battle in every episode -- shows the cost paid in full by the "Greatest Generation."  People of my vintage grew up thinking that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is something that came out of Vietnam.  The Pacific sets that record straight, once and for all.

It's hard to watch as these fine young men are slowly ground down by the horrors they witnessed, but it does make you realize that the rose-colored way we view WWII as maybe the last "good war," is about as meaningless a distinction as can be made.

A few years ago CBC tried to do a doc called "The Valour and the Horror" which suggested and postulated a version of bombing in WWII that was not entirely heroic.  Veterans groups got so up in arms that the documentary was shelved and not reshown, and the CBC apologized.

Now most of the veterans with the first hand accounts of The Pacific are gone.  To view a series like this, and to see that experience, what they went through, warts and all -- doesn't make it seem less heroic to me.  At all.  It makes it seem more human. And tragic, and awful.

It sounds like I'm warning you away from this show.  I'm not.  It's important. It's well made. It's very compelling and enjoyable. There are wonderful love stories in there, and performances that are revelations, particularly James Badge Dale as Leckie and Joe Mazello as Sledge.  But there's also a very strong guest performance by an Australian actress, Claire van der Boom (the name fits) in Ep 3.

Hats off to Hanks and Spielberg on this one.  It's great to see someone using power to make something that's important.  As a document of sacrifice & horror, The Pacific is simply required viewing. Any politician that rattles sabres should be strapped in a chair and forced to watch it exactly as I did.

But without the breaks. And rewinding certain parts.

There are plenty of historical backgrounders on the HBO site too. They're well worth watching.

2nd Week Lucky

WELL, LOOKS LIKE not a lot of people wanted to drink out of the other side of the glass or try to hold their breath, & I guess they like the look of that young whippersnapper Dan For Mayor.  Because both of CTV's new comedies came back with very respectable 2nd week numbers  -- over 1.1 million viewers each.

And that is up against a new episode of HOUSE, which is, or flirts with, being the number one scripted show in Canada.  Yes, yes, House demolished them. But owning any piece of that podium in a highly competative slot is reason to celebrate.

Congrats to both shows!

Dan, Dan, Things I Don't Understand.

FIRST THINGS FIRST. Got to see a preview of tonight's Dan For Mayor (CTV, 8:30 and it continues the genial promise of the pilot.) Do watch.  It's preceded by Hiccups, at 8, which I didn't like quite as much but enjoyed more than I thought I would. I look forward to seeing it improve as it finds its feet. And I'm more than happy to watch a Vancouver-based sitcom.  I think that city's nutty enough to host about three comedies.

Next, here's a blog post of a vintage I just don't get, but which is endemic to Canadian TV coverage.

The number of successful hour-long dramas in the history of Canadian television can be counted on one hand: Street Legal, Da Vinci’s Inquest,North of 60, Road to Avonlea, and Due South. The latest attempt, the 13-part, Toronto-shot series The Bridge, is up against long odds.

First things first -- what exactly is the yardstick we're using here? Does successful mean loadsaviewers? Then how is The Beachcombers and Seeing Things both off the list?  And, ahem...Littlest Hobo? How about Artistic triumph?  Well, then I'd say you've left out Slings & Arrows & probably the show that was so cool it was WAY ahead of its time, Wojeck.

Currently, Flashpoint & Heartland both connect seriously with huge viewing blocks by modern standards.  Being Erica is a critical darling with a passionate fan base both here and in the USA.  When you get your lead on Oprah for some praise, something is being done right.

Beyond that there are dirty little industrials that nevertheless sold like stink all over the world... Relic Hunter.  Psi Factor.  La Femme Nikita. There's Traders, which managed to cater to a devoted audience for five years up against the number one show in TV, and counted both Hart Hanson (Bones) and David Shore (House) among its alumni.

What's more likely is that there's somebody else making the pronouncement of God to put forward the same bullshit thing that due to journalistic laziness, becomes the dominant Canadian narrative.  It's the same reason why reportage of ratings numbers are so deadly here.  Nobody puts out the full picture, so there is no real context.  God forbid we'd have somebody like The Programming Insider actually parsing what things really mean.

Then again, in Canada, sometimes things go away for utterly arbitrary reasons.  Intelligence gets canceled for low ratings because they weren't looking for that critical audience that year. DaVinci is called a hit even though its numbers slid so badly by the end of its run they weren't all that much greater than Intelligence.

Did it matter to the quality of either show?  Hell no. They were awesome and Haddock's a genius.

Now John Doyle thinks the CBC's going for light fluff and that's great. Except when Intelligence got canceled a few years ago, when it was a tragedy.  Got it?

Blood Ties got canceled due to "low ratings" despite the fact that it did better than what preceded and followed it on both Canadian and U.S. channels, and sold everywhere in the world.

In Canada, the why's are rarely parseable down to one, dispassionate reason. Such is the curse and the burden of a system where fiat and political considerations trump entertainment value most days of the week.

Woe betide the person who builds the list of "the only successful one hour dramas" in Canadian history. It's a fool's errand, because the metrics aren't equal and the judgement is entirely subjective.

And since it's all bullshit anyway, let's just raise our glasses of sherry, toast the sunset, and hope there's a beer ad that comes along soon to tell us what it means to be good and proper Canadians.

Hmm

IS IT WORTH noting that the two winners in Screenplay at the Oscars last night, HURT LOCKER, and PRECIOUS, were both works where the collaborative nature of film was celebrated, rather than trying to cram it into a "Director is King" narrative -- or leaving your co-writer or creator frozen out there, flapping, uncomfortably?

Nah. Probably not.

With Glowing Hearts

I THINK I just more or less came to the conclusion right now that I won't be watching the Oscars tonight. I have a party to go to and everything.  But I won't be going.  I probably won't even watch.

Why?  Because as is the way of the freelancer, I've had meetings and work pushed so that this whole weekend & the next few days are about a desperate attempt to turn around an outline and a draft for two separate projects before I smack into a long-arranged time commitment for a third.  Such is the way.  I don't have a spare 3 hours to spend on ephemeral movie-stuff that isn't  that important to me anyway.

Quite a change from a week ago, when I and everybody else in Canada, it seems, couldn't tear our eyes away from the TV -- the Gold Medal Final in Hockey and the aftermath meant that I even found myself watching the Closing Ceremonies of the Olympics - if anything, under normal circumstances, an even lamer live event than your average Oscar telecast.

Just because that's kind of how my brain bubbles, I of course managed to relate it back to Canadian TV.  Others here did the same thing, musing on what the Own The Podium mania meant for our particular, colonized culture.  So here, in one place, a few ruminations on what could be with our domestic TV.  Enjoy the Oscars.  I'll be pounding the keyboard, sweating blood onto the keys.  And no one will likely ask what I'm wearing.  Track pants, if you must know.

So be it.

From DTOS:

Why the Giant Beavers & Flying Moose Mattered.  - What the iconography of the closing ceremonies signals about the shifting winds of Canadian Storytelling.

Gold is Everywhere. - How a quest for excellence might look if we bothered to carry it into domestic TV & film, and why the chimera of importing Americans won't save us.

Prospectors take note.  - In which a Canadian network finally brags about its homegrown show besting someone else's homegrown show -- and why putting those two shows head to head puts  the lie to the "Canadians won't watch Canadian Tv" canard.

From Will Dixon's Uninflected Images Juxtaposed:

Will weighs in on maybe where that prejudice comes from.

From Jim Henshaw's The Legion of Decency, he asks you to stop blaming the actors.

Note to MP's, or CRTC commissioners:  If just once we saw evidence that maybe some of these arguments were at least in your wheelhouse of understanding, you might just gain a few people who know how to craft a narrative. That's kind of a useful thing in politics. Just saying.

But instead, we hear that there's a National Digital Strategy, but it doesn't really consider any thought of how film & TV production -- which has been shown to be extremely effective in stimulating communities in just about every independent study ever done -- fits into it.

But you know, at least the Culture minister has a Twitter account.

Awesome.

HEY GUYS,  let's do a little PR on the internet lesson, shall we?

Today's word is, "Shill."

Read this thread.  Seriously.  I've been Howling over this for about an hour.  When I was a wee little bean and dreamed of growing up to be a corporate communications whore, I at least imagined I'd do it with a bit of panache.

Dude.

#internetfail

Cuppa Coffee update.

I'D JUST LIKE to say, too, that I've been very surprised in the last few days by the number of people who've taken the time to hit my PayPal button there and forward me a few shekels.

And you know what? The nice things you say in your notes are just as heartwarming as what will undoubtedly be a mini-Itunes binge soon.   This beats AdSense everyday.  I know that not everyone has it in them to join the fray and bang out some comments, and it's been wonderful to hear from you.  Really.

The internet is so full of creeps and people looking to be horrible that it's hard sometimes to remember that most people are actually quite lovely. Thanks.

Toronto Screenwriting Conference

GOT ONE THING for you today.


And this is a post about a gulf between newbie-professional development.


The problem with a lot of screenwriting or TV conference/panel thingies is because it's a so-called "glamorous" business (trust me, the reality's anything but, but you don't learn that til you're in it) you often get a very high level of wheat-to-chaff or noise-to-nuggets ratio.  


If it's something like the Paley panels, half the people are there to see the actors. Or sometimes the audience wants to know what it's like to work with so-and-so.  At something like Comic-con you're going to get some very specific fanboy-like stuff, which can lead to better questions and answers or worse depending on how on the ball the moderator is and out of hand the audience is.

See, somehow I don't think that, say, P.D. days for teachers ever get this nuts. Or Policy Wonks.  Actually, I've got a pretty funny image in my head right now of a bunch of Economics geeks showing up with signs & bumph to a Paul Krugman lecture.  (And that's probably b/c of the great New Yorker piece I read on him where one of the scenes is the longtime sci-fi fan addressing a con in Montreal.)


Anyway, if you're a working writer and you've ever sat in the crowd at one of these things thinking, "God, can you please ask something USEFUL?" or even if you're a newbie, up and coming writer who's been frustrated when you sat through a panel that told you stuff you already knew about a show, then I've got news for you.

There's a two-day conference coming to Toronto in April that is going to be a process-oriented, nitty gritty professional development seminar for screenwriters.  It's aimed at working writers, and seriously motivated, craft-oriented up-and-comers.  The moderators and questions will be process and craft focused, not "what's Dexter really like?" or "How do I get a job on your show?"


The Toronto Screenwriting Conference 2010 website is now up and open.  The two day event takes place April 10 and 11th, 2010 at Ryerson University.


Confirmed speakers/guests include:  


Chuck Tatham - Co-Executive Producer, How I Met Your Mother 


Rob C. Cooper - Co-Creator & Executive Producer, Stargate: Atlantis, Stargate: Universe


Tim Long - Executive Producer, The Simpsons


Rob Zotnowski - Head of television development and production for Stars Road Entertainment (producing partners are Sam Raimi and Josh Donen)


Sheldon Bull - author of the excellent half-hour comedy writing book, Elephant Bucks


Ellen Sandler - (Everybody loves Raymond, The TV Writer's Workbook), Dr. Linda Seger (mutliple screenwriting books)  Pam Douglas (Writing the TV Drama Series) & others confirmed & yet to be announced.


This conference is an initiative of my agency, Meridian Artists, and it comes out of a lot of frustrated conversations about past events like this and how they fell short.  This is not a cash grab -- it's an initiative to try and raise the level of craft talk & discussion & deliver professional development that all screenwriters can get behind.  


If you attend, you're going to get trenchant questions that drill down into the nitty gritty of process, craft, the state of TV writing today, and in the future.  I'll be moderating at least one of the discussions, and there'll be plenty of time for networking & audience questions.


Cost is $369. (CDN, obviously.) There's a student rate that I believe is limited to the first 50 who register with valid student I.D.   


I've been to a lot of these things and come away disappointed.  Whatever level you find yourself at in the business today, I know you're going to find this conference useful, if you attend.


Anyway, check out the schedule, and maybe I'll see you there.

Alex Epstein Ruins My Childhood

GREAT. JUST GREAT.

Here I am, trying to power my way through an epic headache, keeping to a rough work/break schedule, and then I go and read Alex's amusing entry here trying to come up with better insults than "retard."

That links to a thread here.  And there are indeed many amusing alternatives.

There's also the uncomfortable reminder that, like "retard," "idiot", "imbecile",  and "moron" all once had clinical definitions.  And were connected to the eugenics movement.  So, you know, there's a group you want to be part of.

Then I go even further down the list and I find out that one of my favorite, harmless but colorful insults -- calling someone a "maroon," which came to me courtesy Bugs Bunny, is actually horribly racist.

ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME?

I click two simple links and now I have to digest the news that Bugs Freaking Bunny was a racist?

Damn you to the Pit, Epstein.  I blame you.

In related news, no I will not stop using the word "niggardly."  Pick up a dictionary, you mouth-breathing jholes.






Damnit, that wasn't satisfying at all.

The Kind of Concentrate That Doesn't Involve Delicious Florida Oranges.

WOKE UP THIS morning with a headache and dry mouth. And then I read Ira Wagman's article about the Shaw deal for Canwest & media concentration.

And now I don't feel so bad anymore, because I imagine a pinata is supposed to be dry & anticipating getting bashed around like that would give anyone a headache:

Is anything missing here? What about Canadian audiences, those most affected by all of this? They only enter the debate in the crudest of terms, usually as being in desperate need of protection from too much American culture. The cost of that protection is greater concentration and, it now appears, less influence over policy decisions.

What is interesting about the Shaw-Canwest deal, like those that preceded it, is how little audiences are being considered. Since many Canadians use a range of digital devices for their media consumption, the policy debate has to shift away from questions about protection and fears of cultural annexation towards questions about ensuring access to a wide swath of digital life.

But doing this would mean revisiting the principles on which the system is built. Revisiting Canada’s Broadcasting Act, last amended in 1991, might be the best place to begin that discussion.

Attention, Prospectors.

WELL TO ANYONE who is on the email blast list of the Canadian networks, this is a welcome -- and kind of strange sight.  CTV & Global have traditionally got into the habit of sending out press releases crowing about how so-and-so program beat so-and-so program.  What's weird, of course, is that most of the time they're crowing about shows that they had absolutely no hand in making.  Kind of like if, say, you sent out a bragging press release taking credit for Avatar cause you rented on DVD & everybody in the family enjoyed it.  Credit for the rental, yes...but anything more...ah....no.

But last night, two Canadian made comedies went head to head.  Now, the CBC show, 18 to Life, has sagged a bit since a fairly strong premiere.  And CTV is still high off everybody (and I mean everybody) watching their Olympic coverage for two weeks... but still, it makes for a much more satisfying presser:

CTV’s HICCUPS and DAN FOR MAYOR Debut 

with 1.9 Million Viewers Each  

 

- Two new homegrown comedies win timeslots against HOUSE and THE BACHELOR -

– Inaugural CTV.ca live online chats a great success with almost 700 comments submitted –

- HICCUPS and DAN FOR MAYOR latest to join CTV’s online line-up at CTV.ca -

 

Toronto, ON (March 2, 2010) – CTV’s newest homegrown comedies, HICCUPS and DAN FOR MAYOR, premiered to 1.9 million viewers each last night, becoming the most-watched premieres of any scripted Canadian series this season. The two new series won the 8 - 9 p.m. ET timeslot against both HOUSE (Global/FOX, 1.3 million) and the season finale of THE BACHELOR (City/ABC, 1.3 million, 8-9 p.m.). Head-to-head, HICCUPS delivered 240% more viewers than 18 TO LIFE (CBC; 558,000) at 8 p.m. ET, while DAN FOR MAYOR delivered 374% more viewers than LITTLE MOSQUE ON THE PRAIRIE (CBC; 404,000) at 8:30 p.m. ET.

 

HICCUPS and DAN FOR MAYOR delivered a big lead-in to their counterparts in CTV’s Monday night comedy block, with both TWO AND A HALF MEN and BIG BANG THEORY winning the night with 2.3 million viewers each at 9 and 9:30 p.m. ET.

Now, leave the spin for the spinners. But there's a couple of things that bear pointing out here. The first is that the fact that both had the same rating - 1.9 million, means that Dan for Mayor retained Hiccups' audience, and the audience for Hiccups stayed through the whole show. That's very, very good.

The big-name U.S. shows that followed the block only drew 20% higher than the homegrown comedies.  Shades of the days when Corner Gas would draw the same -- or more -- as the U.S. imports that preceded or followed them.

And perhaps more importantly, let's leave corporate peeing matches aside altogether and look at the real picture.

Almost two million five hundred thousand Canadians chose to watch Canadian-produced comedies on the TV last night, in the eight o clock hour.  If you look at that in terms of Canada's population, that's about 10% of the people who speak English as a first language.  1 in 10.

So that would be equivalent to about 30 million people watching comedy at 8pm in the USA.

One in ten.

Explain to me now how Canadians don't want to watch Canadian TV?

So there you go -- Entertainment shows, Q, Dead Tree Journalists, Canwest Papers, CP, CBC Radio --whoever's listening...I dare ONE OF YOU to get that story out there.

Anybody.

Because six months from now we're going to have license hearings at the CRTC and the same old people are going to traipse up there and talk about how Canadians don't want to watch Canadian shows.

It sounds to me like that's just not the case. They tune in with hope, wanting to be entertained.  Wanting the chance to see something funny, and different, that's also theirs.

How about writing that -- for once?

Hey Writers...

YES. I KNOW. It's hard, isn't it?  You kind of hate yourself right now.  I get it. I do.

Let it go.  Let the morning come.

And remember, there's hard, and then there's hard & joyous.
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This too shall pass.

Gold Is Everywhere

I HEARD FROM SASHA ROIZ last night.

As I wrote yesterday, Sasha is a brilliant actor -- exactly the type of Actor Jim Henshaw talks about here; the type we could be nurturing & seeing succeed in popular Canadian shows before they decide to go south to the USA.  Sasha was the lead in my mini, Across The River To Motor City, and he nailed it.  Sasha had no choice but to go down to the USA.  He hit a wall here, the same wall that so many Canadian actors hit.  Ironically, he's now getting noticed for his solid and compelling work in Caprica -- which shoots in Vancouver.  He had to go to L.A. to find work in his own country.

That would be insanity in any other business.  Here? That's par for the course. I know two writers right now trying to get U.S. work because they know if they do -- even if they're only down there for a year or two -- they'll be able to march back to Canada and get a show easy.

I would have loved to have used Sasha in a few other things before he left.  He probably would have gone to the USA anyway.  I understand ambition, and think everyone should follow their dreams. But it should be a choice.  We shouldn't make our performers Okies trying to follow the dustbowl (snow covered?) trail to greater glory.

Among the many plagues of Canadian series television -- of which the worst is, I still believe, poor management of talent above & below the line, & a lack of will & talent to see a story through to its best iteration -- there is this persistent regard for the consistently disproved idea that somehow, what we need is to import Americans.

There are entire production companies in Canada that believe this to be true. They're working the WGC to try to get American Showrunners in under the wire...and they're like Michel Roy at Telefilm, musing about attracting American talent to make movies more saleable.  Like the idiots who preach the utterly discredited mantra of supply side economics -- they've been proven wrong time and time again. (Ask anyone from the Wild West Dentist Tax Credit Days how well that worked. Even The Shat doesn't remember the movies he did here, I'm guessing.)

But WHY are they wrong?  And what other alternative exists?

Well, they're wrong because the assumption is that somehow that burnished American talent will guarantee hits.  This is the same talent pool that fails 90% of the time with every pilot season. Because that's the failure rate. Fullstop.

Time and time again what we've proven, in fact, was that we could attract 'talent,' yes.... but it's not 'A' talent.  Just like CBS and NBC will always treat those shows they paid $400 000 an ep for a s filler, talent will always try to get a gig down south first.

So you don't get A lister actors, or Directors, or Writers coming up.  You get hacks.  Not all the time (People relocate for love, for lifestyle all the time, for instance...) but most of the time.  The pool of people who could actually make a difference to your bottom line or foreign sales is low...and don't kid yourself, Americans know who all those people are, too.

Chances are, if they're here, you bought mutton dressed as lamb.  Which is fine. But it's not going to save you, and it shouldn't be funded like a 10/10 Canadian production.

A lot of people - me included - made easy fun at the whole "Own The Podium" thing -- and then a little nation of 33 million people won the most Gold Medals at any winter games, ever.  Is there a lesson there? I sure think there is.  Does anyone have the balls or the stones or the courage to see it, learn it, and live it?

Moving on to the other mutton in the system.  You may ask yourself why you never read an article or heard about Sasha Roiz until he took on the role of Sexy Sam Adama.  The answer for that would be easy. The fire of promotion in this nation is fed by bellows that only choke out red white and blue smoke.

Let me be less obscure -- and remind you how it works in other countries.  In other countries, they don't buy and show and shovel onto the air any American piece of shit show that only runs three episodes.  Nope. There are no bus ads or billboards for the horribly lame comedy that's gone in a fortnight. They wait til CSI becomes, well, CSI, before they sign on.  There's a bit of quality control there...gotta make sure those Desperate Housewives aren't all just a bunch of slags before you get into bed with them, so to speak.

Because they import only the best, the actual working, interesting, worthy shows from the USA, there's a whole lot more space on the air for homegrown shows, and ink to maybe write about homegrown Sasha Roiz's before they go to the USA.  And because of that, Casting Directors actually work hard to find those people, rather than just offer up the same 20 "approved" faces.   And as a result, the actors -- who may choose to stay, or choose to leave, can do so, confident in the fact that the structure of their industry has given them options.

The UK has only twice the number of households as Canada. But they spend eight times as much on locally produced dramas and comedies.  Think about that.

There's much that can't be changed in our system -- at least not easily -- and a lot of it really is wrapped up in this notion that there is no premium for success since the model really is based on re-broadcasting American creativity.  Even standard TV rules of marketing, like, oh, I don't know, if you lose more than 50 percent of your lead in show, you get the chop -- don't seem to apply.

But it strikes me that there could be one tiny little fix that might help you hear more about the Sasha Roiz's before the Bill Brioux's and Andrew Ryan's and Alison Cunninghams et al write their annual "Canadian faces on American TV" article...

...and that's a bit of culling.  The Marriage Ref debuted Sunday to so-so ratings and terrible reviews.  Doesn't look like much of a winner, even with Seinfeld there.  What kind of recognition factor would we have if shows like that got the Canadian TV treatment?  You get your cursory preview article, and then if you stink up the joint, you don't get promo'd anymore. At all. Pull the ads, pull the promo.  Maybe then you've got a few inches to give to the ingenue or the young writer coming up.

A couple of years ago, on a panel at the Banff TV Festival, I got journos to reluctantly admit that the Entertainment Weekly practice of returning to shows they'd reviewed earlier in the season to see if they'd gotten better -- to offer, in other words, a second kick at the can, was a good idea.  Bill Brioux even did this recently with the CBC show 18 to Life.  There should be more of it.

Washed up, past it, American talent will never save us.  It just won't.  But the lesson of Vancouver is that gold is all around.

But to find the Gold you have to work for it.  Journos, Writers, Casting, Prodcos...we all have to work for it.

I know it sounds hard -- but really, how's what you've been doing going for you?  Lot of  new Newspaper Jobs out there, huh?  What have you got to lose, then?

What do any of us have to lose?  Or more importantly, if our strategy up til now is trying to win by desperately trying not to lose...then can we admit that's been a total failure?

Get prospecting.  Look for the Gold. Don't wait for the Americans to find it and then run slavishly to someone to get the interview about how excited they are that they just got U.S. citizenship.

No matter what happens, Rachel McAdams will always be the the young ingenue in the first season of Slings & Arrows. People will be seeing her in that role for years.  They did it.  They found her.







Gold is all around you.


And Sasha, I'll grab that coffee with you anytime.

I just hope it doesn't have to be in L.A.

The Dirty Business

HEY THERE. For five years I've pretty much written what I thought about Canadian TV, and you've read it for free. And that's cool.  I take shit from the interested & the crazy, and know of at least two jobs I lost because I spoke my mind, and that's cool too. I think honest self-reflection is needed to be a better creator, and honesty in general is desperately needed in this community.

People have been telling me for months with my traffic I should go to Google Adsense.  I have been resistant to this. I don't like it.  But you'll notice that I've added a Donate through Paypal button up there to the right.

The idea is this. If you read something here that you think helps you, that you find interesting or inspiring or informing or whatever, click that button, and throw me a Grande Americano, or a couple of songs off of Itunes or something.  I don't expect much.

And hey, if you're one of those radical non-tippers, that's coo too.  See, that's why I don't like the ads. I'll take the radical soft-heartedness by people like me who buy people drinks regularly. And the rest of yas can go on about your day without having to read that weird old tip about how to reduce belly fat in your eyelids, or whatever.

Oh Yeah...

AND 18 TO LIFE also returns with a new episode, tonight at 8pm on CBC TV.  Tonight's ep co-written by Canadian Comedy Writer/Ambassador to the World at Large Rob Sheridan.

I have to mention this, because if I don't, he'll whinge at me like a little girl.  With a severe adenoid problem.

Perhaps you could PVR Hiccups?  There's a lamb.

(I have to say that there's a part of me that is happy that two homegrown comedies go head to head on two broadcast networks.  With a few other changes, and a bit of a different torque, that might almost be considered a sign of a healthy industry.  I said almost.  Still too many of these for that to be strictly true: "*".)

Genie Awards Nominations

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE recipients of Genie Awards Nominations (These are the Canadian Film Awards, the Equivalent of the tv Geminis) The full list of nominations & trailers for all 5 nominated "Best Pictures" can be found here:

But as for the writing awards...

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY / MEILLEUR SCÉNARIO
ATOM EGOYAN – Adoration
ÉMILE GAUDREAULT, IAN LAUZON – De père en flic / Father and Guns
CHARLES OFFICER, INGRID VENINGER – NURSE.FIGHTER.BOY
JACQUES DAVIDTS – Polytechnique
DAVID BEZMOZGIS – Victoria Day

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY / MEILLEURE ADAPTATION
MARIE-HÉLÈNE COUSINEAU, SUSAN AVINGAQ, MADELINE PIUJUQ IVALU – Before Tomorrow
KARI SKOGLAND – Fifty Dead Men Walking
TONY BURGESS – Pontypool

I have to say, just as a bystander (I don't work in film much) I think that the WGC Awards came up with a more interesting list of nominees. Although it's nice to see PONTYPOOL get some love (that screenplay wasn't eligible for a WGC Award b/c Tony Burgess is not a member.)

Anyway, good luck to all the nominees!

And those new shows, preytell?

WELL I'D LOVE to give you a juicy review for The Bridge & Dan For Mayor & Hiccups, but I haven't seen 'em.

Ah screeners, why are you so hard to get out there?

Hiccups - Created by Brent Butt & starring Butt & Nancy Robertson, premieres tonight at 8PM.

Dan For Mayor - The show starring Fred Ewaniuck (Hank from CG) & created by a trio of CG writers, bows at 8:30.

Both on your local CTV stations.

Here's a Macleans review by someone who's seen the shows.

Good luck guys! Hope that CTV habit everyone's still got holds for your debuts!

Why The Giant Beavers & Flying Moose Mattered

Canada tried on a lot of hats these last two weeks. In many ways, the most surprising ones were the most familiar.

I didn't expect to howl.

The opening ceremonies had been so typical. From the unfortunate imagery of the flaccid column, to the inability to pick one torch bearer, to whatever Wayne Gretsky was doing in that truck, the whole thing seemed rather...mild.  Even the parts that split people artistically -- the slam poet, for instance...didn't provoke enough response to catch any kind of fire.  No, it was an empty, mild show. And the best you could probably say about it was some stray American commentator who thought Canada's moniker of "First Nations" was the best descriptor of indigenous peoples she'd ever heard.

But around the time the giant beavers rolled out last night in the closing ceremonies, I found tears rolling down my cheeks. And not the lame, emo, sad kind.  The Vegas-y gusto with which Michael Bublé sold "The Maple Leaf Forever" while rolling out every single trinket, token, or indicator of cheesy Canadian identity announced, "we're done with this, and think it's unbearably cheesy, even if you don't."  It was a tremendous break from the past.  It didn't ask permission -- and no, it didn't even say 'sorry.'

There were aftershocks from certain quarters, to be sure...nervous Tweets wondering what the world was thinking of all this, some saying it was a giant in joke and that was bad, some utterly failing to get that in joke -- which was bad too.

What seemed to have been forgotten around the edges was the last fifteen days. Where a different, vibrant, modern, urban Canada was shown to the world. If that didn't change minds or perceptions, then fuck it. Nothing in a closing ceremony could.

And that's okay.

See, it's the 'okay' that's actually the impressive part.

Canada -- and when I say Canada here, I mean English Canada -- French Canada is, as always, another story ... has suffered from its lingering provincial status for too long.

You see it every time an American show mentions Canada and it makes news here.  You see it in the "how do you like_______" parroted to every celebrity as they pass through a Canadian city.  You see it in the terrible, sad thirst for validation -- not from each other, no -- but from an American cultural gatekeeper whose default switch is always going to be indifference.

The Canada that's locked in a co-dependent relationship with a partner that doesn't even know there's a competition has to die if we're ever going to stride forward as a culture -- a culture who recognizes & celebrates our differences, rather than uses them as cudgels to batter one another.

A Canadian show that gets recognized as good at home, first -- not because Americans have picked it up. That's one measure. We've had a couple of those -- most notably Corner Gas & Trailer Park Boys.  We need more.

We need to recognize our actors before they go south and find fame and succour there.  So no, James McGowan shouldn't show up on the fucking 24.  You know what? One  of the proudest moments I've had in this business was helping to cast an actor named Sasha Roiz in Across The River to Motor City, the miniseries I co-created.  Sasha's an intense, smoldering screen presence currently heating up Caprica -- and getting noticed for that.  I helped give him a lead role, so when all the press start to swoon over Caprica or his next U.S. role, I can say, "where were ya? you're late."

We need to turn away from the gravity of political debates happening down south if they obscure our own.  The fact that the Americans continue to screw up health care does not abrogate our responsibility to fix our (mostly superior) single-payer system.  And NFLD Premier Danny Williams should not be a prism to debate both sides of that just because he went south for care. That in itself is a detail, not a rallying flag.  Look at the system, and fix it. Don't get distracted by the American optics.

We have cultural industry examples that do just fine, that have shaken loose their provinciality.  How interesting that as people grumbled over the choices of pop acts to close the night last night, most could generate a much deeper, hipper, more eclectic list of possible performers.  That, my friends, comes directly out of a rigorous system of content protectionism enacted in the 60's and 1970's. That is why today that industry -- even with all the troubles in the music business -- is mature, with bands and performers who we celebrate at home without particularly caring if the USA likes them or not.

I'm lucky enough to be an immigrant to this nation, from the USA.  Though I love the country of my birth and the country of my youth equally, I am forever amazed by the irony that so often, it's my American voice that gets drafted in defence of Canadian thinking and culture.

My friend Howard Bernstein told me a wonderful story from his youth when I worked for him, sigh, back in mine.  Seems like a lot of people of his generation, he took some time to do the longhair backpack through Europe.  And when the people got together and said where they were from, people would say the City and country. Sometimes with pride, sometimes as an afterthought. Then you'd get to the guys who'd say through their thick borough honks, "I'm from the City."

The City, of course, was New York City.  They didn't feel the need to explain that. Didn't even occur to them.

While I don't think Canada is ever going to get to that place, and while I think we will continue to fight our own, inner parochialisms, Newfoundlanders who cringe every time a CODCO cast member turns up on a certain detective show, who want to celebrate said show simply for how well it makes the city look, or who, conversely, can't abide the tourist ads because they reinforce stereotypes -- I'm looking at you;  And Quebecois who still fight with the tongue troopers, toi aussi...  I think last night was an exorcism of sorts.

Making the old skeletons dance might make you uneasy -- that's kind of why it's fun -- but I think it really does reflect a new attitude I see among younger people in this great country.  The cringing is less, as is the navel-gazing.  They are citizens of a fluid, globalized, instant communication world. And they want to say what they want to say -- without seeing if it's gonna play in N.Y. or L.A. first.

Woe betide the old media dinosaur that doesn't recognize that.  If you've got ancient style provincial thinkers assigning & writing your culture pieces, it is time to clean house.  The calcified forces wanting to drag CBC back to some imagined idyllic Anne Murray-driven 1970's -- off with their heads!  You know what? I hope some of those thinkers show up writing for the New York Times really soon -- cause honestly, if that's what we've got to offer here, I'm more than willing to let my subscriptions lapse. I'm probably too young to be reading a newspaper, anyway.

Navel gazing didn't get us the Highway of Heroes or the Arcade Fire or the Kids in the Hall.  It won't get us more good music, and it won't get us fine Canadian literature, or a more vibrant theatre scene.  Til the hate of Toronto & the jokes about Vancouver become comfortable old moccasins and not flashpoints for culture debates, we're not there yet.

But of all people, Michael Bublé rocking a past-it, "officially unhip" and quaintly controversial song like The Maple Leaf Forever as Moose & Beaver flew through the air might have shook the icicles loose.

Welcome to your new Canada.  Now shutup and create something -- and don't look south for validation. Look to the guy beside you, or the girl next to him.

Give'r.

Gloves off, Throw Down.

OPEN THREAD STARTS NOW.

I will throw down with anyone who wants to say that those closing ceremonies didn't rock.

Including the giant beavers.  Especially the giant beavers.  Seriously.

Go to town in the comments. Let's rumble.

And CTV?

You guys did a fucking amazing job on the coverage. I'll fight about that too.

Oh, and Canada? All that pride & fun and stuff?  No backsies.

Thread's open.

Hopefully.

AS A WRAPPED-UP partisan, I think it's best to keep my powder dry on the subject that Bill Brioux writes about today, save two small comments:  I enjoyed the two seasons I did on THE BORDER and am proud of the work I did there.  I got to work with some of the best writers & directors in the Canadian industry -- and I've never seen a harder working crew.

But it's this sentence in the article that gets to me most:

The series did showcase a strong cast, with James McGowan emerging as a strong series lead. Hopefully we'll see him flanking Jack Bauer soon.

Normally I have a lot of time for Brioux.  But it's sentences and sentiments like that that really make me think, "why the fuck do we even bother?"

Take the shingle, close the shop, leave the mob to their teary-beer ad populism & red painted maple leaves, shuffle off to Silverlake, & when you hit down there tell every newspaper wanting to work "the Canadian angle" to go stick it in their five-hole.

So wrong.

I think it's the "hopefully" that really seals it.

The Snooki Principle

EVERY ONCE IN a while, something occurs to me to write about and I think I've just thought it up and then just before I write the entry I realize, "oh waitaminit...I think I actually read that somewhere."  It happens.

But sometimes you wrack your brain and you can't come up with whether you've come up with this, or someone else has.  And this is such a case. I think this is my own idea, I'm about 90% sure it is -- but there's a nagging part of me that wonders if I read it on a blog somewhere, or in an article or something.

I'm aware that this is the start of the long slow slide that ends with me not being able to remember the word for can opener. I'm thrilled by that, yes, thanks for asking.

Okay. Here's the theory.  I started thinking this in earnest when I was humbled completely late last year, or early this one by Jersey Shore, and how absolutely I enjoyed it.  It was a hard and shaky lesson after years of turning up my nose at The Hills and other shows of that MTV ilk.  But besides stupidity & violence, what the Shore had going for it was a clear, taut, easy-to-understand concept.

I'm doing a lot of development right now, and it is incredibly hard work.  Creating a world that provides possible springboards for lots of stories, and offers good characters, an interesting franchise, natural story possibilities and relatibility is tough.  So how do you know if you're there?

This isn't perfect; it's shorthand, but here goes. I call this The Snooki Principle.

Could it be a reality show? How would THAT show be constructed?

That's it.

Often when you try to explain your pitch you get led down weird blind alleys. But when you think of the shows that are really strong in their franchises, the truth is, you can translate them to the world of unscripted with very little alteration.

To wit:

Desperate Housewives  spawned the Real Housewives of...
The O.C.  gave us The Hills...

Right now they're casting about for a real life Will & Grace.

Modern Family could be a doc series tomorrow.  So could The Office.  (Those are easier, of course, because of the form.)

But look at the number of shows that have done the unscripted version of CSI.

Sons of Anarchy would be a great reality show -- and was, when Hunter Thompson did the book 3 decades ago and nearly got himself killed.

In terms of British shows, they have the comedy/caper show Hustle, and The Real Hustle.

Skins could be ported to reality easy-peasy.

And in our own backyard, I'm sure you could find a real life Trailer Park Boys if you went looking.  Flashpoint, you might be able to do that too, though you'd probably have to shoot for a long time to get that many juicy stories.  Slings & Arrows would work easily.

This obviously works less well for anything genre based.  It's not that Being Erica isn't a decent show, it just would be...uh...hard to find its real-world analogue.

On the other hand, look at The Wire, and then find the Sundance Channel's Brick City, about Newark. Voila. There you go.

This is primarily a visualization exercise. One of the gifts reality has given us is that they tend to have sharp characters, clearly defined conflicts, and -- wonder of wonders -- they are very, very, very story driven.

If your original series is feeling a little loogey to you, take a moment and visualize it as the spectacular success it is meant to be, and then imagine how they'd translate it to the reality realm.

If you get hung up, or can't figure out how it would play, chances are there's something at the heart of it that just isn't quite there yet.

And if you don't solve that thing, you'll wind up in Celebrity Rehab with Tom Sizemore, or people will be doing an Intervention with you. Right before they throw you to the Ice Road Truckers.

Okay. Stopping now.

So Smart

FROM THE YES! file:  (via Playback)

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

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

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


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


Seems so simple.


Congrats to Heather Conkie and everybody involved.  

Banner Day

I'VE GIVEN CTV stick in the past for burying mention of their shows on their websites, and for the poor use they've made of their online rights to the Daily Show.  So it's important to go with the other side of the story when you see it.

Just went to their site looking for some Olympic info, and the first thing that came up were a couple of big bold banners for two of the Canadian shows they have premiering next week.  Dan For Mayor came up too, eventually, in the same rotation as LOST and Desperate Housewives and the Olympic Coverage.

So that's something I guess!