Serial Killers

AT BANFF, I didn't get the opportunity to interview Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars, Cupid) because the only time they could offer me was during my panel. Diane Kristine did, though, and her surprising and interesting Blogcritics interview is here.

In my experience, I've found that TV writers tend to fall into two broad types. The introverts are the ones you imagine...they're quiet and nervous. They look like writers. They may be intense or funny or scabrous in the room, but at a party they tend to keep to the margins and observe. When they have to pitch, or schmooze, they force themselves to do it. But it's not easy and it's not fun.

Then there's the extroverts. The extroverted writers are people who like to talk to people. They enjoy performing, at least a bit. They generally have better relationships with the actors. They relish the opportunity to pitch and tell stories not just in the room, but in any social situation. I'm one of the extroverts.

The real unvarnished truth, of course, is that most TV writers probably fall on a continuum between those two poles. I've written before, I believe, about my impulse toward reticence with people I don't know and how I fight to overcome it. The truth is that if any writer was a complete extrovert, they probably wouldn't be able to abide the most important part of writing: the hours and hours you have to spend in your own head, or alone in a chair making something work.

That's a long explanation to get to a not-too-funny point: Rob Thomas is pretty much the grand high poohbah of writer extroverts.

In his master class session at Banff, moderated by Gillian Flynn of Entertainment Weekly, Thomas was relaxed and funny. He talked a lot about his post-Mars gig, running a new show for ABC starring Judy Greer. (Miss Guided) He repeated his highly improbable-but-true tale of how he got his start in the business (which you can read in the linked interview above,) and he even dished a little dirt. (Let's just say he's probably not on Kevin Williamson's Christmas Card list.)

Though it was highly entertaining, there was, of course, a bit of a funereal vibe over the session. I would say about 95% of the writer mafia at Banff was in the room, and a bunch of execs, and producers. It was also the least grey session I attended at Banff. The median age of the room was about 10-12 years younger than any other panel I went to. The room, in other words, was chock full of diehard, depressed Veronica Mars fans.

Thomas had obviously had time to work through his feelings about the cancellation. He was very gracious and understanding about it - while still pointing out that he thinks the Pussycat Dolls had something to do with putting the shiv in.

As I sat in the audience, seeing this tanned, good looking guy enjoy himself on stage, I thought, "remember to act that way when your baby is cancelled."

Truth is, Mars and Thomas has been a touchstone for me in more ways than just as a fan of quality TV (and quality genre TV, which is even harder to find.) For a couple of years now, when I've been pitching series, I've talked about the concept of "Veronica Mars serialization..."

What do I mean?

Well, if you take that first season of VM, there is definitely a season-long arc. But the interesting thing about the way the show was constructed was that the first couple of eps dealt very heavily with the mystery, and so did the last couple. But in the middle, there were all these strong and interesting standalone episodes, where a case walked in the door and was solved by the fade-to-black-vanity-card. In those episodes, there might be a serial element touched on -- but lightly. I really felt watching it that there was enough meat in the standalone ep to interest you, and if you weren't a regular viewer -- those little serial moments in the middle were so minor that you wouldn't be turned off.

It seemed, in fact, to be a much better execution of a formula that had originally been tried on X-Files, where there were "arc episdoes" (usually during sweeps) and standalones. The problem with X-Files was that the break between those arc episodes always felt forced...I mean, you discover something about bees or black oil and then don't follow it up for weeks because...why, exactly? The whole thing was so amped during the arc eps that they clashed with the pace of the other stories. With VM the threads were still out there, (heh heh, 'the threads are out there' No? ....nevermind) and you got the sense that you were just reflecting the world -- where clues don't often fall into your lap and sometimes it takes a while to solve things.

Now, I know, most of this is academic, because VM was never anything even close to a hit. But from a construction standpoint, I thought this idea of "Veronica Mars style serialization" could point a way toward the cessation of hostilities between the serialization/standalone camp in series TV.

In other words, between the creators, and the network types.

So when it came time for questions in Thomas' session, I asked him about it:

ME: You've seemed to come up with this formula where you have heavily serialized opening episodes and closing episodes, and in the midddle there you manage to tell interesting standalone stories where you would just hit the two or three serial points an ep where if you didn't watch before you wouldn't get thrown out. So I'm wondering now...in everything that happened. What are your thoughts now -- serialization vs. standalone, and what do you think the secret is to getting people to buy into serialization?

The tough thing for me is I'm a writer who loves serialization in a market that doesn't. On this new show I'm on [Miss/Guided starring Judy Greer] I got the directive right from the network president: we want to be able to air these in any order we see fit. you know...we got this initial order of 6 episodes. And they've shuffled the deck. And it makes it really hard to even do the level of serialization The Office does, with the romance and Jim and Pam -- so it's hard...I feel like as long as we promised the network that there would be closed endings in Veronica Mars -- a case comes into the office in the cold open, and it's solved by the final act -- it bought us a lot of leeway in terms of allowing for an ongoing mystery. And yet at the same time, we were tinkering with that until the very end. Um, if Veronica Mars had come back for a fourth season, there would have been no arcing mystery. And the reason for that is we felt -- and I use that and I'm not sure who the 'we' is -- it was felt is a better way to say that -- was that people who were casually sampling the show weren't coming back because they feel like I'm missing elements, I can't figure out what's going on, I'm not going to come back -- in much the same way as, you know, the first season of 24 when I heard this is a good show a good show and I tried to sample it 8 episdoes in, it was...I have no idea...because we had run off our viewers in season one and season two. In retrospect, I don't even know what the best plan is, to answer your question. I love to watch serialiized things. I loved the Sopranos. I could watch that ongoing soap opera like thing forever. Um, and yet, you know, they will discuss in network meetings what their research shows--that the average viewer of any show will watch one out of four episodes. Therefore can you afford to sell a show that's that serial. It's a difficult question and one that I don't have an answer to. Creatively I love serialized shows...they buy and make fewer of those, though.

Sigh. Well. That was depressing, to be sure. I mean, I guess I knew all that. The new thing was the one-in-four. The last time I heard that bandied about they were saying that the average viewer watched half the episdoes.

But the more I thought about Thomas' answer and the whole question of serialization, the more something didn't seem to fit.

We've now fully entered this realm where you can't take a break. Heroes and Lost both took a bath in viewership after taking a long layoff in the middle of the season.

The challenge with serialization, of course, isn't just getting people to tune in in the first place -- it's avoiding the dropout. When I was in Vancouver in the winter, I broke up with Prison Break and 24 because I missed two episodes in a row. I didn't go back. In an on-demand world, or with plenty of viewing opportunities, like HBO or A&E offers with their shows, I'm not sure that breakup would have been as permanent.

Part of me also thinks that the malaise with the sitcom stems from the fact that they are so eminently missable. I'm a big fan of Scrubs, but when it comes to that show, I fit the average viewer pattern. I probably saw about 1/4 of the episodes this season.

The thing about the 1/4 rule is that it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If your show is designed so you only have to see 1/4 of the eps, does that mean you're holding yourself open to new viewers, or does it mean that no one is ever going to be passionate enough to see every ep?

Wasn't the success of Heroes this year tied to that idea of the "Heroes ending you didn't want to miss?"

Maybe it's the contrarian in me, maybe it's self serving, but I can't help but shake the feeling that as viewer loyalty in general shrinks, the solution is not more shows that advertise how much you can miss and still jump in any time; the secret is television you don't dare miss, where even if you PVR or TIVO it, you still want to watch it before anyone can spoil you or talk to you about it.

But if they're telling the grand poohbah no go on the serial, what chance do the rest of us have to prove them and their 1/4 theory wrong?

Any thoughts?

Oh. My. God.

OKAY OKAY. I know I said I was done til Monday. At least. But in catching up on some of my reading over coffee this morning, I read this little article in Salon, an excerpt from an interesting new book called "Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean" by Douglas Wolk. If you work in TV in Canada, read this passage where Wolk talks about comic fans and tell me if it doesn't sound familiar:

There's an element of comics culture, sometimes called (a little derisively) "Team Comics," that gets excited whenever anything that looks like that acknowledgment or respect I mentioned above turns up in the outside world -- a college class on the graphic novel, a Hollywood movie based on a graphic novel, a newspaper or magazine article about a cartoonist, somebody reading a comic book on a TV show. Different segments of Team Comics take notice if a TV character is reading a new issue of "Aquaman" or Lynda Barry's "One!Hundred!Demons!," but the principle is the same.

Both the "Team Comics" culture vultures and the alternate-cover-hoarding mavens are driven by the desire to turn their hobby into some kind of success or validation, whether through affluence or cultural power, and that impulse is directly connected to the class aspirations that afflict the entire medium. A lot of comics readers are unhealthily attached to the idea that everyone else thinks what they do is kind of trashy and disreputable, and that they have to prove their favorite leisure activity worthy of respect -- to show the world that they were right all along.

It's probably time to let go of that strain of earnest defensiveness.

Uh...Der. Wow.

I get it now. We're all comic book geeks.

Mind officially blown. That's it. I'm getting the hell out into the sunshine. Stat.

Wherein Denis Asks for a "What What" and a "Mea Culpa"

I MEANT to work up a post all day today, but it's just turned into one of those days. First there were a couple of aborted notes sessions on other scripts. Then we spun out to see our set -- which is insanely cool, and a dream found location...this show's going to show my city off proper! Now I'm reading an outline and there's just not going to be anything else from me til Monday. Too burnt. Too Summer-headed.

But over at Will's place, he saved the best part of his interview with Al Magee for last. It's well worth reading , and I'm going to excerpt a big chunk of it below.

I get a lot of "good on you" stuff from people -- a lot of it, inevitably, in the "don't use my name" email or conversation department -- Welcome to Canada, you fraidy cats -- every time I post some gear to what the CRTC does or how Jim Shaw is mouthing off, or this, or that, or the other thing...

But every once in a while when I post about how the creative people in this country really need to stand up and pull up boots and work harder and be more professional, I'm greeted on those posts with a whole lot of silence. And that's telling.

Now, I like the Teamakers site. She/He is an anonymous manager somewhere inside CBC Toronto, Fort Dork, and since the days of the lockout of 2005, she/he has posted a lot of interesting commentary and criticism of the dysfunction of CBC, all under the nom du keyboard "Ouimet." Well, today, Ouimet went off on a hack about the Globe's TV critic, John Doyle. I gather the issue is that Ouimet feels Doyle takes info that appears anonymously on the site and uses it in his column without proper attribution. Or something.

I punt on this issue, completely. It just doesn't really interest me.

What does interest me mightily is how a lot of commenters take the time to courageously, from the cheap seats of anonymity, trash Doyle, including someone apparently connected with Dragon's Den who seems to have it out for Doyle because The Globe gave Dragon's Den a bad review.

This is the shit that makes my blood run cold.

Because, see, the other part of having an industry that we take seriously is having, and displaying, a level of professionalism that I don't see everywhere I look. And we should see it everywhere.

Commandment fucking one of that professionalism is that you get a bad review, you take the freight. You don't whinge like a baby about it. Certainly not from a position of anonymity.

Television, when it gets covered at all in Canada, is covered mostly as a business story. That's not good. We don't have very many people writing intelligently and critically about the business and about the culture and what it means to Canada. With Antonia Zerbisias at the Star moving on (after being fed up, finally) with the insularity and reticence of anyone in the business to speak truth about the problems facing us, Doyle is probably the only guy left in Canada who regularly calls it like he sees it, and treats television -- Canadian television -- as something worth considering and writing about. Vinay Menon and some of the other writers at The Toronto Star are trying to get that moving, too. But you know, it's still one page for TV, nine pages for Sports, right?

When I was in Banff, it was a great thrill to finally meet Bill Carter from the New York Times. Much of what I know about TV, much of what I think about this industry, is based on Bill's excellent reportage. We don't have a Bill Carter in Canada. Would that we did. Doyle to me is the only guy who comes close. Antonia's gone, guys. While I was there, I also finally had a conversation with another writer who used to write about TV in this country, and they confirmed something I had always suspected: they stopped because they got tired of all the whining by all the people who pounced every time they thought they were being treated oh so unfairly in the press.

We all need to grow the hell up.

If you're a creative in this country, I think we need a drunkard's prayer or oath or something. Here's my first draft to start:

I resolve to do my best to craft stories and characters that will entertain and enrich the cultural experiencce of the Canadian Television viewer.
I resolve to conduct myself professionally at all times.
I resolve to work as hard as I can, to never settle for good enough.
I resolve to remember to work telling stories, and to be paid for that, is a privilege, and that there are many, many people out there who would gladly trade places with me.
I resolve to put my work out into the world when it is ready to be judged, and to react to that judgement profesionally, with dignity and with perspective.
I resolve to learn, and do better, and to keep ego in check, and to help those who come after me.
I resolve to keep bitterness at bay as long as I can.

I don't know. Too flowery? Anyway, back to Will and Al Magee. Here's what Magee says, kind of on the same line:

The only hit one hour show I worked on was Slings and Arrows and I was a spear carrier to Bob Martin and Susan Coyne’s genius. (Ask producers Niv and Danny, they’ve got the touch.) I think Regenesis is a success because it is unique, it is rigorously produced by a strong production company and team and it has committed support from its broadcaster. That combination has allowed the show to mature and gain momentum and build an audience. It takes time, (more than one season) to discover a series, to learn from the audience and to process all of that learning into stronger characters, stronger stories and a stronger series design, which payoff with audience.

On the speculative opinion side – popular television is made by people who live and love television, not by people taking a break from feature film careers. Which is not to say you can’t do both. Slings was loaded with feature people, and certainly the actors, the producers and the director have great success in features, but they also have great experience and respect for the craft of television story telling and dedicated themselves to that. So too do the team at Regenisis. The industrial series that we make never hit too big in Canada because they smell so inauthentic. It’s not so much fun to watch a guy from a salad dressing commercial dressed up like an Alien spewing gibberish on a set full of flashing lights. But those series give us all great experience and keep us alive and make it possible to develop an industry. And sometimes they make it harder to develop an audience. (And by the way that is not a reference to Stargate, which is a favorite of mine, great television made by an incredibly talented group of people.)

Can we get a one hour series that takes off the way our half hours like Corner Gas and Little Mosque can? Maybe, and maybe if the one-hours follow a similar route as the half hour hits – authentically Canadian, not pretending or aspiring to a US primetime aesthetic, and giving the audience something accessible that is not available on a network simulcast. It takes a perfect triangle to get any series right but it’s more important on a one hour because of the pressure on the writing to be sustainable. So the triangle of a skilled writer with a strong point of view, a producer who knows how to work with writers and broadcasters and banks, and a broadcaster who is unflinchingly committed to the series is essential. I’ve had first hand experience on each side of the triangle and at various points in my life as a writer, as a producer and as a broadcaster, I’ve been the one to screw things up. It’s not one of those triangles that works with two sides out of three. It takes all three. So can I revise my pretentious label and call it not the Perfect Triangle, but the Perfect Storm.

The world doesn’t need another TV series the way it needs cures for what ail us, so the making of TV series is an illogical enterprise from the get go. In my twenty some years, all of the successes I’ve been a part of have had perfect symmetry on what I’ll now call my triangle theory. If you’ll permit me the temporary pretensions of naming my own theories:

Slings and Arrows had a head writer in Bob Martin with a unique imagination and singular point of view. It had producers in Danny and Niv and Sari who are very creative, know how to lead projects, how to marshal resources, how to bridge production and broadcast, and it had a team at Showcase that was maniacally committed to the enterprise. Speaking purely from my experience on that show from the broadcast side at Showcase, we were rigorous and respectful with the development, the creative team completely engaged with us for full debate, and as a result the project maintained one singular point of view and a commitment from everyone to stay on the same page regardless of the pain. Hence there was no pain. That takes great commitment and leadership from all sides which we don’t often experience.

On the creative side, the cliché that it’s all about good writing is only partially true. It’s all about good design. Good design requires the committed input of the writer(s), the producers, and the broadcaster. The broadcaster has to come to the project with an actual tested set of information about their audience not just wacky guesses and misinformation and insecurity that will undermine everyone’s confidence. From the writers it takes a commitment to the project, to the ongoing development of the project, to the responsible integration of all the input, good, bad and otherwise, and to managing their own sense of attachment to their best ideas that just won’t fly without getting pissy and passive aggressive and throwing their hands up. It’s toughest on the writers and we have a lot of extremely talented writers who can write brilliant material, and we need to support and develop those writers to gain the skill to manage their own temperament and attachments so they can apply their talent to what may at the time appear like the most undermining of notes and conditions that get placed on their work.

We need leadership and we need to commit to each other.

Amen, Al. The full post is here. As for the rest of it, maybe this weekend take a look in the mirror and don't think about the CRTC or the CTF or the Networks, or the Tory Government or Bev Oda or Konrad Von Manheimsteamroller or all the other things that are wrong with the system. Look to yourself.

Can you do better?

Let's try. Let's all start Monday.

Have a good weekend.

Greg Daniels, Part II: Long Skinny Notebooks, and The Five-To-One

NOT ONLY has Greg Daniels co-created one of the two best animated tv series of the last 20 years, King of the Hill, but he also wrote for the other one. (The Simpsons) He's written for Seinfeld and Saturday Night Live, and won Emmys galore. In fact, three of Daniels' Simpsons episodes are ranked as among the most popular Simpsons eps of all time. That's a feat.

This is the conclusion to my conversation with Greg Daniels, Creator and Executive Producer of the American version of The Office, which took place at the Banff Springs Hotel during the 2007 Banff World Television Festival.

For Part I, go here. To hear an NPR feature on writing The Office with Daniels and Mindy Kaling (writer, "Kelly") go here.


DTOS: I hate to go to the lame place -- this whole journalist driven, "death of comedy" thing -- but one of the great things about The Office that maybe points what's missing in a lot of other tv comedy today is the idea of truth. There is something true in the work you've done, both in King of the Hill and now in The Office. I recognize the America I see in The Office. And the America that I saw in your years of King of the Hlll. And I don't see that on Television a lot.


GREG DANIELS: Well, we have a couple of things that we do. And one of them is I get these reporters notebooks for the writers, and pass them out. And for King in the Hill we used to go to Texas and go around with our reporters' notebooks and here we're always going to offices, talking to people, and so there's a lot of observational comedy -- seeing what's going on and making humor out of that, rather than coming up with the comedy first. So that's one reason. But another thing is that the cameramen on The Office, specifically Randall Einhorn, although Matt Sohn his number two is also very good...but he's our DP and I used to sit him down when I told him what we were looking for and I'd say, "truth and beauty. we're going for truth and beauty." He really responded to that. "Cool," he'd say -- he lived in Australia, he'd go, "Truth and beauty, mate!" And then he'd go out...so he was always trying to find that moment of behavior, or that thing in the camerawork. So I think that's a lot of -- well, it's a combination of a lot of factors, but I'm glad you pointed it out -- because that's always our sort of secret thing we'd talk to him about.


DTOS: From a standpoint of...for the writer geeks reading this, now. Is there anything in your process that you've learned -- your secret "Office" weapon, the way that you do things that is a better way to do things than maybe a lot of other shows are doing?


GREG DANIELS: Well, I think surprise is extremely important. Which means originality. And I think people have to be really careful when they're doing creative writing that they're not remembering things. Because I think a lot of times you're going, "oh wow, that would be really cool if this happened, and then that happened" and you're not really thinking of it for the first time. You're actually remembering bits and pieces of things that you've seen on other TV shows. Or movies or something. And I would try and steer away from other shows and look toward real life to try and make the writing be fresher. And find stories that people tell you. Stuff like that -- not go, "remember that classic Lucy episode? Well a couple of tweaks and adjustments..." I think a lot of people do that, you know? "I know, how about a 'locked in a' something episode? That's always worked before." And I think that's just the wrong way to think about coming up with ideas. It's so much better to get these little skinny reporters notebooks that fit in your back pocket and try and go out and try and look at things and think of what would be funny in the things that you see out in the real world.

DTOS: Just because you've been so great with it, and have tried so many experiments with it -- what have you learned on the show about using the web, and the internet, and webisodes?


GREG DANIELS: Well, I would love to do way way more stuff on the web. Right now there's certain, um...Guild considerations, which I'm very respectful of, because I think the Guild is a great way to protect a good life for creative people and they've identified that these things are not appropriate for Guild members to do. And for some reason, the companies have not wanted to set a precedent by negotiating a Guild-covered agreement, which is silly because it's the same price, you know. But I guess these are issues that are coming up for negotiation in the next Minimum Basic Agreement, so no one wants to touch it now, which is too bad. If they did, I would be all over the web with all sorts of programming. As it is now, you know, once you pick around all the Guild issues -- we're still trying to do a lot of stuff. Just not as much as we would do. Why do it? To me it's because the whole thing with our show is that we've made it much more disposable because it's a fake documentary. So if there's a boom in the shot it's okay, and the lighting doesn't have to be perfect. And that kind of relaxes everybody in the sense of, they can try weird things. And if it works it works, and it goes in. And if it doesn't it doesn't and we haven't wasted an enormous amount of time and money. It's the ease of production -- and I think that's even more true with the web. Because nobody expects glossy, Hollywood values on the web now. So it's really all about the writing and the ideas, not the execution. And it makes it easier for people to just throw their ideas on. So to me if we have weird ideas, that we don't want to spend tens of thousands of dollars of the studio's money on because I can't justify it, cause it's just too weird. I still could maybe justify a couple of thousand dollars. And that, creatively is maybe is the most exciting part...these weird, late night kind of ideas. The 1am sketch at Saturday Night Live.


DTOS: The five to one, yeah!


GREG DANIELS: Yeah, the five to one, they just throw it on! Yeah, I'd love to do more of those. That's what the web is to me.

New episodes of The Office return to NBC this fall.

In Conversation: Greg Daniels, Executive Producer/Showrunner of The Office (U.S.)

IN PERSON, Greg Daniels is in many ways, the comedy writer in my head. That is to say, he shows up for our interview late, distracted, in a long coat. He's a bit harried -- the interviews have started earlier than he thought they would, and I'm first up. I have a sneaking suspicion he got lost on the way to the room. The Banff Springs Hotel can be kind of cavernous and medieval that way. No paintings that follow you with their eyes, though...which is a shame.

If you didn't know The Office was an American remake, based on characters created by Gervais and Merchant, you'd swear that you were seeing a character who was a bit of Jim Halpert, and Ryan at his most harried. Playing the writer-as-performer game is always a slippery slope, but the heck with it -- I see a bit of Bobby Hill in there, too.

Daniels gets more animated as he gets talking -- and he's downright passionate when he speaks about he craft of writing. TV also runs in the family - his wife, Susanne, is the President of Lifetime Networks. All the best comic minds, I find, aren't shy about showing their serious side, and Daniels is no exception.

Diane Kristine also did an excellent, wider-focused interview with Daniels for Blogcritics, which you can accces here .

DTOS: I guess one of he first things I'd love to know about the show relates to the show I'm working on now. I'm struggling with the size of the ensemble and the cast, and how you service all those characters. And you have an enormous cast. And all those characters breathe, and live, and I'm wondering if that has anything to do with the fact that some of those actors are writers as well. Does that help you service all those characters?


GREG DANIELS: I think that probably is true. Some of the characters are working on the show in a different capacity. So they don't care as much if they don't have as much screen time. So that helps with three characters at least. But it's very difficult, mostly because it's very expensive. I came from doing animation for the last ten years [King of the Hill] and one of the fun things is that people do multiple voices, so you get an actor who does three voices, you get three characters out of them, and you can have a giant cast of characters to play with, where in ordinary tv terms you don't have that because if you want an ongoing character, you have to make them a series regular, which is very expensive. And you generally have to guarantee that they'll be in every episode, or seven out of 13, or ten out of 13. So we recently made series regulars out of a few fantastic actors that we've had, such as the character of Darryl, Craig Robinson, and Ed Helms and Creed Bratton...but you know, it's expensive. It's very hard to do starting off.


DTOS: I know you've probably answered this question a thousand times before but hopefully I'll try to get at it a slightly different way. One of the first things I noticed about the American version. that I thought, "that's interesting, that's a very smart American translation" is that the Jim character doesn't seem to hate his job like the British character did. So now that you've got three seasons under your belt and you know these characters arguably better than we did in the British version I'm wondering how you view-- now--those differences. And what makes your Office American, versus the jumping off point.


GREG DANIELS: Well. (long pause) I don't think a lot of these differences came into play until the second season. Some of them might have, but we were really respectful of the original, the first season. Maybe a little too respectful. But we didn't really start to do our own thing as much til the second season. We certainly had a lot of psychological discussions. I like to have a lot of psychological discussions before writing. And the idea behind Jim and why he was still there was, was at first he was there because of Pam. He would have left but he had this unrequited crush. But then I think we started to decide that he had a few character flaws that kept him there, like he was a little bit of a slacker, uh, I mean you can consider these flaws or not depending on your point of view. But you know...I sometimes think about the Jimmy Stewart character in "It's a Wonderful Life" kind of, how he spends his whole time, his whole time there and he realizes that he hasn't had all the adventures his brother has, but he's become very important to all the people in that town. So, it's kind of like, well, perhaps there's value in that too. So I think we started off thinking that a guy like that would be ambitious and do all these other things, and now we're kind of coming to the conclusion that just being ambitious and moving to New York is not the measure of a good person.


DTOS: I'm a huge fan of your version, and I have been since the beginning. But it's funny, as a viewer, but also as a writer, I can look at one early episode and think, "wow, this show is really finding its feet" and that's where the episode where you managed to do what nobody in America can do right now, which is deal head on with the subject of race.

GREG DANIELS: The Diversity Day episode?

DTOS: To start with, yeah...

GREG DANIELS: Wow, that was our second episode. I was at least thinking that you'd pick one at the beginning of the second season -- but that's pretty good!

DTOS: But that was the one to me that was the shot across the bow. I know a lot of people who watched the first episode and went, 'meh' but to me, this was what you would have to deal with in an American version, and you didn't shy away from it.

GREG DANIELS: Well if you know about the realities of TV production, you'll know that first episode was filmed a year before the other one. The first episode was the pilot, and the script had to be a situation where, you know, you're trying to get picked up. And since they had bought an adaptation, completely starting from scratch would be a very risky thing to do. So you know, that was the episode where we hired all the people, we didn't know who any of the actors were when we started shooting. The second episode is...The first episode really should be buried, really, of any new series. Because you don't know who the actors are. The second episode we knew it was Steve Carell in that part, we knew all the other actors, we knew Stanley was black, we knew all these things that we didn't before. I'm glad you liked it. I liked it too. But that was also one of the things where, Howard Klein and Ben Silverman and I went to England to talk to Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and one of the things we talked about, this was before even the pilot rewrite, was that a big issue in American offices would be race. Huge. Bigger than class. That would be the equivalent to class in Britain. So that's why we hit it dead on.


DTOS: There's another key scene, I think that defines what's surprising about the show. And this one's from last season. Where you finally showed everybody out on the sales call. And the thing about that, the scene that almost had me getting out of the chair was the scene where you show that, despite everything, Jim and Dwight work really well together -- that they're a really good team. I thought that was brilliant.


GREG DANIELS: Thanks. There's a lot of deleted material in that. I'm trying to remember what actually aired and what didn't. But there's ... I think in the mythology of the show they used to go on sales calls a lot, but they got so irritated with each other that they didn't anymore.

Come back for Part II of my Greg Daniels interview tomorrow.

Will Dixon and Al Magee

I SWEAR this is not just because he hosted a wonderfully enjoyable, raucous dinner in Banff, where Evil Dennis and I managed to traumatize a very nice Magee TV staffer -- but Will Dixon is quietly on fire again with a great profile of one of Canada's nicest super-producers -- Al Magee.

There's a lot to ponder in Will's two part (so far!) profile, but here's the bit that caught my eye the most:

Al: The big lesson from Europe was that all audiences really crave homegrown hits. I worked on a show in Finland called Tutto Jutto, a crazy cross between Lawrence Welk and the Newlywed Game. On Thursday nights 3 million of the 5.5 million population watched Tutto Jutto. It’s no wonder that our own hits have such an idiosyncratic homegrown feel.

And the professional sensibility in Europe is the reverse of here; the producers and broadcasters don’t take themselves too seriously, but they take the work and their responsibility to the production community and the audience very seriously.

It's too long for a T-shirt, but I wonder if we could get that last statement on a coffee mug? Or maybe, I don't know, how about a tattoo that we can pass out at the CFTPA convention and the broadcaster launches? Who's with me? Anybody?

You're leaving me out here alone again, aren't you? Bastards!

Part I of the Magee profile is here. For part II, click thusly.

(and just to clarify, in the post below I mention that the only thing keeping us from doing interesting work is will. I mean will. I don't mean you, Will. Glad we cleared that up.)

I'm Not Sure.

THAT I get John From Cincinatti.


I'm also not sure that I care. The performance of the actor playing John, which I thought would get old fast, is really growing on me. Greenwood is dependable as always. And to see Ellsworth and Charlie from Deadwood show up in very different roles is both disconcerting and joyous.

And I haven't even thought about Luis Guzman yet.

And Rebecca DeMornay as a hot granny? Come ON!

John Doyle wrote yesterday about HBO series and how far and away better they were, and you have to admit it's true. Even the ones that I don't care for, like Big Love, are consistently more interesting than anything available from the major networks.

The thing is, because of how crappily CanCon does here anyway, you would think that would take the pressure off to make things more accessible. I'm almost sure that I could live with an industry where we weren't getting the boffo numbers thanks to poor promotion and various other structrual limitations, so long as the quality suggested that we were making a contribution to the art.

One problem, of course, is that fine line between art and self-indulgence. I think there's a bit of Emperor's New Clothes Syndrome out there in CanConLand. Many that have been called "brilliant" and "visionary" have struck me as "boring" or "twee."

I've worked on cheeseburgers and I've worked on vanity projects, and I've worked on shows that were on a continuum between those two things. But if any network, any broadcaster would have the balls to let someone talented here make a John From Cincinatti, well...that'd really be something, now, wouldn't it? That's probably why I flipped for Durham County. Save us Obi-Wan-TMN...you're our only hope!

Except they're not...or they shouldn't be. CTV 's run The Sopranos, terrestrial. CBC gets a whack of cash from taxpayers. How is it possible that they don't have room in their development slate for brilliant? Where is their process failing them?

Think: the only thing keeping us from doing these shows is will. Will, and the wisdom to trust a creative voice and get the hell out of the way.

If You're Surfing in here from Blog T.O.

WELCOME, first of all. This is a blog about TV writing and sometimes Canadian TV. If you scroll down through the last two weeks of posts, hopefully you'll be able to find some lively reportage from my trip last week to the 2007 Banff TV Festival. I have more of that stuff to come, including an interview with the Executive Producer of The Office, Greg Daniels.

If you look at the entry from June 8, I think there are links to some of my big all time posts. Can't say more now. Busy rewriting. Ciao.

Dude, when do you have time to Write?

Debbie over at BlogTo -- a nifty little blog about all things Toronto, did a little email interview with me recently. Go read it here and find out why I'll never forgive Avril for that thing she said to me on the carpet at the MMVA's...or something:

How did you get into screenwriting?

Sideways. I always wanted to write. When I first graduated Ryerson I sent a script I wrote down to L.A. It was a "Wonder Years" spec script and I got really great feedback on it from the Executive Producer of the show. But I didn't follow up. I drifted into TV producing, doing stories on media and technology, first at TVOntario, then at Citytv. I had a wonderful time at Citytv, got to interview a lot of people, but was still restless.

In 1996 I did a play at Summerworks called "Press'd" -- and my boss at the time, Moses Znaimer, brought a Director friend named Jeremy Kagan to the show. And Kagan flipped for my play. He loved the writing. But I never followed up. About a year later, I'm watching the Emmys and there's Jeremy Kagan, accepting an award for Directing "The West Wing," which was my favorite show at the time. And I decided, if I ever got another break like that, I wasn't going to let it pass by.

By this time I'd moved on to help start up Space: The Imagination Station. I met up on-set with a couple of guys producing a show called STARHUNTER. They liked me, I wrote a few eps for their second season, and then I took the big leap. I quit my job and went to the Canadian Film Centre. When I got out, I never looked back. I've been working ever since, first in documentary (I did a lot of lifestyle wedding shows) and now drama.

I say all this because now I look back and I think the missed opportunities had purpose. I had to get past my fear. People tend to think that you only get one 'break,' but it's not true. You just have to want it badly enough that you are willing to risk everything. Some get there more quickly because they've got youthful bravado or a natural fearlessness on their side. Some come later to it, once they realize that they won't be happy if they don't really try. But the risk -- taking the risk, is all.

The full profile is here.

It's a Bouncing Baby Blog! Pro-Writer Style!

IT'S HARD at this point to come up with a new entry point into the scribosphere. Lots of niches are being scratched daily. But more and more agents, both southerly and cold Canadians, are reporting that they're hearing that people want to read original pilots as spec samples. Sometimes it's as the second or third script -- but still, that makes for a daunting challenge.

Because nothing is harder than writing a pilot. It's a dark bit of business, part necromancy and part bone-crushing bravado.

Luckily, an incredibly wonderful, hardworking, and way experienced Canadian writer named Jill Golick has a new blog where she obsesses over pilots. Not so you don't have to...just because she's writing pilots herself and therefore, she's obsessing over them anyway. She's just letting you listen in. Awesome, hey?

Here's a bit from a recent post on a British show I've never seen, but boy do I want to now:

One of my favourite series of 2007 thus far is the British series Skins. The opening scenes of the pilot, entitled "Tony" and written by Bryan Elsley, are absolutely fabulous.

The show opens with a 30 second title sequence that is all shots of characters and ends with the series title "Skins".

The first shot of the first episode is close on eyes which pop open, awake, as the camera slowly pulls out to reveal a teenage boy in bed as church bells ring in the distance. His alarm goes off and he flicks on some music as he springs into action, doing his dips, chin ups and bicep curls in only his tight white underpants, his face expressionless. His first smile appears as he surveys his image in the mirror.

That sequence takes 37 seconds and it's all about character.

A teenage girl looking bedraggled in her smudged makeup and short skirt walks up the street.

In his bedroom, our teenage boy's watch alarm sounds. He stations himself at the bedroom window and looks out. In the window across the street, a woman allows her white robe to drop to the floor, revealing her naked back. She glances out the window; she knows our boy is watching.

On the street, the girl glances up at the woman's window and then at his. She stops, arms crossed, staring up at his window. Is she a pissed off girlfriend?

No, actually. She waves, trying to distract him as the naked woman turns in his direction providing a good front view. Below the young girl finally attracts his attention.

The boy turns to his stereo, cranking the volume higher, higher, higher still, smiling with satisfaction in the direction of his bedroom door, behind which we can barely make out a male voice: "Tony! Tony!"

Tony, the teenage boy, signals to the girl below and she lunges for the front door. An irate looking 40-something male wearing nothing but red boxers storms into Tony's room, yelling to be heard over the music.

"Sorry," says Tony, pretending to fiddle with the remote, "the volume's busted."

"Every fucking morning!" spurts his furious father. Meanwhile the young hottie is sneaking up the stairs, into her bedroom, peeling off her clubbing clothes and slipping into her demure English school girl uniform.We're not done yet.

Tony is now sitting on the toilet reading Sartre's Nausea as his father knocks on the bathroom door begging to be let in. Tony smiles mildly as he flushes, brushes and goes out the window, leaving the bathroom door locked and his father pounding and cursing on the other side.

Tony climbs down to street level, pauses to smile at the now-dressed woman from across the street and lets himself into the house.

In the kitchen, Mom is making eggs. His sister, now every inch the innocent school girl, nibbles toast. Dad, still ranting about getting into the bathroom, steps into the kitchen and stops dead when he sees Tony.

The lock is broken again, Tony claims mildly, as his father stares at him with mounting hatred.

By this time, you couldn't pay me to turn off this show. And the interesting thing about this opening is that none of it has anything to do with what follows. Tony's parents and sister don't have any significance in the series until a much later episode.

Instead of establishing story, the writer has opted to devote the first three and three quarter minutes of the pilot to setting up character. And he has done so beautifully.

Jill breaks down other pilots and talks about what makes them work. If you're taking that leap toward trying to come up with a pilot yourself, it's an invaluable addition to the scribosphere: Running With My Eyes Closed.

And That's a Wrap.

SITTING IN a Starbucks in Canmore, on my way back to Calgary, a short dinner with friends and then the Red Eye home.

The 2007 Banff TV Festival was pretty good for me. I met a lot of people I'd only heard of before. Lots of blog-love from people -- a nice conversation or two with people like Sean Davidson from Playback, and Bill Carter from the NYTimes (swoon), hangin' with the writer mafia, and best of all -- the chance to hang with people I usually only see as pixels -- Will Dixon, Alex, Diane Kristine, and Callaghan (though My God the man whines.)

When I get back, it's diving straight into notes for my CBC script. But I might also have a one-pager to write up. Ah the potential Development Deal. You are a sultry, siren calling little beeyotch.

So hope you enjoyed the posts from Banff. There will be more.

Mountains are Pretty.

Pictures of (some of) the writer mafia...in the Rundle Lounge, Post Wrap...

Number 1: Matt Schiller, Al Magee, Travis McDonald

Number 2: Dennis Heaton, Shelley Eriksen

Number 3: Diane Kristine, Me

Number 4: Alex "Have You Bought My Book Yet?" Epstein, Peter "The Cyborg" Mohan.

They're in the Money

HERE ARE the winners of the Pitching prizes at the 2007 Banff TV Fest:

CTV CANADIAN DOCUMART ($60,000 in development funding)
First prize and $30,000 was presented to Boy Genius & Bobby Fisher by John Chris Tou.

Second prize and $20,000 was presented to Taqwacore by Omar Majeed.

Third prize and $10,000 was presented to Murder for Love by Larry Day.

PITCH IT!: THE N NETWORK YOUTH DRAMA PITCH
Days and Nights at Camp Kanata by Chris Carter and Adam Jack won a development prize of US $10,000 from The N Network. The winner of the Youth Drama pitch also received a $5,000 motion picture film product grant as prizing for this year’s Audience Choice Award, provided by returning sponsor Kodak Canada Inc.

PITCH IT!: UK TV STYLE LIFESTYLE PITCH
Property Protégé by Lyndsay Duthie won a development prize of £5,000 from UK TV STYLE.

PITCH IT!: THE COMEDY NETWORK COMEDY PITCH
Frankie Fats by Scott Feschuk and Scott Reid won a development prize of $10,000 from the Comedy Network.

PITCH IT!: FOX 21 REALITY PITCH
Man Camp by Josh Levy and Robi Levy won a development deal with Fox 21.

iPITCH
Kwad9 by Jean-Francois Grenier won a development prize of $10,000 from the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund.

Congrats to the winners.

Paul Abbot Doesn't Believe in Typing

THE LAST session I attended at the 2007 Banff TV festival was a conversation with one of my favorite TV writers.

Paul Abbot might not be a household name over on these shores, but he's quite the big deal in the U.K. with several constituencies. There are those who love him for his longstanding work on Coronation Street. Then, others who admire his dark comedy Shameless. There's the work he did on several beloved Cracker episodes. And then there's Touching Evil.

Then there are people like me who admire all that work that came before, but who swoon like little girly men at the thought of State of Play, the six part miniseries set in the netherworld between journalism and British Politics.

I was disappointed to see that Paul was there only via satellite, but once you settled in (and got used to the video lag over the mojo wire from London) there was much to admire and report.

Firstly, he said that just this afternoon he's been outlining State of Play II. He says he's a bit stuck at the moment, as he started the 'wrong way round. Not exactly sure what he meant by that, but he assured the audience that BBC would probably have the sequel in hand by next autumn.

The American adaptation is also proceeding. He says he's very interested and encouraged seeing how they get it down to 120 pages. (His original script for the six hour series was 850 pages long.)

They're also working heavily on an American version of Shameless, possibly involving Woody Harrelson. Abbot said it was probably destined for cable since "They found out that fully 1/4 of the material couldn't be broadcast conventionally thanks to FCC rules." Ah America, America.

During the course of the interview, when he spoke about State of Play, I was pretty surprised to discover how he apparently did the thing you're never supposed to do. "I wrote the first ten scenes with no idea where it was going or how it was going to end. I just wanted to get the characters and inhabit the world."

Oh man. But he was just getting going.

Because it's a world, believe it or not, that he managed to reflect mightily without doing any research. "I'd never been inside a newsroom, and I'd never been inside parliament."

Right about this time I'm digging my nails into my knee. Because clearly this guy is a better writer than I could ever aspire to be. When you're that good, you make breaking the rules look easy. And they're not.

Abbot said that the closer he got to the end, the more scared he got, and the more that helped his writing. Been there, done that. Great. At least he's not an alien.

During the Q&A, I asked a question about the complexity at the heart of State of Play, and how he was able to maintain it; whether he had any difficulty getting the narrative past gatekeepers either at BBC or elsewhere. Abbot mostly shrugged off the question, but not before making a great point that though you have to view the network person you're dealing with as your customer, dealing with their note doesn't have to mean doing what they say. In fact, sometimes it's better to go deeper.

If you try sometimes, I guess, you just might find, you give'em what they need.

Abbot also said something intriguing about the experience of writing that I've been pondering myself lately. He said that in many ways, one of the biggest challenges of doing a six part series by yourself is that by the end of it, you're an entirely different writer than you were at the start. I certainly found that writing Across The River last summer. It's an amazing thing to try and reconcile the end with the start, just because you're in such a vastly different place when all the dust and tears and choices have settled.

Abbot was passionate about the need for story teams, and says that, against a lot of advice, he went and bought a building to establish a "writer's studio" in London, where teams of writers can be mentored and paired with a project. Abbot sees that as the way out of the British tendency to only do short runs of shows. In places like Canada that model is viewed a lot more favorably than it is by pros like Abbot. He came out and said that most top quality U.S. drama, working on that 22 episode a year model, is much better than anything that the British are producing.

See? The grass is always greener.

Finally, Abbot waxed angry and eloquently on the subject on the need for writers to be able to inject their personality into their work. He sees a fundamental flaw in a system where writers are forced to conform and respond to the whims of powerful script editors and producers.

"Your personality is what we want. The entire way you're training writers is wrong if you don't allow for that. We tend to train writers to be nothing more than fairly literate typists." Abbot thinks that Producers have their place in crafting the series for market, "but once the story is told, it ought to be up to the writer to find their way through. Otherwise you're just wasting your money."

And Then There Was One

WELL, IT'S the final day of the 2007 Banff Television Festival. It's been a great fest so far -- a chance to meet some of the new blood (even if I did feel, morally, that I had to tell them to strongly consider moving to the USA if they're just starting out and have nothing to lose.) Last night there was also an enjoyable dinner courtesy of Al Magee of Magee TV -- who is everywhere, all the time.

On that score, it bears repeating that Chris Szarka (Producer of Rent-A-Goalie) is the tallest man in Canadian showbusiness. And for once, for once, I managed to outdisturb "Evil" Dennis Heaton (Fido) with a simple three word phrase:

"Quack for Daddy."

Today I'll be taking in Mike Clattenburg's convo with John Doyle -- I'm hoping they really give'r to the whole Canadian TV thing - and maybe a bunch of pitches. I have a couple of meetings, and have to steal time to go over notes on my latest script from CBC. Call it Multi-multi-multitasking.

Today's the day that most of the big-wigs pull out. But the writer mafia, my friend, we stay til the end. The bitter, bitter end.

Take the script. Leave the cannoli.

Oh, I'll also be on Q on CBC Radio today (in the latter portion of the show) talking about Banffing and Pitching and Raindrops and Roses and Whiskers on Kittens.

It's the air, man. It's the air.

More later today.

Ben Silverman Changes The Gravity In The Room

IT WAS near the end of Ben Silverman's "via satellite" appearance at the Banff TV festival where he said the thing that made the room full of (mostly) Canadians perk up:

"I have to give a shout out to Little Mosque," he said. Silverman promised that he would come to Banff next year in person. And, he said, "I'm coming up there with a shopping bag. Soon."

Now that's notable. Because not only is Silverman the who ported The Office from the U.K. to these shores, but his company, Reveille, also had one of last season's only breakout hits, Ugly Betty, based on the popular telenovela "I Am Betty the Ugly."

Silverman has always been a bit of a wunderkind. At the age of 25, he helped sell Granada's Cracker to the U.S. The show didn't work, but it was only the first step up a ladder of a career that's relied on doing the thing that Americans don't normally do well: looking beyond their own shores for great ideas. Silverman was in the right place at the right time to watch Reality TV take off in the U.K -- and when the explosion of format sales took off, Silverman was there in the middle of it.

So he's seen first hand the value of pulling in new formats, new ideas from new places.

"There's some wonderful talent in L.A., but they're all eating from the same feed," said Silverman, in response to a question from Bill Carter, this afternoon. He was clear that he was going to be "forcing our executives into an international world view."

He's got a much bigger sandbox to play in now. The reason why Silverman was in Banff only via satellite was that, well, he's a little busy. Over the next thirty days, he'll be wrapping up his involvement with Reveille, and especially with Ugly Betty, cause it's now on a competing network.

The "executives" Silverman will be trying to force into that international worldview are his new coworkers at NBC, where he's just taken on the job of Co-Chairman of both NBC Entertainment, and the NBC Universal Television Studio. NBC, mired in fourth place, could certainly use some sort of big jolt. But when Carter asked if he could realistically be a change agent in a place like NBC, he paused and said, "It's a lot harder than I thought it would be. This is a big ship. I'm in the oil tanker."

Besides spending time abroad, maybe Silverman's internationalist views (and his veneration for the creative) comes from a childhood that saw him spending time in Stratford, Ontario, where his father was the musical director at the Stratford Festival, for a time. His mother, an opera singer, was also an exec with the BBC, based in New York.

The rest of the interview with Carter touched on some forward-looking and interesting views on TV. (Views that pretty much completely jibe with my own.) Silverman doesn't think the sky is falling when it comes to tv. He had an entertaining run when he talked about the person coming home at the end of the day, pummelled by distraction and worries about the war and meetings and coworkers and family and kids and laundry... and how they just want to turn on their TV and escape. He talked about going to dinner in Manhattan last night, and discussing the Sopranos finale, and two people whingeing that they hadn't seen it. "Tough," he said. That water cooler factor -- that's the thing that TV still has....you still want to talk about it.

The problem with that? You have to find the water cooler shows. Silverman's good at that. But the secret, such as it is, isn't rocket surgery: compelling characters, an emotional hook, and situations that entertain and that people respond to.

One of the most interesting points to come out of the exchange with Carter, that feeds into the "maybe the sky isn't falling" point of view? Now that Nielsen has started rating commercial viewing and not just program viewing (a change advertisers demanded) they have found something that could have incredible implications for the short term in TV. Apparently, "upscale" shows like The Office have the highest percentage of people actually watching the ads. Carter pointed out that that was incredibly counterintuitive, and it is. It doesn't seem it should be that way. But Silverman thinks it all has to do with audience engagement. They're more engaged, so they keep watching. And maybe...that means watching the ads, too.

Think about that for a minute. If people who watch good shows watch more commercials because they like the show, then what does THAT do to the advertising model?

In any case, Silverman is clear that he thinks content will go on, even if distribution changes. Eventually that digital world will enhance, not cannibalize, what we now know as TV. "The computer will come to the TV, not the other way around."

As for his own schedule, he's particularly high on Journeyman for the fall. He thinks they've got the right lead, and the right concept with heart. He also likes Bionic Woman and Chuck. We'll see.

My question is, when he comes to Canada with his shopping bag, will we have shows bold enough to interest him? Think about his high concept shout out. Little Mosque is new. It is untrod ground.

Bold.

I hope Silverman gets his chance to be as bold as he's promising. He's talking a good game right now.

"I didn't need this job. I wanted this job." he said today. And I believe him.

Wouldn't it be funny if he turned out to be better for Canadian TV than some of our homegrown movers and shakers?

Put that in your Banff and smoke it.

Lifetime talks about Blood Ties

JUST BEFORE my cold - so cold - CBC Newsworld interview this afternoon, I attended an "In Conversation With..." session with Susanne Daniels, the President of Lifetime Networks.

In a relaxed interview with Bill Carter from The New York Times, Daniels was refreshingly upfront, and pretty confident, about the challenge she's facing.

Daniels came to Lifetime from the WB, where, as an exec she managed to shepherd everything from Smallville to Buffy to Dawson's Creek. She worked with Kevin Williamson before Scream, J.J. Abrahms before he was a juggernaut, and Joss Whedon when his most reliable credit was one season on Roseanne.

So she knows talent.

She also knows talent close to home, since her husband, Greg Daniels, is the Exec Producer of The Office. Now that's one creative household.

She also said something that I've never heard a network exec say ever:

Don't always listen to the networks when they say what they want. You have to develop the thing you're passionate about. She admitted, in fact, that things change so quickly in the network game that you're better off going with your vision, and that networks often don't know what they want.

Wow. Would that there were 100 more network execs who thought just like her.

Daniels has no small task trying to bring Lifetime back. Her impression when she joined the network was that it seemed to be dated, and a little stuck in the past. She related stories about being on a plane and telling her seatmate what she did for a living and getting a funny look back as she said, "yeah, I used to watch your movies." "Give me a little while," Daniels said, "I'm going to try to get you back."

How that's going to translate into a new movie strategy? Daniels was a little unclear on that point. Seems like she's still working through it herself. But she was bullish on the upcoming slate of original dramas they're launching this summer, including Army Wives, which was (according to Daniels) Lifetime's most successful original program premiere in the channel's history. There are two more series going up this summer, which is a big slate for a cable channel. Daniels says, "that's the thing about cable. Look at USA with Monk. F/X and The Shield... You need one breakout series and you can build your whole channel around it."

So the three dramas this summer, as well as a couple of interesting sounding reality series (a Psychic Challenge?) is Daniels' way of rolling the dice to try and bring the viewers back.

But still, it's going to be a bear. Because as Carter pointed out, 55% of the TV viewing audience is female. That's not exactly a niche. How do you program for a niche that's that large and diverse? Especially when ABC is basically doing the same thing?

Now, Blood Ties fans, you've been very patient up til now, so here's what she said about Blood Ties. Late in the session she mentioned the acquisition of the show and used it as an example of how other considerations come into play. "The show did well for us - not spectacular, not a breakout...but it was one of the most downloaded shows consistently on Itunes."

In chitchat after the session, Daniels was even more enthusiastic about the show. Part of the reason for holding back those last ten episodes for October was that they are going to try a real push to build a whole night around Blood Ties. Daniels thinks that the show hasn't reached its full ratings potential, and they can get it there with better attention and positioning in the fall.

It's hard sometimes for fans to understand that the business realities do sometimes get in the way of the need for instant gratification...but to me, it sounds like a very smart and savvy programmer is thinking that she's got a great property that can do better with a little more help.

So loyal Blood Ties fans -- your efforts have paid off. The downloads are noticed, as is the enthusiasm out there. And yeah, waiting sucks, but sounds to me like you've got someone in the Executive Suite who's looking to try and do on her end, everything you're already doing on yours. This is a great thing.

But...

Before you ask....no -- she didn't say anything about that.